by Ron Chernow
Grant told McDonald that he worried about Republicans losing Missouri, and McDonald, to remedy that, doled out whiskey funds and patronage jobs to favored politicians. So much whiskey money flowed through his operation that he directed funds to candidates in other states. The ring spread its bribes liberally among Washington insiders, who warned distillers whenever anyone from the capital came snooping. Because of Grant’s friendship with McDonald, it was commonly asserted in the St. Louis cabal that “the old man knows”—meaning Grant. McDonald fostered this misconception, giving his conspirators an illusory sense of safety, but he alone alleged that Grant knew of these machinations.6
In June 1874, when Benjamin Bristow became treasury secretary, he brought his prosecutorial zeal to bear against the ring. In his robust style, he embarked on a mission “to purge the [Republican] party of all the rogues that have fastened themselves upon us and to satisfy the people that we mean to have honest government.”7 That October, when he sent revenue inspectors to St. Louis, somebody in Washington tipped off the ring with an oblique telegram: “Put your house in order. Your friends will visit you.”8 Thus forewarned, the conspirators averted detection. The oracle in the capital spoke again to the conspirators on February 3: “We have official information that the enemy weakens. Push things. Sylph.”9 It wasn’t yet apparent to investigators that the Whiskey Ring had a confederate ensconced in a high place and that his name was Orville Babcock. Grant grew wary of Bristow’s crusade, having been warned by Ben Butler that the treasury secretary was a self-seeking man who sought publicity to further his own presidential ambitions.
By December 1874, Bristow believed Babcock and Secretary of the Interior Delano plotted to oust him. “I am struggling along in the Treasury Department as best I can,” he told a friend, “and assure you I find it a very hard place to fill.”10 He was aided by Solicitor of the Treasury Bluford Wilson, brother of General James H. Wilson. Bristow secured a major breakthrough in February, when George W. Fishback, publisher of The St. Louis Globe-Democrat, alerted him to a monstrous system of fraud in St. Louis distilleries and promised to supply a well-placed source. Bristow hired a secret agent, Myron Colony, to delve into nefarious doings in St. Louis, while James J. Brooks, assistant chief of the Secret Service, did the same in Chicago and Milwaukee. Before long, Bristow possessed evidence that St. Louis distilleries ran clandestinely at night, paying taxes on only a third of the whiskey they shipped, and similarly incriminating findings cropped up in Chicago, Milwaukee, Louisville, and other brewing centers where millions of gallons of whiskey escaped taxation. The scope of the scandal broadened just as Grant had labored to improve the ethical tone of his administration.
On May 7, Bristow and Wilson sketched for Grant a massive pattern of collusion between distillers and revenue agents, pinpointing McDonald’s central involvement. Suitably appalled, Grant demanded that suspect agents be dismissed and pledged his “hearty cooperation.”11 Bristow and Wilson were very heartened. Grant “stated that McDonald had been a friend of his, and had grievously betrayed, not only that friendship, but the public,” Wilson later testified. “As to the others . . . he said they were either knaves or fools, and in either case should go out.”12 When Bristow apprised Grant of imminent plans to seize distilleries in St. Louis, Chicago, and Milwaukee, Grant approved. Although the plan was hatched in strictest confidence, Babcock, writing as Sylph, alerted distillers. “Lightning will strike on Monday,” he informed St. Louis. “Be prepared for it.”13 When the intercepted telegram was returned to Washington, Bristow knew the ring had a confederate lodged in the upper echelons of the administration, although he didn’t yet know the culprit was Babcock.
On May 10, Bristow struck hard at the ring, raiding distilleries and tax offices in St. Louis, Chicago, and Milwaukee. Reams of paper fell into his hands that documented systematic tax evasion and yielded dozens of arrests. Confiscated ledgers confirmed John McDonald as a mastermind of the scheme. He turned up in Washington to try to contain the damage, but when Bristow showed him irrefutable evidence against him, McDonald broke down and admitted to swindling in his district. McDonald resigned his St. Louis post along with John A. Joyce, the local revenue agent. They would be sentenced to three and three and a half years in prison, respectively.
