LS signed “J. A. Garfield,” one page both sides, 7.75 x 9.75, April 9, 1873. Letter to the Hon. John Peter Robison, in part: "I determined to let the storm blow a while and felt, as I wrote you, and as I still feel, that to let the fact of my not taking the pay go to the public would be a mere coming to the storm which I did not wish to do. But without my knowledge or procurement the fact has found its way into the newspapers. I never had any idea of taking the back pay, but when they began to make their wicked assaults upon me, I was determined to do nothing that would give them the chance to say I had been driven into it. I have finished a letter addressed to the District which I shall have published in a few days." Includes its original mailing envelope, franked in the upper right by Garfield, "J. A. Gar," with the rest torn off. In fine condition, with light brushing to some of the text.
At this time, Garfield was embroiled in the famed 'Credit Mobilier Scandal'—the greatest political "storm" of the Gilded Age. In 1867, during the construction of the first transcontinental railroad, Congressman Oakes Ames had distributed cash bribes and discounted shares of Credit Mobilier stock to other congressmen in exchange for votes and actions favorable to the Union Pacific Railroad. When this corruption was revealed to the public in 1872, Garfield was among the politicians implicated in accepting stock. Although he was never exactly exonerated from the claims, and Democrats attacked him with talk of the scandal during his run for president in 1880, the Credit Mobilier crisis ultimately had little effect on Garfield's political career.
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