Duty Bound Quotes
This speech did not impress the South and actually lost him a little support in the North as the strong abolitionists were afraid that he would pander to the South.
Polk never took a vacation while in the office. When he left, he was physically exhausted and in poor health and died 3 months later.
The Treasury Secretary had discovered a massive fraud between some whiskey distillers and some government officials whereby the government was defrauded of millions of dollars of tax revenue. One of the Federal officials Bristow wanted to indict was O. E. Babcock, the President’s personal secretary and advisor. Bristow marshaled the facts and sent a report to Grant who wrote the quoted material in the margin of the report and sent it back to Bristow. Despite Grant’s lack of personal involvement and his immediate willingness to prosecute his close friend and colleague, the stain of scandal spread to Grant and to this day is a part of any discussion of his presidency.
Ames was not a native Southerner but as a General of the Union Army he had been the military commander of the wartime district of Arkansas and Mississippi where he became sufficiently popular to be elected Senator. However, once the segregationists returned to political power, Ames lost his bid for reelection amidst a massive, vicious campaign of intimidating Blacks from voting combined with local, rural corruption of the local balloting process. Ames also served as a general in the Spanish American War and was the last surviving Civil War general.
