There is at the moment much-to-do about Former president Donald Trump’s Tuesday arraignment, however he’s not the primary president to face the lengthy arm of Johnny Law — simply the primary to take action within the final 150 years.
Ulysses S. Grant, our 18th president, was a little bit of a velocity demon. In 1872, he was arrested for racing a two-horse carriage down a road in Washington D.C. He was then arrested once more when stopped by the identical officer for the second time in two days. The first time, the officer issued Grant a warning. When he stopped him the subsequent day, a warning was off the desk. It was time to carry the president in.
What’s actually fascinating is that the arresting officer was considered one of solely two Black D.C. cops on the time. William West, a Civil War veteran who fought for the Union, was the one who issued the primary warning. Grant promised to not break the regulation once more, however when West noticed him racing the carriage the very subsequent day, he knew he needed to do his responsibility.
NPR’s Steve Inskeep spoke to John Marszalek, an American historian and former Executive Director of the Ulysses S. Grant Association, concerning the arrest:
MARSZALEK: West stops him once more and says, I’m going to need to arrest you. So he takes him to the station. West is a bit embarrassed as a result of, in spite of everything, that is the president of the United States. But he did his responsibility.
INSKEEP: And President Grant apologized to the officer.
MARSZALEK: Grant mentioned, I do know I used to be rushing. You ought to arrest me. Don’t really feel badly about it. And that is the interval when Grant is president, which is 1869 to 1877. That’s the guts of the Reconstruction interval. And that is the time when Grant says he turns into president solely to guarantee that what the Civil War was fought over actually labored. And so the irony of William West, an African American, stopping him I feel is fantastic.
INSKEEP: The rule of regulation. President Grant didn’t present up for his trial, although. He forfeited his $20 bond. Officer West stored the arrest quiet for many years however lastly instructed the story to a Washington newspaper in 1908.
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But it will get even higher. It appears like Grant was presumably road racing with a gaggle of pals and felt very unhealthy certainly for breaking his promise to Officer West to not velocity. From the New York Times:
President Grant and a number of other of his pals, with whom he had apparently been racing, have been taken to a police station. They all needed to put up $20 in bail — what was described within the information account as “collateral” — a sum that will be equal right now to about $500.
The president, who had “the look of a schoolboy who had been caught in a guilty act by his teacher,” was good-natured concerning the arrest, in accordance with the information account. He even drove Officer West in his carriage to the police station, the place his arrest was processed.
Speeding is rarely a good suggestion. Even right now, in precise automobiles with 150 years of security enhancements, extreme velocity is the primary killer of Americans in crashes. Both Grant and West behaved extremely elegant on this situation with Grant being fairly chastised and West retaining the whole scenario below his hat till years later. And it appears Grant discovered his lesson, as there aren’t any additional experiences of arrests. Grant did, nevertheless, skip out on courtroom, forfeiting his $20 bail — about $500 in right now’s money.
Source: jalopnik.com