Pod Insights Throughline The Deadly Story of the U.S. Civil Service About this episode When James Garfield won the Presidency in 1880, Charles Guiteau got ready to accept his new government job. No one had actually offered him a job – but he'd campaigned for Garfield, so he assumed he'd be rewarded. That was the spoils system, and it was how the government worked.
But President Garfield didn't hire him. Guiteau was furious. And on July 2, 1881, he followed Garfield to a Washington D. C. train station and shot him.
Today on the show: how an assassination meant to restore the spoils system instead led to its end, and birthed the modern federal workforce.
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0:43 Speaker 01 July 2nd, 1881.
0:51 Speaker 01 President James A. Garfield is about to board a train at the
0:55 Speaker 02 Baltimore and Potomac Train Station, which is in Washington, DC.
0:59 Speaker 01 He's headed to New Jersey with his sons to visit his ailing wife. It's about 9:30 a.m.
1:05 Speaker 02 And what he doesn't know is there's a man named Charles Guiteau.
1:09 Speaker 01 Charles Guiteau.
1:11 Speaker 02 Who has been stalking him for weeks.
1:14 Speaker 01 Garfield has no security detail with him.
1:22 Speaker 02 Garfield walks into the train station and Guiteau almost immediately steps out of the shadows.
1:26 Speaker 01 With a pistol in his hand.
1:39 Speaker 01 He fires two shots at President Garfield.
1:44 Speaker 02 He shoots him once in his arm, and then he shoots him again in his back.
1:49 Speaker 01 One bullet gets lodged just below his pancreas.
1:52 Speaker 02 There's this sort of moment of shock and silence.
2:04 Speaker 02 And then just the entire station just erupts and screams.
2:16 Speaker 02 Garfield is lying on this floor in a train station with two bullet holes in him.
2:23 Speaker 01 A group of men rush to President Garfield and grab him.
2:27 Speaker 02 And they get this old horse hair and hay mattress and they put Garfield on it and they take him to a room above the train station.
2:37 Speaker 01 He's still alive and a parade of local doctors arrive to look at his wounds.
2:42 Speaker 02 Every doctor who comes sticks unsterilized fingers and instruments in his back again and again.
2:52 Speaker 02 I mean, it's incredibly, like unbelievably painful, but also obviously introducing so much infection.
3:14 Speaker 03 Assassination can no more be guarded against than death by lightning.
3:20 Speaker 03 And it's best not to worry about either.
3:24 Speaker 03 James A. Garfield.
3:29 Speaker 01 Charles Gouto, the man who shot President Garfield, is arrested right away at the train station.
3:37 Speaker 02 He's immediately taken to a prison.
3:40 Speaker 01 And he wastes no time in telling police why he did it.
3:44 Speaker 02 He believed that God had chosen him for a great purpose. So he thinks that he helped Garfield win the White House.
3:55 Speaker 01 Gouto had delivered a single speech for Garfield's campaign. And when Garfield won the presidency, he believed he was owed a major government job in return. When he didn't receive it, he thought killing Garfield would make things right.
4:09 Speaker 02 He was mentally ill and he was delusional. He believed very happily and vigorously in the spoils system.
4:19 Speaker 01 The spoils system. That's referring to the way federal government jobs were filled at that time. Basically, when a new president would come into office, he'd dole out plum jobs, everything from postmen to cabinet secretaries, as a reward to people in his party, to his supporters, his loyalists. It was a controversial issue at the center of American politics even then. And over the next several months, after President Garfield's shooting in 1881, Americans would read the newspapers every day to find out the latest about his condition and the trial of Charles Guiteau. The fallout of the shooting on that hot day in July would forever change the very nature of the US government.
5:03 Speaker 01 It's a story of redemption and corruption, and how one event can bring the best and worst out of politicians. Ultimately, this is a story about the origins of the modern federal civil service, an institution that's today being fought over again.
5:23 Speaker 04 I'm Rande Abdelfattah.
5:25 Speaker 01 And I'm Ramtin Arablouei. On this episode of Throughline from NPR, The Long Shadow of 1881.
5:38 Speaker 05 This is Oladipo Ikshola from Maryland, USA. You are listening to Throughline from NPR. Bye-bye.
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7:10 Speaker 06 That's why S E L C is fighting back to defend the healthy environment everyone depends on, just as they've done for 40 years. Because clean air, clean water, and a healthy climate aren't political, they're fundamental. Learn more at SELC.org.
7:27 Speaker 07 Part One: From the Wilds of Ohio.
7:38 Speaker 01 Around 20 miles from Cleveland, a fire is burning.
7:45 Speaker 01 The year is 1833.
7:49 Speaker 01 It's three years since President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, aiming to force the last Native populations from the state. Ohio is still largely undeveloped, and this part of the state is full of trees.
8:10 Speaker 01 The thickly wooded forest is the perfect tinder for the fire that is racing towards a lone log cabin, the Garfield family's home.
8:21 Speaker 01 The outcome seems inevitable, but Abram Garfield, the father of James Garfield, the country's future president, won't let everything he's saved and fought for disappear just like that.
