Pendleton Civil Service Act

Context

Beginning with President Andrew Jackson, whose philosophy of granting spoils to the victor dictated the process of appointing people to jobs in the federal civil service, the spoils system was firmly entrenched by the time the Pendleton Act was written. While there were fewer than one thousand civil service employees in 1800, there were more than one hundred thousand by 1883. Until the end of the Civil War, friends, family members, and financial supporters could virtually count on obtaining a job with the civil service. During elections, office seekers continually sought jobs, contributing money to political campaigns and even going so far as to place advertisements in the newspapers. As each new administration took office, however, it appointed new people to posts, so there was no job security. People feared losing their jobs as soon as new administrators were elected or their political patrons lost power. Consequently, before the passage of the Pendleton Act, loyalty and morale in the civil service were low, since employees had little hope for promotion and were often treated unprofessionally.

In his book Since the Civil War, the historian Charles R. Lingley summarizes the sentiment best when he says, “It is the duty of the citizen, therefore, to support the party that stands for right policies and to adhere closely to its official organization. Loyalty should be rewarded by appointment to positions within the gift of the party; and disloyalty should be looked upon as political treason” (Lingley, p. 118). Patricia Ingraham writes that the spoils system was especially out of control between 1845 and 1865. At President Zachary Taylor's inauguration, Senator William Seward jokingly remarked that “the world seems almost divided into two classes: those who are going to California in search of gold, and those going to Washington in quest of office” (Ingraham, p. 21). Of the hordes of hungry office seekers on the White House lawn, President Abraham Lincoln even commented, “There you see something which will, in the course of time, become a greater danger to the public than the rebellion itself” (Ingraham, p. 22).

Over the years, several politicians, including Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, sought to reform the current civil service management. Although it was unsuccessful, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts in 1864 introduced a reform bill based on the British model of civil service. Four years later, Representative Thomas Allen Jenckes of Rhode Island submitted a bill to reform the civil service. The following year, Congress established the Select Committee on the Reorganization of the Civil Service of the Government and appointed Jenckes head of the committee. Passed on March 3, 1871, Jenckes's bill empowered the president to make regulations for hiring civil service employees and to appoint a body to oversee the hiring. President Grant established the Civil Service Advisory Board with a fifteen-thousand-dollar appropriation from Congress. Grant chose the reformer George William Curtis to head the board. After a few years, however, Congress refused to appropriate any more funds to the Civil Service Advisory Board.

While Congress may have abandoned the idea of civil service reform, individual reformers refused to give up and formed the New York Civil Service Reform League in 1877 under the leadership of Dorman B. Eaton. In 1881 the National Civil Service Reform League was formed in Rhode Island, and George William Curtis was elected as the organization's first president. By January 1883 there were more than fifty local associations across the country.

Although President Rutherford B. Hayes advocated for civil service reform, the matter was not discussed again in Congress until President James A. Garfield was assassinated by Charles Guiteau, an upset office seeker hoping to be appointed the U.S. consul in Paris in 1881. After Garfield's death, the public and reformers alike sensationalized the evils of the spoils system. A special committee of the New York Civil Service Reform League distributed a pamphlet containing some of Garfield's best quotes on reform and posted signs in all post offices. Congress could no longer ignore the public clamor for reform in the civil service. Something had to be done.