A Just and Lasting Peace: A Documentary History of Reconstruction (56 page)

(August 31, 1876)

The November 1876 presidential election was a turning point in U.S. history. Americans of both North and South generally favored an end to Reconstruction's political, racial, and sectional tensions. By the mid-1870s white Southerners, the so-called Bourbon Democrats, already had “redeemed” much of their section. In summer 1876, only three Southern state governments remained under Radical Republican control. For their part, white Northerners found the Reconstruction era squabbles over states' rights and the “Negro question” increasingly unappealing. The Republican presidential candidate, Ohio governor Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893), was a man of unquestioned honesty and a champion of emancipation and black education. His Democratic rival, New York governor Samuel Jones Tilden (1814–1884), had been indifferent to emancipation and supported Andrew Johnson's conservative restoration policies. He earned a national reputation by bringing down New York's corrupt Tweed and Canal “Rings.” Though, as Carl Schurz observed in his August 1876 Cincinnati speech, both Hayes and Tilden promoted themselves as reformers, Schurz considered the Ohioan more committed to needed civil service reform and the New Yorker more prone to distributing spoils. In the election, Tilden received a popular vote majority of 250,000 votes, but Hayes's supporters successfully challenged sufficient electoral votes in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina to garner him a 185 to 184 electoral majority and the presidency. Interestingly, following his election, Hayes appointed Schurz his Secretary of the Interior, enabling Schurz himself to advance the cause of civil service reform.

The platforms, as well as the candidates of each, promise what they call “reform.” I will confess at once that I have lost my faith in the professions and promises made in party platforms. They have at last become, on either side, one of the cheapest articles of manufacture in this country, and that industry continues to flourish even without a protective tariff and in spite of the general depression of business. But civil service reform is not produced in that way. If we desire to ascertain by the success of which party that reform is most likely to be promoted, we must look to the character and principles of the candidates as well as to the component elements and general tendencies of the parties behind them. I am firmly convinced that one part of the necessary change, the driving from the public service of the corrupt officials who now pollute it, will be amply secured by the election of either of the two candidates for the Presidency. Governor Tilden has won his reputation as a reformer mainly by the prosecution of the canal ring in the State of New York. I will not follow others in questioning his motives, but readily admit that prosecution to have been an enterprise requiring considerable courage, circumspection and perseverance, for which he should have full credit. Should he be elected President, he will undoubtedly eject from their places, and, if possible, otherwise punish, all the dishonest officers now in the service; making a “clean sweep,” he will eject them, together with the good ones. Nor have we any reason to expect, with regard to the cleaning process, less from Governor Hayes, should he be elected to the Presidency. It is well known that Governor Hayes was not my favorite candidate for the Presidential nomination, and I am not in the least inclined to extol him with extravagant praise. What I shall say of him will be simple justice to his character and record. You, citizens of Ohio, have had the best opportunity to form your judgment of him, from a near observation of his official and private conduct, and as far as I know, that judgment, whether expressed by friend or foe, is absolutely unanimous. Three times he has been elected Governor of your State, against the strongest candidates of the opposition. True, he has had no occasion to break up canal rings, or other extensive and powerful corrupt combinations, for the simple reason that in Ohio they did not exist. But it is universally recognized not only that Governor Hayes is a man whose personal integrity stands above the reach of suspicion, a man of a high sense of honor, but that his administrations were singularly pure, irreproachable and efficient in every respect. If he had no existing corruption to fight, he certainly did not permit any to grow up. Nobody suspects him of being capable of tolerating a thief within the reach of his power, much less to protect one by favor or even by negligence. It is also well known that, while a party man, he always surrounded himself with the best and most high-toned elements of the organization, and kept doubtful characters at a distance. He is esteemed as a man of a very strong and high sense of duty and that quiet energy which does not rest until the whole duty is faithfully performed. The endeavor to purify the Government and to keep it pure will, therefore, with him not be a matter of artificial policy, but of instinctive desire, one of the necessities of his nature. He is honest and enforces honesty around him simply because he cannot be and do otherwise. In saying this I have only given the verdict of his opponents, and when here and there the assertion is put forth that Governor Hayes's Administration of the National Government would only be a continuance of the present way of doing things, it is one of those empty and contemptible partisan flings which prove only to what ridiculous extremities those are reduced who are bent upon inventing some charge against a man of unblemished character and a most honorable and pure record of public service.

The first cleaning-out process, then, seems well enough assured in any event. But the more important question occurs, in what manner that cleaning-out process is to be accomplished, and what is to follow. Where have we to look for that greater and lasting reform which is to insure an honest and efficient public service and a higher moral tone in our political life for the future? On this point both candidates have spoken in their letters of acceptance, and their utterances are entitled to far greater consideration than the party platforms. Look at the letter of Governor Hayes first. It is explicit, and remarkable for the clearness and straightforwardness of its expressions. Here are his words:

 

More than forty years ago a system of making appointments to office grew up, based upon the maxim “to the victors belong the spoils.” The old rule, the true rule, that honesty, capacity and fidelity constitute the only real qualifications for office, and that there is no other claim, gave place to the idea that party services were to be chiefly considered. All parties in practice have adopted this system. It has been essentially modified since its first introduction. It has not, however, been improved. At first the President, either directly or through the heads of Department, made all the appointments, but gradually the appointing power, in many cases, passed into the control of Members of Congress. The offices in these cases have become not merely the rewards for party services, but rewards for services to party leaders. The system destroys the independence of the separate departments of the Government. It tends directly to extravagance and official incapacity. It is a temptation to dishonesty; it hinders and impairs that careful supervision and strict accountability by which alone faithful and efficient public service can be secured; it obstructs the prompt removal and sure punishment of the unworthy; in every way it degrades the civil service and the character of the Government. It is felt, I am confident, by a large majority of the Members of Congress to be an intolerable burden and an unwarrantable hindrance to the proper discharge of their legitimate duties. It ought to be abolished. The reform should be thorough, radical and complete. We should return to the principles and practices of the founders of the Government—supplying by legislation, when needed, that which was formerly the established custom. They neither expected nor desired from the public officers any partisan service. They meant that public officers should give their whole service to the Government and to the people. They meant that the officer should be secure in his tenure as long as his personal character remained untarnished, and the performance of his duties satisfactory. If elected, I shall conduct the administration of the Government upon these principles, and all Constitutional powers vested in the Executive will be employed to establish this reform.