8:43 Speaker 01 Somehow, he does it. The cabin and his family survive. But days later, Abram gets very ill. On the brink of death, he turns to his wife, Eliza, and says,
8:57 Speaker 05 "I have planted four saplings in these woods.
9:03 Speaker 05 I leave them in your care."
9:19 Speaker 01 Four saplings, his children. James Garfield was the youngest.
9:30 Speaker 02 He was born into extreme poverty. He didn't have shoes until he was four.
9:35 Speaker 01 This is Candace Millard. She's the author of
9:38 Speaker 02 Destiny of the Republic.
9:40 Speaker 01 Which is all about the country's 20th president, James Garfield.
9:44 Speaker 02 This guy was extraordinary, and he's been completely forgotten.
9:53 Speaker 01 Raised by a widowed mother in Ohio.
9:56 Speaker 02 He was our last president, born in a log cabin.
9:59 Speaker 01 Garfield grew up surrounded by trees, and his thoughts were nowhere near the machinations of the White House. Instead, he dreamt of the sea.
10:14 Speaker 03 I remember especially the pirate's own book, which became a sort of bible or general authority with me. A tropical climate is suited to eroding life, and liquor as well as dissolute women being in great abundance to gratify him during his hours of relaxation make this a congenial region for the lawless.
10:35 Speaker 01 As an adult, Garfield recalled how reading about the ocean, pirates, and sailors fueled his nautical ambitions.
10:42 Speaker 03 I formed a determination. to become a sailor.
10:45 Speaker 01 Although Garfield didn't even know how to swim, he set off at the age of 16 against the protests of his mother, who wanted him to get an education. He started working in Lake Erie's canals.
10:59 Speaker 03 I knew almost nothing about the water, except what I had read. The consequence was I fell into the canal just 14 times and had 14 almost miraculous escapes from drowning.
11:14 Speaker 01 After so many near drownings and then a terrible case of malaria, Garfield headed back home, where his mother and brother had been hatching a plant to get Garfield back in school.
11:28 Speaker 02 They saved a little bit of money. They put together $17 to be able to send him to college.
11:34 Speaker 01 So he enrolls at a local school, but it's expensive. He finished the term with just six cents to his name.
11:41 Speaker 02 To help pay his tuition, he was a carpenter and a janitor.
11:46 Speaker 01 But he's brilliant. And just a few years after graduating, he returns to his local college.
11:52 Speaker 02 They made him a professor of literature, mathematics, and ancient languages.
11:57 Speaker 01 And not long after that, he became the college's president. And, OK, I know at this point you're probably thinking, this sounds a lot like the plotline for Good Will Hunting. But this is real. This is really how it goes down for James Garfield.
12:11 Speaker 02 He wrote an original proof of the Pythagorean theorem. So he was also this amazing mathematician.
12:18 Speaker 01 For him, education was his path out of poverty and into a new life.
12:23 Speaker 02 He was an incredible classicist. He knew Greek, he knew Latin, he knew huge sections of the Aeneid by heart in Latin. He was just off-the-charts brilliant.
12:36 Speaker 02 But honestly, what was more interesting to me and more important to me about Garfield than his brain was his heart.
12:51 Speaker 01 Garfield grew up in a devout Christian family, and that definitely influenced the way he saw the world.
12:59 Speaker 02 He belonged to the disciples of Christ. That was very informative in his life. I think in their family, they really took seriously the idea of that you try to do the best, not just for yourself and for your family, but for those around you and for civilization and for history.
13:15 Speaker 01 So when it came to the country's fierce debate over the ongoing system of slavery, Garfield had only one answer.
13:23 Speaker 02 He was a fierce abolitionist.
13:26 Speaker 03 At such hours as this, I feel like throwing the whole current of my life into the work of opposing this great evil.
13:34 Speaker 02 He was this incredibly powerful speaker, not shy and always happy to stand up for what he believed in.
13:43 Speaker 01 Garfield, who by this point had already become a lawyer and entered state politics, had one seat in the Ohio Senate.
13:51 Speaker 03 So long must this circle of states be undivided, the bonds of union unbroken.
14:00 Speaker 01 And after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in 1861.
14:04 Speaker 03 The war will soon assume the shape of slavery and freedom. The world will understand it, and I believe the final outcome will redound to the good of humanity.
14:16 Speaker 01 Garfield knew war was probably inevitable.
14:20 Speaker 02 He was never not going to fight in a war that at its heart was about abolishing slavery.
14:26 Speaker 01 So he joins the fight.
14:28 Speaker 02 He's not a trained military strategist, but again, he is a thinker.
14:36 Speaker 01 They make him the leader of the 42nd Regiment, which is tasked with fighting back the Confederate Army in Kentucky. It's a key state to win, and everyone knows it. President Abraham Lincoln hails from there and is widely reported to have said, "I hope to have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky."
15:02 Speaker 01 It all comes down to one battle. The Battle of Middle Creek.
15:07 Speaker 02 He was completely outnumbered by the Confederates.
