Ulysses S Grant, President of the United States (R)
Grant is often known for his honesty, and that’s a true depiction of the man most often credited for his leadership during the Civil War. However, his administration is perhaps the most corrupt presidential administration in the history of the United States.
It is perhaps unfair for us to put the blame for all the corruption that surrounded Grant on his shoulders. However, as is often the case, the President is the ultimate authority, and Grant’s presidency (which should have been a symbol of a nation rebuilding to its previous strength) was marred with almost constant scandal.
There was quite a vacuum in American politics after the Civil War. The Democratic Party, which was pro-South throughout the war was left reeling by the loss, and the Republican Party flew in to fill the void. The Reconstruction period, as it was called, is often called a disaster by historians for many reasons. There was so much that needed to be done after the Civil War for the country to heal, but the corrupt ways of the entire political system made it almost impossible for real reform to happen.
The scandals surrounding Grant’s administration started in 1869 with the Black Friday gold speculation ring (the two perpetrators ended up being personal friends of Grant), which resulted in the Government dropping almost four million dollars in gold on the market after the scandal was revealed. This caused economic problems for the next decade. Then there was the New York Custom House Ring, which surrounded the collection of import revenue in New York.
In 1873, Grant was responsible for the increase of salaries for every single public official, including himself (his salary was raised from $25,000 to $50,000). In and of itself, this doesn’t sound all that scandalous, as we see elected officials giving themselves raises all the time nowadays. However, it was the sneakiness behind it that caused the problems. The raises came as an amendment to the Government’s budget bill, which if it hadn’t been passed and signed into law, would have shut the entire government down, effectively making the pay raises impossible not to pass.
Amongst the dozens of scandals that surrounded the Grant administration, perhaps the largest was the so-called Whiskey Ring. If you want to talk about grand conspiracies, the Whiskey Ring may be one of the largest ever uncovered in the United States. It involved hundreds of people from the lowest to the highest levels of government.
In 1875, the Secretary of the Treasury Benjamin Bristow exposed a conspiracy where Whiskey distillers had been evading paying taxes since the early years of the Lincoln administration. Apparently, the group had been neglecting their proper taxes to the tune of over $2 million a year. The ring was eventually brought down by Bristow in May of 1875. Hundreds of people were arrested, including President Grant’s Supervisor of Internal Revenue, John McDonald and Orville E. Babcock, the personal secretary to the President.