Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 / From Lincoln to Garfield, with a Review of the Events Which Led to the Political Revolution of 1860

by James Gillespie Blaine

The reform of the Civil Service of the National Government occupied a considerable share of public attention during the administration of President Grant and was still further advanced under President Hayes. The causes which led to the necessity of reform are more easily determined than the measures which will effect a cure of admitted evils. When the Federal Government was originally organized, the President and Vice-President, Senators and Representatives, were specifically limited in their term of service. The Federal judges were appointed for life. All other officers were appointed without any limit as to time, but, according to the decision of Congress, were removable at pleasure by the Executive. During the administrations of General Washington and John Adams, covering the first twelve years of the Federal Government, there were practically no removals at all. Partisan spirit was developed in the contest of 1800 and the change of public opinion installed Mr. Jefferson as President.

There is no reason to doubt that Mr. Jefferson's personal views in regard to removals from office were as conservative as those of his two predecessors, but he was beset for place in an extraordinary manner by the hosts of eager applicants who claimed to have contributed to his triumph over John Adams, and who, like their successors in the later days of the Republic, demanded their reward. Mr. Jefferson, entertaining the belief that it was not fair that all the offices should be held by Federalists, began a series of removals. There was great outcry against this course by conservative men, who were averse to the removal of competent and faithful public servants; and before Mr. Jefferson had proceeded far in his scheme of equalization it became widely known, through a letter which he had written in defense of his course in removing the Collector of Customs at New Haven, that he was intending to remove only a sufficient number to give his own supporters a fair proportion of places under the Government.

As soon as this design was perceived it seems to have occurred to the office-holders, most of whom had taken no decided stand upon political issues, that they could effect the partition more readily than Mr. Jefferson, by simply avowing themselves to be members of the party that had elected him. There were certainly many instance of political conversion among the office-holders of a character which would to-day subject the incumbents of Federal places to personal derision and public contempt. But the effect was undoubted; for between the clamor of those opposed to the system of removal and the ready transfer of political allegiance on the part of those already in place, Mr. Jefferson abandoned the whole effort to change the public service after the removal of forty-seven officers. Thenceforward, under his administration and under the administrations of Mr. Madison and Mr. Monroe, removals were so few as scarcely to be noted, and were made only upon the proof or the presumption of a justifying cause.

In 1820 a change was wrought which ultimately affected, to a serious extent, the tenure of office under the General Government. Thirty-one years had passed since the Constitution was adopted, and during that whole period there had only been some sixty-five removals from office. It was inevitable, therefore, that a considerable proportion of the incumbents had by reason of age become somewhat unfit for the discharge of their duties. Many of them were Revolutionary officers and soldiers, the youngest of whom must have been verging upon threescore and ten. No provision had yet been made for retiring disabled officers of the army, and pensioning the civil list was not even dreamed of. What, then, should be done with these old men who had been holding office for so long a period? Mr. Monroe was opposed, on principle, to removals from office, and was too kindly disposed to disturb men who had strong patriotic claims, and who had personal need of the emoluments they were receiving.

As the Executive Department would take no step for relief, Congress initiated action, and passed a bill which Mr. Monroe approved on the 15th of May, 1820, declaring that "all district attorneys, collectors of customs, naval officers and surveyors of customs, navy agents, receivers of public monies for lands, registers of the land offices, paymasters in the army, the apothecary-general, the assistant apothecaries-general, the commissary-general of purchases, to be appointed under the laws of the United States, shall be appointed for the term of four years, and shall be removable from office at pleasure." It was further enacted that all commissions of these officers bearing date prior to September 30, 1814, "shall cease and expire on the day of their dates occurring next after the following 30th of September;" and others were made to expire after four years from the date thereof.