15:11 Speaker 01 So Garfield tries something bold.
15:14 Speaker 02 He divided his regiment into three and had them come at them from three different directions.
15:21 Speaker 01 The Confederates felt like they were being swarmed on all sides.
15:29 Speaker 02 He tricked them.
15:30 Speaker 01 And it worked.
15:31 Speaker 02 They thought that they were completely overwhelmed when the opposite was true.
15:40 Speaker 01 After the fighting ended, Garfield went out and surveyed the aftermath. And he saw.
15:46 Speaker 02 A lot of young men spread out on a field. And at first, it looks as if they're sleeping. And then, you know, he realizes that they're dead. And the enormity of that, you know, stayed with him for the rest of his life.
16:09 Speaker 01 Ten months later, after his decisive win at the Battle of Middle Creek, Garfield was elected to the US Congress as a representative of Ohio. He had decided to keep fighting instead of reporting to DC. But then.
16:22 Speaker 02 Abraham Lincoln asks him to come back to serve because he said he needed him.
16:29 Speaker 03 I did this with great regret, for I had hoped to not leave the field till every insurgent state had returned to its allegiance. But the president told me he dared not risk a single vote in the House.
16:41 Speaker 01 Lincoln knew that he needed men like Garfield to make sure important legislation was passed. And Garfield soon found out that he could achieve more for the Union from his seat in Congress than at the helm of a battle.
16:54 Speaker 03 What legislation is necessary to secure equal justice to all loyal persons without regard to color at the nation's capital?
17:03 Speaker 01 During the war, he introduced a resolution that allowed black people to walk freely through Washington DC without any sort of pass or documentation, something that had long been required to prove their status as freedmen.
17:17 Speaker 02 Yeah, he was a radical Republican. I mean, he was very much involved in the Freedmen's Bureau. And he has not great things to say about Lincoln.
17:25 Speaker 01 Wow.
17:25 Speaker 02 He was frustrated with him because, you know, Lincoln's trying to keep everything together, but he's angry and he felt that Lincoln had kind of dragged his feet and taken too long to release the emancipation proclamation.
17:52 Speaker 01 On April 14th, 1865, President Lincoln was shot and killed.
17:59 Speaker 03 I am sick at heart. And it feel to be almost like sacrilege to talk of money or business now.
18:06 Speaker 01 Despite their differences, Garfield was devastated and more determined than ever to fight for black Americans' right to vote.
18:15 Speaker 03 Let us not commit ourselves to the senseless and absurd dogma that the color of the skin shall be the basis of suffrage.
18:24 Speaker 01 And as always, people were captivated by him.
18:27 Speaker 02 He was tall, he was strong, he was handsome. You know, he had this bigger-than-life personality. You know, he was just irresistible.
18:38 Speaker 01 And they listened.
18:39 Speaker 03 Have we given freedom to the black man? What is freedom?
18:46 Speaker 03 Is it the bare privilege of not being chained, of not being bought and sold, branded and scourged? If this is all, then freedom is a bitter mockery.
18:59 Speaker 01 Coming up, Garfield's rising star puts him on an unlikely path to the White House, even though it's the last thing he wants.
19:14 Speaker 01 My name is Leanne Spaniola. I'm in
19:16 Speaker 00 Dallas, Texas, and you're listening to Herlone. Thank you, guys, for this podcast. I'm smarter because of it. Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from Whole Foods Market. Cheers to fall savings at Whole Foods Market, home of higher ingredient standards. This Halloween, share chocolates and candies made without that spooky high fructose corn syrup. Throwing a party? Make it easy with a berry chantilly cake, ready to cook pizza, no antibiotics ever chicken wings, and sushi made fresh daily. Fall gatherings never tasted better. Save through November 3rd at Whole Foods Market.
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20:23 Speaker 06 Support for this podcast and the following message come from the Southern Environmental Law Center. No one voted for a dirty air. No one voted for polluted water. That's why S E L C is fighting back to defend the healthy environment everyone depends on, just as they've done for 40 years. Because clean air, clean water, and a healthy climate aren't political, they're fundamental. Learn more at SELC.org.
20:51 Speaker 07 Part two. Trickle becomes stream.
21:09 Speaker 01 On June 2, 1880, the Republican Party, the party of Abraham Lincoln, met in Chicago for its national convention.
21:19 Speaker 02 There were 15,000 people there.
21:22 Speaker 01 They're going to choose the Republican ticket for the 1880 presidential election.
21:27 Speaker 02 Everyone expects that Ulysses S. Grant is gonna get this nomination.
21:31 Speaker 01 Ulysses S. Grant was the Union's commanding general during the Civil War. A national hero who served two terms as president from 1869 to 1877.
21:42 Speaker 02 He's hoping for a third term.
21:44 Speaker 01 Back then, there were no limits on how many times you could be president.
21:47 Speaker 02 He's obviously still beloved, even though his past administrations have been sort of riddled with corruption.
21:54 Speaker 01 Corruption that partly came from the spoils system.
