Scandals

President Thomas Jefferson is publicly accused of being the father of several children of a slave, Sally Hemings. During Jefferson's second term, six years after the accusations surfaced, Hemings has another son, Eston. For almost two hundred years, historians debate inconclusively about whether Jefferson fathered Hemings's children. On November 5, 1998, genetics researchers in Massachusetts publish DNA findings that they say strongly indicate Jefferson was Eston's father. Other experts, however, say the study merely shows that Jefferson, among other male members of his family, could have been the father.

The so-called petticoat wars of Andrew Jackson's administration end with the resignation of Secretary of War John Eaton. Wives of other cabinet members had refused to accept Eaton's wife, Peggy, because of her allegedly promiscuous past. Eaton's resignation enabled Jackson to shake up his cabinet and halt the two-year disruption. In 1832 Jackson rewards his former secretary of state Martin Van Buren, who resigned along with Eaton, by making him his second-term running mate in place of Vice President John C. Calhoun. Van Buren wins the presidency four years later.

Rep. Daniel Sickles, New York Democrat, shoots and kills Phillip Barton Key, son of Star-Spangled Banner author Francis Scott Key, on Washington's Lafayette Square. Sickles's wife, Teresa, had publicly confessed her affair with Key. Sickles later pleads temporary insanity and is acquitted of murder.

The House censures Rep. Oakes Ames, Massachusetts Republican, and Rep. James Brooks, New York Democrat, for corruption in connection with the Crédit Mobilier scandal. Crédit Mobilier, the construction arm of Union Pacific Railroad, was suspected of using underhanded means to complete the last link of the transcontinental railroad in 1869. To head off a congressional inquiry, Ames, a shareholder, arranged to sell $33 million of the company's stock at low prices to members and executive branch officials. House Speaker James G. Blaine, Maine Republican, and Rep. James A. Garfield, Ohio Republican, are among those implicated but not disciplined. The scandal has political repercussions in 1872 as Schuyler Colfax loses renomination as Ulysses S. Grant's vice president. In 1880 Garfield is elected president.

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The breakup of the Whiskey Ring during the Grant administration leads to the conviction of 110 officials. The ring was a conspiracy of revenue officials to defraud the government of excise taxes on liquor and distilled spirits. It included the collector of internal revenue in St. Louis, Gen. John A. McDonald, along with Treasury officials and Grant's private secretary, Gen. Orville E. Babcock. Grant's support helps to acquit Babcock, but Treasury Secretary Benjamin A. Bristow's efforts to break up the ring lead to his being eased from the cabinet. Bristow loses the 1876 GOP presidential nomination to Rutherford B. Hayes.

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