Civil War: Ulysses S. Grant's Aide de Camp Orville E. Babcock's Diaries & Court Documents
This collection contains 1,457 pages of material.
1,070 pages of diaries written by Orville E. Babcock from 1863, 1864, 1866, 1867 and 1869 and 376 pages of court documents from United States of America v. Orville E. Babcock (1875).
Orville Elias Babcock (1835–1884) was an engineer and a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War. He was an aide-de-camp to General Ulysses S. Grant during the war. When Grant became president, Babcock served as his private secretary at the White House. Today the position would be called chief of staff. He was also Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds for Washington D.C.
In 1869, President Grant sent him on a mission to explore the possibility of annexing the island nation of Santo Domingo, known today as the Dominican Republic, , but the Senate, led by Charles Sumner, rejected the proposal. Much of Babcock's diary entries in this collection covers his mission to Santo Domingo.
On December 9, 1875, a grand jury in Saint Louis, Mo. indicted Babcock as a member of the Whiskey Ring for conspiracy to defraud the Treasury of the United States. The Whiskey Ring scandal, exposed in 1875, involved the diversion of tax revenues in a conspiracy among government agents, politicians, whiskey distillers, and distributors. Grant provided a written deposition on Babcock's behalf and he was acquitted.
Babcock was indictment a second time in 1876, over the Safe Burglary Conspiracy. This scandal involved unethical building contractors in Washington, D.C., who were on trial for corruption, when fake Secret Service agents working for the contractors placed damaging evidence into the safe of the district attorney who was prosecuting the ring. Babcock was acquitted.
In February 1877, President Grant appointed Babcock Inspector of Lighthouses for the Federal Lighthouse Board's Fifth District in Florida.
