The uncontested were then taken up, in their order, and duplicates issued, as in the cases of September and November, recited.

On that day I was one of the applicants, and, under the rule of the office, applied for several thousand acres. Of the amount applied for, about 30,000 acres turned out to be free from conflict, when I delivered to the register and receiver the full amount in warrants, with the officers' fees for locating the same in American gold. For the warrants thus delivered, and money paid, I demanded from the register and receiver and received a descriptive receipt in full for all the land thus sold to me, which receipt is now in my possession, dated March 2, 1857. Having drawn No. 13, for office business, my office duplicates are dated on 13th and 14th of March.

I am perfectly certain the land thus bought and paid for belongs to me. I willingly and faithfully complied with every demand of the local office, and several months thereafter was very greatly surprised to hear that Thomas A. Hendricks, Commissioner of the General Land Office, had decided that about 3,500 acres of the amount was not mine, but belonged to other parties.

The series of acts by which he arrived at that result are so novel, and furnish evidence of such gross fraud and official misconduct, as to make it my duty to place the whole case before you for your interposition and decision.

For a perfect view of the case, I must go back a few months in point of time. About the 26th day of November, 1856, and while the applications of the 1st were being worked up, Messrs. Felix and McLaughlin, of Pennsylvania, visited Plattsburg. They had left home, as I am informed and believe, about the 30th of October, and arrived there after visiting Minnesota and Kansas. Learning the condition of the office, they went to the neighboring town of St. Joseph, and in company with a gentleman well acquainted with the more valuable vacant lands in the district personally examined them. They returned home without attempting to make an application, and afterwards forwarded to the gentleman of St. Joseph, above recited, several thousand acres of land warrants, which were received by him, by mail, about 1st January, 1857. In a few days thereafter they were withdrawn for the purpose of transacting their business through the General Land Office at Washington.

It was well known to the gentleman of St. Joseph, and, I am satisfied, through him to Messrs. Felix and McLaughlin, that the office would open for applications on 2d March, and not before. On the 6th of February, as I am informed and believe, the Commissioner of the General Land Office in Washington inclosed some nineteen or twenty thousand acres of warrants, by mail, to the register and receiver at Plattsburg, with instructions to locate them on certain lands named. Early in February an unusual amount of rain fell on the head waters of Chariton and Grand rivers in Missouri, which so inundated the sloughs and streams between Glasgow and Brunswick as to make it impossible for the mails to pass either way for thirty days or more. The main eastern mail from Washington to Plattsburg, and all upper Missouri north of the river, had to pass over that road, and, in point of fact, no through eastern mail was received at Plattsburg for

thirty days or more previous to the evening of the 7th of March. The official record of every post office in that section of the State will verify this statement, and it can be proved by any number of citizens. On that day, the 7th March, the above recited letter of Mr. Commissioner Hendricks was received by the register and receiver. It contained the land warrants, as stated, and a receipt from the express company of Adams & Co., in Washington, setting out that an amount of money sufficient to pay the officers' fees for locating said warrants had been deposited with them for transmission to said register and receiver at Plattsburg. This money was received by the receiver on the 16th day of March, and I am particular to fix this date because a positive instruction requires the register not to locate a land warrant until the applicant delivers the receiver's receipt for the legal locating fees.

The Commissioner was immediately notified of the day the warrants were received, and that all the land on which the officers were directed to locate said warrants had been sold and paid for on 2d March, five days before their reception.

In the ordinary course of mail the Commissioner replied, expressing surprise that the warrants did not arrive sooner, and stating that he had called on Messrs. Felix and McLaughlin for a statement.

Soon thereafter he forwarded the statement of Messrs. Felix and McLaughlin, and ordered an ordinary office investigation. With this order, the register and receiver were directed to serve a notice on Felix and McLaughlin, through the Hon. J. Glancy Jones, of Reading, Pennsylvania, their attorney.

