Benjamin Helm Bristow (June 20, 1832 – June 22, 1896) was an American lawyer and Republican Party politician who served as the first Solicitor General of the United States and as a U.S. Treasury Secretary. As the United States first Solicitor General, Bristow aided President Ulysses S. Grant and Attorney General Amos T. Akerman vigorous and thorough prosecution and destruction of the Ku Klux Klan in the Reconstructed South. Sol. Gen. Bristow advocated African American citizens in Kentucky be allowed to testify in a white man's court case and that education was for all races to be paid for by public funding. As Secretary of the Treasury, Bristow promoted gold standard currency and by President Grant's order thoroughly prosecuted and shut down the notorious Whiskey Ring, a tax evasion scheme