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 St. Louis, October 13, 1883. 
 
 Hon. Titos. T. Crittenden., Governor of Missouri, Your 
 
 Excellency : 
 
 In opening this, the third chapter of my history of your 
 administration, as Governor of the good State of Missouri, 
 I feel, as did M. Thiers when ho undertook to write the 
 " Consuhite and Empire of Napoleon." Without at all 
 comparing myself to that great historian, I yet may say 
 that each of us had one thing in common, namely the good 
 fortune to be cotemporary with our hero. . I can go 
 farther and state that I, like him, am oppressed with the 
 voluminous details within my reach, all of which are to be 
 examined thoroughly and sifted conscientiously before I can 
 present them to the world with the undeniable stamp of 
 truth. 
 
 If your Excellency would, for only a moment, look 
 through your own eyes instead of those which so gorgeously 
 bedizen the tail feathers of the peacock usually overhanging 
 your brow, you would be amazed at the vast labor which is 
 mine, in attempting to play the part of Boswell to your 
 Johnson. Here I sit, surrounded with letters, newspapers, 
 and affidavits from every section of the State — all from 
 Democrats — not alone from the betrayed leaders who have 
 been twitted with your malefactions on every rostrum in 
 Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, and Kansas, but from the bone and 
 sinew of the party, each clamoring that I should give pub- 
 lic expression to their disgust. Your Excellency will 
 readily imagine how difficult this is to do, and will probably 
 deprecate my hardihood in attempting so superhuman a 
 task. 
 
 In my defence, I may allege that I am still young, — 
 about your own age, — and as the great French Cardinal has 
 said: " In the lexicon of youth, there is no such word as 
 fail." 
 

_2 — 
 
 Since my last chapter your record runs thus: In the 
 Criminal Court of St. Louis, on the 18th day of April, 1877, 
 one Sam Smith, a negro, pleaded guilty to murder in the 
 second degree and was sentenced to the penitentiary for 
 ten years. Sometime after the incoming of your adminis- 
 tra.tion, in flat violation of the law, he was assigned to the 
 corps of striped janissaries guarding the person of your 
 Excellency. In this capacity he won your favor, and on the 
 3d of January, the day upon which the Greneral Assembly 
 convened, he received an unconditional pardon. Repairing 
 to the capitol, all wreathed in grins, and in his own musical 
 vernacular, he said : " De Gubnor is gwine to gib dis chile 
 a place in de legislachar ! " This negro murderer's name, 
 through your influence, appeared on the pay-rolls of the 
 House on that same day, and he drew his two dollars per 
 diem until the Speaker's hammer fell for the sme die ad- 
 journment. As this is the only exhibition of gratitude I 
 have ever known you to make for non-pecuniary favors, I 
 hesitate before condemning it. In fact, as you are still 
 alive and in ofiice, I do not think I amderelect as a historian 
 in suggesting that should ever a similar occasion arise you 
 ought to advise the nigger to keep your secrets. 
 
 Upon page 90, of the State Auditor's Report, will be 
 found an entry of $80, paid to the Simmons Hardware 
 Company of this city, for " the apprehension of criminals 
 and suppression of outlawry." On first reading it, I was 
 somewhat puzzled. The general impression obtained that 
 this enterprising firm was engaged solely in the trade 
 of hardware, cutlery, etc. The apprehension of criminals 
 and the suppression of outlawry did not appear to be 
 within the purview of their legitimate business. It is true 
 that the senior member of the firm accepted from you the 
 ofiice of Police Commissioner, but finding that as fast as 
 he caused criminals and outlaws to be convicted and jailed, 
 you inter})Osed your executive pardon, he, with his two 
 honest colleagues, retired in disgust. I thought it my duty, 
 as your historian, to inquire into the matter. I found that 
 