The "Union" announces the arrival of that gentleman in Washington on the 9th of July. On the 10th, Commissioner Hendricks notified the register and receiver that if, in a specified time, Messrs. Felix and McLaughlin applied at their office, by themselves or attorney, and filed a descriptive list of the lands they applied for on the 26th of November, 1856, they should make the location. The investigation theretofore ordered was quashed by this new movement.

In his letter on that subject the Commissioner expressly states that Messrs. Felix & McLaughlin had applied for the land embraced in the list forwarded by him on 6th February on 26th November before; had the warrants sent by him on 6th February then in their possession in Plattsburg, and tendered them and the locating fees in gold to the officers as payment for this land.

This official statement of the Commissioner is the basis of his order, above recited, to the register and receiver to make the locations of Felix & McLaughlin upon their filing a list of lands, as stated in the preceding paragraph. Yet, in the face of this statement of the Commissioner, an examination of the warrants sent by him on the 6th February proved that several thousand acres of them were issued from the Pension Office after 26th November aforesaid; that over 5,000 acres were assigned after 26th November aforesaid, and that about one-half were assigned after Felix & McLaughlin left home in October, as per their own statement on file.

Early in August, and within the time specified in the order of the Commissioner, a man, calling himself Felix, and representing him

self a citizen of Pennsylvania, appeared at the office in Plattsburg, and upon being required by the register and receiver to file the statement or list, as above, declined doing so. Upon being expressly informed by those officers that they would only comply with the order of the Commissioner after his compliance with the requisition of the Commissioner, he appended to the descriptive list forwarded by the Commissioner on 6th February, 1857, a statement that the lands therein set out were applied for by Felix & McLaughlin on the 26th of November, 1856.

Immediately, and before Felix left Plattsburg, and before the compliance by the register and receiver with the instructions of the Commissioner, I filed the sworn statement of the register who was in office on the 26th November, that every word in relation to an application by Felix & McLaughlin in November, or at any other time before 7th March, 1857, was false. I also filed the sworn statement of their agent at St. Joseph, entirely corroborating the statement of the register, and proving that Felix & McLaughlin purchased their warrants in Philadelphia, after leaving Missouri in December, and that, on the 26th of November, 1856, Felix & McLaughlin had never seen the lands then attempted to be purchased, he having shown them the lands, in person, after that day.

But the order of the Commissioner was peremptory. The register and receiver had no discretion, but were compelled to make the locations on the prescribed application being filed. They were well satisfied the statement of Felix was false, and will so swear whenever called on, and certainly knew the falsehood stated by the Commissioner in requiring the location.

All, however, was of no avail in the face of a peremptory order from a superior officer, and I am left, as you perceive, with no remedy but to seek justice at your hands.

True, an appeal was taken by other interested parties to the Secretary of the Interior, but he either never investigated the case, or never was permitted by the Commissioner to see the papers, and know the facts, as his decision, so far as I am advised or can learn, was on assumptions foreign to its merits, and utterly regardless of its truths and justice to the citizen. It being now represented in newspapers professing to receive their information from the Commissioner, and in defence of his official act, that he justifies his conduct on the ground of the date of the office duplicates being posterior to 7th March, the day the warrants were received by the register and receiver. If such is the fact, it is directly in the face of his own previous decision in a case made at the same office for the purpose of guarding the very point in question. It is also unfounded, in fact, as regards myself, my office duplicates all bearing date before the money of Felix and McLaughlin to pay office fees for locating the warrants arrived in Plattsburg, and consequently before they had any legal application before the register and receiver. It will also bring to view the fact that on 10th July, 1857, Hon. J. Glancy Jones, as attorney, and the Commissioner, with all the conflicting applications and local office abstracts on file, chose to rely on their then firm conviction that Felix and McLaughlin had actually made an application on 26th November, 1856; and that they

then deliberately rested their case on that ground. But being driven from that by the most indubitable evidence, it will indeed be a marvel in official transactions, if the date of the office abstracts are relied on by an officer who has confirmed the title to near a million of acres of land, under the same form of application, and who deliberately, and upon appeal, sustained and fixed his subordinates in that course.

