William Adams Richardson

(Source)

Throughout the two terms Ulysses S. Grant spent as President of the United States, his administration was beset by various scandals. Several officials were accused of wrongdoing, with lax oversight contributing to the general air of corruption and wrongdoing.

Although it attracted less attention than some of the other Grant Administration scandals, the Sanborn Incident would ultimately end the Cabinet service of William Adams Richardson, the Secretary of the Treasury. While Richardson had enjoyed a sound reputation before this matter wasn't accused of directly benefiting the questionable actions in this affair, he was strongly condemned for failing to stop the scandal in its tracks.

Early life

Richardson was born on November 2, 1821, in Tyngsborough, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard University in 1843, and three years later he was admitted to the bar. He began practicing law from a firm he established in Lowell; he would move it to Boston in 1860.

Early in his career, Richardson dabbled in banking and politics. He briefly served as the president of a Wamesit bank, and held the role of director at other banks in the area. He was elected to the city council of Lowell in 1849, re-elected in 1853, and made president of the council a year later. Initially a Whig, he later joined the Republican Party.

Richardson also held a number of judicial roles, serving as a justice of the peace for Middlesex County from 1847 to 1854. He became a judge for the county's probate court from 1856 to 1858, and its probate and insolvency court from 1858 to 1872.

Richardson also found time to compile and publish the state statutes for Massachusetts, completing this project in 1855 and revising it annually through 1873. He would launch a similar undertaking for the legislation of the U.S. Congress, issuing supplements on these laws from 1874 until his death.

Treasury Department

In 1869, Grant named Richardson as Assistant Secretary of Treasury. The appointment was made at the request of Treasury Secretary George S. Boutwell, a former Massachusetts congressman. Richardson had been offered a judicial role on the Massachusetts Superior Court, but turned it down in order to join Grant's administration. Richardson also briefly served as the acting Attorney General in 1870.

When Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts became Vice President on March 3, 1873, Boutwell resigned his post to fill the vacancy in the Senate. Richardson moved up to become Secretary of the Treasury, though he continued Boutwell's policies aimed at reducing the public debt and building up a federal reserve.

One of the most significant transactions Richardson handled while at the Treasury was the Geneva Award, which in 1872 transferred $15.5 million from British coffers to the United States. Several Confederate raiding ships, most notably the CSS Alabama, had been constructed in British shipyards during the Civil War and gone on to wreak havoc on Union shipping during the conflict. The "Alabama Claims" sought to collect damages for the British role in the matter, and the settlement was finally agreed upon after an international commission met in Switzerland.

The award caused some nervousness in the financial sector, since the transport of such an extraordinary amount of money over the Atlantic Ocean carried a good deal of risk. Richardson instead managed the transaction through a process of receiving and canceling bonds to move the money in a safe manner.

Richardson also played a key role in the federal response to the Panic of 1873. This recession occurred when the European stock market crashed, prompting a selloff of American investments. Railroad bonds were a particularly popular item in these transactions, and as a result the market was flooded with bonds. The railroad companies weren't able to find lenders willing to extend them loans, and many went bankrupt. In the United States, about one in four railroads (89 out of 364) failed.

An illustration of the Panic of 1873. (Source)

The full force of the Panic hit the U.S. on September 18, 1873, when Jay Cooke & Company in New York City collapsed. The bank had overextended itself, with heavy investments in railroads sealing its fate. Two days later, the New York Stock Exchange suspended trading for the first time in its history after economic conditions failed to improve.

A day later, Richardson and Grant traveled to New York to meet with several prominent businessmen. The federal government had promised to buy $10 million in bonds to try to restore confidence in the financial system, and quickly increased this sum to $13 million. The businessmen said it wasn't enough; money was in tight supply, thanks to several commercial banks calling in their loans. To avoid plunging the entire nation into ruin, they argued, the government would need to increase currency in any way possible. Richardson was pressured to release the Treasury's entire reserve of $44 million in order to ease the money market.

Richardson resisted these calls, saying it was unclear if he had legal authority over the disposition of the reserve. He asked Congress to make a judgment, but legislators dithered on the issue. In the last two months of 1873, receipts fell below expenditures and Richardson was forced to act. Although he didn't release the entire reserve, he issued $26 million in greenbacks to help meet the budget.'

While the move was of questionable legality, Congress didn't intervene to challenge it. The cyclical expansion and contraction of the economy, with its accordant panics, would persist for several decades until the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913.

