Arrests of Ulysses S. Grant

There are three reported arrests of Ulysses S. Grant by officers of the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia (MPD), all for speeding by horse. Grant, who led the Union Army to victory in the American Civil War, was widely known for his prowess as a horseman. The first two of the reported arrests were in 1866, when Grant was commanding general; the third is said to have occurred in 1872, when Grant was serving as the president of the United States. While of questionable historicity, the third is the best-known; if it did occur, this would make Grant the only U.S. president to have been arrested while in office.

Both 1866 arrests were reported by the D.C. National Intelligencer. There does not appear to be contemporaneous evidence of an 1872 arrest, but from the 1890s onward, a number of newspaper articles about Officer William H. West (died 1915) included the claim that he had arrested Grant in 1872. In a 1908 profile in The Sunday Star—the sole detailed narrative of the event—West said that he arrested Grant for speeding in a horse-drawn carriage after a warning for doing so the day prior, and that Grant was brought to the police station, where he put up $20 (equivalent to $520 in 2024), which was forfeited the next day when Grant did not appear in court. Other accounts differ but generally involve a fine of similar value, the impoundment of the carriage, or both. After the MPD appeared to confirm the veracity of the arrest in 2012, a number of news media outlets accepted it as fact, although in some cases with reservations. However, because of the lack of contemporaneous documentation, historians at the Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site have questioned whether the event occurred.

Grant is characterized as resistant to police authority in the first narrative and as deferential in the latter two. The image of Grant deferring to West has been cited as a symbol of the rule of law, including in a dissenting opinion at the Supreme Court of the Philippines, in children's education, and in discussions of presidential criminal immunity in the United States.