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 government
 he again called attention to the identity
of bank officials and Bureau officials, to the advertising
 literature which emphasized the semiofficial
 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 continued
 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 investigation
 in 1880 the question of assuming the losses
of the depositors again came before Congress,
and in 1883 John R. Lynch, a Negro congressman
 from Mississippi, reported from the Committee
 on Education and Labor a bill to appropriate
 $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.