Legend, Not History

In June 1861 Arthur M. Eastman bought 5,400 Hall's carbines from the Ordnance Bureau at $3.50 each. He sold 5,000 to Simon Stevens at $12.50, and Stevens sold them to Major General John C. Frémont at $22.¹ The House select committee on government contracts, reporting through Elihu B. Washburne, found that "the arms were placed under the control of J. Pierpont Morgan to secure him the payment of $20,000 he had advanced to Stevens."² Stevens testified: "I got them from J. Pierpont Morgan, to send to General Fremont." He said Morgan was to be refunded the $20,000 with interest "and to be paid for his services and expenses in attending to the sale and collection of the money as trustee for all parties concerned."³

Captain Franklin D. Callender of the St. Louis arsenal testified on October 26, 1861: "According to the best information I have, J. Pierpont Morgan sold them to the government." He produced a bill dated August 7, 1861, headed "The United States to J. Pierpont Morgan, Dr.," for 2,500 carbines at $55,550. It was marked paid on September 10, with a receipt signed "J. PIERPONT MORGAN, By his attorney, J. T. HOWARD." A second bill in Morgan's name for $58,175 was marked "Not paid for want of funds."⁴ The committee valued the arm at "very nearly $12 50" and found that the claim sought "some $49,000 over and above the value of the property sold."⁵ The War Department commission of Joseph Holt and Robert Dale Owen docketed the claim as Case No. 97 in Morgan's name.⁶

The standard account of the affair is The Hall Carbine Affair: A Study in Contemporary Folklore, printed in 1941 in an edition of 100 copies and revised in 1948 in an edition of 750. Its preface states that, "insofar as the case against Morgan is concerned," the transaction "is legend, not history."⁷ Its own reckoning, from Morris Ketchum's statement to the committee, is that Morgan retained $26,343.54 of the voucher's proceeds, including a $5,400 commission, and passed $28,650.96 to Ketchum on September 16, 1861.⁸ The author was R. Gordon Wasson, a vice president of J. P. Morgan & Co.⁹

Wasson's 1956 mushroom expedition to Huautla de Jiménez was joined by the chemist James Moore and drew a $2,000 contribution from the Geschickter Fund for Medical Research, a conduit for the CIA's Project MKUltra program.¹⁰

U.S. House of Representatives, 37th Cong., 2d sess., House Report No. 2, "Government Contracts," section "The purchase of the Hall carbines," pp. 40 to 43. https://archive.org/details/governmentcontra00unit_1 ↩︎
House Report No. 2, 37th Cong., 2d sess., p. 43. https://archive.org/details/governmentcontra00unit_1 ↩︎
House Report No. 2, 37th Cong., 2d sess., testimony of Simon Stevens, "Testimony: Purchase of Arms," pp. 242 to 245, quoted in the committee's report at p. 43. https://archive.org/details/governmentcontra00unit_1 ↩︎
House Report No. 2, 37th Cong., 2d sess., testimony of Captain Franklin D. Callender, October 26, 1861, quoted at pp. 47 to 50. https://archive.org/details/governmentcontra00unit_1 ↩︎
House Report No. 2, 37th Cong., 2d sess., pp. 51 to 53. https://archive.org/details/governmentcontra00unit_1 ↩︎
R. Gordon Wasson, The Hall Carbine Affair: A Study in Contemporary Folklore (revised edition, 1948), pp. 44 to 48, quoting the Report of the Commission on Ordnance Claims and Contracts, Senate Executive Document 72, 37th Cong., 2d sess., p. 460. https://archive.org/details/hallcarbineaffai012466mbp ↩︎
Wasson, The Hall Carbine Affair (1948), title page, copyright page and preface. https://archive.org/details/hallcarbineaffai012466mbp ↩︎
Wasson, The Hall Carbine Affair (1948), pp. 21 to 23. https://archive.org/details/hallcarbineaffai012466mbp ↩︎
Annie Jacobsen, Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis (Little, Brown and Company, 2017). ↩︎
John D. Marks, The Search for the Manchurian Candidate (1979), chapter 7. ↩︎

4.6 KiB Raw Blame History

Legend, Not History

4.6 KiB

Raw Blame History