'What Democrats Can Learn From the Forgotten Impeachment of James Buchanan'

[Wild Bill]

The notion of corruption is endemic to before, during and after the Civil War Era. The Demos were in charge in the 1850s, the Republicans in the 1860s (including Lincoln who over looked a lot of it, especially on the trans-continentalrailroad), and in the 1870s under Grant. Neither Grant not Lincoln made any money off of it. The history authority is Mark W. Summers in his three volumes, The Era of Good Stealings (1993); The Plundering Generation (1987); and Railroads, Reconstruction, and the Gospel of Prosperity (1984). As the carpetbag governor of Louisiana, Henry Clay Warmoth, once said in front of a congressional committee, "I don't pretend to be honest. . . Corruption is the fashion down there." Then he added, "of course I stole--but I could have taken more." He testified to 135 pages of Louisiana Reconstruction frauds. The committee finally concluded, it did not know if he was an "angel from Heaven or a devil from Hell." Warmoth admitted to neither possibility. He just smiled.