Throughline - The Deadly Story of the U.S. Civil Service

Episode Date: April 24, 2025

When James Garfield won the Presidency in 1880, Charles Guiteau got ready to accept his new government job. No one had actually offered him a job – but he'd campaigned for Garfield, so he assumed he'd be rewarded. That was the spoils system, and it was how the government worked.But President Garfield didn't hire him. Guiteau was furious. And on July 2, 1881, he followed Garfield to a Washington D.C. train station and shot him.Today on the show: how an assassination meant to restore the spoils system instead led to its end, and birthed the modern federal workforce.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Having news at your fingertips is great, but sometimes you need an escape. And that's where Shortwave comes in. We're a joy-filled science podcast driven by wonder and curiosity that will get you out of your head and in touch with the world around you. Listen now to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR. you July 2nd, 1881. President James A. Garfield is about to board a train at the Baltimore Potomac train station, which is in Washington, D.C. He's headed to New Jersey with his sons to visit his ailing wife. It's about 9.30 a.m.

And what he doesn't know is there's a man named Charles Gouteau. Charles Gouteau. Who has been stalking him for weeks. Garfield has no security detail within. with no security detail within. Garfield walks into the train station and Guteau almost immediately steps out of the shadows. With a pistol in his hand. He fires two shots at President Garfield. He shoots him once in his arm, and then he shoots him again in his back.

One bullet gets lodged just below his pancreas. There's this sort of moment of shock and silence. And then just the entire station just erupts and screams. Garfield is lying on this floor in a train station with two bullet holes in him. A group of men rush to President Garfield and grab him. And they get this old horse hair and hay mattress and they put Garfield on it and they take him to a room above the train station. He's still alive and a parade of local doctors arrive to look at his wounds. Every doctor who comes sticks unsterilized fingers and instruments in his back again and again. I mean it's incredibly like unbelievably

painful but also obviously introducing so much infection. Assassination can no more be guarded against than death by lightning. And it's best not to worry about either. James A. Garfield. Charles Gouteau, the man who shot President Garfield, is arrested right away at the train station. He's immediately taken to a prison. And he wastes no time in telling police why he did it. He believed that God had chosen him for a great purpose.

So he thinks that he helped Garfield win the White House. Gouteau had delivered a single speech for Garfield's campaign. And when Garfield won the presidency, he believed he was owed a major government job in return. When he didn't receive it, he thought killing Garfield would make things right. He was mentally ill and he was delusional. He believed very happily and vigorously in the spoils system. The spo spoil system. The spoil system. That's referring to the way federal government jobs were filled at that time.

Basically, when a new president would come into office, he'd dole out plum jobs, everything from postmen to cabinet secretaries, as a reward to people in his party, to his supporters, his loyalists. It was a controversial issue at the center of American politics even then. And over the next several months after President Garfield's shooting in 1881, Americans would read the newspapers every day

to find out the latest about his condition and the trial of Charles Gouteau. The fallout of the shooting on that hot day in July would forever change the very nature of the US government. It's a story of redemption and corruption, and how one event can bring the best and worst out of politicians. Ultimately, this is a story about the origins of the modern federal civil service, an institution that's today being fought over again. I'm Randa Abdel Fattah. And I'm Ramtin Arab-Louis. On this episode of Thru Line from NPR, the Long Shadow of 1881.

This is Oladipopo Ishola from Maryland, USA. You are listening to True Line from NTR. Bye bye. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things and other currencies. With WISE, you can send, spend, or receive money across borders, all at a fair exchange rate. No markups or hidden fees. Join millions of customers and visit wise.com. T's and C's apply. This message comes from NPR sponsor Air Canada. Ready for your next adventure? How about taking in views upon views in Athens, browsing mouth-watering night markets in Bangkok,

or dancing to Carnival in the Caribbean? With amazing beach breaks, city breaks, and bucket list trips to choose from, Air Canada has you covered. Start planning your trip to over 180 destinations today at aircanada.com or contact your travel agent. Air Canada, nice travels. Hey, it's Rand.

In our latest bonus episode, we hear from our producer, Lawrence Wu, about the world's first automatic machine gun and the lengths he took to find out exactly what it would have sounded like in a 19th century battle. Listen now and get sponsor-free listening for all of our episodes by signing up for ThruLine Plus at plus.npr.org slash ThruLine. Part One from the Wilds of Ohio. of Ohio.

