accepted it immediately. The President and Belknap were personal
friends. But the certainty of Belknap's perfidy was not removed
by the attitude of the President, nor by the vote of the Senate
on the article of impeachment--37 guilty, 25 not guilty-for the
evidence was too convincing. The public knew by this time Grant's
childlike failing in sticking to his friends; and 93 of the 25
Senators who voted not guilty had publicly declared they did so,
not because they believed him innocent, but because they believed
they had no jurisdiction over an official who had resigned.

There were many minor indications of the harvest which gross
materialism was reaping in the political field. State and city
governments were surrendered to political brigands. In 1871 the
Governor of Nebraska was removed for embezzlement. Kansas was
startled by revelations of brazen bribery in her senatorial
elections (1872-1873). General Schenck, representing the United
States at the Court of St. James, humiliated his country by
dabbling in a fraudulent mining scheme.

In a speech before the Senate, then trying General Belknap,
Senator George F. Hoar, on May 6, 1876, summed up the greater
abominations:

"My own public life has been a very brief and insignificant one,
extending little beyond the duration of a single term of
senatorial office. But in that brief period I have seen five
judges of a high court of the United States driven from office by
threats of impeachment for corruption or maladministration. I
have heard the taunt from friendliest lips, that when the United
States presented herself in the East to take part with the