Who was Roscoe Conkling? The real story of how US politics’ ‘spoils system’ met its match

Netflix drama Death by Lightning has revived interest in the turbulent politics that shaped James Garfield’s brief presidency, and at the heart of that drama stood two Republican powerbrokers – Roscoe Conkling and James Blaine. Their rivalry helped fracture their party and set the stage for Garfield’s rise and the collapse of the spoils system.

Conkling was charismatic, theatrical, and ruthless. More importantly, he controlled a powerful faction within the Republican party known as the Stalwarts, whose influence depended on the ‘spoils system’ – an issue which had flourished unchallenged in the politics of the United States of America since the 1820s.

While Death by Lightning is ultimately the story of Garfield’s untimely death in 1881, following his shooting by Charles Guiteau, much of the action derives from this seemingly unsurmountable rift in the Republican party of the time.

What was this system, what was Conkling’s role in it, and why was it so important to the assassination of President James Garfield?

Here’s the real history.

The Stalwarts, the Half-Breeds, and the spoils system

Speaking on an upcoming episode of the HistoryExtra podcast, historian and biographer CW Goodyear describes Conkling as “a colourful bantam rooster of a politician” who walked through Congress “like a bird of paradise amid a barnyard of DC fowl”.

And as for the system in which he thrived, Goodyear explains that in this era “the civil service, all of the jobs in the federal government, were awarded by politicians to their cronies”.

That arrangement allowed corrupt networks to flourish, and created something called the spoils system through which politicians could “basically rig elections” and “bribe people, and then reward places on the public payroll to their loyalists”.

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These loyalists, in turn, would often “skim money from the public to enrich themselves and give money back to their political patron”.

“It created machine-based politics,” says Goodyear, and the Stalwarts were the system’s unrepentant practitioners.

The Stalwarts represented one faction of the Republican party of the late 1870s, while their opposition was called the Half-Breeds. “We know how to name them, don't we?” jokes Goodyear. And, as the Republican Convention of 1880 approached, along with a need to nominate the party’s presidential candidate, they were at loggerheads.

Who was the real Roscoe Conkling?

Roscoe Conkling was a New York senator who also courted controversy and attention in his personal life, explains Goodyear.

“He was a ladies’ man who always dressed in myriad bright colours, polka dots and stripes and matching socks. He had his pages followed behind him in a single file like he was a priest.”

He also cut a distinctive figure with his hairstyle: “He had something they called a Hyperion curl, this single lock of hair that would kind of split his forehead.”

Ultimately, says Goodyear, Conkling’s biggest impact was as the florid, eloquent, and incredibly brutal boss of the Stalwarts. And for Conkling and his cronies – who included politician and future US President Chester A Arthur – the spoils system was not corruption, but the proper way to wield power.

They aimed to place former president Ulysses S Grant back in the White House for a then unprecedented third term, believing this would let them “extend their style of corruption to all branches of the federal government”.

Opposing the Stalwarts were the Half-Breeds, led by a politician named James Blaine, along with other reform-minded Republicans who were desperate to professionalise government service.

Senator James Blaine of Maine, a figure Goodyear calls “the first American politician to run on charisma and nothing else”, was widely assumed to be a future president because of his magnetism and charm. Yet, as Goodyear notes, Blaine ran for the Republican nomination for the Presidency five times, “and he never won.”

Blaine’s personal feud with Conkling ran even deeper than the factional divide. According to Goodyear, Blaine and Conkling “personally hated each other, long before these factions became a thing”.

Despite claiming to oppose Stalwart corruption, the Half-Breeds “also dabbled in spoils politics” and Blaine himself “was seen as being a very corrupt figure as well”.

This left the Republican Party bitterly divided, while a third group of reformers insisted upon a need to clean up the civil service and get rid of “the practices that had led to people like Conkling and Blaine”.

What happened at the 1880 Republican Convention?

By 1880, with a Republican convention approaching, the party was on the verge of political collapse, and Goodyear notes that many Republicans felt their only hope was a universally respected unifier. They converged on one name – ‘The Man from Ohio’, Congressman James A Garfield.