The growing scandal mesmerized the reading public. Investigators started out by interrogating foot soldiers of the conspiracy—distillers, gaugers, and storekeepers—then worked their way up the ladder to internal revenue agents. Bristow confided to a friend that “I am in a fight up to my eyes with tremendous combinations of money and unscrupulous thieves.”14 At first, Grant was angry at McDonald until Babcock persuaded him of his innocence. In late May, Grant told Bristow that “there was one honest man [McDonald] upon whom they could rely, as he was an intimate acquaintance and confidential friend of Babcock’s.” Horrified, Bristow pointed out that McDonald was at the “center of the frauds; that he was at this time in New York with $160,000 of money fraudulently obtained, ready to take a steamer on the first indication of any effort to arrest him.”15 By now Bristow had concluded that Babcock was a thorough scoundrel. “Bristow tells me that Babcock is as deep as any in the Whiskey ring,” Fish wrote, “that he has most positive evidence he will not say of actual fraud but of intimate relations and confidential correspondence with the very worst of them.”16 An honest man in a corrupt age, Grant could not conceive of such dishonesty by his most confidential aide.
When the president withdrew to Long Branch that summer, Orville Babcock was at his side. With his black goatee, handlebar mustache, and suave, insinuating manner, the Vermont-born Babcock was a capable man, having graduated high in his class at West Point, but he was a dangerously devious one. When a newspaper reporter wrote a damning piece about McDonald and Joyce, Babcock reassured McDonald that “I do not believe in joining in abuse of you and Joyce (Who have always been kind to me) now that you are in trouble.”17 Babcock’s papers at the Newberry Library in Chicago show just how slyly duplicitous he was. Writing two years later to his lawyer, Thomas C. Fletcher, Babcock claimed that he thought the legal pursuit of McDonald and Joyce “a piece of persecution” and that he had “tried to help them all I could and wrote them a few letters and notes, in pencil, I think.” He insisted that his letters contained nothing “that any honorable mind could misconstrue, but you know how hellish the press is.” At the same time he disclosed that McDonald had a letter from him that might be used to threaten him. Convinced McDonald would part with these letters “for a consideration”—that is, a bribe—he instructed Fletcher to have McDonald “Destroy them in your presence” or “Place them in your possession so that as attorney no person can ask them from you.”18 It was a shocking letter: Babcock was advising his lawyer to buy and destroy evidence while pretending to be an innocent soul whose words might be unfairly misconstrued by vindictive reporters.
How had such a rascal insinuated himself into Grant’s good graces? Even fifty years later, Grant’s son Jesse still paid homage to the saintly altruism of Orville Babcock, whom he thought incapable of guile:
Never for a moment did father question Colonel Babcock’s honesty. We all knew and loved him. He fought under father, he was a member of the family on I Street. Not only would it have been impossible for Colonel Babcock to have been guilty as charged, but father appreciated just what had happened. Colonel Babcock was the most disinterestedly friendly person I have ever known. His was almost a passion for helpfulness. The slightest acquaintance was sufficient motive for Babcock to respond ardently to any request within his power to grant. He was never so happy as when exerting himself in behalf of his friends, and to Colonel Babcock every acquaintance was a friend.19
By late July, as a grand jury handed down indictments, Bristow established that the Sylph messages were in the handwriting of Babcock, who had notified McDonald of upcoming investigations in St. Louis. In one letter, Babcock had told McDonald that he had intervened to block the probe. “I have s
ucceeded,” he wrote. “They will not go. I will write you. Sylph.”20 Around this time, Grant received a letter from a St. Louis friend, William D. W. Barnard, that contained alarming news. The attorney for McDonald and Joyce had asked him how far he thought prosecutions would proceed and Barnard, a devout believer in Grant’s honesty, replied indignantly “until the last man made restitution to his utmost ability to pay and were punished to the extent of the law.” The attorney shot back that McDonald and Joyce had assured him Grant would “not give them up, or Babcock was lost.”21 When Grant read this, he was outraged at the shocking suggestion that he had subverted justice. He handed the letter to Bristow with a passionate admonition scrawled across it: “Let no guilty man escape if it can be avoided—Be specially vigilant—or instruct those engaged in the prosecutions of fraud to be—against all who insinuate that they have high influence . . . to protect them.”22 Grant couldn’t have supplied Bristow with a more invigorating statement. Bristow asked if Grant’s statement could be published to silence doubting critics and, when he agreed, it appeared in the Washington Chronicle on August 10. Bristow warned Grant that efforts were being made to show a “want of harmony” between them in the Whiskey Ring prosecutions. “Of course I know how utterly false all such statements are . . . but it cannot be denied that the frequent repetition of them by parties who profess to have your confidence has done some mischief.”23
