Overview

The most flamboyant, consistently dishonest racketeer was Supervisor of Internal Revenue John McDonald, whose organization defrauded the federal government of millions of dollars. When President Grant was asked why he appointed McDonald supervisor of internal revenue he responded, “I was aware that he was not an educated man, but he was a man that had seen a great deal of the world and of people, and I would not call him ignorant exactly, he was illiterate.” McDonald organized and ran the Whiskey Ring but he always credited Grant with the initiation of the Ring declaring that the president “actually stood god-father at its christening.” The demise of the Ring rivals anything that the real or fictional Elliot Ness and his “Untouchables” ever accomplished during the prohibition era in America.

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9781683930129

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Unreservedly recommended for community and academic library 19th Century American History collections and supplemental studies reading lists. Midwest Book Review

Unreservedly recommended for community and academic library 19th Century American History collections and supplemental studies reading lists. * Midwest Book Review *

Author Information

Edward S. Cooper is author of The Brave Men of Company A: The Forty-First Ohio Volunteer Infantry (2015) and Louis Trezevant Wigfall: The Disintegration of the Union and Collapse of the Confederacy (2012).

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