REMOVALS FROM OFFICE.
I am led to give a particular examination of this head, from the
great error into which Tocqueville has fallen in relation to it,
and which he has propagated throughout Europe to the prejudice
of republican government; and also, because the power itself is
not generally understood among ourselves as laid down by Mr.
Jefferson; and has been sometimes abused, and by each party, but
never to the degree supposed by Mons. de Tocqueville. He says, in
his chapter 8 on American democracy: "Mr. Quincy Adams, on his
entry into office, discharged the majority of the individuals who
had been appointed by his predecessor; and I am not aware that
General Jackson allowed a single removable functionary employed in
the public service to retain his place beyond the first year which
succeeded his election." Of course, all these imputed sweeping
removals were intended to be understood to have been made on account
of party politics--for difference of political opinion--and not for
misconduct, or unfitness for office. To these classes of removal
(unfitness and misconduct), there could be no objection: on the
contrary, it would have been misconduct in the President not to
have removed in such cases. Of political removals, for difference
of opinion, then, it only remains to speak; and of those officials
appointed by his predecessor, it is probable that Mr. Adams did not
remove one for political cause; and that M. de Tocqueville, with
respect to him, is wrong to the whole amount of his assertion.
I was a close observer of Mr. Adams's administration, and belonged
to the opposition, which was then keen and powerful, and permitted
nothing to escape which could be rightfully (sometimes wrongfully)
employed against him; yet I never heard of this accusation,
and have no knowledge or recollection at this time of a single
instance on which it could be founded. Mr. Adams's administration
was not a case, in fact, in which such removals--for difference
of political opinion--could occur. They only take place when the
presidential election is a revolution of parties; and that was
not the case when Mr. Adams succeeded Mr. Monroe. He belonged to
the Monroe administration, had occupied the first place in the
cabinet during its whole double term of eight years; and of course,
stood in concurrence with, and not in opposition to, Mr. Monroe's
appointments. Besides, party lines were confused, and nearly
obliterated at that time. It was called "the era of good feeling."
Mr. Adams was himself an illustration of that feeling. He had been
of the federal party--brought early into public life as such--a
minister abroad and a senator at home as such; but having divided
from his party in giving support to several prominent measures of
Mr. Jefferson's administration, he was afterwards several times
nominated by Mr. Madison as minister abroad; and on the election of
Mr. Monroe he was invited from London to be made his Secretary of
State--where he remained till his own election to the Presidency.
There was, then, no case presented to him for political removals;
and in fact none such were made by him; so that the accusation of
M. de Tocqueville, so far as it applied to Mr. Adams, is wholly
erroneous, and inexcusably careless.
With respect to General Jackson, it is about equally so in the main
assertion--the assertion that he did not allow a single removable
functionary to remain in office beyond the first year after his
election. On the contrary, there were entire classes--all those
whose functions partook of the judicial--which he never touched.
Boards of commissioners for adjudicating land titles; commissioners
for adjudicating claims under indemnity treaties; judges of the
territorial courts; justices of the District of Columbia; none
of these were touched, either in the first or in any subsequent
year of his administration, except a solitary judge in one of
the territories; and he not for political cause, but on specific
complaint, and after taking the written and responsible opinion of
the then Attorney General, Mr. Grundy. Of the seventeen diplomatic
functionaries abroad, only four (three ministers and one chargé des
affaires) were recalled in the first year of his administration.
In the departments at Washington, a majority of the incumbents
remained opposed to him during his administration. Of the near
eight thousand deputy postmasters in the United States, precisely
four hundred and ninety-one were removed in the time mentioned by
Mons. de Tocqueville, and they for all causes--for every variety
of causes. Of the whole number of removable officials, amounting
to many thousands, the totality of removals was about six hundred
and ninety and they for all causes. Thus the government archives
contradict Mons. de Tocqueville, and vindicate General Jackson's
administration from the reproach cast upon it. Yet he came into
office under circumstances well calculated to excite him to make
removals. In the first place, none of his political friends, though
constituting a great majority of the people of the United States,
had been appointed to office during the preceding administration;
and such an exclusion could not be justified on any consideration.
