Secretary of War
In March 1857, Floyd became Secretary of War in Buchanan's cabinet, where his lack of administrative ability was soon apparent, including the poor execution of the Utah Expedition. In 1859, Floyd was warned about plans by John Brown to raid Harpers Ferry by David J. Gue of Springdale, Iowa, where Brown had spent time. Gue was a Quaker who believed that Brown and his men would be killed. Gue decided to warn the government "to protect Brown from the consequences of his own rashness". He sent an anonymous letter to Secretary of War Floyd:
Cincinnati, Aug. 20, 1859. SIR: I have lately received information of a movement of so great importance that I feel it to be my duty to impart it to you without delay.
I have discovered the existence of a secret association, having for its object the liberation of the slaves of the South, by a general insurrection. The leader of the movement is "Old John Brown", late of Kansas. He has been in Canada during the winter, drilling the negroes there, and they are only waiting his word to start for the South to assist the slaves. They have one of their leading men (a white man) in an armory in Maryland; where it is situated I am not enabled to learn.
As soon as everything is ready, those of their number who are in the Northern States and Canada are to come in small companies to their rendezvous, which is in the mountains of Virginia. They will pass down through Pennsylvania and Maryland, and enter Virginia at Harper's Ferry. Brown left the North about three or four weeks ago, and will arm the negroes and strike a blow in a few weeks, so that whatever is done must be done at once. They have a large quantity of arms at their rendezvous, and are probably distributing them already. I am not fully in their confidence. This is all the information I can give you.
I dare not sign my name to this, but trust that you will not disregard this warning on that account.
He was hoping that Floyd would send soldiers to Harpers Ferry and that the extra security would motivate Brown to call off his plans.
Even though President Buchanan offered a $250 reward for Brown, Floyd decided that the letter writer was a crackpot, and disregarded it. He later said that "a scheme of such wickedness and outrage could not be entertained by any citizen of the United States."
In late 1860, Floyd was implicated in the scandal of the "Abstracted Indian Bonds." His wife's nephew, Godard Bailey, who worked in the Interior Department and removed bonds from the Indian Agency safe during 1860, was also implicated. Among the recipients of the money was Russell, Majors, & Waddell, a government contractor that held, among its contracts, the Pony Express. In December 1860, on ascertaining that Floyd had honored heavy drafts made by government contractors in anticipation of their earnings, the president requested his resignation. Several days later, Floyd was indicted for malversation in office, although the indictment was overruled in 1861 on technical grounds. No proof was found that he profited from these irregular transactions; in fact, he left office financially embarrassed.
Although he had openly opposed secession before the election of Abraham Lincoln, his conduct after the election, especially after his breach with Buchanan, fell under suspicion. Despite the fact that he had been ordered to reinforce Southern forts by Buchanan, the press accused him of sending large stores of government arms to federal arsenals in the Southern United States in anticipation of the Civil War.
Ulysses Grant, in his postwar Personal Memoirs, wrote:
Floyd, the Secretary of War, scattered the army so that much of it could be captured when hostilities should commence, and distributed the cannon and small arms from Northern arsenals throughout the South so as to be on hand when treason wanted them.
After his resignation, a congressional commission in the summer and fall of 1861 investigated Floyd's actions as Secretary of War. His records of orders and arms shipments from 1859 to 1860 were examined. In response to John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, he bolstered the federal arsenals in some Southern states by over 115,000 muskets and rifles in late 1859. He also ordered heavy ordnance to be shipped to the federal forts in Galveston Harbor, Texas, and the new fort on Ship Island off the coast of Mississippi.
He intended to send these heavy guns in the last days of his term, but the President revoked his orders.
His resignation as secretary of war on December 29, 1860, was precipitated by the refusal of Buchanan to order Major Robert Anderson to abandon Fort Sumter. On January 27, 1861, he was indicted by the District of Columbia grand jury for conspiracy and fraud. Floyd appeared in criminal court in Washington, DC, on March 7, 1861, to answer the charges against him. The indictments were thrown out.
THE INDICTMENTS AGAINST FLOYD QUASHED. The indictments against Ex-Secretary Floyd have been quashed in the Court at Washington on the ground—first, that there was no evidence of fraud on his part; and second, that the charge of malfeasance in the matter of the Indian bonds was precluded from trial by the act of 1857, which forbids a prosecution when the party implicated has testified before a Committee of Congress touching the matter.
