Ten Years Among the Mail Bags. James Holbrook
to select such cases as are not only interesting in themselves, but well calculated to benefit those for whose use the present work is especially designed.
TEN YEARS
AMONG
THE MAIL BAGS.
CHAPTER I.
No "Ear-Biters" employed—The Commission—A whole School robbed—Value of a "quarter"—Embargo on Trunks—Unjust Suspicion—The dying Mother—Fidelity of Post Masters—A venerable pair of Officials—President Pierce assists—A clue to the Robberies—The Quaker Coat—An insane Traveller—The Decoy Letters—Off the Road—The dancing Horse—The Decoy missing—An official Visit by night—Finding the marked Bills—The Confession—The Arrest.
In the fall of 1845, information was received from the Post-office Department at Washington, of extensive depredations upon the mails along the route extending from Boston to a well known and flourishing inland town in one of the New England States, accompanied with the expression of a strong desire on the part of the Post Master General, that prompt and thorough efforts should be made to ferret out, if possible, those who were concerned in these wholesale peculations.
It so happened that the gentleman at this time at the head of the Post-office Department, had not been a very ardent believer in the necessity or usefulness of "Secret Agents," so called. In fact, when he entered upon the duties of his office, he dismissed the entire corps of this class of officials, and notwithstanding the urgent calls of the public, and the dissenting views of his most experienced Assistants, he steadily refused to re-employ them, excepting temporarily, and in special cases, until near the close of his official term. Justice to that honest and thorough-going officer, however, requires some mention of the causes which controlled his decision in this important matter.
While he was a Representative in Congress, a violent onslaught was made upon the system of Special Agents, for the reason (as was alleged,) that they were neither more nor less than so many political emissaries, supported at the public expense; and in consequence of their secret, and therefore commanding position, possessing, and often exerting an undue and improper influence against those opposed to them in politics. Believing this charge to be unjust, he took up, in the House of Representatives, the defence of this Special Agent system, and called for proof in support of the accusations of violent partisan conduct brought against these Agents.
Those who know him will be able to judge of his mortification and displeasure when it was distinctly proved that in one instance a Special Agent relieved his pugnacious propensities by getting into a regular fight at the polls, and damaging one poll, by biting off an ear attached thereto; the poll aforesaid being the property of a political opponent.
It was also shown that this sanguinary Agent inserted a dirk knife between the ribs of another antagonist, thus performing a sort of political phlebotomy, with the intention, doubtless, of relieving the patient of some portion of his superabundant Whig or Democratic blood (whichever it might have been) and thereby bringing him to a rational view of public questions.
This, and some other equally reputable cases of interference in elections, having been fully established, it is not wonderful that strong prejudices should have arisen in the mind of the future Post Master General against this class of officers, although such disorderly and disgraceful conduct was clearly the fault of the individuals who indulged in it, and not of the corps or system, with which they were connected. And I would here say, in justice to this body of Agents, that many of them were gentlemen of intelligence and discretion, who would be far from countenancing such proceedings as have just been mentioned.
When, therefore, in the year above designated, the writer found himself in possession of a Special Agent's Commission, signed by the same gentleman, as "Post Master General," and rendered impressive by the broad seal of that Department, which represented a 2.40 steed rushing madly along, with a post-rider on his back, and the mail portmanteau securely attached—when he received accompanying instructions to look into the alarming state of things on the route aforesaid—his leading thought and ambition was to satisfy the distinguished Tennessean that a Special Agent could catch a mail robber by the ear quite as readily as a political antagonist, and apply the knife of justice to those whose case required it, with at least as much courage and skill as could be displayed in the matter of disabling belligerent "shoulder hitters" at the ballot boxes.
How much the result of this first investigation, after the restoration of the "ear-biters" (as they were then sometimes facetiously called,) had to do with the radical change in opinion and action, noticeable in certain quarters, as to the utility and indispensable necessity of this "right arm" of the Department, it may not be advisable, nor indeed modest, to inquire.
The depredations in the case thus placed in my hands for investigation, were seemingly very bold, although from the length of the route, and the number of post-offices thereon, the rogue had no doubt flattered himself that it would take a long time to trace him out, even if Government should condescend to notice the complaints which he might suppose would be made at head-quarters. It is also possible that he was encouraged to this course of rascality by the belief that the Department had no officials whose particular business it was to be "a terror to evil-doers," and that he could easily elude the efforts of those no more experienced than himself in the crooks and turns through which every villain is compelled to slink.
The letters stolen were principally addressed to the members of a large and flourishing literary institution, situated in the town already mentioned, and embracing in its catalogue pupils of both sexes from almost every section of the Union. So keen was the scent of the robber, that, like an animated "divining rod," he could indicate unerringly the existence of gold, or its equivalent beneath the paper surface soil, and he "prospected" with more certainty, though less honesty, than a California miner. From all the mail-matter passing through his office, he would invariably select the valuable packages, abstracting their material contents, and, as it afterwards appeared, committing the letters to the flames. "Dead men tell no tales." Neither do burnt letters.
The results of this system of robbery, as regarded those who suffered by it, were somewhat peculiar. The abstraction of an equal amount from the members of a business community, might have inconvenienced some, but would have made little perceptible difference in the course of business. The temporary deficiency would have been as little felt, on the whole, as the withdrawing of a pail-full of water from a running stream. The level is quickly restored, as supplies flow in.
But when the victims of dishonesty are youth pursuing their studies at a distance from home, and depending on remittances from their parents and friends for the means of discharging the debts which they may incur, the case is widely different. Here the stream is dammed up somewhere between its source and the place where the waters ought to be flowing, and the worst description of drought—a drought of money—ensues.
All sorts of consequences, in the present instance, followed this state of things. The school became, in this particular, like a besieged city, cut off from supplies from without, while its inhabitants lived on under an ever increasing pressure of difficulties, which made premature Micawbers of the unfortunate aspirants to that temple which is so artistically represented in the frontispiece to Webster's spelling book, as surmounting the hill of Science, and animated by the figure of Fame on the roof, proclaiming through her trumpet a perpetual invitation to enter the majestic portals beneath.
The possessor of money, received, under these circumstances, a greater degree of consideration than is usually accorded to the millionaire in the world at large. The owner of a "quarter" had troops of