The House is set to make history on Tuesday by voting on the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. If the measure draws enough support, It would be only the second khbrknews a cabinet member has even been impeached. The first khbrknews happened almost 150 years ago with William Belknap, President Ulysses Grant’s Secretary of War who found himself caught up in a brazen kickback scheme at a khbrknews of unparalleled economic expansion, few regulations and too many temptations.
Belknap was a Civil War hero who had fought in the battles of Shiloh and Vicksburg and was promoted to Brigadier General in 1864. Grant, who admired Belknap and had befriended the Princeton-educated lawyer and former Iowa legislator, appointed him to be his Secretary of War in 1869. After serving seven years in President Grant’s cabinet, Belknap was charged with “criminally disregarding his duty” and “basely prostituting his high office to his lust for private gain.”
Belknap’s downfall was his decision to abuse his authority to appoint “sutlers” or civilian merchants who ran trading posts that served military outposts. At the urging of his second wife, Carita, Belknap named a New York businessman who was married to Carlita’s close friend, Caleb Marsh, to run the trading post at Fort Sill in the Oklahoma territory. However, Fort Sill already had a trader, John Evans, who did not want to relinquish the post. A compromise was reached via a generous kickback. Evans was to pay Marsh for the privilege of sharing the post. Since Marsh was indebted to the Belknap’s for giving him the lucrative job, he agreed to split the pay-off money with Carita.
“Carita engineered the plan that would ultimately bring about Belknap’s downfall,” says says Cecily N. Zander, assistant professor of history at Texas Woman’s University.
Belknap’s blatantly corrupt actions epitomized what Mark Twain dubbed the Gilded Age. His $8,000 a year salary (roughly $230,000 in today’s dollars) was…