A further point, involving official honor and legal acumen, is the fact that the only legal evidence in the possession of the Commissioner that the warrants of Felix and McLaughlin were ever received at Plattsburg, is that of the register and receiver, who officially certify to him, in the same paper, that the land specified was sold by them before the receipt of the warrants, thereby rejecting a part and receiving a part of the testimony of the same parties, without explanation or impeachment, to make out an apparently pre-determined decision of the question!

I therefore respectfully request such an investigation of all the facts and circumstances herein stated as will enable your honorable body to make a proper order in relation to the issuing of the patents for the land in controversy.

All of which is respectfully submitted.

J. H. BIRCH, JR.

GLASGOW, Mo., March 6, 1858.

MY DEAR FATHER: Enclosed I hand you my memorial to Congress, in reference to the lands claimed by Messrs. Felix and McLaughlin.

I have prepared it, as you know, a hundred miles from the record, and it may be that some of the dates may be incorrect. The facts, as stated, are correct. Should any of the dates be incorrect, you are at liberty to correct them.

I place the memorial in your hands to be disposed of as you think best. I had written to Gen. Clark, telling him that I would forward it to him for presentation, but at that time I did not know you were going to Washington.

Present my compliments to Gen. Clark.

Respectfully and affectionately, your son,

Hon. JAS. H. BIRCH,

J. H. BIRCH, Jr.

Washington.

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR,
Washington, April 8, 1858.

SIR: In answer to the resolution of the Senate adopted on the 8th ultimo, I have the honor to transmit herewith the accompanying report of the Commissioner of the General Land Office, which, upon

examination, I find to be a clear, accurate, and just exposition of the whole matter referred to in the resolution aforesaid. Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

J. THOMPSON,

Secretary.

Hon. B. FITZPATRICK,

President pro tem. U. S. Senate.

GENERAL LAND OFFICE,
April 5, 1858.

SIR: By the resolution of the Senate adopted on the 8th ultimo, and referred by you to this office, "the Secretary of the Interior" is requested to furnish the Senate with a copy of the correspondence, reports, and other papers on file in his office, having relation to the cancellation of the locations which were made at the Plattsburg, Missouri, land office, in the month of March, 1857, by Thomas D. W. Yonley and others, and the subsequent location of the same land by Messrs. McLaughlin and Felix, of Pennsylvania, adding thereto the letter or report of the register and receiver of the 3d March, 1857, in the contested case of Hardin and Jackson, and the Commissioner's ruling and concurrence therein on the 21st of April, thereafter, together with any other letter or paper which the Secretary may deem material to the proper understanding of the relative rights of the parties herein firstly alluded to." I have therefore the honor to transmit herewith "copies of the correspondence, reports, and other papers," believed to be alluded to, and which are described in the accompanying schedule; also a copy of the register and receiver's report of 3d March, 1857, in the case of Hardin and Jackson, and of "the Commissioner's ruling and concurrence therein on the 21st April thereafter."

As the resolution calls for "any other letter or paper which the Secretary may deem material to the proper understanding of the relative rights of the parties herein firstly alluded to," I send herewith a transcript of a paper of the 16th March, 1858, showing that the cancelled entries had not legal priority, but were subsequent in fact and law to those which have been recognized. This paper, being fully explanatory and necessary to a right understanding of the whole proceedings, should properly preface the copies herewith, and is accordingly marked A.

Although, under the last clause of the resolution, copies might be sent of charges against the conduct of affairs at the land office at Plattsburg, and the participation of Birch's sons in the land business at that place, and among these are charges of unlawful exactions particularly, as made by Mr. Dennison Dorsey, who is avouched for as a reliable gentleman, yet, as Register Birch had filed his answer to that charge, in which he represents his course as one "of the most rigid and inflexible justice to all, favoritism to none," and excusing himself