Richardson was generally praised for his action. The injection of cash into the economy was seen as helping to ease the crisis, while the decision not to empty the reserve was seen as a prudent way to keep the government from getting too heavily involved in the financial sector's woes. Secretary of State Hamilton Fish wrote him, "I assure you and he reached on Sunday last. I hear from every one, except those interested in speculative stocks or bonds, one universal approval of the 'heroic action of the President and Secretary of the Treasury.'"

Nevertheless, the economy would remain depressed for another four years. The bankruptcy of Jay Cooke & Company caused a nationwide run on banks, and more than 100 financial institutions failed. This caused a ripple effect of business crashes; about 18,000 closed their doors in the two years following the start of the Panic, with the unemployment rate reaching 14 percent. A collapse in farm prices hurt the agricultural sector as well, while skyrocketing interest rates made it harder for Americans to get a loan or escape debt.

The Sanborn Incident

One year before the Panic, Congress has passed legislation ending the practice of allowing private individuals to pursue the collection of delinquent taxes. However, Representative Benjamin F. Butler, a Republican from Massachusetts, managed to add a rider allowing the Secretary of the Treasury to employ not more than three men to assist the Bureau of Internal Revenue with its duties.

Four people had secured contracts under this rider, but they only managed to collect about $5,000 over a two-year period. Another private collector, John D. Sanborn, would be much more successful. Sanborn had been working as a special agent with the Treasury Department since 1869; a Massachusetts resident, he was personally acquainted with both Boutwell and Butler. He had also been an agent in Butler's cotton speculation around the time of the Civil War, and the congressman strongly supported his appointment.

Richardson was the Acting Secretary of Treasury when he approved Sanborn's contract on August 13, 1872, with a mandate to collect illegally withheld excise taxes and other revenue from 39 whiskey distillers and entities. Whiskey had a steep excise tax, but it was often evaded. In his work with the Treasury Department, Sanborn had been credited with helping to secure indictments against several tax dodgers, including a small whiskey ring operating in New York City, in the spring of 1872.

Sanborn started his work by pursuing the delinquent taxes recorded at the Boston office of the Bureau of Internal Revenue. On October 25, he asked that his contract be expanded so he could go after 760 people who were delinquent on their estate or income taxes. This request was approved five days later, and in early 1873 this mandate was further enlarged with another 2,000 names. On July 7, he was approved to collect delinquent taxes from 592 railroad companies. As stipulated in his contract, he was able to keep half of whatever revenue he collected.

By entrusting Sanborn with tax collection on such a large number of people and entities, the Treasury Department had essentially flipped the intended relationship between private tax collectors and internal revenue authorities on its head. Instead of assisting the Bureau of Internal Revenue with its work, agents frequently found themselves helping with Sanborn's duties. This began to attract some negative attention among the agents, who feared that the scope of Sanborn's work had grown too large. They also noted that his work was essentially unnecessary, since they would have been able to collect the full value of the delinquent taxes without Sanborn's intervention; his involvement merely ensured that the amount going to the government would be halved while Sanborn would be able to enrich himself. A formal complaint was sent to the Treasury Department, but it was ignored.

Sanborn ultimately collected about $427,000 - a minor sum compared to the $102 million in total internal revenue in 1874, but a vastly greater amount than private collectors had typically been able to collect. Not all of the money had been collected in the most above-board way. He was often abetted by corrupt Treasury officials who encouraged those with tax liabilities not to pay up, giving Sanborn an opening to collect and take his fee. Sanborn also reportedly went after some entities that weren't actually delinquent at all.

The questionable practice eventually resulted in Sanborn's indictment for revenue fraud and the scrapping of his contract. The House Committee on Ways and Means opened an inquiry into the matter between February and May of 1874. The investigation was eagerly supported by Boston financiers and others opposed to Richardson's policies. The Treasury was nearly bankrupt at the time, and had allowed Sanborn's conduct to proceed unchecked; the sordid affair had the look of a conspiracy to defraud the government and enrich a select few. The incident offered the prospect that Richardson would be ousted and replaced with someone more in light with the financial sector's views.

The committee investigation included testimony from Sanborn himself. Since he was entitled to half of what he collected, he said he had received $213,500 for his work; however, he agreed that the citizens he collected from would have likely paid on their own, or that revenue agents would have collected the money as part of their regular duties. Sanborn claimed that more than $150,000 of his share went to Richardson, with much of the rest going to various campaign funds.