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 the $80 was accounted for in the fact that the firm had 
 simply filled your order for four No. 44 Smith & Wesson 
 revolvers, of the same pattern used so effectively in the 
 murder of Jesse James, under your order, by that genial 
 museum curiosity, Mr. Robert Ford. Did I not feel that 
 it would be lowering my dignity as a historian, I would 
 advise that after your retirement from oflice you and Bob 
 Ford should pose in all the dime museums of the country 
 (you as plotter and he as executioner), with considerable 
 profit to both. But passing that, let me here tell the use 
 to which these weapons were put. A coterie of wags, 
 originating in this city and having accomplices throughout 
 this and adjoining States, with exemplary lack of judgment, 
 took it into their heads to send you letters from all points 
 of the compass, threatening your precious life for your 
 complicity in the nmrder of Jesse James. To these letters 
 the sio-nature of Frank James, or some of his friends, was 
 deliberately forged. Almost simultaneous with their re- 
 ceipt, and when they had worked on you to such an extent 
 that the footfall of a mouse would make you dance like a 
 boy unexpectedly stung in the rear by a hornet, the Sedalia 
 Democrat, at that time edited by Major Edwards, asked 
 the following momentous question: "What right had any 
 ofllcer of the State to put a price upon his (Jesse 
 James') head, and hire a ])and of cut-throats and high- 
 waymen to murder him for money?" You knew these 
 words were intended for you. At the height of the 
 terror they occasioned, the pistols arrived. Secreting 
 one about your own person, you handed one to your 
 private secretary, another, as I am informed, to the 
 janitor of the Capitol, and the fourth to Mr. John T. Clarke, 
 chief clerk in the Auditor's office. Having thus placed 
 your guns in position with the old time generalship you so 
 often displayed as lieutenant-colonel of militia, your nerves 
 began to resume their ordinary equilibrium. In fact, the 
 disposition ' of your troops was most ingenious. Mr. 
 Clarke's desk is immediately across the hall, opposite to your 
 
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 office. You hoped that when Frank James, upon vengeance 
 intent, should place his hand on the knob of your door, Mr. 
 Clarke would play the role of Bob Ford, and brain him with 
 a bullet from behind. You could then have asserted with 
 Richard III., " The murder would then have been his, not 
 mine." But Mr. Clarke is quite an observer of human 
 nature, so, instead of sitting at his door from rising morn 
 till dewy eve, with a cocked pistol in his hand, waiting for 
 Frank James, he quietly carried your weapon into his inner 
 office and, after pigeon-holing it as a sacred relic of your 
 style of suppressing outlawry, sat down in his easy chair 
 and laughed and laughed and laughed. It is chronicled that 
 his laughter continued from day to day, until you asked 
 him to pay out of the funds of the State your personal sub- 
 scription to the Sedalia Democrat, when it suddenly stopped 
 and has not since been resumed. Frank James did not 
 come; but always expecting him, with that fearful appre- 
 hension of death which haunts the guilty mind, you opened 
 negotiations inviting his surrender. What the nature of 
 the contract between you may be is not entirely known, but 
 there is little doubt that you promised he should not be 
 hung, and he that you should not be assassinated. Ac- 
 cordingly, the gentleman bandit shortly thereafter shook 
 hands with you in your office. 
 
 In your last message to the Legislature you urged an ap 
 propriation to purchase the portraits of the various Gover- 
 nors of this State. Your personal vanity in this recom- 
 mendation was plainly apparent. When the appropriation 
 bill was under discussion in the House, an amendment was 
 offered designating the sum of $4,500 for the purpose. 
 Then uprose Mr. Swetnam, of Clay, and speaking to the 
 amendment, said : " Mr. Speaker, the State of Missouri has 
 had some Governors who were statesmen. I respected, 
 honored, and loved them. The last of this noble band was 
 succeeded in office in January, 1881. She has had other 
 Governors I never care to see or hear of. Could the por- 
 traits only of the true and good be purchased and nailed to 
 
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 these walls, I would vote for the appropriation. But, sir, 
 from the sacriticc of purchasing portraits of shysters, the 
 corrupt and the false, who have crept into that exalted 
 office, may God save the member from Clay." Of course 
 the proposition was overwhelmingly voted down. 
 
 You have been hoarselv clamorous for the enforcement of 
 the alleged Sunday-law in St. Louis, going so far as to 
 basely impugn the motives of the honest judge, who de- 
 cided that it did not apply to this city. And as if this exhi- 
 bition of your maliguty were not enough, in a fit of rage 
 you threatened to call an extra session of the Legislature, 
 hoping that that body would enforce upon the denizens of 
 this great metropolis your hypocritical Puritanism. And 
 yet you had before you the report of the committee of the 
 last General Assembly, api)oiuted to investigate the affairs 
 of the penitentiary, which points out your deliberate and 
 continuous nullification of the law forbidding the employ- 
 ment of State convicts at the Executive Mansion. These 
 convicts have charge of your horses and cows, they wash 
 your linen and perform every menial service in and about 
 your ofiicial residence, entirely without compensation and in 
 total disregard of section 6512 of the Revised Statutes. 
 What an exhibition of consistency ! Alas, that noble attri- 
 bute of a well-governed mind is outside your intellectual 
 ken, and the consciousness of shame has no part in giving 
 to your cheeks that delicate rosy hue which, coloring your 
 sweet alluring smiles, makes you the gubernatorial Adonis 
 of these United States. Adonis et pre.terea niJiil. 
 
