The Gilded Age Presidency Reconsidered
by
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In
his last annual message in December, 1880, Hayes recalled his experiments at
introducing competitive examinations into the various executive
departments. He indicated that the
examinations had worked well, and he asked for their extension to all offices
of the federal government. He also
requested that Congress appropriate $25,000 annually for a commission:
whose
duty it shall be to devise a just, uniform, and efficient system of competitive
examinations and to supervise the application of the same throughout the entire
civil service of the Government.[1]
Furthermore,
he stressed the need for legislation to regulate political contributions by
officeholders, and he asserted once more that they should be free to contribute
or not, as they desired. Finally, Hayes
came to the crux of the problem, the congressional presidential conflict over
appointments. He boldly castigated
congressional intrusion into the executive power of appointment and requested
Congress to adopt legislation “defining the relations of members of Congress
with respect to appointment to office by the President . . .”[2]
President
Hayes’ persistent demands for reform were, of course, only partly fulfilled
during his term, but they were successful enough to cause Democrats to develop
their own civil service reform program.[3] It was no small achievement for the President
to retain support of reformers and Stalwarts during his determined campaign for
reform. Hayes’ groundwork made it easier
for his successors to assert their independence of machine politicians. Moreover, Hayes employed executive power to
end political assessments and to increase efficiency in government
offices. Most important of all, the
President successfully challenged Conkling’s powerful
machine by persuading the Senate to accept the administration’s nominees for
the New York Customs House. In obtaining
his victory over Conkling, Hayes gained much needed
respect for the right of the executive to make appointments to executive
offices without having to accept undue interference from machine
politicians. Finally, Hayes laid the
foundations for the reform movement that gained momentum after
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About the Book
The Gilded Age Presidency Reconsidered is a
revisionist account in which the author examines the leadership of Presidents
Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Chester Arthur, and Grover Cleveland in
dealing with Civil service reform, economic problems such as the tariff, and
civil rights in the South. This work is limited to domestic affairs only, since
the author believes that is the area in which these president
accomplished much needed change.
The work challenges the traditional view that Congress dominated
these weak chief executives who hardly protested its actions. Nothing could be
farther from reality. By taking the actions they did, these presidents not only
helped solve immediate problems for the nation, but they also paved the way for
a significant growth of the president as a leader of the nation in the years
ahead. Without the foundations of these daring men, Theodore Roosevelt and
Woodrow Wilson would have encountered many more difficulties in expanding the
scope of presidential power in the early twentieth century.
About the Author
William Ketchersid has been a
professor of teacher at Bryan College for 28 years. During that time, in
addition to teach an array of survey classes, Dr. Ketchersid
has specialized in American Constitutional history, with a strong emphasis on
the presidency. As a result of his teaching and earlier work on his doctoral
dissertation, he discovered that the chief executives of the Gilded, with the
exception of Benjamin Harrison, have suffered from the standard view that after
Grant Congress dominated the national government until the presidency began to
almost miraculously emerge with intense strength during the terms of Theodore
Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. The author has discovered that Hayes, Garfield,
Arthur, and Cleveland faced economic and reform issues much more boldly than
most historians have been willing to admit. For this reason, he believes a
brief reconsideration of the presidency during the Gilded Age is needed.