Richardson also appeared before the committee, but proved less than helpful. He said he couldn't recall signing Sanborn's contract, and admitted that he often signed documents without actually reading them.

The committee issued its report on May 4, concluding that the Treasury Department had utterly failed to supervise Sanborn's activities. Boutwell had followed the law in requiring that Sanborn set forth a written oath for each claim he proposed to recover, including the specific violation and the person or entity he wished to collect money from; he just hadn't enforced this rule. Richardson had been even more lax, demonstrating "an entire want of knowledge" on the laws regarding private collectors and their contracts. "His only connection, so far as he could remember, with these transactions, was in affixing his signature to the various papers presented to him as a mere matter of office routine, without knowing their contents," the committee declared.

Sanborn, meanwhile, had used his contract to go after a wide range of targets and bilk the country of revenue. The committee concluded that Sanborn's last contract was "substantially the entire list of railroads within the United States." He had simply gotten the 592 names from a register of railroad companies, and only 150 were actually delinquent on their taxes. Moreover, "a very large percentage, if not all" of the money Sanborn raked in would have been collected by the Bureau of Internal Revenue in their usual duties; as a result, the Treasury had gotten only half of what it should have received, with Sanborn pocketing the other half.

The committee was highly critical of Richardson as well as the Treasury Department's assistant secretary and solicitor. The three officials had essentially passed the buck among themselves. The assistant treasury also admitted that he signed documents without reviewing them, and said these had been prepared by the solicitor. The solicitor testified that he was simply a law officer acting on the directions of his superiors, which naturally would include Richardson and the assistant secretary. All three officials, the committee said, "deserve severe condemnation for the manner in which they have permitted the law to be administered."

The committee advised that any contracts made with Sanborn and the other private collectors should be revoked, and that no further claims should be made on them. It also declared the outsourcing of delinquent revenue collection "fundamentally wrong" and advocated that it should be stopped immediately.

The report stopped short of advising punishment for any of the Treasury officials, saying there was nothing "impeaching the integrity" of either Boutwell or Richardson. Sanborn himself would ultimately be acquitted, since he had been under contract to collect delinquent taxes and hadn't actually broken any laws in the course of this work.

Nevertheless, the assistant treasury secretary would resign and the incident brought swift calls for Richardson to be removed from the Treasury. Representative James Burney Beck, a Kentucky Democrat, declared the collection contracts to be "reeking and buoyant with corruption." Wilson wrote to Grant saying, "Since I have been in Washington the past few days, I have heard the strongest condemnation of [Richardson's] unfitness."

Grant was reluctant to dismiss Richardson, going so far as to appeal to individual House committee members in an attempt to keep them from issuing a report condemning the Treasury Secretary. Though he finally asked Richardson to step down, he also made sure that Richardson would have a soft landing. On June 1, just three days before Richardson's resignation, Grant nominated him for a vacant seat on the U.S. Court of Claims, a body settling claims against the United States. He was quickly confirmed by the Senate.

Later life

Benjamin H. Bristow, a Kentucky lawyer, succeeded Richardson as Treasury Secretary. Grant appointed him with some reluctance, since his opposition to inflationary policy and other monetary views were virtually opposite to Richardson's. However, he considered that the choice would help shore up Republican chances in the upcoming election.

It was not to be. Angered by the depressed economy and scandals in the Grant administration, Democrats more than doubled their presence in the House of Representatives in the 1874 midterm elections and regained a majority in the chamber for the first time since 1856; they would hold control of the House for another six years. The party also gained several seats in the Senate, although the Republican Party retained control.

Richardson would hold a seat on the U.S. Court of Claims for the rest of his life. In January of 1885, President Chester A. Arthur promoted him to the court's chief justice position to replace Charles D. Drake. He also busied himself with other work, including a plan for the enlarged jurisdiction of the Massachusetts probate courts which the state legislature subsequently passed. Between 1879 and 1894, he taught law at Georgetown University.

Richardson died in Washington, D.C. on October 19, 1896.

