August 9, 1864
Auditor Crane Speaks a Piece. - Some days ago, a lot of little hand bills were posted up about Centre Wheeling and Ritchietown, announcing that Samuel Crane, Auditor of the State of West Virginia, would speak a piece in the latter place on Monday evening, the 9th. Those little hand bills told the truth. The first thing Auditor Crane said was that he was a candidate for Congress in this district, in opposition to Hon. C. D. Hubbard. He then proceeded to denounce, in very bitter terms, the gentlemen from this city who attended the Grafton Convention, and didn't nominate him for Auditor.
He said he was born a poor shoemaker boy and told in a pathetic strain what he had lost and suffered for the good of the country. He dwelt lugubriously upon his domestic difficulties and how the hand of Providence had been laid heavily upon him; how he had been oppressed with grief more than he could bear even with all his Christian fortitude; how he had not now a tie upon the earth, and how a set of "hardened drunken rascals" had gone up to Grafton and laid him on the shelf.
Auditor Crane alluded to the managers of the late Sanitary Fair as a whisky party and wanted to know where the proceeds of that exhibition had gone to. He said they had met somewhere up in a cock left, concocted the scheme and then called upon the people for contributions. He admitted that the object for which the fair was held was a worthy one, and he would give the clothes off his back for such a purpose. - (We heard a member of the Finance Committee say at the time, that the Auditor positively refused to subscribe one cent.) - He continued in this strain for some time to an audience of some sixty or seventy people among whom he did not appear to have a friend, and during the midst of a brilliant peroration we left.
Timeline of West Virginia: Civil War and Statehood: August 1864