Teapot Dome scandal

The Teapot Dome scandal was the biggest political corruption scandal of the United States in the early 1920s and beyond this period for a long time a symbol of corruption. In order to secure the lucrative private development of in State Owned oil fields, two oil companies 1921/22, Minister of the Interior had bribed Albert B. Fall ( Republican Party ). Case in 1929 was the first American minister who had to play a prison sentence for a crime committed during his tenure crime.

Scandal and detection

Under Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson, the controversial idea was developed that the United States Navy in time of war must have its own oil reserves in the form of state-owned oil fields. Taft had acquired this in California ( Elk Hills in Taft and Buena Vista Hills ) and Wyoming fields. This is located in Wyoming's Natrona County field was there because of a peculiar -looking towering rock formation Teapot Dome called ( "tea-kettle peak" ).

Immediate political consequences

The hope of the Democrats to be able to beat out the affair political capital was not fulfilled. Had Warren Harding 's election victory celebrated in 1920 with the largest percentage lead in U.S. history ( after the abolition of the census suffrage ), Coolidge succeeded in the presidential election in 1924 the second largest with 54% to 28.8 % against John W. Davis. This was due in considerable part to the fact that he personally had a respectable reputation and Daugherty and Denby had removed from office, but also that the critical public learned by the revelations of the tangles of all parties with big business; so was z.Bsp. Woodrow Wilson's son and Finance William Gibbs McAdoo been bribed and got from the Democrats no presidential nomination. Not only Dobneys career was over, though he has not been convicted. Theodore Roosevelt's son Theodore Jr., Deputy Minister of Marine, was likewise acquitted, but was able to write the desired post of governor of New York.