Around 20 miles from Cleveland, a fire is burning. The year is 1833. It's three years since President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, aiming to force the last native populations from the state. Ohio is still largely undeveloped, and this part of the state is full of trees. The thickly wooded forest is the perfect tinder for the fire that is racing towards a lone log cabin, the Garfield family's home. The outcome seems inevitable, but Abram Garfield, the father of James Garfield, the country's future president, won't let everything he saved and fought for disappear just like that. everything he saved and fought for disappear just like that.

All day through the flames and smoke, he and his brothers fight the fire. Somehow he does it. The cabin and his family survive. But days later, Abram gets very ill. On the brink of death, he turns to his wife, Eliza, and says, I have planted four saplings in these woods. I leave them in your care. Four saplings, his children. James Garfield was the youngest. He was born into extreme poverty.

He didn't have shoes until he was four. This is Candace Millard. She's the author of Destiny of the Republic, which is all about the country's 20th president, James Garfield. This guy was extraordinary and he's been completely forgotten. Raised by a widowed mother in Ohio, He was our last president born in a log cabin. Garfield grew up surrounded by trees, and his thoughts were nowhere near the machinations of the White House.

Instead, he dreamt of the sea. Instead, he dreamt of the sea. women being in great abundance to gratify him during his hours of relaxation, make this a congenial region for the lawless." As an adult, Garfield recalled how reading about the ocean, pirates and sailors fueled his nautical ambitions. I formed a determination to become a sailor. Although Garfield didn't even know how to swim, he set off at the age of 16 against the protests of his mother, who wanted him to get an education. He started working in Lake Aries canals. I knew almost nothing about the water except what I had read. The consequence was I fell into the canal just 14 times and had 14 almost miraculous escapes from drowning. After so many near drownings and then a terrible case of malaria, Garfield

headed back home where his mother and brother had been hatching a plan to get Garfield back in school. They saved a little bit of money. They put together $17 to be able to send him to college. So he enrolls at a local school, but it's expensive. He finished the term with just six cents to his name. To help pay his tuition, he was a carpenter and a janitor. But he's brilliant. And just a few years after graduating, he returns to his local college.

They made him a professor of literature, mathematics, and ancient languages. And not long after that, he became the college's president. And, okay, I know at this point you're probably thinking, this sounds a lot like the plot line for Good Will Hunting, but this is real. This is really how it goes down for James Garfield. He wrote an original proof of the Pythagorean theorem. So he was also this amazing mathematician.

For him, education was his path out of poverty and into a new life. He was an incredible classicist. He knew Greek, he knew Latin, he knew huge sections of the Aeneid by heart in Latin. He was just off the charts brilliant. But honestly, what was more interesting to me and more important to me about Garfield than his brain was his heart. Garfield grew up in a devout Christian family, and that definitely influenced the way he saw the world. He belonged to the disciples of Christ.

That was very informative in his life. I think in their family, they really took seriously the idea of that you try to do the best not just for yourself and for your family, but for those around you and for civilization and for history. So when it came to the country's fierce debate over the ongoing system of slavery, Garfield had only one answer. He was a fierce abolitionist. At such hours as this I feel like throwing the whole current of my life into the work of opposing this great evil.

He was this incredibly powerful speaker. Not shy and always happy to stand up for what he believed in. Garfield, who by this point had already become a lawyer and entered state politics, had won a seat in the Ohio Senate. So long must this circle of states be undivided, the bonds of union unbroken. And after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in 1861, The war will soon assume the shape of slavery and freedom. The world will understand it, and I believe the final outcome will redound

to the good of humanity. Garfield knew war was probably inevitable. He was never not going to fight in a war that, at its heart, was about abolishing slavery. So he joins the fight. He's not a trained military strategist, but again, he is a thinker. They make him the leader of the 42nd Regiment, which is tasked with fighting back the Confederate Army in Kentucky. It's a key state to win, and everyone knows it.

President Abraham Lincoln hails from there and is widely reported to have said, I hope to have God on my side, but I must have Kentucky. It all comes down to one battle. The Battle of Middle Creek. He was completely outnumbered by the Confederates. So Garfield tried something bold. He divided his regiment into three and had them come at them from three different directions. The Confederates felt like they were being swarmed on all sides. He tricked them. And it worked.