Relations between Grant and Bristow worsened after the treasury secretary confronted Babcock with a Sylph telegram. A smooth liar, Babcock confessed to having written it, but alleged it was unrelated to the Whiskey Ring. Bristow told Babcock he would probably be indicted and felt duty-bound to show the president the telegram. When Bristow did so, it was clear Grant had already been bamboozled by Babcock. “It doesn’t refer to the whiskey business,” Grant said flatly. “It refers to an order for the transfer of a supervisor.” “Unfortunately, Mr. President,” Bristow noted, “that transfer order was not issued until February, 1875, whereas this telegram was sent in December, 1874!”24 Even though Bristow predicted that Babcock would be indicted when the grand jury met in St. Louis, Grant refused to force his resignation. Afterward, Bristow bemoaned that Grant was “being misled by men who profess friendship for him, but who are acting treacherously.”25 As in the past, Grant identified with the embattled man, worrying more about wrongly accusing an innocent person than pardoning a perfidious one.
In September, escorted by Babcock, Grant spent four days in St. Louis and was furious to discover that Bluford Wilson had forewarned John B. Henderson, the special counsel there, to keep a close eye on Babcock. The shameless Babcock had no scruples about meeting with John McDonald. Even Grant met with him, despite the unfortunate impression this might create.26 Grant received fresh warnings about Babcock’s treachery when William L. Burt, the Boston postmaster, told him of a report from Marshall Jewell that Babcock was aiding Whiskey Ring villains and “was a friend of bad men and protected them.” He named two prominent men in Washington who, he said, “were corrupt and Babcock was shielding them.”27
Things looked ghastly for the Grant administration in early November when a St. Louis grand jury pored over names closely associated with the president: his brother Orvil, his brother-in-law Fred Dent, as well as Babcock, prompting Republican talk of a “rebel grand jury” out to embarrass and discredit the president.28 On November 29, U.S. Attorney David P. Dyer notified Attorney General Pierrepont that he was preparing to indict Babcock, adding, “It is painful to me . . . that the President of the United States should be betrayed by those so close to him as Gen. Babcock. I know that there is no one more anxious than the President himself to see the plunderers of the public Treasury punished.”29 Grant stood squarely behind the prosecutions, even as they crept closer to his own office. At the same time, he knew the popular Bristow eyed the Republican presidential nomination and feared he was exploiting the Whiskey Ring investigation as a national platform for doing so.
On December 3, Henderson obtained a conviction of William O. Avery, chief clerk of the Treasury Department. He introduced damaging evidence against Babcock and dragged Grant’s name into the fray. “It is very far from the opinion of myself or any of my associates that the President of the United States knew anything about the Ring,” he said in the courtroom, but he thought that Grant had “been grossly deceived and imposed upon by men who professed to be his friends, here and in Washington.”30 In an indiscreet closing statement, Henderson came perilously close to accusing Grant of complicity in attempting to halt the Whiskey Ring investigation: “What right has the President to interfere with the honest discharge of the duties of a Secretary of the Treasury? None whatever.”31
When this speech reached Washington, Grant’s cabinet reacted with shock, pronouncing it “an indecency and an outrage upon professional propriety.”32 For Grant it represented proof that “Henderson was a personal enemy of his and was disposed to abuse him when opportunity offered.” According to Fish, the cabinet concurred: “The indecency of a Counsel specially designated by the President abusing him was severely denounced by all.”33 With Grant’s approval, Pierrepont sternly reprimanded Dyer, noting that Grant was not on trial and had imposed no impediments to speedy punishment of the whiskey villains. He instructed him to dismiss the offending Henderson, who was replaced by an able lawyer, James O. Broadhead.
