Accountability

Let every project stand on its own bottom.

The obligation of this Government to make amends therefor could not be questioned if the injury resulted from any fault on the part of the San Jacinto.

The only thing I think of just now not likely to be better said by some one else is a matter in which we have heard some other persons blamed for what I did myself.

I believe he is a brave and able man, and I stand here, as justice requires me to do, to take upon myself what has been charged on the Secretary of War as withholding from him.

That as to both property and persons of African descent accounts shall be kept sufficiently accurate and in detail to show quantities and amounts and from whom both property and such persons shall have come, as a basis upon which…

I am not aware that a dollar of the public funds thus confided without authority of law to unofficial persons was either lost or wasted, although apprehensions of such misdirection occurred to me as objections to those extraordinary…

Every practicable effort has been made, and will be continued, to discover all the guilty parties and to bring them to justice.

The knowledge that such is to be the consequence will inevitably prevent the performance of duties of that character, and thus the Government will be deprived of an important means of investigating the conduct of its agents.

The officer charged with a confidential inquiry, and who reports its result under the pledge of confidence which his appointment implies, ought not to be exposed individually to the resentment of those whose conduct may be impugned by the…