The New Nation

by Frederic L. Paxson

The use of public offices for party purposes had been regarded as a scandal by independents of both parties for four administrations. The long list of breaches of trust, revealed in the seventies, had made reformers feel that incompetence and spoils endangered the life of the nation. As late as 1880, they had heard a delegate in the Republican Convention, when asked to vote for a civil service plank, exclaim indignantly: "Mr. President, Texas has had quite enough of the civil service.... We are not here, sir, for the purpose of providing offices for the Democracy.... After we have won the race, as we will, we will give those who are entitled to positions office. What are we up here for?" And they had become used to the silent or outspoken resistance to their demands from men in "practical" politics.

The history of the civil servants of the United States falls into three periods: Before 1829, 1829-65, and 1865-83. In the first period they were commonly treated as permanent officials. Rarely had they been removed for partisan purposes, although it had been the wail of Jefferson that "few die, and none resign." Appointments had often been given as the reward for past services, but none had felt a need for a general proscription of officials upon the entry of a new President.

Andrew Jackson brought a new practice into use in 1829. His election followed a political revolution, in which it was believed by his supporters that the National Republican party had become corrupt. It was a matter of faith and pledge to turn the incumbents out of office. Hungry patriots crowded round the jobs, while Jackson's advisers included men who in New York and Pennsylvania had already learned how to use the offices as retainers for future service. Advocacy of the Democratic principle of rotation in office was in practice easily converted into the maintenance of the maxim that "to the victors belong the spoils."

Every President after Jackson used the offices for partisan purposes, and few objected to the practice on theoretical grounds. The simplicity of the National Government made the habit less destructive than it otherwise would have been. The spoils system did not enter the army or navy, the only extensive technical departments of the United States. In other branches of the Government a large majority of the officials were unskilled penmen, whose places could easily be filled with others as little skilled as themselves. Always a few clerks who knew the business were saved to guide the recruits, and the departments were generally working again before a President met his first Congress.

Lincoln was not different from his predecessors in the use of offices. He permitted the most complete sweep that had yet been made, being forced to an unusually high percentage of new appointments by the necessity of removing Southerners. In his hands the patronage became an additional weapon for the Union, upholding the leaders in Congress, and striking at the backsliders. In the election of 1864 the Union party carried all the branches of the Government, and it had a vision of four years of complete control of the offices when the death of Lincoln brought a Tennessee Democrat into the White. House.

The discussion of civil service reform, on theoretical grounds, began about 1865, when the evil of removals for party purposes was shown to the Senate. Johnson was trying to use the patronage for his own ends, in opposition to the will of the radicals in Congress. Reformers who maintained the iniquity of this custom now found temporary converts among the Republicans. They got a committee appointed on the civil service in 1866, and President Grant announced his conversion to the principle early in his Administration.

In 1871 Congress tried the experiment of a modest appropriation ($25,000) for a reform of the civil service, and Grant placed the test in the hands of George William Curtis, a leader of the new reform. The commission breasted the whole current of politics, found that Grant would not support it in critical cases, and was abandoned by Congress after a short trial. The demand, however, increased, receiving the support of the independents who were Liberal Republicans in 1872, and who thereafter constituted a menace to party regularity. Schurz, Godkin, and Curtis were their admitted leaders. In 1872 and 1876 they persuaded the great parties to put general pledges for civil service reform into their platforms. Schurz, as Secretary of the Interior under Hayes, put their ideal partly into practice. In 1881 they were a well-recognized body of advocates, with a definite doctrine of non-partisan efficiency, which few politicians denied in principle or liked in fact.

Public attention was focused upon the civil service by the events of 1881. The fight between Garfield and Conkling raised not only the question of the relative rights of President and Senate in appointments, but that of the use of offices for the support of political machines. The frauds uncovered in postal administration by the star-route investigations could hardly have occurred in a department administered by experienced and competent officials. The murder of Garfield by a disappointed office-seeker gave additional emphasis to the need for reform, and these things coming together made possible the passage of a civil service act earlier than its advocates expected.

President Arthur recommended the reform in 1881, and his party, chastened by the fall election of 1882, took up a law in the session of 1882-83. Eaton, one of the leading reformers, and first chairman of the Civil Service Commission, wrote the bill which Congress passed with little real debate. Men who hated the measure knew the unwisdom of opposing it. A board of three commissioners was created in 1883 to classify the civil servants, prepare rules and lists, and conduct examinations. The classified service, removed from politics, began with 13,780 officers in 1884; by 1896 it contained 87,044; by 1911, 227,657. It grew most actively toward the end of each administration, as outgoing Presidents transferred to it the offices that they had filled. Its best recommendation was to be found in the opposition of politicians toward it.

Arthur did better than the reformers had hoped in urging and administering the Civil Service Act. He prosecuted the star-route trials, even among his Stalwart friends.