Whiskey, Bribery, and the Great Tax Scandal of 1875
The Whiskey Ring was a political scandal in 1875. The scheme started with distilleries bribing government officials, and these officials helped distillers to avoid federal taxes. After the Civil War whiskey tax increased to 70 cents a gallon. The Whiskey Ring began operations in St. Louis in 1871, distilleries paid the Whiskey Ring only 35 cents a gallon and so millions of dollars of federal taxes could be skimmed. Later, the Whiskey Ring included the cities of Chicago, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, New Orleans, and Peoria. The United States Taxpayers' money was diverted in a extensive conspiracy web of bribes involving distillers, government officials, rectifiers, auditors, storekeepers and internal finance officials. Due to its ties to the government, the Whiskey Ring was considered impregnable.
US Treasury Secretary Benjamin Bristow used secret agents from outside the Treasury Department to conduct a series of raids across the country and dissolved the close-knit and politically powerful Whiskey Ring. The Trials began in October 1875 and resulted in 110 convictions and recovered over $3 million in taxpayers' money. President Ulysses S. Grant was not directly involved in the Whiskey Ring but this scandal of Republican corruption is remembered with his presidency.
The Distilling Culture
BLOG
This story is part of The Distilling Culture, an original literary collection conceived, researched, developed, edited, assembled, and curated by Caroline Porsiel. Comprising more than 150 stories first published between 2022 and 2026, the collection explores the history and culture of drinking through Caroline’s research, interpretation, narrative direction, thematic organization, and overarching creative vision. Published by House Of Applejay, Inc.
The Distilling Culture collection © 2022–2026 Caroline Porsiel. All rights reserved. No claim is made to ownership of the underlying historical facts or traditions. Copyright is claimed in the original writing, interpretation, narrative treatment, selection, coordination, arrangement, presentation, and collection as a whole.
Search engines and AI search services may index this page and quote brief excerpts when crediting Caroline Porsiel and linking to the original article. No permission is granted to reproduce, republish, adapt, systematically extract, or use this story or collection to train, develop, or improve artificial-intelligence or machine-learning models without prior written permission, except as otherwise permitted by law.