The Impeachment of Secretary William Belknap

On this date, the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously adopted a resolution to impeach Secretary of War William Worth Belknap. Belknap’s impeachment came as House Democrats, who had returned to the majority in 1875 for the first time since before the Civil War, investigated Republican President Ulysses S. Grant’s administration amid a series of scandals and allegations of corruption. In January 1876, the House passed a resolution directing all committees with oversight over the executive branch to investigate government spending across all departments. In February, following the publication of concerning news reports, the Committee on Expenditures in the War Department, led by Pennsylvania Democrat Hiester Clymer, began to investigate Belknap’s appointment of post-traders—merchants empowered by the government with a monopoly over trade at military forts. In testimony before the committee, Belknap’s co-conspirator Caleb Marsh alleged that the Secretary of War had received payments for an appointment. The evidence revealed a scheme where Belknap and Marsh received bribes—more than $40,000 dollars over several years—from a post-trader to maintain his position at Fort Sill in present-day Oklahoma. Belknap, a Civil War veteran who left the military as a brevet Major General, learned of Marsh’s testimony while meeting with Clymer’s committee on March 1, and the next morning he resigned from Grant’s administration. Later that day on March 2, Clymer, Belknap’s former college classmate, introduced the committee’s impeachment resolution, and the House quickly and unanimously agreed to impeach Belknap. On March 30, the Judiciary Committee, led by chair James Proctor Knott of Kentucky, presented five articles of impeachment, all related to the bribery allegations, which the Judiciary Committee argued made Belknap guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Four days later, the House passed the articles and assigned seven Members to try the case in the Senate. During the Senate trial, several Senators expressed doubt that they had the jurisdiction to convict a Cabinet secretary who had already resigned. On August 1, the Senate acquitted Belknap on all articles, failing to reach the two-thirds vote necessary to convict the former Secretary of War.