Institutional Corruption in the Early USA and How Well that Worked Out
The Spoils System and The Pendleton Act of 1883 and why this boring sounding subject matters most now
The early not rich and not powerful USA was marred by an unofficial political system that skewed voting to favor incumbents, enriched connected insiders and made dealing with the federal and state governments difficult. President Andrew Jackson institutionalized the system, his critics adopted it for themselves, and one of his pals named it Spoils System. It was corruption. It was dangerous.
To the Victor Belongs the Spoils
The term Spoils System was coined by Senator William Learned Marcy in 1832 while defending Jackson’s replacement of the minister to the UK with Martin Van Buren. He famously said, “to the victor belongs the spoils.”
Under the Spoils System, the head of state, be it president or governor or top dog of the local fiefdom, received the perk of owning the government and every agency in it. After every election, the victor removed the people working in the prior administration and installed their own friends and family members where they could extract cash and votes in exchange for every government act. Government workers served the top elected official and not the people.
Loyal government workers who owed their employment to the party boss used their position to extract money and favors and discriminate in favor of loyalists over everyone else. If you wanted something from the government, you had to pledge loyalty to the boss, work for or fund their campaigns and/or grease the palms of the loyal workers. And no one in office knew what the heck they were doing because their bosses hired them for loyalty and not skill or experience, so even when they wanted to help, they often couldn’t. Once the loyal workers learned the job (if they even tried), the new administration replaced them.
Jackson and his cronies defended the Spoils System as Trump defends promise to eliminate the nefarious sounding “deep state.” Jackson claimed his work to implement his agenda in the executive branch required complete loyalty up and down the federal hierarchy. He further claimed that government workers who were not periodically replaced to serve the election victor would grow lazy and corrupt. And he touted the active party organizations filled with loyal supporters.
To keep their lucrative double-dipping jobs, government employees campaigned for their boss, ran the conventions, canvassed, took voters to the polls, poll watched, extorted or strong armed voters, anything their boss needed to win. These happy cash laden patronage organizations eventually became Tammany Hall and the Chicago Machine and whatever they called it where you live.
Scandals Under the Spoils System
One could argue that every day under the Spoils System was scandalous while licenses, approvals, grants, easements, information distribution, and everything one might need from the government to live or run a business relied on payoffs and political support. But here are a few of the more famous Spoils System scandals:
The Post Office Scandal
Jackson himself owned the first Spoils System related scandal. Jackson replaced about 10% of the federal workforce, mostly in the Post Office. In the 1820s and 1830s, the Post Office was a big fish in the small federal government pond and controlled large sums of federal money through franking (public officials and certain party loyalists could send letters or political literature for free), and dissemination of the only information pipeline available, newspapers.
Under the Spoils System, Jackson replaced about 500 Postmaster jobs. Jackson used his Postmasters to fight with the Second Bank of the United States (BUS) in his “Bank War” with the new Whig Party. During the fight, the Whigs complained that the Post Office had become a “vast political corporation… with an intimate association with the public press.”
Jackson’s Post Office subsidized the printing and distribution of newspapers, like the Kentucky Globe that supported Jackson’s anti-BUS policies. Whigs complained that their publications opposing Jackson and favoring BUS weren’t distributed. Whigs further complained that the Post Office abused franking privileges, favored loyal editors to print official government documents, lavishly paid off loyal private mail distribution firms.
Money flowed among loyalists inside and outside the Post Office with much of it funded by Jackson’s favorite state banks, called “pet banks.” The pet banks received contracts in exchange, contracts that were supposed to be granted through a public bidding process. On the other side, Whigs used the BUS similarly, as much as possible where they were in office.
