Editing Spoils system (section)

== Andrew Jackson ==
{{Andrew Jackson series}}
Even before he entered the White House, some opponents of Jackson suggested that he had a habit of exploiting the public treasury. Samuel Clement, who had piloted steamboat troop transports for Jackson at the time of the [[Battle of New Orleans]], [[Pamphleteer|pamphleteered]] in 1827:<ref name=":0" />

{{blockquote|text="Some of those who zealously strive to increase the popularity, and promote the cause of general Jackson, figuratively say he will cleanse the [[Augean stable]] at Washington, meaning that he will expel the retainers at Washington and reduce the number of clerks in the secretaries offices. We have hitherto had but very little earnest of this disposition in the General; at New Orleans, the number of aides-de-camp which he had about him, I strongly suspect equated the number which Napoleon had, at the [[battle of Austerlitz]] or any other of his great battles; and if the General for the purpose of curtailing the public expenditures, should be disposed to reorganize the public offices, will any one have the hardihood to say, that he knows enough of the labour, and of the proper manner of conducting business in those offices to know how many clerks they require, and consequently how many he might with propriety send adrift; beside there are some reasons to doubt, whether the General has so very great an interest in preventing expenditures of public money, or whether he holds public property so sacred as some would have it believed he does."<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Clement |first=Samuel |url=https://da.mdah.ms.gov/series/books/detail/525009 |title=Truth Is No Slander |publisher=Printed at the Ariel Office |year=1827 |location=Natchez, Mississippi |pages=33 |id=McMurtrie MS Imprints No. 219, [[Shaw and Shoemaker (bibliography)|Shoemaker]] 28519 |via=Mississippi Department of Archives and History}}</ref>}}

[[1828 United States presidential election|In 1828]], moderation was expected to prevail in the [[United States presidential transition|transfer of political power]] from one U.S. president to another. This had less to do with the ethics of [[Politician|politicians]] than it did with the fact the presidency had not transferred from one party to another since the [[1800 United States presidential election|election of 1800]]—known historically for the extraordinary steps the outgoing [[Federalist Party]] took to try and maintain as much influence as possible by exploiting their control over federal appointments up until their final hours in office{{sfnp|McCloskey|2010|p=25}}{{sfnp|Chemerinsky|2019|loc=§&nbsp;2.2.1, p. 40}} (see: [[Marbury v. Madison|''Marbury v. Madison'']] and [[Midnight Judges Act]]). By 1816, the Federalists were no longer nationally viable, and the U.S. became effectively a one-party polity under the [[Democratic-Republican Party]].<ref>{{Cite journal |jstor = 42628249|title = "It Taught our Enemies a Lesson:" the Battle of New Orleans and the Republican Destruction of the Federalist Party|journal = Tennessee Historical Quarterly|volume = 71|issue = 2|pages = 112–127|last1 = Stoltz|first1 = Joseph F.|year = 2012}}</ref> The Jacksonian split after the [[1824 United States presidential election|1824 election]] restored the [[two-party system]].<ref>{{Cite journal | last1 = Stenberg | first1 = R. R. | title = Jackson, Buchanan, and the "Corrupt Bargain" Calumny | journal = The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography | volume = 58 | issue = 1 | pages = 61–85 | year = 1934| doi =  | jstor = 20086857 }}</ref> Jackson's [[First inauguration of Andrew Jackson|first inauguration]], on March 4, 1829, marked the first time since 1801 where one party yielded the presidency to another. A group of office seekers attended the event, explaining it as democratic enthusiasm. Jackson supporters had been lavished with promises of positions in return for political support. These promises were honored by a large number of removals after Jackson assumed power. At the beginning of Jackson's administration, fully 919 officials were removed from government positions, amounting to nearly 10 percent of all government postings.<ref name="howe2007">{{cite book|title=What hath God Wrought, The Transformation of America, 1815-1848|last=Howe|first=Daniel W.|year=2007|publisher=Oxford University Press, Inc.|isbn=978-0-19-507894-7|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/whathathgodwroug00howe}}</ref>{{rp|328–33}} In 1913 a history of Tennessee commented, "It is said that in early life Jackson had made it a principle never to stand between a friend and a benefit. The converse seemed also to have been a principle: never to benefit an enemy. And those who were excluded from his friendship were excluded from preferment."<ref>{{Cite web |title=A history of Tennessee and Tennesseans : the leaders and representative men in commerce, industry, and modern activities / by Will T. Hale and Dixon L. Merritt ... v.2. |url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044097947352&seq=180 |access-date=2025-01-11 |website=HathiTrust |page=430 |language=en}}</ref>