They thought that they were completely overwhelmed when the opposite was true. He tricked them. And it worked. They thought that they were completely overwhelmed when the opposite was true. After the fighting ended, Garfield went out and surveyed the aftermath, and he saw... A lot of young men spread out on a field, and at first it looks as if they're sleeping. And then he realizes that they're dead and the enormity of that stayed with him for the rest of his life. Ten months later, after his decisive win at the Battle of Middle Creek, Garfield was elected to the U.S. Congress as a representative of Ohio.

He had decided to keep fighting instead of reporting to D.C. But then... Abraham Lincoln asks him to come back to serve because he said he needed him. I did this with great regret, for I had hoped to not leave the field till every insurgent state had returned to its allegiance. But the president told me he dared not risk a single vote in the House.

Lincoln knew that he needed men like Garfield to make sure important legislation was passed. And Garfield soon found out that he could achieve more for the union from his seat in Congress than at the helm of a battle. What legislation is necessary to secure equal justice to all loyal persons without regard to color at the nation's capital? During the war, he introduced a resolution that allowed Black people to walk freely through Washington, D.C DC without any sort of pass or documentation, something that had long been required to prove their status as freedmen.

Yeah, he was a radical Republican. I mean, he was very much involved in the Freedmen's Bureau, and he has not great things to say about Lincoln. He was frustrated with him because, you know, Lincoln's trying to keep everything together, but he's angry, and he felt that Lincoln had kind of dragged his feet and taken too long to release the emancipation proclamation. On April 14th, 1865, President Lincoln was shot and killed. I am sick at heart.

And it feels to be almost like sacrilege to talk of money or business now. Despite their differences, Garfield was devastated and more determined than ever to fight for Black Americans' right to vote. Let us not commit ourselves to the senseless and absurd dogma that the color of the skin shall be the basis of suffrage. And as always, people were captivated by him. He was tall, he was strong, he was handsome. You know, he had this bigger than life personality.

You know, he was just irresistible. And they listened. Have we given freedom to the black man? What is freedom? Is it the bare privilege of not being chained, of not being bought and sold, branded and scourged. If this is all, then freedom is a bitter mockery. Coming up, Garfield's rising star puts him on an unlikely path to the White House, even

though it's the last thing he wants. My name is Leanne Spagnola. I'm in Dallas, Texas, and you're listening to Early. Thank you guys for this podcast. I'm smarter because of it. I'm Jesse Thorne, this week on Bullseye Fat Joe, on being a late middle-aged rapper with an 18-year-old daughter. She's really looking at me like I'm a dinosaur. She's like, yo dad, come on now. You going where? Stop. Just stay home, watch Jeopardy. That's on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Keeping up with the news can feel like a 24-hour job. Luckily, it is our job. Every hour

on the NPR News Now podcast, we take the latest most important stories happening and we package them into five minute episodes. So you can easily squeeze them in between meetings and on your way to that thing. Listen to the NPR News Now podcast now. At NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, we sort through a lot of television and we've found some recent TV comedies we really like that you don't want to miss. And we'll tell you where to watch them in one handy guide. Listen to the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast from NPR. Part 2. Trickle Becomes Stream. On June 2nd, 1880, the Republican Party, the party of Abraham Lincoln, met in Chicago for

its national convention. There were 15,000 people there. They're going to choose the Republican ticket for the 1880 presidential election. Everyone expects that Ulysses S. Grant is going to get this nomination. Ulysses S. Grant was the Union's commanding general during the Civil War, a national hero who served two terms as president from 1869 to 1877. He's hoping for a third term. Back then there were no limits on how many times you could be president. He's obviously still beloved even though his past administrations have been sort of

riddled with corruption. Corruption that partly came from the spoils system. The spoils system really is as old as democracy in this country. The spoils system is exactly what it sounds like. It's the idea that whoever wins the presidency should be able to fill all those federal government jobs with people who are loyal. To the winner goes the spoils. So this meant that jobs like postman or tax collector weren't filled by the most qualified

person, but instead the job was given out like a perk to party loyalists. It had been in use for decades at all levels of government, but when the Civil War happened, suddenly the federal government grew exponentially to support the war effort and there were a lot of jobs to be filled via the spoils system. The Republican Party, which controlled every branch of government at that point, used it to their advantage. But when the war ended, many people started to call the system out as corrupt and unfair. In fact, Within the Republican Party, you had this deep divide. There were the stalwarts

stalwarts who believed that the spoils system was great and it made a lot of sense and they needed to protect it to keep it going. And then there were what some people derisively called half breeds who believed that it was essentially corrupt and needed to be reformed. The term half breed was an insulting way to describe someone of mixed native and European descent. And the stalwarts used that term to insult Republicans who criticized the spoils system,

meaning they were only half Republican. It's hard for Americans in the 21st century to understand how civil service reform could be like the number one issue at the top of the national agenda. But it was in the late 1870s. This is Scott Greenberger. He's the executive editor of a news site called Stateeline and has written extensively about this time in American politics.