22:04 Speaker 03 The spoils system really is as old as democracy in this country.
22:08 Speaker 01 The spoils system is exactly what it sounds like. It's the idea that whoever wins the presidency should be able to fill all those federal government jobs with people who are loyal to the winner goes the spoils. So this meant that jobs like postman or tax collector weren't filled by the most qualified person, but instead, the job was given out like a perk to party loyalists. It had been in use for decades at all levels of government. But when the Civil War happened, suddenly, the federal government grew exponentially to support the war effort. And there were a lot of jobs to be filled via the spoils system. The Republican Party, which controlled every branch of government at that point, used it to their advantage.
22:53 Speaker 01 But when the war ended, many people started to call the system out as corrupt and unfair. In fact...
23:00 Speaker 02 Within the Republican Party, you had this deep divide. There were the stalwarts...
23:05 Speaker 01 Stalwarts.
23:06 Speaker 02 ...who believed that the spoils system was great, and it made a lot of sense, and they needed to protect it to keep it going.
23:12 Speaker 01 And then there were what some people derisively called...
23:16 Speaker 02 Half-breeds, who believed that it was essentially corrupt and needed to be reformed.
23:23 Speaker 01 The term "half-breed" was an insulting way to describe someone of mixed Native and European descent. And the stalwarts used that term to insult Republicans who criticized the spoils system, meaning they were only half-Republican.
23:36 Speaker 03 It's hard for Americans in the 21st century to understand how civil service reform could be like the number-one issue at the time. Top of the national agenda, but it was in the late 1870s.
23:46 Speaker 01 This is
23:47 Speaker 03 Scott Greenberger.
23:49 Speaker 01 He's the executive editor of a news site called Stateline and has written extensively about this time in American politics. He says going into the 1880 election, the spoils system
23:59 Speaker 03 was the major issue.
24:05 Speaker 01 So at the convention, Ulysses S. Grant was the candidate for the stalwart faction. His opponent, the candidate for the spoils system reformers, was a guy named John Sherman.
24:17 Speaker 02 And he desperately wanted this nomination.
24:20 Speaker 01 The custom at that time was for candidates to not attend the convention and to have someone else give a speech on their behalf, making the argument for why they would be the right candidate. No one wanted to appear too thirsty for the presidency. So Grant sends
24:36 Speaker 02 Sort of the king of the stalwarts. He was this man called Roscoe Conkling.
24:42 Speaker 01 Roscoe Conkling.
24:44 Speaker 02 And he was a senior senator from New York.
24:47 Speaker 01 He also had control over the New York City Custom House, where most of America's imported goods came in, where custom taxes on those goods were collected. They were a form of tariffs.
24:58 Speaker 02 So bringing in tons of money has a lot of power.
25:01 Speaker 01 And he used that power to make sure Republicans stayed in power.
25:06 Speaker 03 He is very pro reconstruction and pro civil rights, but he is also a great defender of the spoils system. In his view, when a new party comes in, whoever won the election, the president should be able to put his people in the position. So in that sense, it's not unlike the argument, in fact, it's the same argument that the Trump administration is making now, which is that, okay, the people elected me and my job as the executive is to implement the policies that I've been elected to implement and therefore, why shouldn't my people be in those positions?
25:36 Speaker 01 Conkling argued that the spoils system was the most realistic way for the Republican Party to achieve its goals, like civil rights for black Americans, expanding access to education and building more railroads.
25:49 Speaker 03 He said, people disparage our political machine, but a machine is just something that gets things done.
25:54 Speaker 01 So that's the person giving this speech for the stalwarts, Conkling. And Sherman, the half-breeds faction candidate, the person he chooses to give his speech is none other than James A. Garfield.
26:08 Speaker 02 So he goes to Chicago and he's up all night the night before.
26:18 Speaker 01 On the fourth day of the convention, Saturday, speeches were given on behalf of each candidate. Roscoe Conklin takes the stage.
26:27 Speaker 02 And it was fantastic.
26:30 Speaker 03 I rise in behalf of the state of New York to propose a nomination with which the country and the Republican Party can grandly win.
26:40 Speaker 02 Just fantastic.
26:41 Speaker 01 Conklin was in his bag, fiery and direct. He presented Grant as a noble war hero.
26:48 Speaker 03 Never defeated in war or at peace, his name is the most illustrious born by any living man.
26:59 Speaker 02 And he's got everybody completely worked up and they're pounding their fists and they're stomping their feet and they're cheering.
27:08 Speaker 03 He never betrayed a cause or a friend, and the people will never betray or desert him.
27:15 Speaker 01 The crowd is going nuts. They are cheering.
27:19 Speaker 02 For Grant, Grant, Grant, Grant.
27:21 Speaker 01 Conklin finishes his speech and the cheering just continues.
27:26 Speaker 02 And in the middle of this, Garfield has to get up and give the nominating address for John Sherman.
27:40 Speaker 03 Gentlemen of the convention, your present temper may not mark the healthful pulse of our people. When your enthusiasm has passed, when the emotions of this hour have subsided, we shall find below the storm and passion that calm level of public opinion from which the thoughts of a might people are to be measured and by which their final actions will be determined.
