n the voters of that time the revelations came as a
shock. Some of the most trusted Congressmen were drawn into the miasma
of suspicion, among them Garfield; Dawes; Scofield; Wilson, the newly
elected Vice-President; Colfax, the outgoing Vice-President. Colfax had
been a popular idol, with the Presidency in his vision; now bowed and
disgraced, he left the national capital never to return with a public
commission.

In 1874 came the disclosures of the Whiskey Ring. They involved United
States Internal Revenue officers and distillers in the revenue district
of St. Louis and a number of officials at Washington. Benjamin H.
Bristow, on becoming Secretary of the Treasury in June of that year,
immediately scented corruption. He discovered that during 1871-74 only
about one-third of the whiskey shipped from St. Louis had paid the tax
and that the Government had been defrauded of nearly $3,000,000. "If a
distiller was honest," says James Ford Rhodes, the eminent historian,
"he was entrapped into some technical violation of the law by the
officials, who by virtue of their authority seized his distillery,
giving him the choice of bankruptcy or a partnership in their
operations; and generally he succumbed."

McDonald, the supervisor of the St. Louis revenue district, was the
leader of the Whiskey Ring. He lavished gifts upon President Grant, who,
with an amazing indifference and innocence, accepted such favors from
all kinds of sources. Orville E. Babcock, the President's private
secretary, who possessed the complete confidence of the guileless
general, was soon enmeshed in the net of investigation. Grant at first
declared, "If Babcock is guilty, there is no man who wants him so much
proven guilty as I do, for it is the greatest piece of traitorism to me
that a man could possibly practice." When Babcock was indicted, however,
for complicity to defraud the Government, the President did not hesitate
to say on oath that he had never seen anything in Babcock's behavior
which indicated that he was in any way interested in the Whiskey Ring
and that he had always had "great confidence in his integrity and
efficiency." In other ways the President displayed his eagerness to
defend his private secretary. The jury acquitted Babcock, but the
public did not. He was compelled to resign under pressure of public
condemnation, and was afterwards indicted for conspiracy to rob a safe
of documents of an incriminating character. But Grant seems never