Stalwarts (politics)
[16] Blaine and his political organization formed an informal coalition with the Stalwarts during the presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes,[17][18] supporting patronage and advocating on behalf of Southern blacks.
The Maine Senator also frequently joined Stalwarts in voting against nominations of reformers by President Hayes who received the support of Democrats and staunch Half-Breed Republicans.
Their program was the return to the radicalism of Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner, with no quarter shown to unrepentant rebels or their allies among the Northern Democrats or their new recruits from the muddle-headed, mushy-hearted “liberals” in the Republican fold.
The candidate must be no goody-goody like “Granny Hayes,” but a strong, red-blooded man who identified patriotism with Republicanism and would stand no nonsense from “traitors” to the country or to the party.
That man they found in General Grant—not the generous Grant of Appomattox, but the “tawdry Caesar” of the Enforcement Acts.The Stalwarts were mostly identifiable through their support of the presidency and re-election of Ulysses S.
[15] Deemed as loyalists to the policies pursued under the Grant administration, they stood in favor of hard money, high tariffs, waving the bloody shirt, and Southern Republicanism led by freedmen and carpetbaggers.
Some members, including John A. Logan, broke with the standard Republican Party position on the issue of protective tariffs and favored lower rates.
He was known to have turned a blind eye to corruption in the New York Customs House,[30] in addition to hiring thousands of Republicans for government jobs on the mere basis of partisan affiliation.
[33] The Hayes administration subsequently emerged victorious in several intraparty battles, successfully nominating Edwin Atkins Merritt and Silas W. Burt to prominent positions in New York.
[34][35] Although Republican opposition towards Hayes considerably eroded in contrast to the defeat of Roosevelt Sr.'s nomination, the Stalwarts and Blaine faction remained, at this point, informally united in persistent antipathy towards the president's reform advocacy.
Although Grant had previously pushed for some degree of civil service reform as president, he became disenchanted with Hayes' efforts to effectively dismantle the Stalwarts' patronage machines.
[15] For the vice presidential pick, Garfield at first proposed nominating Treasury of the Secretary John Sherman, a staunch Half-Breed, Moderate Republican, and supporter of civil service reform who Stalwarts loathed.
[40] The nomination went to James G. Blaine, who Conkling continued loathing and refused to lend any support to in spite of the vice presidential selection going to Stalwart John A. Logan.
