USA Political Scams between 1866–1899

• Arkansas Governor Powell Clayton (R) was investigated for corruption but acquitted. (1868–1871)

• California State Senator Thomas D. Harp (D) was indicted for malfeasance.(1891)

• Florida Governor Harrison Reed (R) originally appointed to a position in Florida after the Civil War, he was elected and then subjected to three separate impeachment inquiries all of which he survived. (1868–1872)

• Kansas Senator Samuel Pomeroy (R) was arrested on charges of bribery and vote buying during his 1867 election. The trial was postponed several times and Pomeroy’s term ended before it concluded.
• Kansas Senator Alexander Caldwell (R) was accused of buying votes and bribing opponents such as Thomas Carney not to run against him. A US Senate Investigating Committee declared therefore that Caldwell had not been "duly and legally elected" to the Senate and on March 24, 1873, before a vote for expulsion could be taken, Caldwell resigned.
• Kansas Senatorial CandidateThomas Carney (R) (and former Republican Governor of Kansas), admitted that he had accepted $15,000 from fellow Senate Candidate Alexander Caldwell to leave the race and thereby assist in Caldwell's election in 1871.

• Kentucky State Treasurer James "Honest Dick" Tate (D-KY) ran off with the entire Kentucky state treasury (about $247,000), left his wife and children, and disappeared. He was impeached in absentia and the word "Tatism" for crook, is still used in Kentucky today.(1888)

• Nebraska Governor David C. Butler (R) was impeached and removed from office for misuse of funds. He was later reinstated and elected to the Nebraska Senate. (1871)

• North Carolina Governor William Woods Holden(R) was impeached for the actions of the North Carolina militia in trying to quell the lynching activities of the Ku Klux Klan in what became theKirk-Holden war. He was the first state governor ever removed from office. (1870)

• Oregon Governor La Fayette Grover (D) (later U.S. Senator) was implicated, but eventually exonerated, on vote-rigging charges to give Oregon's electoral votes in the 1876 presidential election to Samuel Tilden (D).

• Wisconsin Governor William Augustus Barstow(D) Even though he vowed to never "give up his office alive" Barstow resigned in 1856 after investigations of election fraud gave the office toColes Bashford.