Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, rediscovered.

These days, from Boise to Britain, TV talking heads and barstool philosophers have been pondering one of the great mysteries of the U.S. Constitution.

Can the President of the United States actually be indicted, arrested, handcuffed the whole deal?

Is it possible?

The prevailing answer is this.

Nobody is sure.

But that's not entirely true. President Ulysses S. Grant knows,

or should I say, new. In 1872, while president, Grant was arrested at the corner of 13th and

M in the district.

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 on his horse.

Grant's arrest was confirmed a few years ago

by then District Police Chief Kathy Lanier.

The story was told in a remarkable but obviously

forgotten article in the September 27th, 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.

It begins with Grant's love of fast horses.

...