Background
He was born in Elkton, Ky., June 20, 1832. He studied law with his father. Siding with the North in the Civil War, he was commissioned a lieutenant colonel in the Twenty-fifth Kentucky Infantry. He later helped organize the Eighth Kentucky Cavalry, serving as colonel.
Until his death, June 22, 1896, he practiced law in New York City.
Education
After his graduation from Jefferson College, he studied law with his father.
Career
Siding with the North in the Civil War, he was commissioned a lieutenant colonel in the Twenty-fifth Kentucky Infantry. He later helped organize the Eighth Kentucky Cavalry, serving as colonel.
Elected to the Kentucky state senate in August 1863 Bristow resigned from the army and in December took his seat. In 1866 he was appointed assistant United States attorney and later that year United States attorney for the Kentucky district. In 1870 President U. S. Grant appointed him to fill the new office of United States solicitor general, a post he resigned in 1872, to enter corporation law practice. He was appointed secretary of the treasury in 1874, and he prosecuted and was instrumental in crushing the St. Louis "Whisky Ring," whose members had cheated the government out of millions of dollars in revenue. Prominent among the men indicted was Orville E. Babcock, President Grant's private secretary. (Babcock was later acquitted.) Bristow resigned as secretary of the treasury in 1876, and after his failure to win the nomination for president at the 1876 Republican National Convention, he retired from politics.