 The bill establishing a bureau of labor statistics passed 
 by the Thirty-second General Assembly provided that imme- 
 diately after its passage the Governor by and with the 
 advice and consent of the Senate, should appoint a com- 
 missioner. You approved the bill on the 2od of ^Nlarch and 
 during the two days thereafter, caused the Senate to be 
 secretly polled with a view to ascertain whether the name 
 of Mr. Henry A. Newman would be favorably received by 
 that body. A friendly Senator informed you that it would 
 
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 not, whereupon you waltzed over to Kentucky as a volun- 
 teer witness for the Louisville Courier- Journal in a suit for 
 libel, hoping thereby to enlist the powerful aid of Mr. 
 Henry Watterson in behalf of your amusing delusion that 
 you are a fit man for the Vice-Presidential nomination on 
 the Democratic ticket of 1884., Tittlebat Titmouse Critten- 
 den for Vice-President of the United States ! ! Oh, ever 
 dear and venerated shade of the immortal Don Quixote, 
 arise in thy valor, throw off the cerements of the grave and 
 fly to the assistance of the last scion of thine ancient house. 
 Array him in thine own impenetrable armor, place in his 
 hands thy redoubtable lance, mount him upon thy faithful 
 Kosinante, bid Henry Newman attend as his loyal Sancho 
 Panza and sound the bugle note heralding his entrance to the 
 field, for none of thy most entertaining stupidities have ever 
 rivalled this one of his I Vice-President of the United 
 States ! What lesson does the old fabulist teach in telling 
 the story of the toad who endeavored to swell himself to 
 the size of an ox? Is it to beware of ambition? No, but 
 to regard the eternal fitness of things. Ambition is the 
 noblest of the vices. When it espouses civic virtue it gives 
 incarnation to the loftiest aspirations of the human soul. 
 From its loins spring Hampdens, Sobieskis and Washing- 
 tons. " Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kinffs." 
 In our ow^n beloved State, as chieftains among its offspring, 
 have shone the great Benton, the heroic Frank Blair, the 
 noble Sterling Price, and the stern old statesman, John S. 
 Phelps. The virtuous ambition of these men has illumin- 
 ated the story of their lives upon the most absorbing pages 
 of Missouri's history. 
 
 But ambition is not to be identified with its bastard 
 brother — love of notoriety. The former ennobles, the 
 latter enslaves. So long as this passion for notoriety re- 
 tains its virginal idiocy it only provokes good-natured 
 laughter, and dies without issue. But when it lives in in- 
 cestuous concubinage with avarice, treachery and mendacity 
 the world stands aghast at its progeny of Beau Brummels, 
 
— 7 — 
 
 Benedict Arnolds, and Tom Tit Crittendens. Vice Presi- 
 dent of the United States ! When you reach that exalted 
 position buttertles will hatch buzzards in thimbles, and kan- . , 
 
 garoos will teach philosophy in the halls of Ho-wftrtl Uni- flCt^t/l^'t C^ 
 versity. 
 
 Immediately upon the adjournment of the Legislature, 
 having successfully defied the law, you appointed Mr. New- 
 man. Folding him in your clammy embrace, you bade him 
 go forth among the forges, workshops and trades-unions of 
 the horny-handed sons of toil and fasten them to the sup- 
 port of delegations that would be favorable to your de- 
 mented hopes on the National Convention. But these 
 stalwart men of brawn have locked their doors against your 
 emissary, and have refused him all recognition, not for any 
 special demerits of his own, but because they regard him 
 as the organizer of your degraded political fortunes. 
 
