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Whiskey Ring
| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Whiskey Ring |
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| US History Encyclopedia: Whiskey Ring |
During the Grant administration, a group of western distillers and Internal Revenue Service officials formed a conspiracy to evade the whiskey tax. After a lengthy investigation into the ring, Benjamin H. Bristow, the secretary of the treasury, procured the indictment of more than 230 persons, including the president's personal secretary, and the conviction of 110, including four government officials. The investigation turned up allegations that funds generated by the illegal abatements of taxes went to the Republican Party to achieve a second term for Grant. The private secretary was acquitted, however, and no evidence implicated Grant himself.
Bibliography
McDonald, John. Secrets of the Great Whiskey Ring. St. Louis, Mo.: W. S. Bryan, 1880.
McFeely, William S. Grant: A Biography. New York: W. W. Norton, 1981.
Simpson, Brooks D. The Reconstruction Presidents. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998.
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Whiskey Ring |
Whiskey Ring, in U.S. history, a group of distillers and public officials who defrauded the federal government of liquor taxes. Soon after the Civil War these taxes were raised very high, in some cases to eight times the price of the liquor. Large distillers, chiefly in St. Louis, Milwaukee, and Chicago, bribed government officials in order to retain the tax proceeds. The Whiskey Ring was a public scandal, but it was considered impregnable because of its strong political connections. U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Benjamin H. Bristow resolved to break the conspiracy. To avoid warning the suspects, he assigned secret investigators from outside the Treasury Dept. to collect evidence. Striking suddenly in May, 1875, he arrested the persons and seized the distilleries involved. Over $3 million in taxes was recovered, and of 238 persons indicted 110 were convicted. Although President Grant's secretary, Orville E. Babcock, was acquitted through the personal intervention of the President, many persons believed that the Whiskey Ring was part of a plot to finance the Republican party by fraud.
Bibliography
See J. MacDonald, Secrets of the Great Whiskey Ring (1880, repr. 1969).
| Wikipedia: Whiskey Ring |
In the United States, the Whiskey Ring was a scandal, exposed in 1875, involving diversion of tax revenues in a conspiracy among government agents, politicians, whiskey distillers, and distributors. The Whiskey Ring began in St. Louis but was also organized in Chicago, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, New Orleans, and Peoria.
Before they were caught, a group of mostly Republican politicians were able to siphon off millions of dollars in federal taxes on liquor; the scheme involved an extensive network of bribes involving tax collectors, storekeepers, and others.
U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Benjamin H. Bristow, working without the knowledge of the President or the Attorney General, broke the tightly connected and politically powerful ring in 1875 using secret agents from outside the Treasury department to conduct a series of raids across the country on May 10, 1875. The trials began at Jefferson City, Mo. in October, 1875.[1]Ultimately, 110 convictions were made and over $3 million in taxes were recovered. President Grant appointed General John Brooks Henderson (a former U.S. Senator from Missouri) to serve as special prosecutor in charge of the indictments and trials, but Grant eventually fired Gen. Henderson for challenging Grant's interference in the prosecutions.
The Whiskey Ring was seen by many as a sign of corruption under the Republican governments that took power across the nation following the American Civil War. General Orville E. Babcock, the private secretary to the President, was indicted as a member of the ring — for this reason, President Ulysses S. Grant, although not directly involved in the ring, came to be seen as emblematic of Republican corruption, and later scandals involving his Secretary of War William W. Belknap only confirmed that perception. The Whiskey Ring scandal, along with other alleged abuses of power by the Republican party, contributed to national weariness of Reconstruction, which ended after Grant's presidency with the Compromise of 1877.
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 | Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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Mentioned in
- Benjamin Helm Bristow (American statesman)
- The Night Hawk (1938 Crime Film)
- James Overton Broadhead
- Rebecca Harding Davis (literature)
- Belknap Scandal (American history)
- Solicitor General
- Ulysses Simpson Grant
- Corruption, Political (American history)
- Special Prosecutors (American history)
- Independent Counsel (legal term)
- Grantism
- 1874 (chronology)
- 1875 (chronology)
- 1876 (chronology)
