spoils system

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The systematic sacking of one's opponent's appointees, and substitution by appointees of one's own, on winning an election. The spoils system was an accepted part of American federal government throughout the nineteenth century. It continues in a diluted form today with the presumption that the top appointed federal offices are vacated on a change of administration. The term is also applied to the systematic filling of low-level posts by one's own appointees as a reward for political loyalty such as helping in an election. Critics of quangos and (since 1979) privatized agencies in British government argue that they give the incumbent party an opportunity to exercise a similar spoils system on behalf of their political supporters.

The "spoils system" of distributing government jobs as a reward for political services takes its name from an 1832 speech by the Democratic senator William L. Marcy of New York. Defending President Andrew Jackson's partisan dismissals from office, Marcy avowed that he and his fellows saw "nothing wrong in the rule, that to the victor belong the spoils of the enemy."

Although Jackson is usually credited with inaugurating the system, he never justified it on Marcy's blunt grounds. Under the long reign of Virginia Democratic-Republican presidents, permanent tenure had become the de facto rule in many federal offices. Honoring tradition, Jackson's predecessor John Quincy Adams refused to remove even overt political opponents. Despite this, Jackson accused the federal establishment of opposing his election in 1828. He proclaimed a policy of "rotation in office" to curb official arrogance and corruption and democratize opportunities for public service. Disclaiming anyone's inherent right to continue in office, Jackson dismissed political foes along with some career bureaucrats, replacing them with partisan newspaper editors and other active supporters.

Opponents condemned Jackson for introducing political "proscription," but soon learned to follow his example. By the 1840s both Jackson's Democrats and the opposing Whigs routinely wielded patronage to inspire and discipline party workers. Partisan removals grew ever more extensive, reaching down from Washington bureau chiefs and clerks to land and customs and territorial officials to village postmasters. Thousands of eager supplicants besieged each new administration, making the redistribution of offices every four years a major undertaking.

By the 1850s the spoils system was thoroughly entrenched as an instrument of political warfare both between the parties and among factions within them. Calls for reform surfaced before the Civil War and gathered impetus during Reconstruction from Andrew Johnson's attempted purge of Republican office holders and the scandals of the Grant administration. Chastising the system for promoting official incompetence and corruption and for adulterating the purity of elections, critics demanded that federal employment be removed from party politics and grounded on merit as determined by competitive examination.

Eradicating the spoils system became a major crusade in the 1870s, championed by good-government reformers, cautiously advanced by presidents, and vehemently opposed by congressional party chieftains. President James Garfield's assassination by a "disappointed office-seeker" undermined resistance and led to the passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Act in 1883. The act inaugurated a merit system of employment for certain classes of federal employees under the supervision of a bipartisan Civil Service Commission and banned the common practice of dunning office holders for contributions to party coffers.

In the remainder of the century, presidents put more offices under civil service protection, largely replacing the spoils system with a career bureaucracy. Political patronage survives in some federal as well as state and municipal appointments, but its range has been drastically curtailed. Scholars disagree whether politicizing government service improved or damaged its efficiency, integrity, and responsiveness. For good or ill, the spoils system certainly opened office to a broader range of citizens. It also buttressed the operations of mass political parties, and rose and declined in tandem with them.

Bibliography

Hoogenboom, Ari. Outlawing the Spoils: A History of the Civil Service Reform Movement, 1865–1883. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961.

White, Leonard D. The Jacksonians: A Study in Administrative History, 1829–1861. New York: Macmillan, 1954.

———. The Republican Era: 1869–1901, A Study in Administrative History. New York: Macmillan, 1958.

The practice of appointing applicants to public offices as a reward for their loyalty to the political party in power. The term comes from a statement by a senator in the 1830s: “To the victor belong the spoils.” Reform of the system commenced in the 1880s with the introduction of merit as the basis of appointment to office. (See James A. Garfield, machine politics, and patronage.)

In memoriam--our civil service as it was, A Political cartoon by Thomas Nast showing statue of Andrew Jackson on pig, which is over "fraud," "bribery," and "spoils," eating "plunder." in Harper's Weekly, 1877 April 28, p. 325.

In the politics of the United States, a spoil system (also known as a patronage system) is an informal practice where a political party, after winning an election, gives government jobs to its voters as a reward for working toward victory, and as an incentive to keep working for the party—as opposed to a system of awarding offices on the basis of some measure of merit independent of political activity.

The term was derived from the phrase "'to the victor belong the spoils..." by New York Senator William L. Marcy,^[1] referring to the victory of the Jackson Democrats in the election of 1828.

Similar spoils systems are common in other nations that are struggling to transcend systemic clientage based on tribal organization or other kinship groups and localism in general.

Contents 1 Peak and Reform 2 References 2.1 Secondary sources 3 See also

Peak and Reform

Presidents after President Andrew Jackson continued the use of the spoils system. President Abraham Lincoln used the system effectively to support both his Republican Party, United States Republican Party, and the Union American Civil War effort. But by the late 1860s, reformers began demanding a civil service system. Running under the Liberal Republican Party in 1872, they were harshly defeated by patronage-hungry Ulysses S. Grant.

After the assassination of James A. Garfield by a rejected office-seeker in 1881, the calls for civil service reform intensified. The end of the spoils system at the federal level came with the passage of the Pendleton Act in 1883, which created a bipartisan Civil Service Commission to evaluate job candidates on a nonpartisan merit basis. While few jobs were covered under the law initially, the law allowed the President to transfer jobs and their current holders into the system, thus giving the holder a permanent job. The Pendleton Act's reach was expanded as the two main political parties alternated control of the White House in every election between 1884 and 1896. After each election the outgoing President applied the Pendleton Act to jobs held by his political supporters. By 1900, most federal jobs were handled through civil service and the spoils system was limited only to very senior positions.

The separation between the political activity and the civil service was made stronger with the Hatch Act of 1939 which prohibited federal employees from engaging in political activities.

The spoils system survived much longer in many states, counties and municipalities, such as the Tammany Hall ring, which survived well into the 1930s when New York City reformed its own civil service. Illinois modernized its bureaucracy in 1917 under Frank Lowden, but Chicago held on to patronage in city government until the city agreed to end the practice in the Shakman Decrees of 1972 and 1983.

References

1. ^ http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/andrewjackson/

Secondary sources

• Griffith; Ernest S. The Modern Development of City Government in the United Kingdom and the United States (1927)
• Hoogenboom, Ari Arthur. Outlawing the Spoils: A history of the civil service reform movement, 1865-1883 (1961)
• Ostrogorski; M. Democracy and the Party System in the United States (1910)
• Rubio; Philip F. A History of Affirmative Action, 1619-2000 University Press of Mississippi (2001)
• Van Riper, Paul. History of the United States Civil Service Greenwood Press (1976; reprint of 1958 edition)

See also

• List of United States political appointments that crossed party lines

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