Among the frank, but not particularly wise, defenses offered by Oakes Ames was that the gifts of stock were not bribes because bribes were quid pro quo while the offers of a chance to buy into the Crédit Mobilier were exchanges between friends already willing to do each other favors. The stock could not possibly be a bribe, he argued, because its value was beneath the going price of a congressional vote. Ames was drawing a distinction essential to Gilded Age politics.
