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