This week, Donald Trump became the first former President to be indicted on felony charges when he was arraigned in a Manhattan courtroom.
But anyone who thinks Trump was the first President to be arrested is about a century-and-a-half too late.
In 1872, while he was serving his first of two terms in the White House, Ulysses S. Grant found himself on the wrong side of the law.
His crime? Speeding.
Apparently, Grant was fond of driving his horse and buggy too fast, and he was stopped one night by William H. West, a former enslaved person and veteran of the very same Civil War where Grant had made his name as a leader of the Union.
After the war, West had become an officer of the law, one of just two Black policemen on the force in Washington, D.C., back then, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.
Grant was issued a warning by West the first time he was stopped for driving too fast, but when West caught him racing down M Street again the following day, he placed the Commander-in-Chief under arrest.
“I am very sorry, Mr. President, to have to do it, for you are the chief of the nation and I am nothing but a policeman, but duty is duty, sir, and I will have to place you under arrest,” West said, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.
The President was released on a $20 bond, $430 in 2023 dollars.
Cathy Lanier, chief of D.C.'s Metropolitan Police Department, told WTOP in 2012 that Grant’s sentence turned out to be light.
"They ended up letting him pay a fine and walk back to the White House," Lanier said.
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