28:07 Speaker 02 And he's a completely different person from Roscoe Conkling. He's quiet and intellectual and thoughtful, but he's very, very powerful.
28:18 Speaker 03 Twenty-five years ago, this republic was bearing and wearing a triple chain of bondage. Long familiarity with traffic in the bodies and souls of men had paralyzed the consciences of a majority of our people.
28:33 Speaker 01 Garfield praises the great effort it took to erase slavery from the United States. He calls to renew that spirit.
28:41 Speaker 03 At that crisis, the Republican Party was born. Then, after the storms of battle, were heard the calm words of peace spoken by the conquering nation.
28:54 Speaker 02 There were a lot of reporters there, and I've read every single article about this. And they all described this hall just slowly becoming mesmerized.
29:06 Speaker 03 This is our only revenge, that you join us in lifting into the serene firmament of the Constitution to shine like stars forever and ever, the immortal principles of truth and justice, that all men, white or black, shall be free and shall stand equal before the law.
29:28 Speaker 01 In the middle of all this, he pauses and...
29:31 Speaker 02 He says...
29:32 Speaker 03 And now, gentlemen of the convention, what do we want?
29:38 Speaker 02 Someone in the crowd shouts, "We want Garfield."
29:44 Speaker 02 And everybody just goes crazy.
29:54 Speaker 02 And he's trying to quiet them down, and he literally says, "You know, my friends, my friends, please, I ask you, quiet down so you can hear what I have to say."
30:03 Speaker 01 He was there to get John Sherman the nomination. So he's horrified that instead of cheering his name, they're saying Garfield.
30:12 Speaker 02 He finishes his nominating address, and he sits down.
30:17 Speaker 02 And then suddenly, out of nowhere, someone stands up and gives one of their votes to Garfield. And he was like, "What?" And he stands up and he objects, but they shout him down.
30:29 Speaker 01 When the balloting begins, things proceed normally at first.
30:34 Speaker 02 Then, round after round, more and more and more votes start coming from him. Again, he's not a candidate.
30:41 Speaker 01 Garfield does not want to be the nominee.
30:43 Speaker 02 But this trickle becomes a stream, becomes a river, and then just this flood of votes.
30:54 Speaker 02 And Garfield suddenly finds himself the Republican nominee for President of the United States.
31:00 Speaker 01 Garfield is in total shock.
31:03 Speaker 02 Over the next few days, it's not just shock that he feels, it's grief. Because he knows that if he does then become president, he's going to have to give up so many of the things he loves.
31:24 Speaker 01 Meanwhile, Roscoe Conkling, the guy who gave the speech supporting Grant's nomination, he was not happy.
31:31 Speaker 02 He's furious.
31:32 Speaker 01 And suddenly, he feels like his interests are threatened.
31:36 Speaker 02 But they need him for the general election. They need his help.
31:40 Speaker 01 So Garfield and his allies start looking to smooth things over with the stalwarts.
31:45 Speaker 02 And what they decide on is that they're going to use his man.
31:49 Speaker 01 Conkling's protege.
31:51 Speaker 02 Chester Arthur, who will be Garfield's running mate.
31:58 Speaker 01 Chester Arthur was a man who had never held office. Yet here he was, being placed on the ticket as Vice President as a way to appease the stalwarts.
32:10 Speaker 01 And he was an unlikely running mate for Garfield. He was from Vermont, but moved to New York City as a young man to chase fame and fortune.
32:22 Speaker 03 Arthur actually, as a young man, was involved in the case that ended up desegregating New York City's streetcars.
32:30 Speaker 01 He was a progressive, and he was also great at schmoozing it up with the elites in the city.
32:35 Speaker 03 He was considered to be extraordinarily handsome. He was tall. He had those terrific mutton chop sideburns.
32:43 Speaker 01 Like a Civil War-era Great Gatsby.
32:46 Speaker 03 Sort of the backslapping guy who was interested in staying up all night, drinking and smoking cigars. That was Chester Arthur.
32:54 Speaker 01 During the Civil War, he met a number of political leaders. And after the war ended, he used those connections to become a lobbyist.
33:02 Speaker 03 From there, he became a very important part of the New York political machine.
33:07 Speaker 01 Roscoe Conkling took him under his wing and helped him become the head of the New York Custom House, where he got very involved in the spoils system.
33:15 Speaker 03 There were close to 1,000 patronage jobs there. And it was very, very important to the New York Republican machine, the statewide machine, to be able to reward its supporters with jobs at the Custom House.
33:26 Speaker 01 Classic spoils system.
33:27 Speaker 03 He's fully invested in the spoils system. He's a creature of the spoils system.
33:31 Speaker 02 He was completely loyal to Conkling.
33:35 Speaker 03 So this is Chester Arthur on the eve of the 1880 Republican Convention.
33:41 Speaker 01 So you can imagine, Arthur is very surprised when he's asked to join a Republican ticket with Garfield.