The Civil War and Reconstruction Scandals
The Lincoln Administration suspected some federal and state workers of using their offices to promote Secession and spy on the US government from within. Early in the war, the Baltimore Chief of Police blew up railroad bridges serving the city from the north impeding troop transportation to Washington DC. In a long series of events surrounding this explosion, the federal government arrested a man named Merryman, a suspect in the explosion. This case is usually cited as a civil liberties violation as the Lincoln administration suspended habeas corpus. In addition to that mess, the good old patronage Post Office injected it’s own patronage cronies into the situation, hampering distribution of New York newspapers that disagreed with their point of view on the war and affecting Merryman’s trial.
Another public worker scandal hit the fan after the war and during Reconstruction. The House impeached President Andrew Johnson over an alleged violation of the Tenure of Office Act. The main charge against Johnson in the impeachment was that he had removed Secretary of War Edwin Stanton against objections in the Senate, and attempted to replace him with Civil War hero Ulysses S. Grant while Congress was out of session (Note: Now such out-of-session appointments are deemed okay if the media likes the party controlling appointments).
Grant resigned fearing retribution, but read on to see what he does as President.
After Grant’s resignation, Johnson replaced Stanton with Lorenzo Thomas. This appointment resulted in a physical kerfuffle between Stanton and Thomas. Federal marshals arrested Thomas and held him for several days until federal law enforcement dropped the charges against him and Congress decided to go after President Johnson instead. Impeachment managers lacked the votes and the Senate acquitted Johnson. But one of the House Impeachment managers, Benjamin Butler, complained that someone offered patronage jobs in exchange for Johnson’s acquittal. And, pro-Johnson forces complained that anti-Johnson forces bribed one Senator with the prized minister post in Great Britain. To this day no one really knows if Johnson should have or should not have been removed. The case was decided on corruption.
The Grant Scandals
Grant looked smart and perhaps less corruptible in the above case, but his character fell to the Spoils System, too. Grant initially supported civil service reform and appointed a commission to look into new rules for testing and appointing civil servants. But Congress withdrew funding and Grant went all in appointing NY Governor Edwin D. Morgan’s crony Chester A. Arthur to the top position at the New York Customs House over the experienced assistant.
Spoils System corruption fueled the rest of Grant’s administration, including a national financial panic, Black Friday, involving Grant’s brother Orvil, one of many relatives he hired. Orvil made a little money on the side overpaying military contractors and taking kickbacks.
Grants secretaries of war, navy and interior, and Grant’s private secretary also made money on the side. The latter allegedly pocketed some whiskey tax payments. A larger bribery scandal sat under those allegations, the Whiskey Ring. The Whiskey Ring was a group of whiskey distillers and distributors. They bribed government cronies to avoid paying excise taxes. By the end, the courts convicted over 100 people. Grant hired and fired the special prosecutor, and testified for the defense. Federal agents recovered around $3 million.
No one knows exactly how much the Whiskey Ring and political cronies stole from the American people. And the kicker was that Grant’s reelection campaign used some of the ill gotten gains from the scandal, and he won still running on being a Civil War hero. The double kicker is that liquor distillers and distributors were involved in many similar scandals throughout the post Civil War years and funneled cash into Republican Party campaigns up and down ballots in several states. The ring became its own crime syndicate that survived after the Spoils System ended.
When the new US Project 2025 government ends the professional IRS and replaces the income and corporate taxes with a series of tariffs and excise taxes, and you’re going to see a lot more of the above described corruption.
The Gilded Age Scandals
Television fans have romanticized the Gilded Age for all the balls, pretty gowns, top hats, marriage market romances, and downstairs antics, but if historians wrote television series, it would be about Spoils System corruption. Corruption was rampant at all levels of government. Political bosses ran US cities like mob dons. New immigrants and formerly rural job seekers in the cities quickly learned they had to fund and assist local politicians to get what they needed to start their new lives and businesses. Corporations including the railroads, heavy industries, and financial institutions, entered the Spoils System funding political cronies for favorable government actions. They made substantial political contributions for government subsidies, land grants, political appointments for allies, control public funding for projects.