His election was, in some degree, a revolution of parties, or
rather a re-establishment of parties on the old line of federal and
democratic. It was a change of administration, in which a change
of government functionaries, to some extent, became a right and a
duty; but still the removals actually made, when political, were
not merely for opinions, but for conduct under these opinions;
and, unhappily, there was conduct enough in too many officials to
justify their removal. A large proportion of them, including all
the new appointments, were inimical to General Jackson, and divided
against him on the re-establishment of the old party lines; and many
of them actively. Mr. Clay, holding the first place in Mr. Adams's
cabinet, took the field against him, travelled into different
States, declaimed against him at public meetings; and deprecated
his election as the greatest of calamities. The subordinates of
the government, to a great degree, followed his example, if not in
public speeches, at least in public talk and newspaper articles;
and it was notorious that these subordinates were active in the
presidental election. It was a great error in them. It changed
their position. By their position all administrations were the
same to them. Their duties were ministerial, and the same under
all Presidents. They were noncombatants. By engaging in the
election they became combatant, and subjected themselves to the
law of victory and defeat--reward and promotion in one case, loss
of place in the other. General Jackson, then, on his accession to
the Presidency, was in a new situation with respect to parties,
different from that of any President since the time of Mr.
Jefferson, whom he took for his model, and whose rule he followed.
He made many removals, and for cause, but not so many as not to
leave a majority in office against him--even in the executive
departments in Washington City.
Mr. Jefferson had early and anxiously studied the question of
removals. He was the first President that had occasion to make them,
and with him the occasion was urgent. His election was a complete
revolution of parties, and when elected, he found himself to be
almost the only man of his party in office. The democracy had been
totally excluded from federal appointment during the administration
of his predecessor; almost all offices were in the hands of his
political foes. I recollect to have heard an officer of the army
say that there was but one field officer in the service favorable
to him. This was the type of the civil service. Justice to himself
and his party required this state of things to be altered; required
his friends to have a share proportionate to their numbers in the
distribution of office; and required him to have the assistance
of his friends in the administration of the government. The four
years' limitation law--the law which now vacates within the cycle
of every Presidential term the great mass of the offices--was not
then in force. Resignations then, as now, were few. Removals were
indispensable, and the only question was the principle upon which
they should be made. This question, Mr. Jefferson studied anxiously,
and under all its aspects of principle and policy, of national and
of party duty; and upon consultation with his friends, settled
it to his and their satisfaction. The fundamental principle was,
that each party was to have a share in the ministerial offices,
the control of each branch of the service being in the hands of
the administration; that removals were only to be made for cause;
and, of course, that there should be inquiry into the truth of
imputed delinquencies. "Official misconduct," "personal misconduct,"
"negligence," "incapacity," "inherent vice in the appointment,"
"partisan electioneering beyond the fair exercise of the elective
franchise;" and where "the heads of some branches of the service
were politically opposed to his administration"--these, with Mr.
Jefferson, constituted the law of removals, and was so written
down by him immediately after his inauguration. Thus, March 7th,
1801--only four days after his induction into office--he wrote to
Mr. Monroe:
"Some removals, I know, must be made. They must be as few as
possible, done gradually, and bottomed on some malversation,
or inherent disqualification. Where we should draw the line
between retaining all and none, is not yet settled, and will
not be until we get our administration together; and, perhaps,
even then we shall proceed _à tatons_, balancing our measures
according to the impression we perceive them to make."
On the 23d of March, 1801, being still in the first month of his
administration, Mr. Jefferson wrote thus to Gov. Giles, of Virginia:
"Good men, to whom there is no objection but a difference
of political opinion, practised on only so far as the right
of a private citizen will justify, are not proper subjects
of removal, except in the case of attorneys and marshals.
The courts being so decidedly federal and irremovable, it is
believed that republican attorneys and marshals, being the doors
of entrance into the courts, are indispensably necessary as a
shield to the republican part of our fellow-citizens; which, I
believe, is the main body of the people."
Six days after, he wrote to Elbridge Gerry, afterwards
Vice-President, thus:
"Mr. Adams's last appointments, when he knew he was appointing
counsellors and aids for me, not for himself, I set aside as
fast as depends on me. Officers who have been guilty of gross
abuse of office, such as marshals packing juries, &c., I shall
now remove, as my predecessors ought in justice to have done.
