Benjamin Helm Bristow, Whiskey Ring Prosecutor

Near here, in Elkton, Kentucky, Benjamin Helm Bristow was born on June twentieth, eighteen thirty-two. He studied law in his father's office, fought for the Union in the Civil War, and in eighteen seventy became the very first Solicitor General of the United States. But his real fame came in eighteen seventy-four, when President Ulysses Grant made him Secretary of the Treasury.

Bristow promptly turned on corruption inside Grant's own administration. He cracked open the Whiskey Ring, a network of distillers and federal officials who had been pocketing millions in evaded liquor taxes. His prosecutions reached all the way to the President's private secretary.

The crusade made Bristow a reform hero and a serious presidential contender, but it also cost him Grant's favor, and he resigned in eighteen seventy-six.