33:47 Speaker 03 He was an emotional person, and he was flabbergasted.
33:53 Speaker 01 But...
33:54 Speaker 03 He says, "You know what? This is the greatest honor that anyone has ever given me, and I'm gonna do it."
34:01 Speaker 01 And he does it. They do it. Garfield and Arthur, the divided ticket. They win the election. But obviously, it's still awkward, especially for Garfield.
34:14 Speaker 02 The person closest to him and his administration is his sort of sworn enemy.
34:22 Speaker 01 And the tension rises even more when Garfield dedicates a part of his inauguration speech to calling for reform of the spoils system.
34:32 Speaker 03 The civil service can never be placed on a satisfactory basis until it is regulated by law.
34:40 Speaker 02 He had freedmen and former slave owners in the crowd before him, tears in their eyes, you know, because there's so much promise and possibility for this still very young country.
34:54 Speaker 03 For the good of the service itself, for the protection of those who are entrusted with the appointing power against the waste of time and obstruction to the public business caused by the inordinate pressure for place, and for the protection of incumbents against intrigue and wrong.
35:15 Speaker 01 But not everyone was inspired by his message of reform.
35:19 Speaker 02 Conkling is not going to back down, and he's got his man right there in the White House.
35:25 Speaker 01 Chester Arthur, the new vice president.
35:27 Speaker 02 While Garfield is trying to set up his administration, Conkling is pulling every single person that Garfield's like, okay, maybe this guy, Conkling gets to them first and pulls them into his apartment, which they had nicknamed "The Morgue," and terrifies them and threatens them.
35:44 Speaker 01 He basically tells them, "Don't take a job with Garfield if you want a future in the Republican Party."
35:50 Speaker 02 Person after person starts backing out, like, "I thought I wanted that position in your administration, Garfield, but I'm sorry, I can't take it."
35:57 Speaker 01 President Garfield is getting sabotaged by Conkling and the stalwarts, and on top of all that, he has to face the realities of the spoils system every single day in the White House.
36:08 Speaker 02 At that time, people didn't think that there should be any protections for the president or any separation from the president.
36:16 Speaker 01 So every day, random people would walk into the White House in queue to ask the president for a job.
36:22 Speaker 02 Say you want to be in charge of your post office in your little town, go to the White House and make your case to the president himself.
36:30 Speaker 01 And Garfield hated it.
36:32 Speaker 02 This is what made life hell, really, for Garfield when he was president. He specifically said, "I don't know why anyone would ever want to be president."
36:53 Speaker 01 The man who shot President Garfield on July 2, 1881, a man named Charles Guiteau. He was one of these office seekers.
37:02 Speaker 02 Guiteau was Garfield's opposite in every way. He had failed at everything he had tried.
37:09 Speaker 01 He once started a newspaper. That failed.
37:12 Speaker 02 He had tried to be a lawyer.
37:13 Speaker 01 At one point, he was a member of a cult, basically a free love commune.
37:18 Speaker 02 They had nicknamed him Charles Get Out.
37:20 Speaker 01 He had campaigned for Garfield in 1880, which he felt entitled him to a big government job as a reward.
37:28 Speaker 02 I should be given the ambassadorship to France. And so, you know, no qualifications, but that's a spoiled system, he thinks.
37:36 Speaker 01 So then he starts.
37:38 Speaker 02 Writing to the White House, saying, yes, this is what I've done and this is what I'd like in return.
37:43 Speaker 01 He doesn't get a response. And so Guiteau starts showing up to the White House almost daily to personally ask Garfield for a job.
37:52 Speaker 02 At one point, he even walks into the president's office with Garfield there.
37:58 Speaker 01 He doesn't get the job offer he wanted, so he's furious and getting desperate.
38:02 Speaker 02 He doesn't have any money. He's moving from boarding house to boarding house.
38:07 Speaker 01 He's becoming hungrier and more delusional.
38:09 Speaker 02 He thinks God wants him to kill the president to make Chester Arthur president, so to get the stalwarts in office.
38:18 Speaker 01 He buys a pistol. And for weeks, he stalks President Garfield, looking for the right moment to strike.
38:25 Speaker 02 He reads that Garfield's going to be in the train station on July 2. And so he goes there and he's waiting for him when Garfield arrives.
38:54 Speaker 01 I'm the stalwart of stalwarts. Arthur is president now.
39:09 Speaker 01 These are the words Charles Guto screamed after shooting Garfield.
39:19 Speaker 01 Meanwhile, Vice President Chester Arthur is in New York with Roscoe Conkling.
39:25 Speaker 03 Someone tells them what has happened, that Garfield has been shot. And Arthur's reaction is, he basically just collapses in the chair. He can't, he can't even believe that this has happened.
39:41 Speaker 03 Not only is he shocked and upset that the President of the United States has been shot, he is fearful that people are talking about him as a suspect, that he and Conkling might be involved in this somehow.
39:56 Speaker 01 Conkling has a different reaction.
