UNDER THE COMPTROLLER OF CURRENCY 127 
troller, renewed the recommendation for the 
relief of the Negroes, and put their case more 
strongly than it had ever before been stated. 
As proving the moral responsibility of the gov- 
ernment he again called attention to the identity 
of bank officials and Bureau officials, to the ad- 
vertising literature which emphasized the semi- 
official status of the institution, to other facts 
which led the depositors to believe the bank 
under the care of the government, such as the 
absorption of the three army savings banks and 
the endorsement by Howard and Lincoln, and 
to the terms of the charter itself. And so it con- 
tinued under Republican and Democrat until 
1908.8 
At various times the matter of compensating 
the depositors came before Congress. In 1875 a 
House committee reported that the government 
was in no way responsible for the debts of the 
Freedmen’s Bank.? After the Bruce investiga- 
tion in 1880 the question of assuming the losses 
of the depositors again came before Congress, 
and in 1883 John R. Lynch, a Negro congress- 
man from Mississippi, reported from the Com- 
mittee on Education and Labor a bill to appro- 
priate $969,000 to compensate the depositors. 
The report stated that while the government was 
not legally bound to reimburse the depositors 
“the circumstances that were connected with the 
inauguration and management of the bank were 
of such a character as to make the government 
8 Ho. Misc. Doc. No. 34, 49 Cong., 2 Sess., and No. 33, 51 Cong, 1 
Sess.; Annual Reports of the Comptroller as Commissioner, 1889, 1906, 
1907 ‘and 1908. 
9 Ho. Redvort, No. 58, 43 Cong., 2 Sess.