With an indictment now looming, Babcock tried to head off trouble by requesting that a military court of inquiry consider his case and Grant agreed. Everybody knew the consequences if Grant was perceived as tampering with criminal proceedings in St. Louis. Pierrepont gave his opinion that a military inquiry wouldn’t “interfere with the pending criminal proceedings at St. Louis,” which would have been “ruinous to Babcock, the President and the Administration.”34 Grant performed an immense favor for Babcock by naming three sympathetic generals—Phil Sheridan, Winfield S. Hancock, and Alfred Terry—to oversee the military inquiry in Chicago, but it was disbanded when St. Louis prosecutors refused to share their evidence against Babcock.
On December 9, Dyer secured a fraud and conspiracy indictment against Babcock. When Babcock insisted that he would be exonerated, Grant clung with a childlike devotion to complete faith in his innocence. On December 17, he sat down to allay the fears of Babcock’s wife, Annie:
My Dear Mrs. Babcock, I know how much you must be distressed at the publications of the day reflecting upon the integrity of your husband, and write therefore to ask you to be of good cheer and wait for his full vindication. I have the fullest confidence in his integrity, and of his innocence of the charges now made against him. After the intimate and confidential relations that have existed between him and myself for near fourteen years—during the whole of which time he has been one of my most confidential Aides & private Sec.—I do not believe it possible that I can be deceived. It is scarcely possible that he could, if so disposed, be guilty of the crime now charged against him without at least having created a suspicion in my mind . . . My confidence in Gen. Babcock is the same now [as] it was when we were together in the field contending against the known enemies of the government.35
On Christmas Day, Grant summoned Bluford Wilson, accused him of attempting to have his brother Orvil and son Fred indicted for whiskey frauds, and expressed “his earnest belief in Babcock’s innocence and his sense of the great outrage perpetrated on him,” Wilson said.36 A week later, Chicago and New York newspapers fingered Orvil and Fred Grant as involved in the Whiskey Ring. Indignant at the feeding frenzy in the press and protective toward his family, Grant exploded in fury, saying he had “heard enough through talk like this from Treasury officials, and wanted it either stopped or proven true.”37 At a cabinet session he ordered Pierrepont to haul reporters before grand juries and force them to substantiate their charges. He said he was prepared to let his brother and son be prosecuted, if the rumors proved true, but he strongly questioned their veracity. Treasury officials then confirmed that Orvil and Fred
Grant bore no connection to the Whiskey Ring.
At this point, Grant took active steps to guard Babcock. In late January, he had the attorney general issue a circular letter to U.S. attorneys in St. Louis, Chicago, and Milwaukee, advising them not to allow witnesses to turn state’s evidence. Granting immunity had formed an essential part of the prosecutions, which would be crippled without them. Grant reiterated his position in a petulant exchange with Bluford Wilson, lecturing him that “when I said let no guilty man escape, I meant it, and not that nine men should escape, and one be convicted.” Wilson countered: “Pardon me, Mr. President, we are not in this battle counting heads.”38
As Liberal Republicans talked up Bristow for president, Grant regretted that the secretary’s “zealous young friends” promoted his nomination.39 Bristow now felt a peculiar chill in the air around Grant. Bothered by this, he stopped by Hamilton Fish’s home on February 6 for a confidential talk. He recounted how he had gone to Long Branch the previous September to present Grant with his resignation and Grant had assured him that “he was more likely than any one person to be named as his successor, and that there was no one whom he would prefer, and he begged him to take back his resignation, which he did.”40 Since that time, relations with Grant had soured and the president was now “cold, distrustful and at times offensive, and severe in his insinuations and his remarks.”41 Fish urged Bristow not to resign, pointing out that Grant sincerely believed in Babcock’s innocence and was persuaded “the prosecution of persons who were appointees of his reflected upon the Administration.”42