He says going into the 1880 election, the spoils system was the major issue. So at the convention, Ulysses S. Grant was the candidate for the stalwart faction. His opponent, the candidate for the spoils system reformers, was a guy named John Sherman. And he desperately wanted this nomination. The custom at that time was for candidates to not attend the convention and to have someone else give a speech on their behalf, making the argument for why they would be the right candidate. No one wanted to appear too thirsty for the presidency. So Grant sends sort of the king of the stalwarts. He was this man called Roscoe Conkling. Roscoe Conkling. And he was a senior

senator from New York. He also had control over the New York City Custom House, where most of America's imported goods came in, where custom taxes on those goods were collected. They were a form of tariffs. So bringing in tons of money has a lot of power. And he used that power to make sure Republicans stayed in power. He is very pro-reconstruction and pro-civil rights, but he is also a great defender of the spoil system in his view. When a new party comes in, whoever won the election, the president should be able to put his people in the position. So in that sense, it's not unlike the argument. In fact, it's the same argument that the Trump administration is making now, which is that, okay,

the people elected me and my job as the executive is to implement the policies that I've been elected to implement. And therefore, why shouldn't my people be in those positions? Conkling argued that the spoils system was the most realistic way for the Republican Party to achieve its goals, like civil rights for black Americans, expanding access to education and building more railroads. He said people disparage our political machine, but a machine is just something that gets things done. So that's the person giving this speech for the stalwarts, Conkling. And Sherman, the Half Breed's faction candidate, the person he chooses to give his speech,

is none other than James A. Garfield. So he goes to Chicago and he's up all night the night before. On the fourth day of the convention, Saturday, speeches were given on behalf of each candidate. Roscoe Conklin takes the stage. And it was fantastic. the stage. Conkling was in his bag. Fiery and direct, he presented Grant as a noble war hero. He never betrayed a cause or a friend, and the people will never betray or desert him. The crowd is going nuts. They are cheering for Grant, Grant, Grant, Grant. Conkling finishes his speech and the cheering just continues.

And in the middle of this, Garfield has to get up and give the nominating address for John Sherman. Gentlemen of the Convention, your present temper may not mark the healthful pulse of our people. When your enthusiasm has passed, when the emotions of this hour have subsided, we shall find below the storm and passion that calm level of public opinion from which the thoughts of a might people are to be measured, and by which their final actions will be determined. And he's a completely different person from Roscoe Conkling. He's quiet and intellectual and thoughtful, but he's very, very powerful. 25 years ago, this republic was bearing and wearing a triple chain of bondage.

Long familiarity with traffic in the bodies and souls of men had paralyzed the consciences of a majority of our people. Garfield praises the great effort it took to erase slavery from the United States. He calls to renew that spirit. At that crisis the Republican Party was born. Then after the storms of battle were heard the calm words of peace spoken by the conquering nation. There were a lot of reporters there and I've read every single article about this and they all described this hall just slowly becoming mesmerized.

This is our only revenge, that you join us in lifting into the serene firmament of the Constitution to shine like stars forever and ever the immortal principles of truth and justice, that all men, white or black, shall be free and shall stand equal before the law. In the middle of all this, he pauses and he says, And now, gentlemen of the convention, what do we want? Someone in the crowd shouts, we want Garfield. And everybody just goes crazy. And he's trying to quiet them down and he literally says, you know, my friends, my friends, please, I ask you quiet down so you can hear what I have to say.

He was there to get John Sherman the nomination. So he's horrified that instead of cheering his name, they're saying Garfield. He finishes his nominating address and he sits down. And then suddenly, out of nowhere, someone stands up and gives one of their votes to Garfield. And he was like, what? And he stands up and he objects, but they shout him down. When the balloting begins, things proceed normally, at first.

