Consequences of the Spoils System

Today’s installment concludes Andrew Jackson Becomes President,
our selection from Life of Andrew Jackson by James Parton published in 1860.

If you have journeyed through the installments of this series so far, just one more to go and you will have completed a selection from the great works of five thousand words. Congratulations! For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in Andrew Jackson Becomes President.

Time: 1829

The President, distracted with the number of applications for the New York collectorship, and extremely fond of Swartwout, gave him the place. Upon his return to New York his proverbial good-nature was put to a severe test; for the applicants for posts in the custom-house met him at every turn, crowded his office, invaded his house, and stuffed his letter-box. There was a general dismissal of Adams men from the New York Custom-house, and the new appointments were made solely on the ground that the applicants had aided the election of General Jackson.

Henry Lee was appointed to a remote foreign consulship, a place which he deemed beneath his talents and an inadequate reward for his services. He would probably have obtained a better place but for the fear that the Senate would reject the nomination. The Senate did reject his nomination even to the consulship, and by such a decided majority that nothing could be done for him. Even Colonel Benton voted against him. Lee, I may add, died soon afterward in Paris, where he wrote part of a history of the Emperor Napoleon.

Terror, meanwhile, reigned in Washington. No man knew what the rule was upon which removals were made. No man knew what offences were reckoned causes of removal, nor whether he had or had not committed the unpardonable sin. The great body of officials awaited their fate in silent horror, glad, when the office hours expired, at having escaped another day. “The gloom of suspicion,” says Stansbury, himself an office holder, “pervaded the face of society. No man deemed it safe and prudent to trust his neighbor, and the interior of the department presented a fearful scene of guarded silence, secret intrigue, espionage, and tale-bearing. A casual remark, dropped in the street, would, within an hour, be repeated at headquarters; and many a man received unceremonious dismission who could not, for his life, conceive or conjecture wherein he had offended.”

At that period, it must be remembered, to be removed from office in the city of Washington was like being driven from the solitary spring in a wide expanse of desert. The public treasury was almost the sole source of emolument. Salaries were small, the expenses of living high, and few of the officials had made pro vision for engaging in private business or even for removing their families to another city. No one had anticipated the necessity of removal. Clerks, appointed by the early Presidents, had grown gray in the service of the Government, and were so habituated to the routine of their places that if removed they were beggared and helpless.

An old friend of General Jackson’s was in Washington that summer. He wrote on July 4th to a friend:

I have seen the President, and have dined with him, but have had no free communication or conversation with him. The reign of this Administration -— I wish another word could be used -— is in very strong contrast with the mild and lenient sway of Madison, Monroe, and Adams. To me it feels harsh; it seems to have had an unhappy effect on the free thoughts and unrestrained speech which have heretofore prevailed. I question whether the ferreting out Treasury rats, and the correction of abuses, are sufficient to compensate for the reign of terror which appears to have begun. It would be well enough if it were confined to evil-doers, but it spreads abroad like a contagion: spies, informers, denunciations -— the fecula of despotism. Where there are listeners there will be talebearers. A stranger is warned by his friend on his first arrival to be careful how he expresses himself in relation to anyone or anything which touches the Administration. I had hoped that this would be a national Administration; but it is not even an administration of a party. Our Republic henceforth will be governed by factions, and the struggle will be who shall get the offices and their emoluments -— a struggle embittered by the most base and sordid passions of the human heart.”

So numerous were the removals in the city of Washington that the business of the place seemed paralyzed. In July a Washington paper said:

Thirty-three houses which were to have been built this year have, we learn, been stopped, in consequence of the unsettled and uncertain state of things now existing here; and the merchant cannot sell his goods or collect his debts, from the same cause. We have never known the city to be in a state like this before, though we have known it for many years. The individual dis tress, too, produced in many cases by the removal of the destitute officers, is harrowing and painful to all who possess the ordinary sympathies of our nature, without regard to party feeling. No man, not absolutely brutal, can be pleased to see his personal friend or neighbor suddenly stripped of the means of support, and cast upon the cold charity of the world without a shelter or a home. Frigid and insensible must be the heart of that man who could witness some of the scenes that have lately been exhibited here, without a tear of compassion or a throb of sympathy.

But what is still more to be regretted is that this system, having been once introduced, must necessarily be kept up at the commencement of every Presidential term; and he who goes into office knowing its limited and uncertain tenure, feels no disposition to make permanent improvements or to form for himself a permanent residence. He therefore takes care to lay up what he can, during his brief official existence, to carry off to some more congenial spot where he means to spend his life, or reenter into business. All, therefore, that he might have expended in city improvements is withdrawn, and the revenue of the corporation, as well as the trade of the city, is so far lessened and decreased. It is obviously a most injurious policy as it respects the interests of our city. Many of the oldest and most respectable citizens of Washington, those who have adhered to its fortunes through all their vicissitudes, who have ‘grown with its growth and strengthened with its strength,’ have been cast off to make room for strangers who feel no interest in the prosperity of our infant metropolis, and who care not whether it advances or retrogrades.”

This ends our series of passages on Andrew Jackson Becomes President by James Parton from his book Life of Andrew Jackson published in 1860. This blog features short and lengthy pieces on all aspects of our shared past. Here are selections from the great historians who may be forgotten (and whose work have fallen into public domain) as well as links to the most up-to-date developments in the field of history and of course, original material from yours truly, Jack Le Moine. – A little bit of everything historical is here.

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