Sources

U.S. Department of the Treasury, The Miller Center at the University of Virginia, Federal Judicial Center, "The Panic of 1873" on American Experience at pbs.org, "Discovery and Collection of Monies Withheld From the Government" report by the House Ways and Means Committee on May 4 1874, "Historical Perspective: The Unhappy History of Private Tax Collection" at the Tax History Project on Sep. 20 2004, "New York and the Panic of 1873" in the New York Times on Oct. 14 2008, The Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, The New England Historical and Genealogical Register Vol. 53, The New Encyclopedia of American Scandal edited by George C. Kohn, Biographical Directory of United States Secretaries of the Treasury 1789-1995 edited by Bernard S. Katz and C. Daniel Vencill, Monetary Policy in the United States: An Intellectual and Institutional History by Richard H. Timberlake, A Sketch of the Life and Public Services of William Adams Richardson by Frank Warren Hackett, The Reconstruction Years by Walter Coffey, Grant by Ronald Chernow

James Brooks: out of stock

Image from civil-war.net

With the half of the country still missing at the time of the 1864 elections, the question of how to proceed with the ongoing Civil War raised the passions of the candidates and voters. The Democratic Party had split between "Peace" faction, which favored a truce with the Confederacy, and the "War" faction, who supported the effort to reunify the nation. James Brooks, a New York City candidate for re-election to the House of Representatives, fell into the former camp. During his time in Congress, he had become a proponent of peace negotiations with the seceded states. This position did not necessarily translate into support of slavery. Brooks had asked his wife to emancipate her slaves before their marriage, and he later publicly declared slavery a dead or dying institution that could not be defended.

Old-fashioned politicking played a role in the New York election as well. Tammany Hall, the Democratic machine, had nominated former congressman Thomas J. Barr to contest Brooks in the general election. The Brooks campaign offered him $5,000 if he would withdraw from the race. Barr, a War Democrat, in turn sought to get the Republican candidate, William E. Dodge, to drop out. When he was not successful, he asked for $5,000 from the Dodge campaign to stay in the race and split the Democratic vote and received $2,000. It almost worked. When the ballots were counted, Barr came in a distant third with 4,544 votes; Dodge earned 8,435, and Brooks squeaked past with 8,583. One month after his election, Brooks and his brother, Erastus, were arrested after Peter Sweeney of Tammany Hall accused them of libel in printing accusations of about Tammany interference in the election through payouts and having inspectors ignore Brooks' votes.

Brooks' new term began in March of 1865, but the election was close enough that Dodge contested it to the House Committee on Elections. His appeal charged widespread ineptitude or corruption on the part of the election inspectors. Dodge said thousands of votes from people who weren't residents of the district had been counted, soldiers' votes had been forged, Dodge's votes had been improperly rejected, public notice had not been given of registration areas or voting places, and bribery and coercion had been used throughout. Brooks said Dodge was simply using his personal wealth to try to sway the election and the district to his side. The question dragged on into 1866, when the majority report of the committee declared that Brooks was not entitled to his seat and Dodge was. In April, the matter went to the House. After unsuccessful attempts to declare the seat vacant and refer the issue back to the people or send the question back to committee, the members agreed that Brooks should no longer be seated in an 84-45 vote, with 54 abstaining; soon after, they voted 72-52, with 59 abstaining, to put Dodge in his place. Brooks' absence was short-lived, however. Dodge, a reluctant nominee, did not seek re-election after his truncated term and Brooks won the seat back in the November election.

The hiccup in his political career and almost immediate recovery give an example of the relative success Brooks enjoyed in his life. Born in Portland, Maine in November of 1810, he earned money to attend college by working as a store clerk in Lewiston. After graduating from Waterville College in 1831, he briefly studied law and taught school while frequently writing letters to the Portland Advertiser. This last activity led to his career in editing the newspaper and serving as a political correspondent in Washington, D.C. Brooks served one term in the Maine house of representatives in 1835, and, after an unsuccessful attempt at re-election, traveled through Europe and the South, continually writing back to the Advertiser to document his adventures.

Upon his return to the United States, Brooks moved to New York City and established the New York Daily Express. He served in the New York state assembly in 1847, and in the next year was elected as a Whig to the House of Representatives, winning one more term there before he was turned out in the 1852 election. During the gaps in his political career, Brooks continued with his editorial duties, and continued working on the Express for the rest of his life.

When the war was concluded, one of the most important projects in the United States was the construction of a transcontinental railroad. Unfortunately, this undertaking was fraught with corruption and greed. The Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads, swollen with land grants, federal bonds, and state and local purchases of their stock, soon became the largest corporations in the country. In part, the project got off the ground because Thomas Durant and seven other directors of the Union Pacific bought up a defunct Philadelphia holding company and dubbed it Credit Mobilier after a prestigious French credit company. By having Credit Mobilier buy Union Pacific stock and sell it below face value, the railroad raised enough money to begin construction.

