Benjamin Helm Bristow, border state politician

About this book

Benjamin Helm Bristow was the 30th U.S. Treasury Secretary, the first Solicitor General, an American lawyer, a Union military officer, Republican Party politician, reformer, and civil rights advocate. Bristow, during his tenure as Secretary of Treasury, is primarily known for breaking up and prosecuting the Whiskey Ring, a corrupt tax evasion profiteering ring that depleted the national treasury, having President Ulysses S. Grant's permission. As the United States' first solicitor general, Bristow aided President Ulysses S. Grant and Attorney General Amos T. Akerman's vigorous and thorough prosecution and destruction of the Ku Klux Klan in the Reconstructed South.[1] Sol. Gen. Bristow advocated African American citizens in Kentucky be allowed to testify in a white man's court case and that education was for all races to be paid for by public funding.