HOUSTON — While the indictment of former President Donald Trump is historic, technically he is not the only one to have a run-in with the law.
We didn’t learn about it until decades later, but President Ulysses S. Grant was arrested in 1872, right outside of the White House. He was charged with speeding, which is pretty impressive considering he was using a two-horse carriage at the time.
According to the New York Times, it was the second time in two days that the same policeman stopped the president. The day before he had been let off with a warning.
Grant was taken to the police station, along with several of his friends, and each of them had to pay $20 in bail. The president apparently took the whole incident in stride. The officer who arrested him was an African American civil war veteran. The president himself, a Civil War general, assured the officer he wouldn’t get in trouble for the arrest since he admired a man who did his duty.
The incident was not reported in the press at the time and didn’t come to light until more than 30 years later. That’s when the Sunday Star of Washington published an interview with the police officer with the splashy title "The only policeman who ever arrested a president."
The story was confirmed more than 100 years later by the Washington Police Department.