Of course, this meant Credit Mobilier was essentially a dummy organization through which Union Pacific could pay itself to collect rich dividends. The directors were well aware of this fact, and eagerly sought to increase their profits in any way possible. By being both part of the railroad and Credit Mobilier, they could not only overcharge for services but approve the faulty figure as well. The railroad further cut corners by using shoddy building materials, not paying subcontractors for work, and, most notoriously, paying laborers paltry wages for the often dangerous work. Credit Mobilier held the valuable bonds resulting from the project, while the Union Pacific's debt increased. When the two spurs linked up in Promontory Point in Utah in 1869, the railroad was $74 million in the hole while Credit Mobilier had produced some $16 million to $23 million for stockholders. The impressive accomplishment of the transcontinental route was undermined by the sub-par quality of the railroad and the unjust enrichment of Credit Mobilier. Mired in debt, Union Pacific went bankrupt in 1893.

Congress, overseeing several of the financial and other issues required to move the construction forward, was not immune from the corrupt practices. Several members had been appointed government directors of the Union Pacific, including Brooks in October of 1867. Though they were forbidden from holding the lucrative stock in companies related to the project, the temptation was overwhelming. "The members of it are in Congress; they are trustees for the bondholder, they are directors, they are stockholders, they are contractors; in Washington, they vote the subsidies, in New York they receive them, upon the Plains they expend them, and in the Credit Mobilier they divide them," journalist Charles Francis Adams wrote of Credit Mobilier in 1869. "As stockholders they own the road, as mortgagees they they have a lien upon it, as directors they contract for its construction, and as members of the Credit Mobilier they build it."

Though Adams' charge essentially outlined the Credit Mobilier problem, the issue did not explode into a full scandal until September of 1872. The New York Sun, a prominent enemy of Republican President Ulysses S. Grant's administration, published an article charging that Credit Mobilier had given 2,000 to 3,000 shares of stock to the chairmen of congressional committees related to the transcontinental railroad. The scandal broke in part because of bad blood among the Credit Mobilier group, with trustee and stockholder Henry S. McComb suing the corporation and its officers, including Republican Representative Oakes Ames of Massachusetts and former Republican congressman John B. Alley of Massachusetts, in an attempt to retrieve a signficant amount of stock he felt he had earned. The article concluded that Ames had written McComb three letters in late 1867 and early 1868, revealing that Credit Mobilier stock had been sold at a steep discount to congressmen and mostly kept in trust to hide their names. The letters also hinted that the sales aimed to influence legislation and that the stock should be put "where it will produce most good for us." The Sun implicated 12 Republican officials in the affair, including former Vice President Schuyler Colfax; Henry Wilson, a Massachusetts Senator chosen to replace him on the 1872 ticket for Grant's re-election; and Representatives James G. Blaine of Maine and James Garfield of Ohio. Brooks, who had won re-election in 1868 and 1870, was not among the names.

Coming as it did on the eve of the major election year of 1872, pro-Grant newspapers such as the New York Times accused the Sun's account of amounting to mudslinging. The Sun had indeed been highly critical of corruption during the Grant administration, and expressed its support for newspaper editor and renowned antebellum abolitionist Horace Greeley as the Presidential candidate of the Democrats and a splinter group of liberal Republicans. Though Brooks' involvement in the Credit Mobilier affair was still unknown, the Times nevertheless had harsh words for him and urged support of Republican candidate Adolphe G. Dunn. The newspaper said Brooks had been disloyal during the Civil War, shown more loyalty to Tammany Hall than the district, and that his career was "chiefly distinguished by the accumulation of a large fortune for himself." Within the year, it would be determined that this last charge had hit the nail on the head.

