Alexandria Gazette

THE BEECHER-TILTON SCANDAL.

New York, Aug. 5.-The following letters from Mr. Beecher to Moulton are made public to-day:

BROOKLYN, July 28, 1874.

F. D. Moulton:

My Dear Friend:--The Committee of Investigation are waiting vainly for you before closing their labors. I do earnestly wish that you would come and clear your mind and memory of everything that can bear on my case. I pray you also to bring all letters and papers relating to it which will throw any light upon it and bring to a result this protracted case.

I trust that Mrs. Moulton has been reinvigorated, and that her need of your care will not be so great as to detain you.

Truly yours,
H. W. BEECHER.

BROOKLYN, August 4, 1874.

F. D. Moulton, Esq:

SIR:-Your letter bearing date August 4, 1874, is this moment received. Allow me to express my regret and astonishment that you refuse me permission even to see certain letters and papers in your possession relating to the charges made against me by Theodore Tilton and at the reasons given for the refusal.

On your solemn and repeated assurances of friendship, and with the unquestioning confidence you inspired me of your honor and fidelity, I placed in your hands for safe keeping various letters addressed to me from my brother, my sister, and various other parties; also a memoranda of affairs not immediately connected with Mr. Tilton's matters. I also, from time to time, addressed you confidential notes relating to my own self, as one friend would write to another.

These papers were never placed in your hands to be held for two parties, nor to be used in any way. They were to be held for me. I did not wish them to be subject to the risk of loss or scattering from my careless habits in the matter of preserving documents.

They were to be held for me. In so far as these papers were concerned you were only a friendly trustee, holding the papers subject to my wishes.

Mr. Tilton has made a deadly assault upon me, and has used letters and fragments of letters purporting to be copies of these papers.

Are these extracts genuine? Are they garbled? What are their dates? What, if anything, has been left out, and what put in?

You refuse my demand for these papers on various pleas; that if I speak the truth in my statement I do not need them; if I make a successful use of them it will be an injury to Mr. Tilton, and that you, as a friend of both parties, are bound not to aid either in any act that shall injure the other.

But I do not desire to injure any one, but to repel an injury attempted upon me by the use of papers committed sacredly to your care.

These documents have been seen and copied. They have been hawked for sale in the New York newspaper offices. What purport to be my confidential notes to you are on the market but when I demand a sight of the originals of papers of which you are only a trustee that I may defend myself, you refuse, because you are a friend of both parties.

Mr. Tilton has access to your depository for materials with which to strike me, but I am not permitted to use them in defending myself. I do not ask you to place before the committee any papers which Mr. Tilton may have given you, but I do demand that you forthwith place before the committee every paper which I have written or deposited with you.

Yours truly,
H. W. BEECHER.

The following is the letter from Moulton to which Mr. Beecher's letter of August 4 was a reply:

49 Remsen Street,
BROOKLYN, August 4, 1874.

My Dear Mr. Beecher: I received your note of July 24, informing me that you are making a statement, and need the letters and papers in my hands, and asking me to send to you for the purpose extracts of copies made from them, as the case may be, that you may use them in your controversy with Mr. Tilton.

I should be very glad to do anything that I may do consistent with my sense of what is due to justice and right to aid you, but you will reflect that I hold all the important papers intrusted to me at the desire and request, and in the confidence, of both parties to this unhappy affair. You will see that I cannot in honor give them to either party to aid him as against the other. I have not given or shown to Mr. Tilton any documents or papers relating to your affairs since the renewal of your controversy, which had been once adjusted.

I need not tell you how deeply I regret your positions as foes each to the other after my long, and as you, I have no doubt, fully believe, honest and faithful effort to have you otherwise.

I will sacredly hold all the papers and information I have until both parties shall request me to make them public or to deliver them into the hands of either or both, or to lay them before the committee, or I am compelled in a court of justice to produce them, if I can be so compelled.

My regret that I am compelled to this course is softened by my belief that you will not be substantially injured by it in this regard, for all the facts are of course known to you, and I am bound to believe and assume that in the statement you are preparing you will only set forth the exact facts, and if so the documents when produced will only confirm and not contradict what you may say, so that you will suffer no loss.

If, on the contrary, which I cannot presume, you only desire the possession of the documents that you may frame your statement in a manner not to be contravened by the facts set forth in them, aiding you to the disadvantage of Mr. Tilton, I should be then aiding you in doing that which I cannot believe the strictest and firmest friendship for you calls upon me to do.

With grateful recollections of your kind confidence and trust in me,

I am, very truly yours,
F. D. MOULTON.