Garfield never sought the nomination. Yet at the 1880 convention, after dozens of deadlocked ballots, delegates began spontaneously switching to him.

When Wisconsin unexpectedly assigned Garfield enough votes to place him in the running, the Ohio congressman rose and insisted that “no candidate can receive votes without their consent”.

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This refusal, says Goodyear, delivered in the heat of chaos, made Garfield appear sincere and selfless. On the next ballot, delegates elevated him to the nomination.

Yet the party remained divided, and Garfield still walked a fine line. To soothe Conkling, Garfield accepted a Stalwart running mate: Chester Arthur. Goodyear calls Arthur “one of the most notoriously corrupt Stalwarts,” noting that as Collector of Customs at the Port of New York Arthur had personally pocketed a proportion of import fees, a perk that (until President Rutherford B Hayes removed him from the post in 1878) had made him immensely wealthy.

But while he gave a nod to the Stalwarts faction with Garfield’s appointment, on other fronts, Garfield was ready to play hard ball.

Garfield vs Conkling: what happened?

Garfield “was very much dancing on the heads of snakes,” says Goodyear, trying to keep both the Half-Breeds and the Stalwarts happy. “And then the predictable happened, which was that the Stalwarts didn't get the jobs they want.

“And Roscoe Conkling, this embroidered turkey of a politician, basically waged war against Garfield.”

Once Garfield entered the White House in March 1881, he refused to hand Conkling control of federal appointments.

Conkling was basically “trying to use veto power to put his own cronies in the jobs he thinks Garfield promised him,” says Goodyear, and the Stalwart leader retaliated by trying to block Garfield’s nominees. But Garfield held firm.

After conspiring with leading Stalwarts, including Arthur who by then was Vice President, Conkling responded with what Goodyear characterises as “a huge miscalculation”.

“Conkling and one of his cronies, Tom Platt, resigned from the Senate,” says Goodyear. The pair were fully confident that the New York legislature would immediately reappoint them.

But this did not have the desired effect of forcing Garfield’s hand. Instead, Garfield was able to rely on support from other Stalwarts who moved in defiance of Conkling, which allowed Garfield to appoint the people he wanted.

Conkling and Platt were not re-elected, laying bare the extent of their misjudgement, and no longer beholden to the brutal politics of the Stalwarts, Garfield now had much freer rein.

How the spoils system spawned a tragedy

It was soon afterwards that tragedy struck. A mentally unstable office-seeker named Charles Guiteau, immersed in the logic of the spoils system, had convinced himself that murdering Garfield would make Arthur president and earn him diplomatic office. Goodyear notes that Guiteau was wrapped up in the belief that Arthur “would be so grateful” that he would reward Guiteau with a prestigious position as an ambassador.

Guiteau shot Garfield in July 1881, and the president suffered for 80 days while being cared for by his wife, Lucretia Garfield, before dying from infection.

Garfield’s death ignited national outrage. According to Goodyear, reformers used him as “a fallen saint, a fallen hero,” turning Garfield’s cause of civil service reform into “the grassroots fiery political movement in the United States”.

How did the spoils system end?

The final chapter in the story of the spoils system belonged to Chester Arthur. Expected to be Conkling’s puppet, he was instead transformed by grief and conscience.

Goodyear explains that Arthur “used it as an opportunity to turn his life around”, ultimately championing and signing the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act in 1883, the first major law to professionalise federal employment and dismantle the old system that had created him.

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Arthur’s redemption was so complete that, as Goodyear describes, “no one ever entered the White House more widely distrusted and no one ever left it more generally respected.”

CW Goodyear is the author of President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier (Simon and Schuster, 2023). Goodyear was talking to Elinor Evans on the HistoryExtra podcast

Death by Lightning is streaming on Netflix now. For more content like this, check out the best historical movies of all time as chosen by historians, history TV shows and films to stream tonight, and our picks of the new history TV and radio released in the UK this week