The Sun's accusations had little effect on the elections, which saw the re-election of Grant as well as Brooks. In December, Blaine called for an investigation into the Credit Mobilier affair, saying he wanted the "slanders" to be addressed. The House approved the formation of a committee of five attorneys led by Judge Luke Poland of Vermont. The committee called on the targeted politicians as well as representatives from Credit Mobilier, the Union Pacific, and the Central Pacific. The initial hearings were conducted behind closed doors, but certain tidbits leaked out. One involved McComb saying that Brooks had received 50 shares of Credit Mobilier stock to influence his own decisions and those of the Democrats regarding legislation about the Union Pacific railroad. Permitted to speak to the charge on the floor of the House, Brooks angrily denied the accusation. "If this charge is true, I am unfit to be a member of the House and ought to be expelled--and not only from the House, but from all association with decent men," he said. Brooks explained that his son-in-law, Charles Neilson, was the person who owned the shares and that he could produce the receipt to prove it; moreover, he said, McComb had become complicit in the crimes he was accusing Brooks of by bribing members of the Louisiana legislature to support railroad interests McComb had a stake in. "Mr. Brooks weakened the force of his explanation greatly by bringing in a great deal that seemed unnecessary, and by his bitterness toward McComb," the New York Times judged, "but his denial was very broad and very emphatic, and he left McComb a very badly impeached witness."

After the closed hearings were criticized, the proceedings were made public in January of 1873, along with transcripts from the private activities of the Poland Committee. In the same month, the House formed a second select committee to conduct their own investigation.

When the Poland Committee completed their work, they determined that Brooks had only been telling half the story in his assertion that the Credit Mobilier stock belonged to Neilson. The committee said that Brooks had spoken with Durant about acquiring $15,000 to $20,000 in stock, but no formal agreement was made. When the value of the stock increased substantially in December of 1867, Brooks again wanted a piece of the profits and sought a transfer of 200 shares. He had been made a government director of the Union Pacific railroad two months before, however, and such ownership was forbidden. To circumvent this prohibition, Brooks arranged for 100 shares of Credit Mobilier stock, $5,000 in Union Pacific bonds, and $20,000 in Union Pacific stock to be transferred to Neilson. The committee found that Neilson was not complicit in the activity, since Brooks had purchased the shares for him and Neilson immediately turned over the dividends to his father-in-law. When the Credit Mobilier stock increased by 50 percent, Brooks made the dodgy claim that it entitled him to an additional 50 shares via the agreement he had made. Even the Credit Mobilier parties were skeptical of the assertion, but Brooks ended up receiving the bonus.

Neilson admitted receiving an additional 50 shares, but denied that Brooks had ever received dividends on the stock. The committee did not believe there was sufficient evidence showing that Brooks was merely a third party, however. It discovered that Neilson had given Brooks $9,000 in dividends in June of 1868, ostensibly to repay Brooks for $10,000 that had been advanced for the purchase of the 100 shares of Credit Mobilier stock. This left only $1,000 left on the loan, yet Brooks continued to hold $16,000 worth of Union Pacific bonds given to him by Neilson as a security. The committee concluded that Brooks had been the proprietor of his son-in-law's funds, and had received the 50 shares of Credit Mobilier stock worth $15,000 to $20,000 worth of Credit Mobilier at a price of only $5,000.

While the Poland Committee determined that most of the people accused in the scandal had merely been indiscreet, it had different conclusions for Brooks and Ames. Brooks, they said, had knowingly defrauded the government and rather foolishly tried to hide the benefits of the stock while still managing the investment and dividends. They confirmed that Ames had used discounted Credit Mobilier stock to try to bribe congressmen. In February, the committee recommended that both congressmen be expelled. Two days later, the congressional committee led by Republican Representative Jeremiah Wilson of Indiana concluded that Credit Mobilier had bilked the U.S. taxpayers and Union Pacific out of millions of dollars to enrich their directors. It recommended suing to recover the lost funds.

The matter went before the House later in the month. The congressmen proved reluctant to go forward with the Poland Committee's recommendation. The chamber voted 164 to 59 against tabling the whole matter, and agreed in a 115-110 vote to accept Republican Representative Aaron Sargent's suggestion that Brooks and Ames be censured instead. The House voted 174 to 32 to censure Brooks, and 181 to 36 to censure Ames. Some Republican members immediately apologized to Ames, saying they had voted for his censure only because they felt it was what their constituents would approve. The votes also set off a barrage of abortive resolutions to retain the Poland Committee to further investigate other members charged in the scandal, since there was some grumbling that Ames and Brooks had simply been chosen to mete out symbolic punishment to both parties. These efforts eventually burned out, and the Poland Committee was discharged.

