Today we worry about the revolving door. People work for the government, maybe make some decisions that favor certain contractors, then get lucrative jobs or lobbying contracts with those contractors. Things were a little more straightforward 150 years ago. From American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant:
Although dishonest distillers were active in the Lincoln and Johnson administrations, by the 1870s their tax avoidance had become a well-practiced business. The procedure was simple. Distillers produced twelve to fifteen million gallons of whiskey each year. But by reporting far fewer gallons to the government, they paid lower taxes. To succeed, the distillers bribed agents of the Bureau of Internal Revenue to look the other way.
The attack on the whiskey rings—Bristow called them “rings” because they worked in multiple cities—coincided with Grant’s removal of Attorney General George H. Williams. He asked for Williams’s resignation after learning he had stopped proceedings against New York merchants Pratt & Boyd for fraudulent customhouse accounts after Mrs. Williams asked for a payment—bribe—of $30,000. Julia, who long ago saw through Kate Williams’s schemes to support her high-flying lifestyle, applauded her husband’s action. Grant’s overdue firing of Williams opened the door to making significant upgrades to his cabinet. He appointed Edwards Pierrepont, one of the most famous lawyers of the day, as attorney general. A man of indisputable integrity, Pierrepont helped shutter “Boss” William Tweed’s Tammany Hall as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. Using Bristow and Pierrepont, Grant formed an anticorruption team.
Grant was criticized for bringing rich people in as cabinet secretaries but the book makes it sound as though only the already-rich failed to succumb to the temptations of corruption. Grant had trouble seeing that a change in someone’s circumstances might change behavior: “personal loyalty, which Grant prized so highly in the military, became his blind spot in the more public world of the presidency. He could not understand how men could change within power-seeking Washington.”
Journalists these days sometimes have to come up with elaborate theories for how an already-rich Trump family member is going to benefit from being involved in politics. In the case of Grant, he came out of the Army with minimal wealth and rich people bought him houses. Then he appointed them to cabinet-level jobs and/or closely associated with them once president.
In October, wanting his own residence, he purchased a large, four-story house for $30,000. The building was actually bought for him by Abel Rathbone Corbin, a newspaper editor and financier Grant knew from Missouri. Corbin subsequently transferred the title to Grant, who signed a note promising to pay back the amount over ten years. With the cost of furnishing his Washington house, he anticipated being in debt for years. “I suppose a man out of debt would be unhappy,” he quipped to Charles Ford, his friend and financial adviser. “I never tried the experiment myself however.” Grant’s personal finances changed dramatically in February. Daniel Butterfield, Joe Hooker’s chief of staff at Chattanooga and now a New York businessman, spearheaded an effort to raise money for the celebrated general in chief. He said he was asked everywhere: “How much is Genl. Grant’s pay?” His standard reply: “Not enough to support the position he holds at all.” Butterfield bestowed a “testimonial” check for $105,000 to Grant. Grant used the money to pay off the mortgage on his new home, put $55,000 in government bonds, and received the rest, $19,837.50, in cash. He told Butterfield, “I feel at a loss to know how to express my appreciation.” Grant was beginning to walk in corridors of wealth and power with which he was not familiar. As a military man he had steered clear of politics, but he was slower to eschew business. In accepting houses in Philadelphia, Galena, and Washington as gifts from a thankful nation, he failed to appreciate that there was no such thing as a free house.
Grant appointed Galena friend Elihu Washburne secretary of state. He chose Alexander Stewart, the merchant prince, to be secretary of the Treasury. The New York Times praised Grant’s selections. But others believed the president’s choices were based more on loyalty than on competence. Gideon Welles complained, “No statesman and patriot with right intentions would have selected it.” Too many of the nominees were “untried,” “personal adherents,” and “money-givers.”
His selection of Stewart, however, smacked of a different sort of payback to a generous campaign donor: Grant’s home. Although no one could question the success of one of the richest men in America, Congress objected to his nomination. When Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner unearthed a law from 1789 expressly forbidding the appointment of an importer, Grant asked for an exemption, even as Stewart offered to relinquish all his profits while serving at the Department of the Treasury. But Congress had been badly burned by Johnson and refused to listen. Grant was forced to pull the nomination.
More: read American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant.