{"id":1956216,"date":"2023-06-24T14:56:02","date_gmt":"2023-06-24T18:56:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/trump-isnt-the-first-president-to-be-arrested\/"},"modified":"2023-06-24T14:58:15","modified_gmt":"2023-06-24T18:58:15","slug":"trump-isnt-the-first-president-to-be-arrested","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/trump-isnt-the-first-president-to-be-arrested\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump is not the initial arrested president."},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">14<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Ftrump-isnt-the-first-president-to-be-arrested%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1956216&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><h2>Trump Isn&#8217;t the First President to Be Arrested<\/h2>\n<p>Donald Trump is the first president to be impeached twice, and he is the first former president to be indicted twice.<\/p>\n<p>He is not, however, the first president to be arrested.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<h3>A Surprising Historical Fact<\/h3>\n<p>In an April interview with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2023\/04\/03\/1167683136\/ulysses-s-grant-was-the-first-president-to-be-arrested\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NPR<\/a>, historian John F. Marszalek, a William L. Giles Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Mississippi State University, noted that a Washington policeman once placed President Ulysses S. Grant under arrest.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>In 1872, William West, one of the city\u2019s two African-American <a href=\"https:\/\/www.westernjournal.com\/police-officer-rescues-kidnapped-woman-noticing-2-words-mouthed-passenger-seat\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">police officers<\/a>, stopped President Grant for speeding.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s correct. Near the end of his first term in office, a sitting president, the former Commanding General of the United States Army, ran afoul of the law for driving his horse and buggy too fast down a street in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n<p>A man of legendary aggressiveness on the battlefield, Grant apparently had no more patience for metropolitan traffic laws than he did for dawdling generals.<\/p>\n<p>Nor was this Grant\u2019s first offense.<\/p>\n<p>Marszalek explained that Officer West, a former slave and Union war veteran, had given Grant a warning only a day earlier.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<h3>Multiple Offenses<\/h3>\n<p>In 2012, Cathy Lanier, who then served as D.C. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.westernjournal.com\/second-hero-k-9-dog-dies-hot-patrol-cars-known-police-tech-glitch-fix-prevented\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">police<\/a> chief, told <a href=\"https:\/\/wtop.com\/news\/2012\/10\/dc-police-once-arrested-a-us-president-for-speeding\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">WTOP-FM<\/a> that officers \u201cactually stopped and cited Ulysses S. Grant three times for speeding.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>No matter the president\u2019s actual number of violations, his encounter with Officer West is of special interest.<\/p>\n<p>According to the <a href=\"https:\/\/nleomf.org\/william-west\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund<\/a>, West approached President Grant with a mixture of embarrassment and resolve. \u201cI 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,\u201d West said.<\/p>\n<p>Marszalek told NPR that Grant was gracious about the arrest. No doubt the former general appreciated an officer doing his duty.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<h3>A Moment of Possibility<\/h3>\n<p>Modern readers might be jaded enough to dismiss the Grant-West exchange on several grounds.<\/p>\n<p>They might note with disapproval, for instance, that West was one of only two <a href=\"https:\/\/www.westernjournal.com\/65-african-americans-banned-dining-nyc-de-blasio-implements-vaccine-passport\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">African-American<\/a> police officers in the entire city. Or, they might read racial paternalism into Grant\u2019s graciousness.<\/p>\n<p>The real story, however, is of a moment in time when better things seemed possible.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>After all, Grant\u2019s democratic sensibilities allowed him to respond to West\u2019s authority in a way that no plantation grandee ever would have.<\/p>\n<p>Furthermore, this was 1872, a time of substantial and meaningful optimism on the civil-rights front.<\/p>\n<p>One year earlier, on April 20, 1871, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.westernjournal.com\/gen-grant-posthumously-promoted-highest-us-military-rank-existence-honor-shared-just-2-others\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Grant<\/a> had signed into law the Enforcement Act, also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act. Under this new law, Grant used the U.S. Army to destroy the Reconstruction-era South\u2019s most <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/eu-officials-set-60-price-cap-on-russian-oil\/\" title=\"EU Officials Set  Price Cap on Russian Oil\">notorious terrorist organization<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The Klan would rise again, but neither Grant nor West knew that when they encountered one another on the streets of Washington.<\/p>\n<p>As far as they knew, the Civil War was over. Congress had passed the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments guaranteeing equality under the law and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wow-georgia-judge-who-also-is-stacy-abrams-sister-blocks-elections-officials-from-challenging-voters-who-live-outside-of-registered-district\/\" title=\"WOW! Georgia Judge Who Also Is Stacy Abrams\u2019 Sister BLOCKS Elections Officials from Challenging Voters Who Live Outside of Registered District!\">voting rights<\/a> regardless of color.<\/p>\n<p>In 1870, Hiram Revels of Mississippi became the nation\u2019s first African-American U.S. senator.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<h3>A Different Time<\/h3>\n<p>\u201cBack then,\u201d students sometimes say, \u201cthings were different.\u201d Yes, but they were not always worse.<\/p>\n<p>In 1872, the ugliness of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.westernjournal.com\/black-ex-gop-candidate-hits-back-biden-tells-can-find-real-21st-century-jim-crow\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jim Crow<\/a> \u2014 of legal segregation based on race \u2014 lay in the future. We are apt to forget this when we treat the past as a monolithic \u201cback then.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Of course, modern racial attitudes did not prevail in the late-nineteenth century. One need only read Frederick Douglass\u2019s autobiographies to understand the depth of prejudice black Americans endured in both the North and South.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, history is never a record of steady progress. Sometimes, it is not a record of progress at all.<\/p>\n<p>Officer West arrested President Grant at a time when prospects for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/trump-isnt-the-first-president-to-be-arrested\/\" title=\"Trump is not the initial arrested president.\">racial equality appeared brighter<\/a> than they would for another century.<\/p>\n<p>Beyond mere curiosity, that is the real story of the first presidential arrest.<\/p>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.westernjournal.com\/trump-isnt-first-president-arrested\/\">Trump Isn&#8217;t the First President to Be Arrested<\/a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.westernjournal.com\">The Western Journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Donald Trump holds the distinction of being the only president impeached twice and indicted twice as a former president. However, he is not the first president to face arrest. Historian John F. Marszalek highlighted this in an NPR interview, stating that Trump&#8217;s case is not unprecedented.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2056,"featured_media":1956217,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[548],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1956216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-conservative-news-daily"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1956216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2056"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1956216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1956216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1956217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1956216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1956216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1956216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}