Caleb J. McNulty

Caleb Jefferson McNulty (1816-1846) (D) was a Democratic Party (United States) politician and a scandalous early 19th century Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives. His alleged embezzlement of U.S. congressional funds “drawn from the Treasury” and his placement of those “large sums … in the hands of sundry persons in the city of New York and the State of Ohio” or what then former U.S. President and sitting U.S. Representative John Quincy Adams (W) referred to as a “… memorable development of Democratic defalcation”^[1] provides a glaring example of the perfidy associated with the U.S. Jacksonian era Democratic Party Spoils system, which was slowly crippled at the federal level, decades later, by the 1883 Pendleton Act and completely dismantled, much later, with the Hatch Act of 1939.

Background to national scandal

Of Washington County, Pennsylvania, McNulty removed to Ohio, where he practiced law and became a Democratic Party operative, as a newspaper editor, distinguished political writer and orator, and multiple term Democratic Party member of the Ohio General Assembly. In 1842, he ran in Knox County, Ohio as the Democratic Party candidate for U.S. Congress in the first U.S. congressional elections federally mandated to occur by district and on standardized date. He lost by 12 votes to his opponent Whig Party (United States) candidate Columbus Delano. Just after this defeat and at the very next session of the U.S. Congress where Delano, himself, was first seated, Caleb J. McNulty of Ohio whose party had regained control of the House in the United States House of Representatives elections, 1842 was on December 6, 1843, anyway, elected by the House membership to the position of Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives. He defeated for reelection Matthew St. Clair Clarke of Pennsylvania.^[2][3]

Scandal

On January 17, 1845, a shortage of some forty five thousand dollars was reported from a U.S. House contingency fund of some two hundred and thirty seven thousand dollars.^[4] McNulty was, thereafter, on January 18, 1845 dismissed from his office as Clerk, after a House investigation and 3 mandatory House votes, each of the first two with 198 members for dismissal and none against and the third after debate a vote of 170 for his dismissal and 4 against. A new Clerk was subsequently elected that day on voice vote. McNulty was succeeded as Clerk by Benjamin B. French of New Hampshire.^[5][6]

The House also voted to recommend that the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury be directed to institute forthwith the necessary legal proceedings to ascertain and secure the balance of public money due from McNulty as Clerk of the House and that the President of the United States John Tyler (W) be requested to cause a criminal prosecution to be commenced against Caleb J. McNulty, late Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, for an embezzlement of the public money and, also, of all persons advising or knowingly or willingly participating in such embezzlement in accordance with the provisions of the Act of Congress approved I3th August, 1841.^[7]

Whether the alleged embezzlement was solely an act of personal turpitude, graft for distribution among Democratic Party House members as payoff for McNulty’s election to the prestigious and well salaried position of Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives or to fund reward of Ohio Democratic Party patrons from the public coffers, generally, is unknown. As earlier noted, in the 1842 elections, the Democratic Party had managed to only regain majority control of the U.S. House of Representatives, and it was, therefore, the only branch of the federal government from which the Party could dispense offices and other rewards under its then existing Spoils system. Also, several highly visible and, otherwise, prominent Ohio Democratic Party members came to McNulty’s defense both unsuccessfully during the House proceedings against him and, successfully, during the subsequent criminal proceedings against him.

Ohio Democratic Party support of McNulty

During the House proceedings, the later himself scandal involved U.S. Representative John B. Weller (D) of Ohio produced a document, ostensibly, showing that McNulty had simply deposited thirty thousand dollars of House funds with a New York commercial house, and McNulty’s accounting clerk, a Mr. Kershaw, produced voluminous, if specious or outright fraudulent documents, including a certificate ostensibly showing that the House through McNulty had a credit for twenty-nine thousand dollars at the then Bank of America in New York (not to be confused with the more modern Bank of America). When the House committee investigating the matter asked Kershaw for an order for the deposited monies, however, he said that only Clerk McNulty (who had not reappeared before the committee as he promised he would the day earlier) could make such an order.^[8]

When McNulty was ultimately indicted for embezzlement, none other than Ohio’s Edward M. Stanton (D), himself, who was, then, a highly reputed and successful Steubenville, Ohio attorney, concurrently, well paid Reporter of decisions of the Ohio Supreme Court (Vol. 11, 12, 13 Ohio State Reports) after his election to that public office by the then Democratic Party controlled Ohio General Assembly and, also, already, otherwise, quite prominent in Ohio Democratic Party politics, went to Washington, D.C. and, successfully, defended McNulty. Somehow, Stanton succeeded at either quashing or otherwise obtaining the dismissal of McNulty’s indictment, thereby, avoiding a public trial of the matter and, also, thereby, any further exposure of the details of the embezzlement, including the identity of any co-conspirators with McNulty.^[9][10]

Postscript

All of this intensive support of McNulty may simply have been cronyism. It is, also, just as likely, if not more so, however, to have been an immense effort directed at successfully covering up the operations of a corrupt early 19th century Ohio Democratic Party political machine. It is telling, too, again, that then former U.S. President and sitting U.S. Representative John Quincy Adams (W) introduces the matter of McNulty’s alleged embezzlement of House funds by writing in his journal for January 17, 1845 “This day was signalized by a memorable development of Democratic defalcation (archaic term for embezzlement) (emphasis and explanatory parenthetical added)."

