Civil service reform in the United States

[2] Early aggressive demands for civil service reform, particularly stemming from Democratic arguments, were associated with white supremacy and opposition towards economic and social gains made by blacks through the spoils system which pro-civil rights Republican "Stalwarts" shrewdly utilized during the Reconstruction and Gilded Age eras.

[3] Historian Eric Foner writes that at the time of the Reconstruction era, blacks recognized that the establishing of a civil service system would prevent "the whole colored population" from holding public office.

[5] In 1801 President Thomas Jefferson, alarmed that Federalists dominated the civil service and the army, identified the party affiliation of office holders and systematically appointed Democratic-Republicans.

President Ulysses S. Grant (1869–1877) spoke out in favor of civil service reform, and rejected demands in late 1872 by Pennsylvania senator Simon Cameron and governor John Hartranft to suspend the rules and make patronage appointments.

[7] Grant's Civil Service Commission reforms had limited success, as his cabinet implemented a merit system that increased the number of qualified candidates and relied less on congressional patronage.

The Liberal Republicans, led by Charles Sumner, B. Gratz Brown, and Carl Schurz, nominated Horace Greeley, who would lose the general election to Grant.

The Half-Breeds supported civil service reform, and often blocked legislation and political appointments put forth by their main congressional opponents, the Stalwarts, led by Roscoe Conkling of New York.

Their ranks were informally joined by Vermont Republican George F. Edmunds, a staunch Half-Breed who never accepted Blaine as an honest convert and opposed the Maine senator's candidacy.

Whenever [Allen G. Thurman] and I have settled upon legislation to bring the Pacific Railroad to terms of equity with the government, up has jumped Mr. James G. Blaine musket in hand, from behind the breastworks of Jay Gould’s lobby to fire in our faces.This division among Republicans may have contributed to the victory in 1884 of Grover Cleveland, the first president elected from the Democratic party since the Civil War.

In the period from 1876 to 1892, presidential elections were closely contested at the national level, but the states themselves were mostly dominated by a single party, with Democrats prevailing in the South and the Republicans in the Northeast.

[18] The 2001 September 11 attacks gave George W. Bush the political support needed in order to launch civil service reforms in US agencies related to national security.

According to Kellough, Nigro, and Brewer, such attempts included "restrictions on collective bargaining, such as the authority given to departmental secretaries (and, in the case of the DOD, other high-level officials as well) unilaterally to [repeal] negotiated agreements and the limitations imposed on employee rights in adverse actions."