 

Then he pledges himself to the “speedy, thorough and unsparing prosecution and punishment of all public officers who betray official trusts.” And finally, “believing that the restoration of the civil service to the system established by Washington and followed by the early Presidents can be best accomplished by an Executive who is under no temptation to use the patronage of his office to promote his own reëlection,” he “performs what he regards as a duty in stating his inflexible purpose, if elected, not to be a candidate for election to a second term.”

This is the clearest and completest program of civil service reform ever put forth by a public man in this Republic. Not a single essential point is forgotten,—and what is more, there is in it no vagueness or equivocation of statement or promise. No back door is left for escape. Each point is distinct, precise, specific and unmistakable. It covers the whole ground with well-defined propositions. If this program is carried out, the reform of the civil service will be thorough and genuine; and if the reform is permanently established, the main source of the corruption and demoralization of our political concerns, the spoils system, will be effectually stopped. It will be the organization of the service on business principles. Even the opponents of Governor Hayes will be compelled to admit this. Some of them have indeed attempted to find fault with one or the other of his propositions, but their objections are easily disposed of. A few Democratic papers argue that if officers are kept in their places as long as their personal character remains untarnished and the performance of their duties satisfactory, the result will be “a permanent aristocracy of officeholders.” Is this so? Look back into the history of the Republic and you will find that under the early Administrations down to John Quincy Adams, public officers were kept in place as long as their character remained untarnished and the performance of their duty satisfactory. Where was the “aristocracy of officeholders” during that period? The officers of the Government were then a set of quiet, industrious, modest and unobtrusive gentlemen who did not try to control party politics, and did not steal, but did, as a general rule, studiously endeavor, by strict attention to their official business, to win the approval of the Government which employed them, and an honorable name for themselves. But no sooner was the good old custom supplanted by the system which transformed the offices of the Government into the spoils of party warfare, and made appointments and removals depend not upon the question of integrity and competence, but upon party service and claims to party reward, than a remarkable change occurred in the character as well as the pretensions of the officeholding class. No longer did they remain the quiet, unobtrusive and dutiful public servants they had been before, but they gradually attempted to control party politics in the different States, and transformed themselves into a regularly organized force of political prætorians employed by ambitious leaders to override the public opinion of the country. If there ever was anything that might be called an officeholding aristocracy in the worst sense of the term, it did not exist under the early Administrations when good official conduct was considered a valid title to continuance in place, but it was created by the spoils system which stripped the officer of his simple character of a servant of the Government, and made him a party agent, or in case of those of higher grade, a party satrap, obsequious to those above him and insolent to the people, over whom they thenceforth considered themselves appointed to exercise power and influence. If the civil service reform proposed by Governor Hayes reduces them to their proper level as servants of the people again, it will not be the creation, it will be the destruction of that odious sort of an officeholding aristocracy. Besides, the idea that a letter-carrier, or a customhouse officer, or a revenue agent, or a Department clerk, will become a member of an aristocracy, if left in office as long as he behaves himself well, has something so intensely ludicrous that it need scarcely be discussed. We might as well speak of an aristocracy of railroad conductors or hotel waiters.

Another very curious objection to Governor Hayes's reform plan is put forth by my esteemed friend Mr. Godwin in his recently published letter in favor of Governor Tilden, which has deservedly attracted much attention. He thinks that if officers are to be secure in their tenure as long as their character remains untarnished and the performance of their duties satisfactory, this principle will “give
all
the present incumbents an indefinite tenure, perpetuate their hold of the trusts they have so many of them abused” and be “in its practical operation an act of indemnity for all the felons and rogues who now infest and pollute the public offices.” The critics of Governor Hayes's letter of acceptance seem indeed to be in terrible stress for an objection. When the principle is laid down that the tenure of an officer shall be secure as long “as his character remains untarnished and the performance of his duties satisfactory”—can that be interpreted as meaning that the tenure of an officer shall also be secure, when he has become a bad fellow, so that his character is tarnished and the performance of his duties unsatisfactory? When Governor Hayes pledges himself to a “speedy, thorough and unsparing prosecution and punishment of all public officers who betray public trusts,” does that mean that those who have betrayed official trusts shall go unprosecuted and unpunished? Is that an act of indemnity to all felons and rogues who now infest and pollute the public service? Oh, Mr. Godwin, lifelong friendship for Governor Tilden may carry even a man of ability and great attainments beyond the point of safety in criticizing his opponents. The most charitable explanation of Mr. Godwin's objection is, perhaps, that he never read Governor Hayes's letter of acceptance. He can now, even after his criticism, read it with profit as a study on true civil service reform. No, the plan put forth by Governor Hayes is nothing more, and nothing less, than the revival of the principle and practice which prevailed under the early Administrations, whose elevated tone and purity are still the pride of American history; the principles and practice of the men whose wisdom and virtues we have exalted in the Centennial year with glowing eulogies; the men who, could they now appear among us, would say: “If you want truly to honor our names, do it a little less by praising our virtues, and a little more by following our example.”