Then round after round, more and more and more votes start coming from him. Again, he's not a candidate. Garfield does not want to be the nominee. But this trickle becomes a stream, becomes a river, and then just this flood of votes. And Garfield suddenly finds himself the Republican nominee for president of the United States. Garfield is in total shock. Over the next few days, it's not just shock that he feels, it's grief because he knows that if he does then become president he's gonna have to give up so many of the things he loves. Meanwhile Roscoe Conkling, the guy who gave the speech supporting Grant's

nomination, he was not happy. He's furious. And suddenly he feels like his interests are threatened. But they need him for the general election. They need his help. So Garfield and his allies start looking to smooth things over with the stalwarts. And what they decide on is that they're going to use his man, Conkling's protege, Chester Arthur, who will be Garfield's running mate. Chester Arthur was a man who had never held office.

Yet here he was being placed on the ticket as vice president as a way to appease the stalwarts. And he was an unlikely running mate for Garfield. He was from Vermont, but moved to New York City as a young man to chase fame and fortune. Arthur actually, as a young man, was involved in the case that ended up desegregating New York City's streetcars. He was a progressive, and he was also great

at schmoozing it up with the elites in the city. He was considered to be extraordinarily handsome. He was tall. He had those terrific mutton chop sideburns. Like a Civil War era great Gatsby. Sort of the back-slapping guy who was interested in staying up all night, drinking and smoking cigars.

That was Chester Arthur. During the Civil War, he met a number of political leaders. And after the war ended, he used those connections to become a lobbyist. From there, he became a very important part of the New York political machine. Roscoe Conkling took him under his wing and helped him become the head of the New York Custom House, where he got very involved in the spoil system. There were close to a thousand patronage jobs there, and it was very, very important to the New York Republican machine, the statewide machine, to be able to reward its supporters

with jobs at the Custom House. Classic spoil system. He's fully invested in the spoil system. He's a creature of the spoil system. He was fully invested in the spoil system. He's a creature of the spoil system. He was completely loyal to Conkling. So this is Chester Arthur on the eve of the 1880 Republican convention. So you can imagine Arthur is very surprised when he's asked to join a Republican ticket with Garfield. He was an emotional person, and he was

flabbergasted. But... He says, you know what? This is the greatest honor that anyone has ever given me, and I'm going to do it. And he does it. They do it.

Garfield and Arthur, the divided ticket. They win the election. But obviously, it's still awkward, especially for Garfield. The person closest to him and his administration is his sort of sworn enemy. And the tension rises even more

when Garfield dedicates a part of his inauguration speech to calling for reform of the spoil system. The civil service can never be placed on a satisfactory basis until it is regulated by law. He had freed men and former slave owners in the crowd before him, tears in their eyes, because there's so much promise and possibility for this still very young country.

For the good of the service itself, for the protection of those who are untrusted with the appointing power against the waste of time and obstruction to the public business caused by the inordinate pressure for place, and for the protection of incumbents against intrigue and wrong. But not everyone was inspired by his message of reform. Conkling is not going to back down. And he's got his man right there in the White House. Chester Arthur, the new vice president. While Garfield is trying to set up his administration,

Conkling is pulling every single person that Garfield's like, okay, maybe this guy, Conkling gets to them first and pulls them into his apartment, which they had nicknamed the morgue and terrifies them and threatens them. He basically tells them, don't take a job with Garfield if you want a future in the Republican party. Person after person starts backing out, like, I thought I wanted that position in your administration,

Garfield, but I'm sorry, I can't take it. President Garfield is getting sabotaged by Conkling and the stalwarts. And on top of all that, he has to face the realities of the spoil system every single day in the White House. At that time, people didn't think that there should be any protections for the president or any separation from the president. So every day, random people would walk into the White House and queue to ask the president for a job.

Say you want to be in charge of your post office in your little town, go to the White House and make your case to the president himself. And Garfield hated it. This is what made life hell really for Garfield when he was president. He specifically said, I don't know why anyone would ever want to be president. The man who shot President Garfield on July 2, 1881, a man named Charles Gouteau, he was one of these office seekers. Gouteau was Garfield's opposite in every way.

He had failed at everything he had tried. He once started a newspaper. That failed. He had tried to be a lawyer. At one point, he was a member of a cult, basically a free love commune. They had nicknamed him Charles Get Out. He had campaigned for Garfield in 1880, which he felt entitled him to a big government job as a reward.

I should be given the ambassadorship to France. And so, you know, no, no, no qualifications, but that's a spoil system, he thinks. So then he starts Riding to the White House saying, yes, this is what I've done and this is what I'd like in return. He doesn't get a response. And so Gouteau starts showing up to the White House almost daily to personally ask Garfield for a job.

