" In other ways the
President displayed his eagerness to defend his private
secretary. The jury acquitted Babcock, but the public did not. He
was compelled to resign under pressure of public condemnation,
and was afterwards indicted for conspiracy to rob a safe of
documents of an incriminating character. But Grant seems never to
have lost faith in him. Three of the men sent to prison for their
complicity in the whiskey fraud were pardoned after six months.
McDonald, the chieftain of the gang, served but one year of his
term.
The exposure of the Whiskey Ring was followed by an even more
startling humiliation. The House Committee on Expenditures in the
War Department recommended that General William W. Belknap,
Secretary of War, be impeached for "high crimes and misdemeanors
while in office," and the House unanimously adopted the
recommendation. The evidence upon which the committee based its
drastic recommendation disclosed the most sordid division of
spoils between the Secretary and his wife and two rascals who
held in succession the valuable post of trader at Fort Sill in
the Indian Territory.
The committee's report was read about three o'clock in the
afternoon of March 2, 1876. In the forenoon of the same day
Belknap had sent his resignation to the President, who had
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.
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