Mr. Moulton has sent the following reply to Mr. Beecher's letter of yesterday:

46 REMSEN STREET,
Brooklyn, August 5, 1874

Rev. Henry Ward Beecher:

My Dear Sir: In all our acquaintance and friendship I have never received from you a letter of the tone of yours of August 4. It seems unlike yourself, and to have been inspired by the same ill-advisers who had so lamentably carried your private affairs before a committee of your church, and thence before the public.

In reply let me remind you that during the whole of the past four years all the documents notes, and memoranda which you and Mr. Tilton have intrusted to me have been so intrusted because they had reference to your mutual differences. I hold no papers of either yours or his except such as bear on this case.

You speak of memoranda of affairs not immediately connected with the Tilton matter. You probably allude here to the memoranda of your difficulties with Mr. Bowen; but these have a direct reference to your present case with Tilton, and were deposited with me by you because of such reference.

As you speak also of a letter or two from your brother and sister, and I am sure you have not forgotten the apprehension we entertained lest Mrs. Hooker should fulfill the design which she foreshadowed to invade your pulpit and read to your congregation a confession of your intimacy with Mrs. Tilton.

You speak of others which I hold subject to your wishes. I hold none such, nor do I hold any subject to Mr. Tilton's wishes. The papers which I hold, both yours and his, were not given to me to be subject to the wishes of either of the parties, but the very object of my holding them has been, and still is, to prevent the wish of one party from being injuriously exercised against the other.

You are incorrect in saying Mr. Tilton has had access to my depository of material. On the contrary, I refused Mr. Tilton such statements. He came to me and said his case would be incomplete unless I permitted him the use of all documents, but I refused, and all he could rely upon was such notes as he had made from time to time from writings of yours which you had written to me to be read to him, and passages of which he caught from my lips in short-hand.

Tilton has seen only part of the papers in my possession, and would be more surprised to learn the entire facts of the case than you can possibly be.

What idle rumors may have existed in newspaper offices I know not, but they have not come from me.

In closing your letter you say, "I do not ask you to place before the committee any papers which Mr. Tilton may have given you, but I do demand every paper I have written or deposited with you." In reply, I can only say that I cannot justly place before the committee the papers of one of the parties without doing the same with the papers of the other, and I cannot do this honorably, except by legal process compelling me, or else by consent, in writing, not only of yourself, but of Mr. Tilton, with whom I shall confer on the subject as speedily as possible. You will, I trust, see a greater spirit of justice in this reply than you have infused into your unusual letter of August 4.

Very respectfully,
FRANCIS D. MOULTON.

Mr. Moulton, on appearing before the Investigating Committee, read the following:

Gentlemen of the Committee: I have received your invitation to appear before you, and have been ready on any proper occasion to disclose all facts and documents known to me, or in my possession, relating to the subject matter of your inquiry, but I have found myself embarrassed because of my peculiar relations to the parties and to the controversy.

Friendly for years to all of them, and at the time of the outbreak of this miserable business have had the kindest feelings towards each, I endeavored to avert the calamity that has now fallen upon all. Most fully and confidentially trusted by all parties it became necessary that I should show the exact and simple truth of every fact and circumstance of the controversy.

I was made by mutual consent in some part the arbiter of the affair, and after the estrangement the medium of communication between the parties, both saving and writing to me such things as were desired to be said or written to the other, to whom in such case I gave the information, or showed the communication to the person intended to receive or be affected by it.

Under these circumstances, I have not felt at liberty to give testimony or facts thus obtained in the sacredness of confidence before a tribunal not authorized by law to require them, however much otherwise I might respect the members and objects, without the consent of the parties from whom I received the disclosures and documents. With the consent or request of Mr. Beecher and Mr. Tilton, I have felt myself ready, sorrowingly, to give all the facts that I know about the object of the inquiry of the committee, and produce whatever papers I have to the committee, and leave copies of the same with them if they desired it, with perhaps the one stipulation, if I was to give my evidence orally, or to be cross examined, that I might bring with me a phonographic reporter in order that I should have an exact copy for my own protection.

I am to-day in receipt of letters from Rev. H. W. Beecher and Mr. Theodore Tilton, with their consent and request, thus absolving me thereby from my confidential relations toward them, to appear before you and give you facts and documents in reference to the difference between them. It appears to me that as Mr. Tilton has given his evidence, and Mrs. Tilton hers, Mr. Beecher should be requested to add his own, in order that the three principal parties to the case should have been independently heard on their own responsibility before I am called on to adduce facts in my possession derived from them all.

Nevertheless, since I am now fully released from my confidential relation to the parties in said affair, and since my only proper statement must consist of truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, I see no especial reasons why it may not be made at one time as well as another; but as my statement will necessarily include a great multiplicity of facts and papers, I must ask a little delay to arrange and copy them. Accordingly I suggest Saturday evening, August 8, as an evening convenient to me to lay my statement before the committee.

Yours truly,
FRANCIS D. MOULTON

Brooklyn, August 5.