The question of Rawlins' ownership of Cuban bonds is so important that
I subjoin the entries in Fish's Diary which bear upon it:

July 26, 1875.-- . . . [ Bristow] . . . refers of his own accord to the President's allu-
sion to the Cuban question at the Cabinet meeting, and asked if I knew that when Gen-
eral Rawlins died, $28,000 in Cuban bonds were found among his securities; that the
President, who was his executor, had refused to put them on the inventory, and he be-
lieved had destroyed them. I told him that Rawlins' name for either $20,000 or $25,000
had been in a list shown me at the time by the Spanish Minister, whose detectives had
the names of many parties to whom distribution of these bonds had been made.

Bristow says that be obtained this information in New York from a gentleman who knew
the facts and whom I knew well, but who did not wish his name to appear.

November 5, 1875.-- . . . While Secretary Robeson and myself were with the Presi-
dent, he (the President) referred to General Rawlins, stating that he was executor of
his estate, and that at the time of his death, he requested General Smith to collect and
make an inventory of all his property; that Smith has reported to him that he found
a number of Cuban bonds, which he ( General Grant) requested Smith to destroy, but
some short time since, having occasion to look in the safe, he was surprised to find that
instead of being destroyed, they had been kept.

To Robeson's inquiry "whether he had filed an inventory of the property," he said
no, that with the exception of these bonds there was nothing except a house which
Rawlins had purchased, but had not then paid for; that he himself had endorsed a note
of Rawlins', in part payment of the house, but had never been called upon to pay it;
whereupon Robeson remarked that the note by this time had been outlawed. . . .

The President seemed in doubt as to what should be done with the bonds. Robeson
suggested that they be sold. I thought it would not do for the President, even as execu-
tor, to be selling such bonds, in which opinion he agreed. I then informed him that
prior to Rawlins' death I had been told he had the bonds. . . . I further stated that
Mr. Roberts had, more than once, produced a list of persons holding Cuban bonds; that
they had been distributed very largely in this city, especially to representatives of the
press and to some Senators and members of Congress, and others supposed to have in-
fluence. I said that I had been shown names in the list, but had never been shown the
whole list. . . .

It is shown in a preceding chapter that the Cuban Junta contributed
$20,000 in Cuban bonds to a fund for Rawlins' family. It would be pleasant
to believe that this accounts for the bonds mentioned in these entries. But
surely Grant would have known it had this been so; surely the fund for the
family was not included in the estate delivered to Grant as executor; and
surely the Spanish Minister's list refers to a time before the fund was raised.

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