The instances will be few, and governed by strict rule, and not
party passion. The right of opinion shall suffer no invasion
from me. Those who have acted well have nothing to fear, however
they may have differed from me in opinion: those who have
done ill, however, have nothing to hope; nor shall I fail to
do justice, lest it should be ascribed to that difference of
opinion."
To Mr. Lincoln, his Attorney-General, still writing in the first
year of his administration, he says:
"I still think our original idea as to office is best; that
is, to depend, for obtaining a just participation, on deaths,
resignations and delinquencies. This will least affect the
tranquillity of the people, and prevent their giving into the
suggestion of our enemies--that ours has been a contest for
office, not for principle. This is rather a slow operation, but
it is sure, if we pursue it steadily, which, however, has not
been done with the undeviating resolution I could have wished.
To these means of obtaining a just share in the transaction of
the public business, shall be added one more, to wit, removal
for electioneering activity, or open and industrious opposition
to the principles of the present government, legislative
and executive. Every officer of the government may vote at
elections according to his conscience; but we should betray the
cause committed to our care, were we to permit the influence
of official patronage to be used to overthrow that cause.
Your present situation will enable you to judge of prominent
offenders in your State in the case of the present election.
I pray you to seek them, to mark them, to be quite sure of
your ground, that we may commit no errors or wrongs; and leave
the rest to me. I have been urged to remove Mr. Whittemore,
the surveyor of Gloucester, on grounds of neglect of duty and
industrious opposition; yet no facts are so distinctly charged
as to make the step sure which we should take in this. Will you
take the trouble to satisfy yourself on the point?"
This was the law of removals as laid down by Mr. Jefferson, and
practised upon by him, but not to the extent that his principle
required, or that public outcry indicated. He told me himself, not
long before his death (Christmas, 1824), that he had never done
justice to his own party--had never given them the share of office
to which their numbers entitled them--had failed to remove many
who deserved it, but who were spared through the intercession of
friends and concern for their distressed families. General Jackson
acted upon the rule of Mr. Jefferson, but no doubt was often misled
into departures from the rule; but never to the extent of giving to
the party more than their due proportion of office, according to
their numbers. Great clamor was raised against him, and the number
of so-called "removals" was swelled by an abuse of the term, every
case being proclaimed a "removal," where he refused to reappoint an
ex-incumbent whose term had expired under the four years' limitation
act. Far from universal removals for opinion's sake, General
Jackson, as I have already said, left the majority of his opponents
in office, and re-appointed many such whose terms had expired, and
who had approved themselves faithful officers.
Having vindicated General Jackson and Mr. Adams from the reproach
of Mons. de Tocqueville, and having shown that it was neither a
principle nor a practice of the Jefferson school to remove officers
for political opinions, I now feel bound to make the declaration,
that the doctrine of that school has been too much departed from of
late, and by both parties, and to the great detriment of the right
and proper working of the government.
The practice of removals for opinion's sake is becoming too
common, and is reducing our presidential elections to what Mr.
Jefferson deprecated, "a contest of office instead of principle,"
and converting the victories of each party, so far as office is
concerned, into the political extermination of the other; as it was
in Great Britain between the whigs and tories in the bitter contests
of one hundred years ago, and when the victor made a "clean sweep"
of the vanquished, leaving not a wreck behind. Mr. Macaulay thus
describes one of those "sweepings:"
"A persecution, such as had never been known before, and has
never been known since, raged in every public department.
Great numbers of humble and laborious clerks were deprived of
their bread, not because they had neglected their duties, not
because they had taken an active part against the ministry, but
merely because they had owed their situations to some (whig)
nobleman who was against the peace. The proscription extended
to tidewaiters, to doorkeepers. One poor man, to whom a pension
had been given for his gallantry in a fight with smugglers, was
deprived of it because he had been befriended by the (whig) Duke
of Grafton. An aged widow, who, on account of her husband's
services in the navy, had, many years before, been made
housekeeper in a public office, was dismissed from her situation
because she was distantly connected by marriage with the (whig)
Cavendish family."
