Part 17

It was at this point that the Great Compromiser, Henry Clay, moved to seek the solution which would avoid bloodshed and perhaps civil war. He introduced in the House his own bill to lower tariffs by 20 per cent over a period of ten years. The Clay bill was pushed through Congress along with the Jackson Force Bill and both were sent to the President for his signature. Jackson won his demand for authority to send troops to South Carolina to put down any move toward secession or nullification of the tariff laws, and he signed the compromise tariff bill even though it was, in a measure, appeasement of the Nullificationists. Clay’s tariff bill was a face-saving measure for South Carolina. The head-on conflict between Federal and state forces was averted--at least for the time being.

In Jackson’s administration there was one man whose name appears mostly in the footnotes of that turbulent period, but it is a name that deserves special mention in this chronicle. The man was Samuel Swartwout, Collector of Customs in New York City during Jackson’s two terms in the White House. He rates special mention and a shadowy niche in American history because he was the first and only man to steal a million dollars from the Treasury of the United States. In fact, he stole $1,250,000.

Swartwout was a young man when he plunged into New York politics. He was a dark-haired, personable man who made himself useful by running errands for the political bosses until he reached a position of backroom fixer and schemer with no small amount of influence. He was the bluff, hearty type who made friends easily. And while he never was a central figure in the making of history, he was one of those men whose names continually cropped up in the affairs of the men who did make history in his time.

Swartwout was a protege and confidante of Aaron Burr during the period of Burr’s shady adventure in the West when he was accused of treason in an alleged plot to establish an empire in the southwestern United States. And when Jackson’s star began to rise as a Presidential candidate, Swartwout attached himself to the cause of the Tennessean.

Many of Jackson’s friends and followers resented Swartwout’s close association with Jackson because they regarded him as a doubtful character smeared by the tar of the Burr affair. But when Jackson entered the White House in 1828, Swartwout was among the honored guests at the celebrations.

Jackson’s friends were concerned when it became known that the New Yorker had easy access to the office of the President and was seen coming and going as though he were one of Jackson’s intimate advisers--which he wasn’t. The concern became dismay when rumors spread that Swartwout had come to town seeking from Jackson the nomination as Collector of Customs for New York City, a post of no little prestige and political influence in those days. Jackson’s Secretary of State, Martin Van Buren, was so upset by the reports that he refused to admit Swartwout to his office or to enter into correspondence with him.

Jackson must have felt he owed a political debt to Swartwout because on April 25, 1829, during a recess of Congress, he handed the New Yorker the political plum he had been seeking. Swartwout continued in the office until March 29, 1838, with never any public suspicion that he was involved in thefts of money collected by the Customs House in New York. Only when the records were checked by his successor was the discovery made that his accounts were short by $1,250,000.

The scandal which followed broke like a storm over the young Customs Service. Demands were made in Congress for safeguards to prevent any such future looting of the Treasury. Enemies of Jackson attacked the “spoils system” of appointments and centered much of their assault on Customs.

As for Swartwout, he had foreseen the storm that was to come. He had bade his friends farewell and boarded a ship for Europe several weeks before the shortages in his accounts were discovered. He was in France, safely out of reach of the law, when the scandal broke--and he didn’t bother to return.

By 1849, the Customs Service spanned the continent. It reached the coast of California in the person of John Collier, who was appointed as the first Collector of Customs for San Francisco just as the state was clearing the way for entry into the Union. Collier reached San Francisco on November 13, 1849, after a perilous trip across the country. He arrived at the beginning of the gold rush to find the city and the customs situation in a state of disorganization and confusion.

Collier was overwhelmed by the amount of business being carried on in San Francisco, by the number of vessels arriving and leaving the harbor, by the smuggling which was going on, and by the high prices he found in the city. He advised Secretary of the Treasury W. M. Meredith in a long, rambling letter: “I am perfectly astounded at the amount of business in this office.... The amount of tonnage ... on the 10th instance in port, was 120,317 tons; of which 87,494 were American, and 32,823 were foreign. Number of vessels in the harbor on that day, 10th instance, 312, and the whole number of arrivals since the first of April, 697; of which 401 were American, and 296 foreign. This state of things, so unexpected, has greatly surprised me....”

He found that Customs clerks were being paid from $1800 to $3000 per annum but that the salaries were not particularly attractive in a city gripped by the get-rich-quick fever. Flour was selling for $40 per barrel and pork for $60. Board was $5 a day and a room with a single bed was $150 a month. Wood was $40 a cord and prices for other necessities were equally shocking to a man as obviously thrifty as Collier.

Collier moved into the Old Spanish Custom House to set up shop. It was a dark and gloomy building. The roof leaked. Some of the doors were off the hinges. There was no vault in which to place the money he collected. He confided to the Secretary that “owing to the rates for rents, I am afraid to lease a building. One for myself, containing four rooms, two below and two above, without fireplaces, was offered to me on yesterday at $2400 a month....”

