Kemble was afterward convicted of trying to bribe Pennsylvania legislators, and was sent to prison for a year.
The Post-Trader Scandal—William W. Belknap, Grant’s Secretary of War, was charged with receiving from Caleb P. Marsh fifteen hundred dollars in consideration for the appointment of John S. Evans to maintain a trading-establishment at Fort Sill, in the Indian Territory. The scandal came to the surface through the remark of Mrs. Belknap that Mrs. Evans would have no place in society, “as she is only a post-trader’s wife,” and the retort of Mrs. Evans, upon hearing of this, that “a post-trader’s wife is as good as the wife of an official who takes money for the appointment of a post-trader.”
The Sun laid the story of bribery wide open, and the Senate proceeded to impeach the Secretary of War. He escaped punishment by resigning his office, twenty-five Senators voting “not guilty” on the ground that Belknap’s resignation technically removed him from the Senate’s jurisdiction. Thirty-five Senators voted “guilty,” but a two-thirds vote was necessary to punish.
The Salary Grab—This was the act of Congress of March 3, 1873, which raised the President’s salary from twenty-five thousand dollars to fifty thousand, and the salaries of Senators and Representatives from five thousand to seventy-five hundred. Its evil lay not in the increases, but in the retroactive clause which provided that each Congressman should receive five thousand dollars as extra pay for the two-year term then ending. The assaults of the Sun and other newspapers so aroused public indignation that Congress was obliged to repeal the act in January, 1874, and many Members returned their share of the spoil to the Treasury.
The Boss Shepherd Scandal—The Sun printed an article from Washington accusing Alexander Shepherd, vice-president of the Board of Public Works of the District of Columbia, and Henry D. Cooke, governor of the District, with having a financial interest in the Metropolitan Paving Company, which had many street contracts in the national capital. Shepherd and Cooke laid a complaint of criminal libel against Mr. Dana, and an assistant district attorney of the District of Columbia came to New York and procured from United States Commissioner Davenport a warrant for the editor’s arrest.
It was the intent of the prosecution to hale Dana to a Washington police-court, where he would be tried without a jury. Dana had gone willingly, even eagerly, to Washington when summoned in the Robeson case, but the Shepherd strategy was so manifestly an attempt to railroad him that an appeal was taken to the Federal court for the southern district of New York. The historic decision of the district judge—Samuel Blatchford, subsequently promoted to the United States Supreme Court—may be summed up in one of its paragraphs:
The Constitution says that all trials shall be by jury, and the accused is entitled, not to be first convicted by a court and then to be convicted by a jury, but to be convicted or acquitted in the first instance by a jury.
As the Sun said of this decision, important to the freedom of the individual as well as to that of the press:
Those who sought to murder liberty, where they looked for a second Jeffreys, found a second Mansfield.
The Safe Burglary Conspiracy—Columbus Alexander, a reputable citizen of Washington, was active in the movement to smash the Washington contractors’ ring. He sought to bring certain contractors’ books into court and exposed the false set that was produced. The ringsters hired a man to go to Mr. Alexander with a story that he could bring him the genuine books. Then the gang, which included men in the secret-service departments of the government, placed some of the genuine books in the safe of the district attorney’s office and employed three professional burglars to blow open the safe.