39:59 Speaker 02 He's like, great, this is our opportunity. Garfield will die, you'll become president, and I can run things again. But Chester Arthur has an opposite reaction. He's, he's grief-stricken.
40:09 Speaker 01 And the American people...
40:11 Speaker 02 Are furious. They think that Conkling and Chester Arthur were behind it, which they weren't, but they think that. And they think that Chester Arthur is just waiting in the wings. But strangely, the opposite is happening.
40:29 Speaker 01 Coming up, the letters that changed the American civil service forever.
40:40 Speaker 07 Hi, I'm Aline Racey, calling from San Jose, California. And you're listening to Throughline.
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42:12 Speaker 07 Part Three: Metamorphosis.
42:16 Speaker 04 To the Honorable Chester A. Arthur. The people are bowed in grief. But do you realize it? Not so much because he is dying, as because you are his successor.
42:30 Speaker 01 As President Garfield lies in the White House, an infection spreading through his body, Vice President Chester Arthur starts getting a series of letters.
42:41 Speaker 03 From this mysterious woman in New York.
42:43 Speaker 01 A 31-year-old, single woman.
42:45 Speaker 02 She was dressed as invalid, shut in.
42:49 Speaker 03 But she is a political junkie who clearly knows all about Chester Arthur and his background and how he grew up.
42:56 Speaker 04 Your kindest opponents say, "Arthur will try to write." Adding gloomily, "He won't succeed, though. Making a man president cannot change him."
43:05 Speaker 01 Her name is Julia Sand.
43:08 Speaker 03 They had never met before.
43:09 Speaker 01 At first, it seems that she, like most of the country, doesn't have high hopes for Arthur. But then she writes.
43:16 Speaker 04 "But making a man president can change him. Great emergencies awaken generous traits which have lain dormant half a life. If there is a spark of true nobility in you, now is the occasion to let it shine."
43:33 Speaker 03 So she really, she zeroes in on what he's feeling.
43:38 Speaker 04 Your past, you know best what it has been. You have lived for worldly things. Fairly or unfairly, you have won them. You are rich, powerful. Tomorrow, perhaps, you will be president. What is it all worth?
43:53 Speaker 03 She urges him, she says, "Listen, you can now make up for the, all these years of shady machine politics by doing the right thing, by championing civil service reform, by finally solving this issue that has resulted inevitably in this horrible event, the shooting of Garfield. You are the guy."
44:14 Speaker 04 Faith in your better nature forces me to write you, but not to beg you to resign.
44:20 Speaker 04 Do what is more difficult and more brave. Reform.
44:30 Speaker 01 Meanwhile, Garfield's condition is getting worse. Doctor after doctor visits him. Even Alexander Graham Bell brings his prototype for a metal detector to help doctors find where the bullets were lodged.
44:43 Speaker 02 This goes on for months.
44:46 Speaker 03 It's the front page of the, of the newspapers every day.
44:49 Speaker 02 It was just horrific.
44:52 Speaker 01 By August, it becomes clear to Garfield and his doctors that he's probably not going to recover. Garfield demands to be taken out of the White House. He wants to go to the sea.
45:09 Speaker 02 So they get a train and they got the inside of one of the train cars and they totally change it out. They put his bed in there and they take him to New Jersey.
45:28 Speaker 02 One of the most touching scenes is when they get to the house that's on a hill and the train tracks don't go up the hill, they stop. And all these people who are there waiting, they themselves lift this train car and pull it up the last few feet to the door of this house to try to save him some more misery.
45:54 Speaker 01 He spends the next several days there by the beach with his wife and family, staring out at the ocean.
46:02 Speaker 02 And that's where he dies.
46:05 Speaker 02 He died in September.
46:08 Speaker 02 September 19th.
46:25 Speaker 01 A few days later, Chester Arthur is sworn in as the 21st President of the United States. And Julia Sand never stops believing in him. She kept sending him letters.
46:39 Speaker 04 Nothing can be more beautiful than the manner in which you have borne yourself through this long, hard ordeal.
46:45 Speaker 01 Less than a year after becoming president, Arthur visited Julia Sand at her home.
46:51 Speaker 03 He just showed up on her doorstep in Manhattan one day.
46:55 Speaker 03 He came and said, you know what? You don't fully understand how hard it is to be in my position. You know, you criticize me for some things. You expect me to be an angel and it's impossible to be an angel on this job. But I really do appreciate these letters and they've meant a lot to me.
47:13 Speaker 02 She believed in him and I think it was that belief, you know, that helped him find the strength to try to do the right thing at last.
47:23 Speaker 01 Not long after he became president, Chester Arthur turned his back on his old mentor, Roscoe Conkling.
47:30 Speaker 03 For the vice presidency, I'm indebted to you and my, you know, role in the party. But for the presidency, I'm indebted to Almighty God. I'm in charge of the country and I need to serve all the American people and not just the political machine. So the first surprising thing that Arthur did was in his first annual message, which is what we now call the State of the Union. Chester Arthur does... What nobody thought he would do. He surprised everyone by endorsing civil service reform.