He continued: “To enforce the revenue laws in this district, and to cut up and prevent smuggling, which has been and is now carried on to a great extent, it seems to be necessary that an additional cutter should be sent out or that the Ewing, now in this port, should be assigned to that duty.”

In a later letter to the Secretary, Collier wrote: “... San Francisco ... must become to the nation what New York is to the Atlantic.... It is impossible to estimate the extent to which her commerce may reach. It is now large and it will be constantly on the increase. These facts are stated for the double purpose of putting you in position of what may be anticipated from duties, and of impressing upon Congress the necessity of doing something--doing much for California, and that without delay. The responsibilities that rest upon the Collector, in the absence of any legal tribunal, any legal adviser, to which he might resort for redress or advice weigh heavily upon me.”

The troubles experienced by Collier and other early-day collectors along the borders of the growing nation were soon to be submerged in the conflict between the states. At the outbreak of the Civil War most Southern Customs officers simply resigned and accepted appointments to similar posts in the Confederate government.

President Lincoln ordered a blockade of the South on April 19, 1861. At that time the United States naval fleet consisted of only 42 ships carrying some 555 guns. Of this total many were tenders and store ships and among them were old fashioned sailing ships and frigates. For a time, business went on as usual in the Southern ports.

Many in the South laughed at the idea of a blockade. One Southerner in a letter from Charleston, South Carolina, printed in the New York Illustrated News on June 15, 1861, said:

We are now in the enjoyment of a very pleasant spring, and are now as quiet as a brood of chicks under the parent’s wing. For all that, however, our head men are not asleep. Everything is going nicely. You have heard, no doubt, old Abe has blockaded our port.

A nice blockade indeed. On the second day a British ship, the A & A ran the gauntlet and got in safe. She leaves in a few days with a snug freight of $30,000. Today two vessels passed safely in, both British, I understand. A captain told me that one of them can carry more cotton than the A & A and that she is engaged at 5¢ a pound, which will give a freight of $35,000 to $40,000....

Under the guns of Admiral Farragut and the troops of General Butler, New Orleans remained securely in the hands of the Northern forces, shutting off this port to the Southern cause. After a short while Galveston fell to the Union and the flow of cotton and smuggled goods from this area was sharply reduced.

In England, the Liverpool firm represented by Thomas E. Taylor owned some fifteen ships which were engaged in blockade running. Among Taylor’s swiftest and most elusive runners was a steel vessel called the Banshee, one of the first--if not the first--ship built for the express purpose of evading the Union blockade for the Southern ports. Nassau, in the Bahamas, was the primary staging point where the blockade runners fueled and stocked for the run to the American coast.

The blockade had been underway for two years when Taylor brought the Banshee into Nassau. Workers removed everything aloft except the two lower masts, and the ship was painted an off shade of white which the blockade runners had found made their ships almost invisible at night, even from a distance of only a few yards.

Moving cautiously out of Nassau, the Banshee sailed along the Bahama shores and then began the run toward Charleston. From a crosstree in the masts, a lookout was rewarded with a dollar each time he sighted a sail on the horizon before it was seen from the deck. If someone on the deck spotted the sail first, then the lookout was fined five dollars. It was a system that encouraged alertness by the lookouts. As soon as a ship was sighted, the Banshee turned its stern to the stranger and waited quietly until the vessel was out of sight.

On the fourth day the Banshee reached the American coast some fifteen miles north of Cape Fear and the mouth of the Charleston River. When darkness came she began easing cautiously toward the blockading Union ships, running as close to the pounding surf as the skipper dared. No lights were permitted, not even the glow of a lighted cigar. Tarpaulins covered the engine-room hatchways. And the Banshee was a gray ghost slipping silently through the water while the men aboard talked only in whispers. Occasionally the ship stopped for a seaman to take soundings.

Taylor later recalled one tense moment in these words: “... Suddenly Burruss (the pilot) gripped my arm--‘There is one of them, Mr. Taylor, on the starboard bow.’... A moment afterwards I could make out a long, low, black object on our starboard side, lying perfectly still. Would she see us? That was the question: but no, though we passed within a hundred yards of her, we were not discovered and I breathed again. ‘Steamer on the port bow,’ and another cruiser was made out close to us. Still unobserved, we crept quietly along, when all at once a third cruiser shaped herself out of the gloom straight ahead and steaming slowly across our bow.

“Burruss was now of the opinion that we must be inside the squadron and advocated making the land. So ‘ahead slow’ we went again, until the low-lying coast and the surf line became dimly visible.... It was a big relief when we suddenly heard Burruss saying, ‘It’s all right, I see the big hill!’...”

The Big Hill was near the Confederate-held Fort Fisher at the mouth of the Charleston River. As dawn came, the Banshee was sighted by the Union blockaders and they moved against her with guns blazing. But then the Banshee slipped under the protecting guns of Fort Fisher and safety.