 Your management of police affairs in this city, opening 
 with corruption, has since been a shifting panorama of high 
 comedy and low farce. In conformity with your solemn 
 engagement to the gamblers of this city, you appointed 
 Messrs. Boland and Kinkead Police Commissioners, with 
 the advice and consent of Mr. Warren McChesney. That 
 gentleman having duly and generously paid for this favor, 
 nevertheless thought it advisable to take a mortgage upon 
 these two saints. In drawing it up he constituted your ex- 
 cellency the trustee, and himself the holder of the notes. 
 Dropping metaphor, he took their blank resignations, ad- 
 dressed to you, to be filled up at such time as, in his judg- 
 ment, they should become forgetful of their duty to the 
 public. Still, this not giving you and your estimable con- 
 freres a majority of the board, you were ordered to dis- 
 place the two commissioners appointed by Gov. Phelps. 
 You did so. The scene then changed. Their places were 
 to be filled, and an outcry had arisen at your action. Mr. 
 McChesney retired temporarily from the stage, but yonv 
 excellency kept a view of it from the wings. Mr. Thos. 
 E. Tutt entered, and, approaching Mr. Charles Green, ten- 
 
dered him, in your name, the appointment of Police Com- 
 missioner, with the proviso that you should have his blank 
 resignation. Mr. Green refused in words of indio-nant 
 contempt, and bade Mr. Tutt tell you that the Governor of 
 Missouri did not know him, else he would not have made so 
 infamous a proffer. Mr. Tutt's high reputation is now, 
 and has always been, beyond cavil in this community, and 
 Mr. Green stands in the very front of our eminent citizens. 
 I therefore challenge either of these gentlemen to deny the 
 foul deception you practised on Mr. Tutt, or the ignomini- 
 ous humiliations you sought to impose on Mr. Green. 
 
 In furtherance of this history I simply note here that 
 while you have not yet been three years in office you have 
 appointed eleven police commissioners, every one of whom 
 has already or will certainly be betrayed. 
 
 Mr. E. A. Hitchcock, foreman of the last grand jury, the 
 same gentleman from whom in the same capacity, three 
 years ago, you claimed to have received sufficient cause to 
 remove the appointees of Gov. Phelps now tells you that 
 there is a vast gambling ring in St. Louis and calls upon you 
 to investigate the matter. I unhesitatingly tell Mr. Hitch- 
 cock that you will not do it ; tliat you dare not do it; that he 
 might as well expect Frank James to get up before a jury 
 impanelled to try him for his life, and tell them the history 
 of his crimes. Mr. McChesney has been indicted, but 
 whether adjudged innocent or guilty, he is as safe from 
 punishment during your administration as though he were 
 lord chief justice of England. 
 
 Your career as Governor of this State stands alone. It 
 is without a model and defies imitation. It baffles criticism 
 and exhausts invective. It was the pity of yesterday, it is 
 Ihe apprehension of to-day, it will be the derision of to- 
 morrow, and when you lay it down at the feet of your suc- 
 cessor, the sonorous " amen " that will rise from a hundred 
 thousand Democratic voices will make the welkin ring with 
 a joyous acclaim. A distinguised Republican editor thus 
 epigrammatically describes it: " Crittenden alternates be- 
 
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 tween knavery and folly. When any one wants him to do 
 a foolish thing they mostly approach him on his knave day . 
 When any one wishes him to do a knavish act they are 
 likely to suggest it on his fool day, and when anything 
 honest is desired he is invariably absent from the State." 
 
 Of all the distinguished men who were elected with you 
 on the Democratic ticket, you have secured the respect of 
 not a single one. The Lieutenant-Governor reposes in se- 
 rene indifference to your follies. The Auditor is disgusted 
 with your avarice. The Treasurer is chagrined at your 
 trickery in garbling his report in your message to the Legis- 
 lature. The Secretary of State turns up his nose at your 
 sham Democracy, which, like a child's soiled linen, must be 
 aired every day before it can again be pinned to your polit- 
 ical principles. The bluff, honest Register of Lands dis- 
 avows all responsibility, as a co-ordinate officer, for your 
 acts ; while the Attorney General is constantly wondering 
 in what new and ridiculous position you will place him as 
 " law officer of the crown." 
 
 In all this recital of your strange, eventful career, I have 
 followed the advice of Othello. I have extenuated nothing, 
 nor set down aught in malice, but spoken of you as you 
 are. Allow me to close the chapter in the words of the 
 great English Unknown, in his letter to the Duke of Graf- 
 ton : " It is the historian's office to punish, though he cannot 
 correct. I do not give you to posterity as a pattern to imi- 
 tate, but as an example to deter ; and as your conduct com- 
 prehends everything that a wise and honest governor should 
 avoid, I mean to make you a negative instruction to your 
 successors forever." 
 
 I am, &c., &c., &c., ' 
 
 John D. Finney. 
 
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