Brooks had continued to travel throughout his life, and at the time of his censure he was extremely ill after picking up a fever in Asia. The proceedings may well have further drained the vitality from him, but he retained a bit of kick in the final months of his life. He thanked the black members of the House who had voted against his punishment, and issued a statement in March reiterating his innocence. He said the Poland Committee had ignored other testimony and exploited his illness, and once again claimed that Neilson had owned the 150 shares of Credit Mobilier stock rather than him. He died in April, and Ames followed him to the grave eight days later.

Sources: The Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, "Criminal Prosecution Of The Editors Of The Express For Libel" in the New York Times on Dec. 13 1864, "Arrest Of Hon. James Brooks" in the New York Times on Dec. 28 1864, "Washington News" in the New York Times on Mar. 27 1866, "Washington News" in the New York Times on Apr. 7 1866, "New-York Contested Election" in the New York Times on Apr. 11 1866, "James Brooks" in the Lewiston Evening Journal on Apr. 17 1872, "Dunn vs. Brooks" in the New York Times on Nov. 1 1872, "The National Capital" in the New York Times on Dec. 18 1872, "Credit Mobililer" in the New York Times on Jan. 14 1873, "Telegrams Condensed" in the Reading Eagle on Feb. 27 1873, "Ames And Brooks" in the New York Times on Feb. 28 1873, "Credit Mobilier: Mr. James Brooks Again Explains His Connection With It And Loses His Temper" in the New York Times on Mar. 8 1873, "Obituary: Hon. James Brooks" in the New York Times on May 1 1873, Nothing Like it in the World: the Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad by Stephen E. Ambrose, Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad by David Haward Bain, The Reconstruction Era: Primary Documents on Events from 1865 to 1877 by Donna Lee Dickerson, Final Freedom: the Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment by Michael Vorenberg, William E. Dodge: the Christian Merchant by William Carlos Martyn, The American Ballot Box in the Mid-Nineteenth Century by Richard Franklin Bensel, The Election Frauds of New York City and Their Prevention by John I. Davenport, The Credit Mobilier of America by J.B. Crawford, Campaign of '84 by Thomas V. Cooper, The House: The History of the House of Representatives by Robert Vincent Remini

William W. Belknap: shell game

Image from politico.com

William Worth Belknap's argument was simple, if not a model defense: you can't impeach someone who is no longer in office.

Born in Newburgh, New York in 1829, Belknap graduated from Princeton University in 1848, studied law at Georgetown University, and was admitted to the bar in 1851. He moved to Iowa, briefly entering government work in 1857 when he was elected as a Democrat to one term in the state legislature.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Belknap joined the Union Army and became a major in the 15th Iowa Infantry. He fought at Shiloh, Corinth, and Vicksburg before taking part in the campaign from Chattanooga to Atlanta. In 1864, he was promoted to brigadier general and given command of the 4th division of the XVII Corps. Belknap joined General William Sherman's march through Georgia and the Carolinas. When he was mustered out in 1865, Belknap was a major general; he had also switched parties to join the Republicans.

After the war, Belknap returned to Iowa and served as a collector of internal revenue from 1865 to 1869. In that year, President Ulysses S. Grant appointed him to be Secretary of War after the death of John A. Rawlins. In a time of relative peace for the country, Belknap's activities in this position included starting preparation of historical reports by post commanders, advocating preservation for Yellowstone Park, launching a secretarial portrait gallery, and recommending that Congress fix May 1 as the start of the fiscal year. He was evidently not supportive of the Freedmen's Bureau.

Belknap's annual salary was $8,000, though he was known for living in a certain amount of luxury and throwing extravagant parties. The New York Times later reported that many acts of government corruption were considered unsubstantiated or invented, and investigations of wrongdoing were conducted "in an aimless, drifting manner." However, Belknap soon found himself fully exposed after the damning testimony in late February of 1876 by one Caleb P. Marsh of New York.

Marsh testified before the House Committee on Expenditures in the Department of War that Belknap's second wife, Carrie, encouraged him to apply for a post trader position at Fort Sill in Indian Territory. She asked for $6,000 a year to help convince her husband to appoint Marsh, though she also warned that Belknap had threatened to throw a man who offered $10,000 for a post trader appointment down the stairs. Such a position could be quite lucrative, with the New York Tribune reporting that a $15,000 investment could yield a $40,000 annual income. Not surprisingly, the current trader, John S. Evans, wasn't inclined to part with it.

