The president who fired a special prosecutor — in 1875

The president fired the special prosecutor. The investigation was zeroing in on his closest confidant, and maybe even the president himself.

The president was Ulysses S. Grant. The year was 1875 — more than 140 years before the current special counsel investigation. And the heat was turning up in the Whiskey Ring scandal involving millions of dollars of stolen revenue from federal alcohol taxes.

Grant’s White House was under siege almost from the time he took office in 1869. First, financiers with access to Grant tried to corner the gold market, leading to the 1869 gold panic. Then in 1872 came disclosures in the Credit Mobilier scandal about some shareholders of the Union Pacific Rail Road bribing lawmakers to win contracts for new rail lines. One former lawmaker implicated in the scandal was Grant’s vice president, Schuyler Colfax, who was dropped from the ticket in that year’s presidential race.