“I am a Stalwart”: the patronage fight behind Garfield’s assassination

When police arrested Charles Guiteau after he shot President James A. Garfield on July 2, 1881, he told them he was a Stalwart of the Stalwarts and that Arthur was now president. Most summaries call him a disappointed office seeker, and the Park Service historian who wrote this essay for the Garfield Observer says he was almost certainly mentally unstable. But the author argues that the remark was not mere rambling: the murder, he writes, was wholly political, and it grew out of a split in the Republican Party over who got federal jobs.

The spoils system

Under the patronage system, the winners of elections could appoint whomever they chose to many federal jobs, and experience and qualifications counted for little. Powerful politicians liked it because it let them place friends and relatives and secure the loyalty of everyone they appointed. Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York was its undisputed king, and his key weapon was the post of Collector of the Port of New York. Much of the nation’s trade flowed through that port and the collector took a percentage of the customs duties, making it the most prized appointment in the country.

Roscoe Conkling, senior senator from New York and, in the essay’s words, the undisputed king of the spoils system. Image from the National Park Service’s page.

Two factions

Conkling led the faction known as Stalwarts, who held to the patronage system and still thought sectional appeals, “waving the bloody shirt,” were valid even as the Hayes administration (1877 to 1881) began gradually ending Reconstruction in the South. Senator James G. Blaine of Maine led the opposing faction, known as Half Breeds, a nickname for their willingness to depart from Stalwart orthodoxy. Many of them, President Hayes included, believed patronage had contributed to the scandals and graft that embarrassed the party during Ulysses S. Grant’s eight years as president, and civil service reform, the idea that candidates for federal jobs should have some qualification beyond politics or connections, became their cause. Conkling and Blaine also disliked each other personally, dating from their service together in the House of Representatives during the Civil War.

Hayes tried to wrest the New York collectorship from Conkling, nominating two different men; Conkling rallied the Senate to defeat both and got his own man, Chester Alan Arthur, appointed. In 1878 Hayes and Treasury Secretary John Sherman fired Arthur for turning a blind eye to corruption in the Customs House. Conkling made him chairman of the New York Republican committee and planned to have him elected the junior senator from New York in 1880.

Chester Alan Arthur, a Conkling loyalist, was Collector of the Port of New York until Hayes fired him. Image from the National Park Service’s page.

The 1880 convention

The Stalwarts, led by Conkling, urged former president Grant to seek an unprecedented third term, and he agreed. The Half Breeds backed Blaine. At the Republican convention in Chicago each side blocked the other’s man, and a compromise was needed. James A. Garfield of Ohio, a longtime House member and then Ohio’s Senator-elect, was respected by both. He had come to nominate Sherman, whom the Stalwarts would never support, and was stunned to be nominated himself on the 36th ballot. To placate the Stalwarts, Arthur, two years after his firing, received the vice presidential nomination.

A cartoon of Conkling trying to solve “the great presidential puzzle.” Conkling hoped for a third term for Grant, but many Republicans, Garfield among them, opposed it. Image from the National Park Service’s page.

Garfield against Conkling

Garfield narrowly won the popular vote against the Democrat Winfield Scott Hancock and took office on March 4, 1881. The olive branch of Arthur’s nomination cracked when he made Blaine secretary of state and splintered when he nominated William H. Robertson as Collector of the Port of New York without consulting Conkling. A historian the essay cites calls Conkling touchy and notes that what was really at stake was whether he would control New York. Conkling argued that the Senate’s power to advise and consent gave senators the power of appointment itself. To force the issue he and New York’s other senator, Thomas Platt, resigned, expecting the New York legislature to send them straight back. At that time legislatures chose senators, and this one was glad to be rid of them and elected others. The Senate confirmed Robertson, Garfield’s only political victory of his brief presidency.

The assassin

Charles Guiteau, almost certainly unstable, but also a self-described Stalwart who opposed Garfield’s intention to reform the civil service. Image from the National Park Service’s page.

Guiteau considered himself a Stalwart. He had backed Grant for the 1880 nomination and prepared a speech for Grant’s campaign in New York; when Garfield was chosen, he crossed out “Grant” and wrote in “Garfield.” He finally gave it to a small, puzzled crowd and came to believe he had helped Garfield carry New York. That, he felt, earned him a patronage job, so he went to Washington seeking the consulship in Paris, although he had no qualifications. He failed, became a nuisance, and angered Blaine, who told him never to ask about the Paris consulship again. Once he realized he would not get the post and that Garfield’s administration meant to scrap patronage, he decided that “removing” Garfield was his best option: it would make Arthur president, save the patronage system, quash civil service reform and, he expected, win him the Paris job from a grateful Arthur.

A Puck cartoon showing Guiteau threatening murder if not given a patronage job. He sought the consulship in Paris and later said he would accept Vienna instead. Image from the National Park Service’s page.

He bought a pistol, followed the president around Washington and shot him on July 2, 1881. Garfield lingered for eighty days and died on September 19 after what the essay calls horrendous medical treatment. Guiteau was tried and found guilty; at his trial he answered the charge of murder by saying the doctors did it and he merely shot at him. He was hanged on June 30, 1882. The author concludes that he died a disappointed office seeker, but also a political assassin who killed Garfield to force the Republicans to change course, and that the party’s factionalism, which produced Garfield’s nomination, also led to his murder.

Sources

• Todd Arrington, Chief of Interpretation and Education, James A. Garfield National Historic Site, National Park Service, “Stalwarts, Half Breeds, and Political Assassination” (written November 2012 for the Garfield Observer), https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/stalwarts-half-breeds-and-political-assassination.htm, which cites works by Kenneth D. Ackerman, Lewis L. Gould and Heather Cox Richardson; rewritten in hubnx’s own words.