SINNERS AND SAINTS

In the late summer of 1862, Senator James F. Simmons of Rhode Island could surely see the writing on the wall. His colleagues were soon to return to Washington, D.C., for the Senate’s December session, during which they almost certainly would vote to expel him. And so, on September 5, 1862, Simmons did the expedient and perhaps honorable thing: He resigned.

Simmons’s sin was to have extracted a 5 percent kickback from Casper D. Schubarth, a small-time