At one point he even walks into the president's office with Garfield there. He doesn't get the job offer he wanted, so he's furious and getting desperate. He doesn't have any money. He's moving from boarding house to boarding house. He's becoming hungrier and more delusional. He thinks God wants him to kill the president, to make Chester Arthur president, so to get the stalwarts in office. He buys a pistol and for weeks he stalks President Garfield looking for the right moment to strike. He reads that Garfield's gonna be in the

train station on July 2nd and so he goes there and he's waiting for him when Garfield arrives. ["I'm a Starwart of stalwarts! Arthur is president now! These are the words Charles Guteau screamed after shooting Garfield. Meanwhile Vice President Chester Arthur is in New York with Roscoe Conkling. Someone tells them what has happened, that Garfield has been shot. And Arthur's reaction is he basically just collapses in the chair. He can't even believe that this has happened.

Not only is he shocked and upset that the President of the United States has been shot, he is fearful that people are talking about him as a suspect, that he and Conkling might be involved in this somehow. Conkling has a different reaction. He's like, great, this is our opportunity, Garfield will die, you'll become president and I can run things again. But Chester Arthur has an opposite reaction.

He's grief stricken. And the American people are furious. They think that Conkling and Chester Arthur were behind it, which they weren't, but they think that. And they think that Chester Arthur's just waiting in the wings. But strangely, the opposite is happening. Coming up, the letters that changed the American Civil Service forever. Hi, I'm Aline Raece, calling from San Jose, California, and you're listening to Throughline. mind. Part Three, Metamorphosis. To the Honorable Chester A. Arthur. The people are bowed in grief,

but do you realize it? Not so much because he is dying as because you are his successor. As President Garfield lies in the White House and infections spreading through his body, Vice President Chester Arthur starts getting a series of letters. From this mysterious woman in New York. A 31-year-old single woman. She was dressed this invalid, shut in. But she was a political junkie who clearly knows all about Chester Arthur and his background and how he grew up. Your kindest opponents say, Arthur will try to write. Adding glumily, he won't succeed though. Making a man president cannot change him.

Her name is Julia Sand. They'd never met before. At first, it seems that she, like most of the country, doesn't have high hopes for Arthur. But then she writes, But making a man president can change him. Great emergencies awaken generous traits, which have laying dormant half a life. If there is a spark of true nobility in you, now is the occasion to let it shine.

So she really zeroes in on what he's feeling. Your past, you know best what it has been. You have lived for worldly things. Fairly or unfairly, you have won them. You are rich, powerful. Tomorrow, perhaps, you will be president. What is it all worth? She urges him, she says, listen, you can now make up for all these years of shady machine politics

by doing the right thing, by championing civil service reform, by finally solving this issue that has resulted inevitably in this horrible event, this shooting of Garfield, you are the guy. Faith in your better nature forces me to right you, but not to beg you to resign. Do what is more difficult and more brave. Reform. Meanwhile, Garfield's condition is getting worse. Doctor after doctor visits him. Even Alexander Graham Bell brings his prototype for a metal detector to help doctors find where the bullets were lodged.

This goes on for months. It's the front page of the newspapers every day. It was just horrific. By August, it becomes clear to Garfield and his doctors that he's probably not going to recover. Garfield demands to be taken out of the White House. He wants to go to the sea. So they get a train and they got the inside of one of the train cars and they totally change it out.

They put his bed in there and they take him to New Jersey. One of the most touching scenes is when they get to the house that's on a hill and the train tracks don't go up the hill, they stop. And all these people who are there waiting, they themselves lift this train car and pull it up the last few feet to the door of this house to try to save him some more misery. He spends the next several days there by the beach with his wife and family, staring out at the ocean. And that's where he dies. He died in September, September 19th. A few days later, Chester Arthur is sworn in as the 21st President of the United States, and Julia Sand never stops believing in him.

She kept sending him letters. Nothing can be more beautiful than the manner in which you have borne yourself through this long, hard ordeal. Less than a year after becoming president, Arthur visited Julia Sand at her home. He just showed up on her doorstep in Manhattan one day. He came and said, you know what?