The Cabinet of Mr. Monroe contained at that time three able men, each ambitious for the Presidency—John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State; William H. Crawford, Secretary of the Treasury; John C. Calhoun, Secretary of War. As there was much opposition to the four-year law, the friends of Mr. Calhoun and of Mr. Adams united in imputing its authorship to Mr. Crawford, whose Department included far the largest share of Executive patronage. The accusation was openly made that Mr. Crawford intended to use the offices of the Treasury Department to promote his political fortunes; and the friends of Mr. Calhoun and of Mr. Adams, seeing that their chiefs had no corresponding number of offices to dispose of, found their resource in virtuous denunciation of the selfish schemes projected by Mr. Crawford. But there appears to have been no substantial ground for the imputation—the official registers of the United States showing that between the date of the Act and the year 1824 (when Mr. Crawford's candidacy was expected to ripen) only such changes were made in the offices of the Treasury Department as might well have been deemed necessary from causes of age and infirmity already referred to. Besides, Mr. Crawford during all this period was in ill-health, with ambition chastened, and strength constantly waning.

President John Quincy Adams, following Mr. Monroe, maintained the conservative habit already established as to removals,—depriving very few officers of their commissions during the four years of his term, and those only for adequate cause. With the inauguration of General Jackson in 1829, and the appointment of Mr. Van Buren as Secretary of State, the practice of the Government was reversed, and the system of partisan appointments and removals, familiar to the present generation, was formally adopted. It became an avowed political force in those States where the patronage of the Government was large. It had no doubt a special and potential influence in the political affairs of New York where the system had its chief inspiration, where the "science" of carrying elections was first devised and has since been continuously improved. The system of partisan removals was resisted by Mr. Clay, Mr. Calhoun, Mr. Webster, and all the opponents of the Democratic party as then organized; but it steadily grew, and became the recognized rule under the well-known maxim proclaimed by Mr. Marcy in the Senate of the United States in 1832: "To the victors belong the spoils." In two years President Jackson had made ten times as many removals as all his predecessors had made in forty years.

When the Whigs came into power by the election of 1840, President Harrison discussed the question of patronage and its abuse, not merely as tending to strengthen one political party against the other, but as building up the power of the Executive against the Legislative Department. Nevertheless with all the denunciations of the leaders and the avowals of the new President, it is not to be denied that the Whigs as a party desired the dismissal of the office-holders appointed by Jackson and Van Buren. From that time onward, although there was much condemnation of the evil practice of removing good officers for opinion's sake, each party as it came into power practiced it; and prior to 1860 no movement was made with the distinct purpose of changing this feature off the civil service.

The Administration of Mr. Lincoln was prevented by the public exigencies from giving attention to any other measures than those necessary for the preservation of the Union, and during the war no change was made or suggested as to the manner of appointment or removal. The first step towards it was announced in Congress on the 20th day of December, 1865, when Mr. Thomas A. Jenckes of Rhode Island introduced a bill in the House "to regulate the civil service of the United States." A few months later, in the same session, B. Gratz Brown, then a senator from Missouri, submitted a resolution for "such change in the civil service as shall secure appointments to the same after previous examination by proper Boards, and as shall provide for promotions on the score to merit or seniority." While he remained in Congress Mr. Jenckes annually renewed his proposition for the regulation of the civil service, but never secured the enactment of any measure looking thereto.

Neither of the two great political parties recognized the subject as important enough to be incorporated in their platforms, until 1872, when the National convention of the Republican party declared that "any system of the civil service under which the subordinate positions of the Government are considered rewards for mere party zeal is fatally demoralizing, and we therefore demand a reform of the system by laws which shall abolish the evils of patronage and make honesty, efficiency, and fidelity essential qualifications for public positions, without practically creating a life tenure of office." Thenceforward the subject found a place in the creed of the party. But even prior to this declaration of a political convention, Congress had on the 3d of March, 1871, appended a section to an appropriation bill, authorizing the President "to prescribe such regulations for the admission of persons into the civil service of the United States as may best promote efficiency therein and ascertain the fitness of each candidate in respect to age, health, character, knowledge, and ability for the branch of service in which he seeks to enter; and for this purpose he may employ suitable persons to conduct such inquiries, prescribe their duties, and establish regulations for the conduct of persons who may receive appointments in the civil service."