Another was the impeachment and trial of General William W.Belknap, Secretary of War, for receiving a bribe for the appointment of a Post Trader.
3.

A third example of the prevalent laxity of morals that occurred was the case of the Sanborn contracts.

I was a member of the House when they were investigated, but took no special part in the proceedings.
4.

A fourth example was the claim of Senators and Representatives which had been asserted in Andrew Johnson's Administration, and to which General Grant had partly yielded, to dictate the appointment of executive officers.

In that way a vast army of public servants, amounting to more than one hundred thousand in number, who were appointed and removed at the pleasure of the Executive, became first the instrument of keeping the dominant party in power, and afterward became not so much the instruments and servants of party as the political followers of ambitious men to whom they owed their office, and on whose pleasure they depended for maintaining them.
I made, in a speech at West Newton in 1876, an earnest attack on this system, and afterward in the Senate had a good deal to do with framing the Civil Service Law, as it was called, which put an end to it.
5.