Caleb J. McNulty died the next year near Helena, Arkansas on route to the Mexican-American War while serving as a Colonel with the 1st Ohio Infantry. He left a wife, who was Caroline Abbott née Converse, and 1 child, a 1 1/2 year old son named Rob Roy MacGregor McNulty (later, also, Converse), who had been born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1844. The child's mother Caroline died too by his 10th birthday, leaving him then completely orphaned.

Caleb's son Rob Roy MacGregor McNulty Converse, S.T.D., D.C.L., LL.D. rose from these circumstances though to become a nationally prominent Episcopal priest and U.S. scholar, a military chaplain and to serve heroically with the Union Army during the American Civil War. The Reverend McNulty was wounded at the Battle of Gettysburg in July, 1863 and nursed back to health at the Mower U.S.A. General Hospital at Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia. Returned to the field for the Battle of the Wilderness, the Rev. Rob Roy McNulty’s entire Union Army brigade was captured by the Confederate States Army, and he was held as a prisoner of war from May to December, 1864 in the South’s notorious Andersonville prison, Andersonville, Georgia. In the 1870s and into the 20th century, the Reverend Dr. McNulty was successively rector of St. John’s Church, Waterbury, Connecticut, Christ Church, Corning, New York, and St. Luke’s Church, Rochester, New York. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Iowa’s Griswold College, Dr. McNulty was also a professor of mathematics and science and chaplain at Washington and Jefferson College and the then only men's Hobart College at the Hobart and William Smith Colleges. He was a president of the Archeological Institute of America and a fellow of the American Geographical Society.^{[11][12][13][14]}

See also

• 28th United States Congress
• Jacksonian democracy

References

1. Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, his diary from 1795 to 1848, Charles Francis Adams, ed., Philadelphia, J.B. Lippincott & Co., © 1877, Vol. 12, p. 148 (entry for January 17, 1845)
2. History of Washington County, Pennsylvania with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Boyd Crumrine, ed., Philadelphia H.L. Everts & Co., 1882, p. 676
3. Biographical Directory of the United States Congress 1774-2005, Washington, D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, © 2005, p. 127
4. Again, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, his diary from 1795 to 1848, Charles Francis Adams, ed., Philadelphia, J.B. Lippincott & Co., © 1877, Vol. 12, p. 148 (entry for January 17, 1845)
5. Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, his diary from 1795 to 1848, Charles Francis Adams, ed., Philadelphia, J.B. Lippincott & Co., © 1877, Vol. 12, p. 149-150 (entry for January 18, 1845)
6. Again, Biographical Directory of the United States Congress 1774-2005, Washington, D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, © 2005, p. 127
7. Again, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, his diary from 1795 to 1848, Charles Francis Adams, ed., Philadelphia, J.B. Lippincott & Co., © 1877, Vol. 12, p. 149-150 (entry for January 18, 1845)
8. Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, his diary from 1795 to 1848, Charles Francis Adams, ed., Philadelphia, J.B. Lippincott & Co., © 1877, Vol. 12, p. 148-150 (entries for January 17 and 18, 1845)
9. “went to Washington and succeeded in having an indictment against Caleb McNulty, a defaulting clerk of the House of Representatives dismissed, thus saving”, p.27, Joseph Beatty Doyle, In memoriam, Edwin McMasters Stanton, his life and work, with an account of dedication of a bronze statue in his native city, E Book
11. Some of the Ancestors and Descendants of Samuel Converse, Jr. (Vol. II) (Ed. Charles Evans Converse). (1905). Boston: Eben Putnam, p. 443 (digitized by Google September 24, 2007)
12. Builders of Our Nation, published annually, “Men of 1913”. (1914). Chicago: American Publishers Association, p. 122 (digitized by Google June 6, 2013)
13. Thomas William Herringshaw, The American Blue Book of Biography. (1913). Chicago: American Publishers Association, p. 183 (digitized by Google April 11, 2011)
14. Niles National Register newspaper, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (founder Niles Hezekia, lived 1777-1839) edition archived as NNR 70.343, available digitized by subscription at www.nilesregister.com, also,