John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana

On February 17, 1872, the Sun published a leading editorial in which it stated that the nation was now “passing through an epoch of public corruption without precedent in its history, and almost without precedent in the history of free governments.” In support of this generalization, it alluded to the frauds of the Tammany Democrats and the political revolution that had followed their detection. But, great as they were, they sank into insignificance, “not only beside those of the carpet-bag governments of the South, but still more beside those committed by the Republican administration at Washington.” It charged the Republican party and the Republican journals with stifling inquiry and concealing the magnitude and enormity of these crimes. It called attention to Senator Sumner's resolution of inquiry into the sale of arms and ammunition by the War Department to France, to be used in the war against Germany. It alleged that “millions of money had been made” by high officials and persons connected with the administration, and that those who were implicated were seeking refuge “in a committee which had been packed to hide the truth and to whitewash instead of detect and punish the guilty.” It declared that this had been done in the Black Friday and custom-house investigations; that a resolution to investigate a deficit of six millions in the stamps of the Internal Revenue Department had been defeated; that the facts of the case had been suppressed; and that the truth had been successfully concealed in many instances.

In this article the Sun declared that the frauds of the bosses in the District of Columbia “surpassed in greed and boldness” those of Tweed and his confederates in New York; that the Postmaster-General had corruptly participated in the notorious Chorpenning claim against the Post-Office Department, and in the Baltimore whiskey frauds against the internal revenue; that the Navy Department,