Memoirs of an editor : fifty years of American journalism / Edward P. Mitchell.

PROCESSION THROUGH THE WHITE HOUSE 311
and his bureau; that the New York congressman had been
active in preventing the prosecution of bounty-money
frauds in the Utica district while exceedingly energetic
in pursuing and punishing other frauds in the Elmira
district, away from his home constituency; and, what
was more interesting to me afterward, that through his
intimacy with Dana, then assistant secretary of war,
Roscoe Conkling had procured his own appointment as
special judge advocate and his investment with extraordinary powers for the investigation and prosecution of
bounty frauds in western New York, a function that
brought to his pocket a federal compensation of $3,000 in
defiance of law prohibiting members of Congress from
taking double pay in government employ.
As to Dana's part in Conkling's extraneous law practice, that feature of the Fry charges vanished promptly.
It was shown that although the assistant secretary wrote
the formal orders of appointment and authority he did
so by the secretary's instruction; Mr. Stanton's testimony
was clear to that effect.
The episode was inflammatory, but no more so than
hundreds of others that have heated up the proceedings
of Congress. Fry remained in the army for fifteen years
thereafter, serving with distinction as adjutant-general in
the Pacific, the South, the Missouri, and the Atlantic
divisions until his retirement in 1881. Roscoe Conkling
lived a life singularly free from suspicions of pecuniary
guile, and till he found his death summons in the snowdrifts of the great blizzard of 1888 was justly regarded
as one of the cleanest of politicians; "too proud to steal"

would have been the tribute of his worst enemy. The
Conkling and Blaine-Fry controversy of 1866 would be
worth scarcely a line to-day but for the long lasting
consequences already indicated.
As the debate grew hotter and hotter the interest centred
not on Fry but upon the two contending Republican