The Book of Bastards by Brian Thornton Page A

bought.”
    â€” Simon Cameron
    There are all kinds of bastards, but some just rise above (or, if you prefer, “sink below”) most of the others. These include, but are in no way limited to, rapists, murderers, and slave traffickers. Right there in the pit with them are people who profit by stealing from the soldiers protecting their country. People like Simon Cameron, President Lincoln's first secretary of war.
    Born poor in Pennsylvania in 1799, Cameron charmed his way into a series of lucrative political posts. He then helped found the Northern Central Railway, sold it, and started a bank. Cameron was a wealthy man by the time he turned to politics full-time in his forties. By the election year of 1860 Cameron had been a Whig, a “Know-Nothing,” a Democrat, and of course, a Republican. He had also served two separate terms in the U.S. Senate and wanted to be president.
    At the Republican National Convention in Chicago Cameron didn't have the votes to get the nomination, so he parlayed his control of a substantial number of Pennsylvania votes into a place in the cabinet of the eventual nominee, Abraham Lincoln of Illinois. In return for his support Cameron was only too happy to take over the War Department. He had barely taken his oath of office when the Civil War broke out.
    Cameron served as secretary of war for a little less than a year. During those ten months Northern newspaper after Northern newspaper reported widespread graft involving contracts given for both goods and services intended to support the Union war effort. Over-aged muskets were purchased that didn't fire. Blankets were purchased, paid for, and never received. Uniforms were threadbare. Horses were sold to the government, only to be found to be blind or lame, or some combination thereof. Barrels of salt pork were purchased and when opened, found to be empty, filled with salt water, half-full, or outright spoiled. And on top of all of this, the War Department was spending millions.
    How did Cameron avoid seeming as if he were personally profiting from this national disgrace?
    Railroads. Everything the government bought and shipped to the troops in the field went via rail.
    And if it ran through Pennsylvania, because of his railroad contracts, Simon Cameron got a piece of it. Merchants and traders Cameron rewarded with such lucrative contracts all overpaid for shipping on railroads in which he'd invested, creating Cameron's “cut.”
    By December 1862, Lincoln had seen enough. He unceremoniously told Cameron that he had decided to honor Cameron's previously expressed “desire for a change of position,” and was nominating him to serve as the new ambassador to Russia. Cameron had expressed no such desire. Regardless, he was out within a month.
    Cameron was eventually censured by the House of Representatives for his part in the scandal. It could have been worse. After the House Committee on Contracts made public the number of unfit horses and faulty weapons that were sold to the War Department on Cameron's watch, the House itself passed a bill making it tantamount to treason to pull these sorts of swindles.
    Cameron didn't stay in Russia for long. He was back in the United States within a year, and by 1866 was once again in the Senate, serving a third term. He held on to his office until he had received assurances that his son Donald would succeed him. J. Donald Cameron served in the Senate for twenty years.
    Simon Cameron himself lived to be ninety years old. He died of natural causes, rich and by any measure, successful. And he never spent a day in jail for his part in profiteering from the republic's darkest hour.
    Bastard.

36
ULYSSES S. GRANT
Drunk on Duty (1822–1885)
    â€œThe vice of intemperance had not a little to do with my decision to resign.”
    â€” Ulysses S. Grant
    Ulysses S. Grant: master strategist who turned the tide of the American Civil War by re-writing the book on military strategy and