page_title: Benjamin Bristow
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Benjamin Bristow / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: Streetside view of Edwards Hall, located on the southern side of Goebel Avenue in Elkton, Kentucky, United States. Its first owner was politician Benjamin Edwards, whose grandson Benjamin Helm Bristow was born in the house. Built in 1821, it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
context_page_description: Benjamin Helm Bristow was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 30th U.S. Treasury Secretary and the first Solicitor General.
  A Union military officer, Bristow was a Republican Party reformer and civil rights advocate. During his tenure as Secretary of Treasury, he is primarily known for breaking up and prosecuting the Whiskey Ring, a corrupt tax evasion profiteering ring that depleted the national treasury at the behest of President Grant. Additionally, Bristow promoted gold standard currency rather than paper. Bristow was one of Grant's most popular Cabinet members among reformers. Bristow supported Grant's Resumption of Specie Act of 1875, that helped stabilize the economy during the Panic of 1873. As the United States' first solicitor general, Bristow aided President Ulysses S. Grant and Attorney General Amos T. Akerman's vigorous and thorough prosecution and destruction of the Ku Klux Klan in the Reconstructed South. Solicitor General Bristow advocated African American citizens in Kentucky be allowed to testify in a white man's court case and that education was for all races to be paid for by public funding.
context_section_description: Benjamin Helm Bristow was born in Edwards Hall on June 20, 1832 in Elkton, Kentucky. Bristow was the son of Francis M. Bristow and his wife Emily Helm. Francis was a prominent lawyer and Whig member of Congress in 1854–1855 and 1859–1861.   Edwards Hall was the home of his late grandfather, Benjamin Edwards. Bristow graduated at Jefferson College, Washington, Pennsylvania, in 1851, studied law under his father, and was admitted to the Kentucky bar in 1853. For a while Bristow worked as a law partner for his father. His father later became a strong anti-slavery Unionist.  His father's political anti-slavery and Whig views strongly influenced Bristow's own political outlook.
caption: Bristow's birthplace Edwards Hall
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