This, to be sure, was a tory proscription of whigs, and therefore
the less recommendable as an example to either party in the United
States, but too much followed by both--to the injury of individuals,
the damage of the public service, the corruption of elections, and
the degradation of government. De Tocqueville quotes removals as
a reproach to our government, and although untrue to the extent
he represented, the evil has become worse since, and is true to
a sufficient extent to demand reform. The remedy is found in Mr.
Jefferson's rule, and in the four years' limitation act which has
since been passed; and under which, with removals for cause, and
some deaths, and a few resignations, an ample field would be found
for new appointments, without the harshness of general and sweeping
removals.
I consider "sweeping" removals, as now practised by both parties, a
great political evil in our country, injurious to individuals, to
the public service, to the purity of elections, and to the harmony
and union of the people. Certainly, no individual has a right to an
office: no one has an estate or property in a public employment; but
when a mere ministerial worker in a subordinate station has learned
its duties by experience, and approved his fidelity by his conduct,
it is an injury to the public service to exchange him for a novice,
whose only title to the place may be a political badge or a partisan
service. It is exchanging experience for inexperience, tried ability
for untried, and destroying incentive to good conduct by destroying
its reward. To the party displaced it is an injury, having become a
proficient in that business, expecting to remain in it during good
behavior, and finding it difficult, at an advanced age, and with
fixed habits, to begin a new career in some new walk of life. It
converts elections into scrambles, for office, and degrades the
government into an office for rewards and punishments; and divides
the people of the Union into two adverse parties--each in its turn,
and as it becomes dominant, to strip and proscribe the other.
Our government is a Union. We want a united _people_, as well as
united _States_--united for benefits as well as for burdens, and
in feeling as well as in compact; and this cannot be while one
half (each in its turn) excludes the other from all share in the
administration of the government. Mr. Jefferson's principle is
perfect, and reconciled public and private interest with party
rights and duties. The party in power is responsible for the
well-working of the government, and has a right, and is bound by
duty to itself, to place its friends at the head of the different
branches of the public service. After that, and in the subordinate
places, the opposite party should have its share of employment;
and this Mr. Jefferson's principle gives to it. But as there are
offices too subordinate for party proscription, so there are others
too elevated and national for it. This is now acknowledged in the
army and navy, and formerly was acknowledged in the diplomatic
department; and should be again. To foreign nations we should, at
least, be one people--an undivided people, and that in peace as
well as in war. Mr. Jefferson's principle reached this case, and
he acted upon it. His election was not a signal gun, fired for the
recall of all the ministers abroad, to be succeeded incontinently
by partisans of its own. Mr. Rufus King, the most eminent of the
federal ministers abroad, and at the most eminent court of Europe,
that of St. James, remained at his post for two years after the
revolution of parties in 1800; and until he requested his own
recall, treated all the while with respect and confidence, and
intrusted with a negotiation which he conducted to its conclusion.
Our early diplomatic policy, eschewing all foreign entanglement,
rejected the office of "minister resident." That early republican
policy would have no permanent representation at foreign courts. The
"envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary," called out on
an emergent occasion, and to return home as soon as the emergency
was over, was the only minister known to our early history;
and then the mission was usually a mixed one, composed of both
parties. And so it should be again. The present permanent supply
and perpetual succession of "envoys extraordinary and ministers
plenipotentiary" is a fraud upon the name, and a breach of the old
policy of the government, and a hitching on American diplomacy to
the tail of the diplomacy of Europe. It is the actual keeping up
of "ministers resident" under a false name, and contrary to a wise
and venerable policy; and requires the reform hand of the House of
Representatives. But this point will require a chapter of its own,
and its elucidation must be adjourned to another and a separate
place.
Mons. de Tocqueville was right in the principle of his reproach,
wrong in the extent of his application, but would have been less
wrong if he had written of events a dozen years later. I deprecate
the effect of such sweeping removals at each revolution of parties,
and believe it is having a deplorable effect both upon the purity
of elections and the distribution of office, and taking both out
of the hands of the people, and throwing the management of one and
the enjoyment of the other into most unfit hands. I consider it as
working a deleterious change in the government, making it what Mr.
Jefferson feared: and being a disciple of his school, and believing
in the soundness and nationality of the rule which he laid down, I
deem it good to recall it solemnly to public recollection--for the
profit, and hope, of present and of future times.