You don't fully understand how hard it is to be in my position. You know, you criticize me for some things. You expect me to be an angel and it's impossible to be an angel in this job. But I really do appreciate these letters and they've meant a lot to me. She believed in him and I think it was that belief,

you know, that helped him find the strength to try to do the right thing at last. Not long after he became president, Chester Arthur turned his back on his old mentor, Roscoe Conkling. For the vice presidency I'm indebted to you and my role in the party, but for the, I'm indebted to you and my role in the party. But for the presidency, I'm indebted to Almighty God.

I'm in charge of the country, and I need to serve all the American people and not just the political machine. So the first surprising thing that Arthur did was in his first annual message, which is what we now call the State of the Union. Chester Arthur does what nobody thought he would do. He surprised everyone by endorsing

civil service reform. Congress should leave it advisable at the present session to establish competitive tests for admission to the service. No doubts such as have been suggested shall deter me from giving the measure my earnest support." It's a total 180 that tips the scales in favor of civil service reform.

And there's already an Ohio senator who's been working on the issue. George Pendleton. George Pendleton was a prominent Democrat. And at that time, many Democrats were openly sympathetic to the former Confederacy. Pendleton did believe that Africans were inferior to white Americans. This is Tom Mack. He's a history professor at Cedarville University and the author of Gentlemen George Hunt Pendleton, Party Politics and Ideological Identity in 19th Century America. He believed that slavery was a state issue.

Pendleton was not a progressive like Garfield or Arthur, but he did agree with them on one thing. He is concerned about the spoiled system. The system's become elitist once again, and the only way to fix that is to reform civil service. And in order to do something about it, he has to go beyond his own party for support. Much of his party opposed him in the civil service reform. There is no question that most of his support comes from across the aisle. From Republicans. He puts together a civil service reform bill that would come to be called the Pendleton Act.

It did things like set up a test for all federal government job seekers. You had to pass the exam in order to be able to be considered for a government job. This is the concept of civil service by merit. If you're gonna be working in the accounting office of the Treasury Department, you can actually keep a ledger. At this time, it was a revolutionary idea.

You get the government job because of your ability, not just party loyalty. The spoil system was so entrenched in American politics, it was going to be hard to pass this bill. But President Garfield's death galvanized a movement for reform that couldn't be stopped. Finally gets passed both houses of Congress, in 1883. And shortly after, on January 16th, 1883, a little over a year after Garfield's death, President Chester Arthur signed the Pendleton Act into law. It was most definitely the beginning of the professional civil service that we have now. And in subsequent decades, they added civil service protections for more workers, and

it grew and grew and grew. At first, the Pendleton Act only covered about 10% of federal jobs, a few thousand federal workers. But as time went on, it expanded to eventually cover the vast majority of the federal workforce, which now measures in the millions. These people who are professional civil servants, many of whom have been there for decades through administrations, Democratic and Republican, they serve the American people. They're not serving whoever happens to be in the White House. And they have expertise.

And yes, they're supposed to be implementing the laws faithfully, but their jobs are not to advance the agenda of any party or a particular president. Less than a year after he shot President Garfield, Charles Gouteau was executed. His madness had driven the country into mourning and inadvertently sparked a chain of events that would alter the future of the federal government of the United States. It doesn't always take a big event to change the course of history, right?

It can be something as small as one man's madness, one woman's faith, one man's sort of personal ambition, and one man's death to completely change the course of history. And that's it for this week's show. I'm Rand Abdel Fattah. I'm Ramtin Arablui. And you've been listening to Thru Line from NPR.

This episode was produced by me and me and... Lauren Thwu Julie Kane Anya Steinberg Casey Miner Christina Kim Devin Kadiyama Irene Noguchi. Voiceover work for this episode was done by Micah Basquere, Ashley Strayke, Emanuel Martinez, and Ari Steinberg. Thank you to Johannes Dergi, Edith Chapin,

Luis Clemens, Tony Cavent, and Colin Campbell. This episode was mixed by Maggie Luthar. Music for this episode was composed by Ramtin and his band Drop Electric, which includes Naveed Marvi, Sho Fujiwara, Anya Mizani. Fact checking for this episode was done by Andrea Lopez Cruzado. And before we go, we have to shout out the book by Scott Greenberger, one of our guests on this show, called The Unexpected President, The Life and Times of Chester A. Arthur. And finally, if you have an idea or like something you heard on this show, please write us at

throughline at npr.org and make sure you follow us on Apple, Spotify, or the NPR app. That way, you'll never miss an episode. Thanks for listening.