Knoxville Daily Chronicle

The resolution of Senator Sumner to enquire into the sale of arms to French agents during the war, is construed by the President's enemies as a blow at him.

The facts of the case are as follows:

Under an act of Congress of July, 1862, the Secretary of War sold the surplus arms on hand from the war and from the manufactory at Springfield. He sold arms to Turkey, Russia, Spain and Peru. If any were sold to France, it was done through private secret agents who imposed upon the Government. In his letter reporting these sales to Congress, the War Minister says:

About a half hour before the time fixed for opening the bids for the purchase of Springfield and Enfield muskets in October, 1870, a dispatch was received from a member of the house of E. Remington & Sons, stating that they were agents for the French Government, and authorized to purchase arms for it. The opening of bids was postponed and the sale suspended, and the Secretary directed that no bids from E. Remington & Sons for arms, &c., should be entertained.

The Department may have been imposed upon by secret agents, but that shows no evasion of the laws of neutrality.

Baron Gerolt, the able Prussian Minister at Washington, was firmly convinced of the sympathies of the Administration, and so repeatedly expressed himself. Intelligent Germans everywhere know who sympathized with them during the war, and cheap political tricks to prove them blind or fools will hardly succeed at this late date.