Chapter 18 Free Fight (1869-1870) Summary

Adams returns to Quincy and Boston. News of a massive scandal, involving the financier Jay Gould, gold, and the Erie Railway, breaks. Adams, along with his brother Brooks, begins a journalistic investigation: his brother handles the Railway angle, while he attacks the gold issue. Adams finds he was right in his opinion of the Grant government as non-reforming: President Grant and other high-ranking persons and agencies in the Federal Government are suspected of having been involved. It seems that Gould has bought the support of Secretary of the Treasury Boutwell and of Grant.

Because he has no connections with the current Treasury regime, Adams turns to the State Department and the Departments of the Interior, looking to assist in reforms there while doing his investigations. In doing so, he once again puts himself on the wrong side...