48:01 Speaker 05 Congress should deem it advisable, at the present session, to establish competitive tests for admission to the service. No doubts, such as have been suggested, shall deter me from giving the measure my earnest support.
48:15 Speaker 03 Chester Arthur, the stalwart of stalwarts, says, "We need to do something about this."
48:19 Speaker 01 It's a total 180 that tips the scales in favor of civil service reform.
48:26 Speaker 01 And there's already an Ohio senator who's been working on the issue.
48:31 Speaker 03 George Pendleton.
48:33 Speaker 01 George Pendleton was a prominent Democrat, and at that time, many Democrats were openly sympathetic to the former Confederacy.
48:41 Speaker 03 Pendleton did believe that Africans were inferior to white Americans.
48:46 Speaker 01 This is Tom Mack. He's a history professor at Cedarville University and the author of Gentleman George Hunt Pendleton: Party Politics and Ideological Identity in 19th Century America.
48:59 Speaker 03 He believed that slavery was a state issue.
49:01 Speaker 01 Pendleton was not a progressive like Garfield or Arthur, but he did agree with them on one thing.
49:07 Speaker 03 He is concerned about the spoils system. Now, the system's become elitist once again, and the only way to fix that is to reform civil service.
49:15 Speaker 01 And in order to do something about it, he has to go beyond his own party for support.
49:21 Speaker 03 Much of his party opposed him in the Civil Service 3-4. There is no question that most of his support comes from across the aisle.
49:29 Speaker 01 From Republicans. He puts together a civil service reform bill that would come to be called the Pendleton Act. It did things like set up a test for all federal government job seekers.
49:41 Speaker 03 You had to pass the exam in order to be able to be considered for a government job. This is the concept of civil service. By merit, if you're going to be working in the accounting office of the Treasury Department, you can actually keep a ledger.
49:52 Speaker 01 At this time, it was a revolutionary idea. You get the government job because of your ability, not just party loyalty. The spoils system was so entrenched in American politics, it was going to be hard to pass this bill. But President Garfield's death galvanized a movement for reform that couldn't be stopped.
50:13 Speaker 03 Finally gets passed both houses of Congress in 1883.
50:17 Speaker 01 And shortly after, on January 16th, 1883, a little over a year after Garfield's death, President Chester Arthur signed the Pendleton Act into law.
50:34 Speaker 03 It was most definitely the beginning of the professional civil service that we have now. And in subsequent decades, they added civil service protections for more workers, and it grew and grew and grew.
50:49 Speaker 01 At first, the Pendleton Act only covered about 10% of federal jobs, a few thousand federal workers. But as time went on, it expanded to eventually cover the vast majority of the federal workforce, which now measures in the millions.
51:05 Speaker 03 These people who are professional civil servants, many of whom have been there for decades through administrations, Democratic and Republican, they serve the American people. They're not serving whoever happens to be in the White House. And they have expertise, and yes, they're supposed to be implementing the laws faithfully, but their jobs are not to advance the agenda of any party or a particular president.
51:30 Speaker 01 Less than a year after he shot President Garfield, Charles Guiteau was executed. His madness had driven the country into mourning and inadvertently sparked a chain of events that would alter the future of the federal government of the United States.
51:47 Speaker 02 It doesn't always take a big event to change the course of history, right? It can be something as small as one man's madness.
51:54 Speaker 01 One woman's faith.
51:56 Speaker 02 One man's sort of personal ambition.
52:00 Speaker 01 And one man's death.
52:02 Speaker 02 To completely change the course of history.
52:21 Speaker 04 And that's it for this week's show. I'm Rund Abdelfatah.
52:25 Speaker 01 I'm Ramtin Arablouei. And you've been listening to Throughline from NPR.
52:41 Speaker 04 This episode was produced by me.
52:43 Speaker 01 And me. And.
52:45 Speaker 05 Lawrence Wu.
52:46 Speaker 07 Julie Kane.
52:47 Speaker 02 Anya Steinberg. Casey Minor.
52:50 Speaker 03 Christina Kim. Devin Kadyama.
52:52 Speaker 04 Irene Noguchi.
52:54 Speaker 01 Voiceover work for this episode was done by Mica Basqueer, Ashley Strachey, Emmanuel Martinez, and Ari Steinberg. Thank you to Johannes Dergi, Edith Chapin, Luis Clemens, Tony Cavan, and Colin Campbell. This episode was mixed by Maggie Luthar.
53:14 Speaker 04 Music for this episode was composed by Ramtin and his band, Drop Electric, which includes.
53:19 Speaker 03 Navid Marvi. Cho Fujiwara.
53:22 Speaker 01 Anya Mizani. Fact checking for this episode was done by Andrea Lopez Cruzado. And before we go, we have to shout out the book by Scott Greenberger, one of our guests on this show, called The Unexpected President: The Life and Times of Chester A. Arthur. And finally, if you have an idea or like something you heard on this show, please write us at [email protected] . And make sure you follow us on Apple, Spotify, or the NPR app. That way, you'll never miss an episode.
53:56 Speaker 04 Thanks for listening.
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