John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana

It is a matter of history that Grant hastened to put his personal views into effect within his own department, but, unfortunately, in doing so he acted against the advice of Rawlins, and couched his order in such terms as made it most objectionable to a class of traders who had influence enough with the President to secure from him an order countermanding the one issued by Grant. But before this was done Dana went to Washington, and after repeated interviews with the President and the Secretary of War, in which he claimed the support of General Grant as well as of every other general he had met, he succeeded in convincing then that they ought to adopt comprehensive measures not only to put an end to the cotton trade through the army lines, and to prohibit army officers from engaging in it, but that it should pass entirely under the control of the Treasury Department, and be conducted under rigid regulations which should be prepared and carried into effect under the supervision of the Secretary of the Treasury himself. This suggestion was not only an unselfish and disinterested one for Dana, but it was a most timely and important one for the government. The greed for money which it was intended to counteract was a natural one, especially among that class of army officers which had been drawn from commercial life; the industrial needs of the countries with which we were on friendly relations were pressing; our own manufacturers and merchants were most persistent in the desire to secure a supply of cotton and cotton goods, and therefore it was both natural and proper that the government, until it was correctly informed, should desire to see the trade continued. But till Dana intervened, with his statement of the evils and his practical plan for eradicating them, it is not too much to say that no one connected with the administration appeared to understand the subject or to know how to deal with it. Fortunately, both the President and the Secretary of War became deeply interested in it,