# Ulysses S. Grant — "Let no guilty man escape" > [!quote] "Let no guilty man escape, if it can be avoided. Be specially vigilant — or instruct those engaged in the prosecution of fraud to be — against all who insinuate that they have high influence to protect, or to protect them. No personal considerations should stand in the way of performing a public duty." > — Ulysses S. Grant, autograph endorsement on a letter concerning the Whiskey Ring prosecutions, July 29, 1875 ## Context The Whiskey Ring was a vast conspiracy of distillers and Treasury officials defrauding the government of liquor taxes. When the investigation reached into Grant's own White House — implicating his private secretary, Orville Babcock — Grant wrote this endorsement directing prosecutors not to spare anyone claiming presidential protection. (His resolve later wavered as the case closed in on Babcock, whom he helped acquit, which is part of what makes the written instruction notable as a statement of principle.) ## Why this matters A sitting president, in his own hand, instructing law enforcement that proximity to power must not buy immunity — "no personal considerations should stand in the way of performing a public duty." It is the equal-justice principle stated at its hardest test: applied to the president's own friends and staff. The line is the direct ancestor of the modern axiom that no one, including those around the president, is above the law — and the inverse of any demand that prosecutors protect a leader's allies. ## Verification - **Primary source:** [U.S. National Archives, *Prologue*, "Grant, Babcock, and the Whiskey Ring"](https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2000/fall/whiskey-ring-1), which reproduces Grant's July 29, 1875 endorsement. - **Status:** Verbatim from Grant's autograph endorsement. Undisputed. ## Related quotes - [[Thomas Jefferson - equal and exact justice to all men]] — the principle Grant applies to his own circle. - [[Theodore Roosevelt - no man is above the law]] — the same idea made a general maxim a generation later. - Featured in [[Presidents on the Rule of Law]].