1784 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 
including interest to October 1, 1868, was $4,993,503, and that sum 
represents the loss to the State on account of the unfortunate bank 
ventures. The State has never recovered her credit, lost largely by 
the efforts to sustain these banks. 
The claim of the United States.—The United States invested $538, — 
000 of the Smithsonian fund and $90,000 of the Chickasaw fund in 
these bonds. The United States also invested $3,000 of the Chickasaw 
orphan fund in 5 per cent bonds. As of the date of January 1, 1874, 
the $90,000 of Chickasaw bonds and interest were funded into $252,000 
new 6 per cent bonds, due January 1, 1900. The principal of all the 
bonds amounts to $793,000, and in the pending compromise the State 
is charged with that, and in addition the interest thereon to the time 
of maturity, which is $818,803, making in all the sum of $1,611,803.61. 
No interest is charged against the State after the maturity of the 
bonds, although upon their face they bear interest until the payment 
of the principal. If interest should be added to this date, the amount 
is nearly $3,000,000. 
From time to time, as the State defaulted in the payments, Congress 
appropriated money to protect the trust funds invested in the bonds, 
and the United States now own in their own right all of the bonds, 
and the Smithsonian and Indian funds have nothing to do \7ith them. 
When the bonds matured in 1861 the State had seceded from the 
Union and was engaged in an effort to sustain the Confederacy. The 
whole country was then in a state of cruel war, which, after four 
years, left the State peopled principally with widows and orphans, 
aged men, and maimed soldiers, without any organized State govern- 
ment; her relations to the General Government uncertain; a new and 
ignorant citizenship to deal with, and aliens as rulers. 
With this condition of affairs, it is unnecessary for me to say that 
nothing was or could be done to pay the debt to the United States. 
From then until now the people who survived the wreck and ruin of 
that sad conflict of the sections and the more disastrous effects of the 
reconstruction period that followed it have labored with all -their 
energies to rebuild their lost fortunes; but the high taxes, hard times, 
floods, and droughts have made it almost impossible to do more than 
support the State government, and they are yet unable to fully meet 
the demands pressing upon them for public schools and other import- 
ant purposes. With the present low price of cotton, our great farm _ 
product, the probabilities of the State ever being able to pay the 
principal and interest of these real-estate bonds in money are very 
slight, even if willing to do so. 
I do not hesitate to say that I do not believe she can pay the full’ 
amount of them by taxation, and for that reason 1 have sought to effect 
a compromise. I regret this condition as much as anyone possibly 
can, for I love the State passionately, and I wish she were strong 
