should be the Governor of the State whose troops were to be commanded by the general. This was his first sacrifice to State rights, and it was a great effort to him.

He then endeavored to get the regiment armed with the rifles which afterward became

so celebrated as the " Mississippi Rifles."

He said that these would be more effective in the hands of our men than any other arms, as they were all used to hunting, and most of them had either a rifle or a double-barrelled shot-gun, and were good marksmen.

Before leaving Washington for the scene of hostilities, Mr. Davis had an interview with General Scott.

"It may be interesting to state," said Mr. Davis in 1889, "that General Scott endeavored to persuade me not to take more rifles than enough for four companies, and objected particularly to percussion arms as not having been sufficiently tested for the use of troops in the field. Knowing that the Mississippians would have no confidence in the old flint-lock muskets, I insisted on their being armed with the kind of rifle then recently made at New Haven, Conn. - the Whitney rifle. From having been first used by the Mississippians, those rifles have always been known as the Mississippi rifles."

CHAPTER XXII.

THE SECRET SERVICE FUND CHARGES AGAINST WEBSTER, 1845-46.

MR. DAVIS Saw that he had been approved by Mr. Adams, and generally recognized as a personage in the House, without any one having an exact reason to assign for this distinction, and was subsequently brought more prominently into notice by an attack made upon Mr. Webster by Mr. Charles Jared Ingersoll in the House of Representatives.

The hands of the public men of the time had been clean of plunder, or the imputation of dishonesty-it was not a day of personal "investigations." Wall Street had no subterranean passage leading to the White House; and an imputation upon the honor of a senator startled his colleagues like "a fire-bell in the night."

Mr. Ingersoll astonished the House and Senate by moving an inquiry into Mr. Webster's conduct as Secretary of State. He asked for the papers relating to the killing of Durpree, an American. In 1837, a party of

Americans had made an effort to capture and occupy Navy Island, a British possession, and Durpree had been one of them. The attempt was not successful, the invading party were captured, and Durpree killed in the mêlée. In 1840, two years after, McLeod, the man who killed him, related the circumstance in a boastful manner in New York. He was arrested and tried for murder.

Mr. Fox, for the English Government, avowed the act and demanded McLeod's release. Mr. Ingersoll accused Mr. Webster of using the contingent fund and his personal influence over Mr. W. H. Seward, Governor of New York, to secure McLeod's release; of expending public moneys in corrupting the press and the people, and of being himself a defaulter to the Government. He compared the illustrious ex-Secretary of State to Bacon, "the wisest and meanest of mankind," capping the indictment with the suggestion that Mr. Webster had offered the Northwest Territory to Great Britain in exchange for freetrade. Astonishing as it now seems, the resolution calling upon the President for the correspondence covering this period was passed 136 yeas to 23 nays-though Mr. Adams assured the House, as an ex-President of the United States, that Mr. Webster had no opportunity to defraud the Government

of the secret service money or contingent fund, without the co-operation of the President, and gave the most cogent reasons why these secret negotiations should not be made. public.

It would be a most embarrassing precedent, and one it would be unadvisable to establish and impracticable to follow. Mr. Winthrop, of Massachusetts, Mr. Seddon, of Virginia, and most of the conservative men of the House

objected to calling for the secret papers as a dangerous precedent; but Mr. Winthrop said if any were called for, he wanted also those concerning Texas and Louisiana. Butler King and other men of national reputation spoke warmly against the resolutions.

T.

Seen in the light of the "investigations" of this day, and the immense deficits which have been discovered in the public funds, this inquiry of Mr. Ingersoll's seems to have been a mere "tempest in a tea-pot." Then it stirred men deeply on both sides of the House and became almost a party question. The effort to stain the great reputation of Mr. Webster, in the possession of which the North and South felt alike honored, the petty sum that he was accused of filching ($5,460), horrified his friends and staggered the faith of his enemies in his accuser. Everybody was enlisted on one side or the other. The prevail

ing impression made upon the moderate men of both parties was that Mr. Ingersoll's spleen was the result of some private pique.

Mr. Webster made rather a lengthy explanation to the Senate, before such a crowd of spectators in the galleries and on the floor of the Senate, that even outside the railing there was not standing room. His manner was not that of a man defending himself before enemies, but rather of a brother explaining to his family one of his contentions with the outer world, and confiding his unexpected annoyance to those of whose sympathy he was assured. I venture to say he received it very generally. The ladies and the reporters certainly were with him. After various pros and cons, stated by almost all the leading men of the House, following pretty much the bent of party rancor, the resolutions were passed.

This resolution called up T. Butler King, of Georgia, in defence of Mr. Webster; Mr. Ingersoll in reiteration and reaffirmation; Mr. Ashman, of Massachusetts, in defence.

Mr. Schenck and Mr. John Pettit (Democrat) each moved that a committee be organized, the first to inquire how the seal of confidence imposed upon the Department had been broken; the second to examine into the charges, with a view to impeaching Mr.