[[File:"Solicitor of the Treasury" Martinsburg Gazette, June 21, 1837.jpg|thumb|Reports of a plan to appoint [[Alfred Balch]] of Nashville to be Solicitor of the Treasury led a [[Martinsburg, Virginia]] newspaper to comment that former President "A. Jackson, it is evident, can yet provide for his friends by billeting them on the Treasury, as he use to do when he was the Government "'solitary and alone'." (''Martinsburg Gazette'', June 21, 1837)]]
[[File:"The Proscribed and the Spoilsmen" May 12, 1841.jpg|thumb|News article ("The Proscribed and the Spoilsmen," May 12, 1841) listed beneficiaries of [[nepotism]] and political patronage who were given jobs under the new Whig-party administration, including nephews and sons-in-law of high government officials, participants in the [[Buckshot War]], and the "president of a broken [[Wildcat banking|wildcat bank]]" ]]
Historians like [[Paul Wallace Gates|Paul W. Gates]] and especially [[Malcolm J. Rohrbough]] seem to have concluded that the transfer of land from Indigenous to U.S. government title was particularly susceptible to exploitation, and that "the bias against adequate support for public work and the political utility of patronage appointments conspired to create a system that functioned admirably to transfer public resources to private hands but showed itself inadequate to any more grandiose end."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Young |first=Mary |date=1969-12-01 |title=History of Public Land Law Development. By Paul W. Gates , with a chapter by Robert W. Swenson . (Washington, D. C.: [Public Land Law Review Commission.] 1968. Pp. xv, 828. $8.25.) and The Land Office Business: The Settlement and Administration of American Public Lands, 1789–1837. By Malcolm J. Rohrbough . (New York: Oxford University Press. 1968. Pp. xiii, 331. $8.75.) |url=https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article/75/2/571/62156 |journal=The American Historical Review |language=en |volume=75 |issue=2 |pages=571–573 |doi=10.1086/ahr/75.2.571-a |issn=1937-5239}}</ref> As told by Rohrbough in his history of the government land office to 1837, "Andrew Jackson himself displayed signs of frailty in a period when men were becoming increasingly flexible in their ethical standards."{{Sfn|Rohrbough|1971|p=278}} Jackson used government appointments as currency with which to pay political debts, for instance by directing Levi Woodbury to appoint a judge "the office promised worth $1000."{{Sfn|Rohrbough|1971|p=278}} Newspaper editors who had supported the campaign, in-laws, and "attorneys" and "colonels" who were skilled at graft were often among the beneficiaries of land office appointments; per Rohrbough, "Historians have dealt harshly with the land officers of this period."{{Sfn|Rohrbough|1971|p=291}} The most-changed organization within the federal government proved to be the Post Office. The Post Office was the largest department in the federal government, and had even more personnel than the War Department. In one year, 423 postmasters were deprived of their positions, most with extensive records of good service.<ref name=howe2007 />{{rp|334}} Jackson did not differ much from other Presidents in the number of officials he replaced by his own partisans.{{sfn|Friedrich|1937|p=10}} There was, however, an increase in outright criminality, with a measurable, if not marked, increase in corruption in the Land Office, Post Office, and Indian Affairs departments, for instance, see the embezzlement of government funds from the port of New York in what is known as the [[Swartwout–Hoyt scandal]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Howe |first=Daniel Walker |url=https://www.worldcat.org/title/122701433 |title=What hath God wrought: the transformation of America, 1815–1848 |date=2007 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-507894-7 |series=The Oxford history of the United States |location=New York |pages=334 |oclc=122701433}}</ref> In another case, Jackson had personally battled to get [[Samuel Gwin]], the son of an old friend, appointed to a land office job down in Mississippi; a Congressional investigation later found that Gwin "had left his office to buy some tracts and had resold them immediately at a 33 percent profit to settlers."{{sfnp|Gates|1968|p=152}} Furthermore, Jackson's replacement of 29 of 56 [[Indian agent|U.S. Indian agents]] was critical to his administration's [[Indian removal|systematic expulsion of Indigenous people]] from the lands east of the Mississippi River because it removed any institutional resistance and left "several zealous officers at the top who had little sympathy for indigenous Americans, and dozens of inexperienced, patronage appointees at the bottom."<ref>
{{Cite book |last=Saunt |date=2020 |first=Claudio |title=Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |page=85 |isbn=978-0-393-60984-4 |edition= |location=New York |lccn=2019050502 |oclc=1102470806}}</ref>

Jackson was also accused of dabbling in [[nepotism]] for the benefit of his family network of [[Wards of Andrew Jackson|wards]], [[John Donelson#Descendants|in-laws, and nephews]]. As one history of public administration described, "During Jackson's administration the policy of political patronage and nepotism in federal employment was intensified, partly because of his belief that rotation of government jobs was an essentially democratic process. What this actually implies is that political nepotism is not corruption, but one of the principles of sound democracy. This is, of course, ridiculous!"<ref>{{Cite book |last=Gildenhuys |first=J. S. H. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SmIyAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA300 |title=The Philosophy of Public Administration |year=2004 |publisher=Sun Media |isbn=978-1-919980-04-1 |page=300 |language=en}}</ref> In 1831, "A Corn Planter of Madison County" called out the political appointments and government-funded salaries of Jackson's kinsmen [[Stockley D. Hays]], [[John Coffee]], [[John C. McLemore]], [[Andrew Jackson Donelson|A. J. Donelson]], and [[Robert I. Chester|R. I. Chester]], asking, "Have we, sir, no high minded and honorable men amongst us, who are qualified to offices of honor, profit, and trust, but the [[Donelson family|nephews of President Jackson]]?"<ref>{{Cite news |date=1831-06-18 |title=A Corn Planter of Madison County |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/southern-statesman-a-corn-planter-of-mad/166510375/ |access-date=2025-02-23 |work=Southern Statesman |pages=2}}</ref> Historian Ronald P. Formisano wrote in 1976 about the state of Jacksonian scholarship, "Kinship has acquired considerable visibility in recent years as a binding tie among political élites, and it is too important to leave to genealogists. This traditional element seems to have been a cement of many oligarchies which controlled local parties. Its influence on patronage suggests that studies of different modes of distribution{{Mdash}}for example, party-oriented versus patron-client{{Mdash}}are needed."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Formisano |first=Ronald P. |date=June 1976 |title=Toward a Reorientation of Jacksonian Politics: A Review of the Literature, 1959–1975 |url=https://academic.oup.com/jah/article-lookup/doi/10.2307/1908989 |journal=The Journal of American History |volume=63 |issue=1 |pages=42–65 [54–55] |doi=10.2307/1908989}}</ref>

After Jackson and Martin Van Buren, succeeding Whig presidents swapped in Whig appointees of the same caliber and the cycle continued apace.{{Cn|date=April 2025}}