A president has never been indicted before. But one was arrested. (Washington Post, updated March 30, 2022)

A grand jury in Manhattan has voted to indict Donald Trump, The Washington Post reported Thursday evening.

This is the first time a former president has been charged with a crime. But a sitting president was arrested once.

In 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant was arrested at the corner of 13th and M streets NW in Washington. This was not a high crime, but it was — at least theoretically speaking — a misdemeanor.

The man who led the North to victory in the Civil War was busted for speeding in his horse-drawn carriage.

The story of his arrest — confirmed in 2012 by Cathy L. Lanier, who was then D.C.’s police chief — was told in a remarkable but obviously forgotten story in the Sept. 27, 1908, edition of the Washington Evening Star under the headline: “Only Policeman Who Ever Arrested a President.”

That policeman was William H. West, a Black man who had fought in the Civil War.

“Since his retirement,” the story said, “he has decided to let the public know the true story of the arrest.”

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President Grant paid a $20 bond, and forfeited it when he failed to appear in court.