Though Belknap was later charged with appointing Marsh to the position, Marsh never took the job. Instead, apparently with Belknap's consent, Evans and Marsh entered into a contract which would allow Evans to keep his job; he agreed to pay Marsh $12,000 each year, half of which he was to pay to Carrie. The amount was subject to a proportional decrease if the number of troops at the fort fell below 100. The first payment rolled out in the fall of 1870.

Carrie died of tuberculosis in 1870. Marsh kept sending the payments to Carrie's sister, Amanda, ostensibly to help support Carrie's infant child. Belknap, if he didn't know about the arrangement from the start, received some of the payments while Amanda was traveling. The child died in 1871; Belknap later married Amanda, and the payments kept coming. According to the articles of impeachment later handed down in Congress, Belknap received $24,450 between 1870 and 1876.

Following Marsh's testimony, things moved with surprising speed. On March 1, 1876, Belknap apeared before the committee. They offered to hear him the next afternoon, but he didn't show up. Instead, on the morning of March 2, Belknap handed in his resignation to Grant. The President accepted, appointing the Secretary of the Navy to replace him. Within a week, he had appointed attorney Alphonso Taft to the post.

The House of Representatives immediately took up the question of whether it had the authority to impeach Belknap, since impeachment cannot impose fines or imprisonment but only remove someone from office or disqualify them from holding office. Hiester Clymer, Democrat of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Committee on Expenditures in the War Department, described Belknap as "the proper outgrowth, the true exponent, of the corruption, the extravagance, the misgovernment that have cursed this land for years past." The House unanimously voted to have the Senate go ahead with the impeachment process.

As the impeachment process moved along, Marsh fled to Canada. Congressman Lucius Q.C. Lamar, a Democrat of Mississippi, said that Marsh's flight took with him any chance of a criminal indictment of Belknap. "Now, gentlemen, we have all the proceedings which have been been taken in this House and all the testimony which has been brought before it against William W. Belknap," said Lamar. "But with Marsh absent it is useless, and there is no way of criminally proceeding against William W. Belknap." A grand jury still managed to find enough to indict Belknap on bribery charges in May. The Times had reported prior to the indictment that he faced up to three years in prison and a fine three times the amount taken if convicted.

The Senate took up five articles of impeachment against Belknap, which included one colorful charge that he had been "basely prostituting his high office to his lust for private gain." When he was tried before the senators, he repeated the argument that the impeachment did not apply to him, since he was no longer a United States officer but simply a citizen of Iowa. The official Senate reply stated that his argument did not hold water, since the malfeasance occurred during his time as Secretary of War.

After over 40 witnesses came before the Senate, 35 senators voted that Belknap was guilty; 25 voted that he was not guilty, although 23 of them said that it was only because they felt that Congress did not have jurisdiction in the matter. The Times dubbed the whole impeachment affair "a rather stupid and uninteresting farce," and said that it set a precedent in allowing any civil officer to "escape the penalty fixed by the Constitution by hastening to resign as soon as his deeds are disclosed." The newspaper noted how the criminal indictment still stood, but guessed that it would not hold up in light of the "rather common robbers" involved in a $47,000 theft from the Treasury managing to avoid prosecution. The writers were prophetic in this matter, as the charges against Belknap were dismissed in February of 1877 for lack of evidence.

Belknap returned to practicing law, moving first to Philadelphia and then back to Washington. He died in 1890 of an apparent heart condition.

Sources: The Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, The Senate Historical Office, Secretaries of War and Secretaries of the Army by William Gardner Bell, "The New Secretary of War" in the New York Times on Oct. 14 1869, "Gen. Belknap's Career" in the New York Times on Mar. 3 1876, "The Case in the House" in the New York Times on Mar. 3 1876, "The Testimony" in the New York Times on Mar. 3 1876, "The Event at the Capital" in the New York Times on Mar. 3 1876, "The Belknap Impeachment" in the New York Times on Mar. 31 1876, "Belknap Indicted" in the New York Times on May 4 1876, "Acquittal of Belknap" in the New York Times on Aug. 2 1876, "The Suit Against Gen. Belknap" in the New York Times on Feb. 9 1877, "Belknap's Sudden Death" in the New York Times on Oct. 14 1890, Grant: A Biography by William S. McFeely, Lucius Q.C. Lamar: His Life, Times, and Speeches 1825-1893 by Edward Mayes, Appleton's Annual Cyclopaedia and Register of Important Events of the Year 1876