The Star Route Scandal
From the Grant Administration in 1872 to the great overhaul of the US government civil service in 1883, the Post Office granted mail delivery contracts to private companies, favoring cronies and overpaying them leading to four separate bribery investigations. In one investigation, the players in question included US Senator from Arkansas, Stephen Wallace Dorsey and Assistant Postmaster General Thomas J. Brady, connected insiders the Hayes administration granted a contract. Opponents had already accused him of improper campaign finance spending in Indiana. The investigation went nowhere under a cloud of bribery. President Hayes eventually stopped granting star route contracts but only after additional charges of graft and corruption between contract grantors and recipients who were also high level government insiders turned private contractors (sound familiar?) Widespread corruption. Many charged. Few convictions.
President Garfield Assassinated
Corruption born from the Spoils System got so bad that it all resulted in the assassination of President James Garfield in 1881.
While President, Garfield claimed to support civil service reform, he didn’t do much about it and played the game. But he wasn’t a fan of the actual task of finding positions for political cronies and was less than welcoming when Charles J. Guiteau sought to present his case for appointment as consul in Paris. Garfield and his Secretary of State, James G. Blaine, thought Guiteau unqualified and appointed someone else. Guiteau, who didn’t speak French, decided Garfield rejected him, not for his lack of language skills or experience but because he belonged to a different faction within the Republican Party, the Stalwarts. Garfield, a Half-Breed, was known for appointing members of the Stalwart faction to balance things out, but Guiteau either didn’t know or didn’t care.
Half-Breeds, Stalwarts, doesn’t this start sounding childish at some point.
Guiteau shot Garfield who eventually died from the gunshot wounds.
The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883
Some politicians recognized the need for civil service reform from the Civil War and aftermath scandals, but the assassination of James A. Garfield shamed Congress into reform. The new law, called the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, required all federal government jobs be awarded based on merit and not political affiliation and established the Civil Service Commission to regulate hiring and promotions.
Reformers worked for many more years to uproot corruption in state and local governments. FDR and New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia took down Tammany Hall. FDR created the Seabury commission to investigate and then exposed Tammany Hall’s mob connections. La Guardia campaigned hard against Tammany Hall corruption, won, and implemented a merit-based civil service as mayor in the 1930s. New York Mayor John Lindsay stopped an attempted resurgence in the 1960s by addressing social and economic issues that Tammany Hall politicians sought to exploit to regain power.
The Northern District of Illinois court writing Shakman decision and order (detailed in my prior post) took down the Chicago Machine.
But many states and local governments remain run by political hacks. Those are the ones you don’t hear about because they’re so locked down by loyalists no one ever whistle blows and no one prosecutes.
The “Deep State” and the Teardown of the Professional Civil Service
QAnon cultists and Trump supporters, urged on by Trump and Republicans created a narrative denigrating merit-based civil service workers as the “deep state.” These worker are really experts or experienced workers who passed civil service exams or otherwise proved their merit. They’re supposed to retain offices and jobs through administration changes.
Trump and Republicans don’t like the professional civil service. They’re useless for promoting nonsensical non-fixes to real or non-problems. They can put up inconvenient roadblocks against lies and bad policies, flowing graft and indefinite power.
When Trump talks about the “deep state” or “draining the swamp” he’s talking about repealing or simply ignoring the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act that created a professional, not politically affiliated civil service. Democrats weren’t smart enough to campaign on that.
When Trump implements his new version of the very old Spoils System, you won’t be able to get a thing out of a federal government office (or state office when states follow suit) without handing over cash or pledging active support of their agenda or candidates. Trump won’t have to end elections. He can fix all of them using the old Spoils System.
If you think the rich and connected control everything now, as the old song line goes, “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” But your great great grandparents did which is why they were poor, sick, and uneducated. They wanted better for you and many of you threw it away in-fighting against other minority groups and women. It took the better part of the 19th century to do away with federal patronage corruption and another century to eliminate or lessen it in the states. This time the party bosses won’t just own the Post Office, they’ll own every single source of information and communication from television to email, texts, and the Internet.