Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
Scandal
How a presidential candidate got caught 36 years ago
Why have thousands of U.S. banks failed over the years? The answers are in our history and politics.
Crédit Mobilier, one of the worst outrages in the history of Congress, affected national elections and gave “the Gilded Age” its name.
Wit
The Senate's inquiry into a Kennedy Administration defense contract is considered one of the longest and most extensive congressional investigations ever undertaken.
The Kennedy administration took office under a small political cloud. Allegations of fraud and vote-stealing filled the air in the days following John F.
There was widespread misconduct in Harry Truman’s administration, but historians discount the president's responsibility.
Harry S. Truman became president of a country much changed from the pre-war America of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Relative prosperity born of war had replaced depression, and government had turned its attention from combatting hardship to underwriting an immense military enterprise.
Though no scandals touched Eisenhower personally, the media showed occasional interest in the number of gifts he received.
Because of the heavy barrage of criticism the Republicans had directed at the scandals in the Truman administration during the 1952 campaign, both the executive and legislative branches were particularly sensitive to the issue of corruption in government for the duration of Dwight D.
After the Department of Justice brought suit to nullify the Bell telephone patents, it was discovered the action could have made Attorney General Garland a multi-millionaire.
Elected mayor of Buffalo in 1881, governor of New York in 1882, and president of the United States in 1884, Grover Cleveland owed his rapid rise in politics to his reputation for honesty, retrenchment, and administrative reform. In 1884 he ran as the clean candidate against James G.
To many voters—some Republicans, as well as most Democrats—Hayes' title to the presidency was a fraudulent one.
Rutherford B. Hayes entered the White House under the cloud of the disputed election of 1876 and the ensuing electoral crisis, and the cloud did not dissipate during his four years in office.
Ulysses S. Grant had to respond to more charges of financial misconduct than any other president.
In additi
Did James Buchanan know that his Secretary of War, a future Confederate general, sent 110,000 muskets to armories in the South in 1860?
Many historians point to the presidency of James Buchanan as the nadir of antebellum public ethics. All of the trends of corruption at the lower ranks of the government seemed to culminate in three years, and the rate of exposure increased dramatically.
President Monroe was considered guilty of impropriety, not wrongdoing. But his reputation suffered.
President Monroe twice diverted public funds for private use (probably to cover expenses for his travel to try to reunite the country after the War of 1812.)
Prior to Watergate, Harding's bribery ring was regarded as the greatest and most sensational scandal in the history of American politics.
Ultimately, three of Harding's appointees, including a cabinet officer, went to jail. Two other officials committed suicide.
Lincoln's first Secretary of War amassed a fortune at the start of the Civil War, forcing a congressional investigation.
There were instances of misconduct in Abraham Lincoln's administration, especially in the War Department and the army.
Overrated For a hundred years the armor-plate scandal of the 1890s has been offered up as a definitive example of corporate greed. In fact it’s a better example of government incompetence.
And how history shows it’s actually good for us
THERE’S AN OLD JOKE ABOUT A COMPANY’S NEEDING TO hire a new accounting firm. The chief executive invites the heads of eight firms to come in for interviews and he hires one right away. A friend asks him how he did it. “Simple,” the chief executive replies.
It has been with us since Plymouth Colony. But that’s not why it’s an American institution.
On September evening in 1918, while unpacking an overseas bag for her husband, who had returned from a fact-finding tour of war-torn Europe with double pneumonia, Eleanor Roosevelt came upon a cache of love letters from her social secretary, Lucy Mercer.
You've always heard that Harding was the worst president. Sex in the White House. Bribes on Capitol Hill. Was he really that bad?
The Beecher-Tilton Scandal
Among the entrants in the presidential election of 1872 was Victoria Woodhull, the most flamboyant, outspoken, and uncompromising feminist of her day.
AN ANNIVERSARY LOOK BACK AT THE BIGGEST PRESIDENTIAL SCANDAL EVER, THROUGH THE CHANGES IT WROUGHT IN THE LANGUAGE
When the government manipulated and misused the robber barons
Economists from Adam Smith on have written about the evils and dislocations that monopolies bring to an economy. What has been much less written about over the years, however, are the evils of monopsony.
A 19th-century blueprint for the savings-and-loan scandal
It was a banking system. The act that made it possible slipped through Congress with hardly any debate and little attention to economic reality. Many of its highest-ranking officials knew little or nothing about the peculiar nature of the banking business.
An extraordinary new historical novel begins with the great political scandal of the 1970s, then visits the great political scandal of the 1820s.
In a classic model of government corruption, the promoters placed shares of the company's stock “where it will do most good"—in the pockets of key Congressmen
Corruption must be fought in ways that preserve fairness and freedom. Otherwise, the reformers can be as bad as the rascals.
One balmy summer morning this year, the headlines sang a song of scandal. GINGRICH’S PAY TO AIDES IN 2 RACES RAISES QUESTION OF RULE-BREAKING, said one.
Stempel’s winning technique was simplicity itself: He got all the questions in advance.
In October 1956, the 29-year-old scion of an illustrious American literary family took up a suggestion that countless Americans were then making to their more erudite friends and relations.
An old, familiar show is back in Washington. There’s a new cast, of course, but the script is pretty much the same as ever. Here’s the program.
WHEN THE IRAN-CONTRA STORY BROKE LAST NOVEMBER, A NUMBER OF public figures as well as news commentators put the revelations in a historical context.
Until July 2, 1986, I felt comfortably detached from the current insider-trading scandal on Wall Street.
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