should they be held up to the curiosity of posterity as a singular and pernicious exhibition, detached from his time and generation, and independent of them. Again and again the facts disclose that men such as he were merely the representative crests of prevailing commercial and political life. Substantially the whole propertied class obtained its wealth by methods which, if not the same, had a strong relationship. His methods differed nowise from those of many cotton planters of the South who stole, on a monstrous scale,2 Government land and then with the wealth derived from their thefts, bought negro slaves, set themselves up in the glamour of a patriarchal aristocracy and paraded a florid display of chivalry and honor. And it was this same grandiose class that plundered Whitney of the fruits of his invention of the cotton-gin and shamelessly defrauded him.3
Far more flagrant, however, were the means by which other Southern plantation owners and business firms secured landed estates in Alabama, Georgia and in other States. Their methods in expropriating the reservations of such Indian tribes as the Creeks and Chickasaws were not less fraudulent than those that Astor used elsewhere. They too, those fine Southern aristocrats, debauched Indian tribes with whisky, and after swindling them of their land, caused the Government to remove them westward. The frauds were so extensive, and the circumstances so repellant, that President Andrew Jackson, in 1833, ordered an investigation. From the records of this investigation,—four hundred and twenty-five solid pages of official correspondence—more than enough details can be obtained.4
WHERE WAS FRAUD ABSENT?
In Wisconsin the most valuable Government lands, containing rich deposits of lead and other mineral ore, were being boldly appropriated by force and fraud. The House Committee on Public Lands reported on December 18, 1840, that with the connivance of local land agents, these