and corruption, and gave specific reform orders to that were vigorously enforced, cleaning up the Justice Department. Later career In February 1876, Williams was part of a three-man defense team who defended Orville E. Babcock, President Grant's military secretary, at the Whiskey Ring trial held in St. Louis. Babcock had been charged with secretive collusion with the ring, and throwing off investigators. The investigation into the Whiskey Ring was started by Grant's Secretary of Treasury Benjamin H. Bristow to clean up Republican corruption. Babcock was acquitted. After resigning Williams declined an offer from Grant to become the U.S. minister to Spain. George Williams campaigned for the election of Rutherford B. Hayes as President in 1876. During the controversial Presidential Election of 1876, Williams, now a private citizen, went to Florida to manage the Hayes ballot returns. After the 1876 U.S. Presidential election, Williams returned to his Portland private law practice. Williams supported women's suffrage and the Oregon "popular government" movement. In 1895, Williams published a compilation of Occasional Addresses gathered "from newspapers and stray places" that he had delivered as early as 1869, with the majority dating from 1885 to 1893. Intended primarily as a souvenir for friends, professional and political speeches were excluded. Among the 21 addresses presented are tributes delivered on the deaths of Generals U.S. Grant and W.T. Sherman and several prominent judges, and speeches bearing upon the history and growth of Portland, the study and practice of medicine, the militia, and the United States Supreme Court. Williams' address on the value of good thoughts was intended as advice to the 1891 graduating class of the high school at Portland. On October 11, 1901, the Episcopal Church of America met in San Francisco to decide whether Episcopal clergymen could remarry divorced persons and discipline any Episcopal members who remarried. Former Attorney General Williams attended the meeting and opposed all restrictions by the Episcopal church on married and divorced persons and stated that such matters belonged in civil law as opposed to church law. Williams was elected Portland's mayor serving from 1902 to 1905. On January 4, 1905, Mayor Williams, at the age of 83 years, was indicted by a grand jury in Multnomah County for allegedly refusing to enforce laws that regulated gambling . Williams was charged for not closing down gambling facilities on July 13, 1904, that operated within four miles of Portland. Portland's Chief of