D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier went on WTOP for her regular “Ask the Chief” interview. In today’s segment, though, she was asked to describe a few funny stories in the history of the Metropolitan Police Department.
One of Lanier’s examples should ring hard for anyone who has found themselves on the losing end of the District’s ongoing fight against speeding. But it turns out that anyone can get a speeding ticket in this town, even the president of the United States. Lanier mentioned that during his presidency, Ulysses S. Grant was pulled over and cited for driving his horse-drawn coach dangerously fast. An MPD officer, Lanier said, fined the president and impounded the vehicle.
The story struck us as perhaps a bit apocryphal, but it all checks out. It’s unclear in what year the traffic incident happened, but early in his presidency, Grant ran afoul of the fuzz. Not only that, it’s not as though Grant was being chauffeured around Washington. The 18th president preferred to drive himself.
“The story goes that he loved horses and he loved to ride fast and he literally went fast through the city,” says John F. Marszalek, the executive director of the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Collection at Mississippi State University. “In one instance this Washington policeman pulled him over.”
The MPD officer’s name was William West, according to Significa, a 1983 compendium of weird facts about historical figures. Grant was driving his horse-drawn coach down M Street NW at such a great speed, that after West grabbed the horse’s bridle, it took half a block to stop the hasty president.
West, according to Marszalek, was so embarrassed when he discovered he had pulled over Grant that he offered to ignore the infraction. But Grant was magnanimous.
“The story goes that Grant says, ‘I was speeding, you caught me and I’ll pay the ticket,’ ” Marszalek says. At the time, speeding tickets were payable by a $5 fine. It was not Grant’s first.
But racing through the streets was something of a favorite hobby of Grant’s. Even after being elected, he did not want to give up his life as a horseman. That Grant was able to blow off steam by racing through the streets of Washington is especially notable considering he was inaugurated just four years after President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in a public venue, to say nothing of the protective measures that surround modern-day U.S. presidents.
In fact, Grant rather liked to show off his equestrian skills, Marszalek says. In 1866, while being dragged along on a political junket through New York City with President Andrew Johnson, Grant found himself riding in a carriage through Central Park. Grant challenged the driver of Johnson’s coach to a road race to the top of the parks’ Great Hill and won handily.
“Grant beat them because he had such a better handle on the horse,” Marszalek says.
Of course, the presidential speeding ticket might have been well-taken. A few years later, according to Marszalek, Grant’s driving skills led to a rather terrible incident. While traveling outside of Washington, the president’s coach ran over a young boy’s foot by accident. Grant wrote a letter apologizing and wishing the boy a speedy recovery, but was not ticketed for the run-in.
