<\/p>\n
Often on this program I have given extracts from letters written by soldiers in the Civil War. Not so often have I told you about any civilians who worked in Washington during that period. Although those men suffered not the dangers and the hardships of the men in the field, they did work hard at their assigned tasks, and they did their part to save the Union.<\/p>\n
One such worker for the Union cause was a granduncle of Mrs. Harold Hersum of Waterville. He and his brother bore proud names of Whig leaders. He was Daniel Webster Peabody and his brother, Mrs. Hersum’s grandfather, was Henry Clay Peabody. That grandfather had a prominent career as a Maine attorney and served conspicuously as a Justice of the Maine Supreme Court.<\/p>\n
In the attic of the old Peabody home in Gorham, N.H. was found a letter written by Daniel Peabody to his brother Henry on November 11, 1863. In it Daniel gives his impressions of the national capital two and a half years after the start of the Civil War. Although we now know that Gettysburg, four months earlier, had turned the tide definitely toward inevitable Union victory, people at that time did not know it. The war was by no means assuredly won. The days of Grant’s long campaign in the wilderness were ahead. Sherman had not yet marched from Atlanta to the sea. Appomatox was but a dream.<\/p>\n
Let us see what the young civilian employee in Washington had to say to his brother back in Maine in that autumn of 1863: “I supposed I should get a letter from you before now, but I have not. I will write you a word without it. I am in Washington, which apart from its public buildings, is the meanest, dirtiest, dustiest city I ever wish to see.<\/p>\n
“I am installed in a first class clerkship in the Pension Office. If I do well in this place, I shall be fortunate in my position for the sojourn I hope to be here. It is very unusual for a clerk to be put into so responsible a place as I now have, which is examining evidence in applications for pension. I was put here on account of my having had some experience in making out such papers. Office hours are from 9 to 3, pay is $100 per month, from which I shall have to pay upwards of $30 for board.<\/p>\n
“Altogether I am in a situation as well as I could be in any department here, but I am not so much in love with it as not to hope earnestly for the place I told you in my letter that Mr. Healy is going to try to get for me. Remember that you are not to mention that I think of resigning.<\/p>\n
“My journey here was very agreeable. I took the Fall River route, passing up Long Island Sound in a steamer and seeing the big city of the nation in the early morning. I had about two hours to look around, but I did not happen to find any of the fellows.<\/p>\n
“New York beggars description, though I did not see it in the full rush of business life. I had a better chance to see Philadelphia, passing through it on a horsecar. It is a quiet, easy-going, sensible city. The houses have mostly white, wooden shutters, and look alike as peas in a pod. It was too dark for me to see Baltimore when I got there.<\/p>\n
“The capital building in Washington is a magnificent hodgepodge of architecture. Its two wings of marble are out of all proportion with the old building, which forms the center. The rest of the public buildings with the exception perhaps of the White House, are fully up to my expectations.<\/p>\n
“Abe and I (he means Pres. Lincoln) attended church together on Sunday morning last, and we had seats near each other. People lie about his appearance. He is not so cussed ugly as they tell. He looks firm and full of brains and proclamations.<\/p>\n
“I am in the same building with Hobbs, the offices of the Interior Department being in the Patent Office Building, and I have seen both of the Wadsworths.<\/p>\n
“Write me some smashing letters, for they will be doubly acceptable now. Tell Judge to come on and go on a bender in this mean town. Give my regards to all who love me. Yours truly, DWP.”<\/p>\n
The more I learn about Timothy Boutelle, Waterville’s leading attorney in the first half of the 19th century, and one of the community’s wealthiest men, the more I admire him. Only recently did I run across an account of the part Boutelle played in an exciting episode in the Maine Legislature of 1831.<\/p>\n
Everyone today knows about the Spoils System in politics. Remnants of it are indeed still with us. When one political party is victorious, it proceeds to take over just as many governmental jobs as the law will allow. Such distribution of the spoils of political war was not the intent of the founding fathers who so laboriously put together the Constitution of the United States. In fact, from the first term of George Washington’s presidency until the conclusion of John Quincy Adams’ single term in 1829, there was surprisingly little removal from office of persons below cabinet rank. It was, of course, expected that each President should choose a cabinet whose views were compatible with his, but he wasn’t expected to throw out clerks and postmasters and” janitors.<\/p>\n
Andrew Jackson changed all that. He is personally credited with the slogan “To the victor belong the spoils”, and with initiating a practice that became the custom of both parties until civil service reform put an end to such behavior. I said that traces of the practice are still with us. Only thirty years ago things were notoriously bad in the local affairs of Waterville. To most people today it seems incredible that in the early 1930’s, whenever the city government changed parties in an election, even the school janitors were immediately changed.<\/p>\n
In those days our city election was in March. If the election went against the party then in power, every school janitor was replaced by a man of the opposite party on the following Monday morning. One party was just as bad as the other, Republicans and Democrats alike played the same game.<\/p>\n
Finally the people in Waterville realized the absurdity of such a practice, and the school janitors, as well as many other city workers, went on a kind of civil service program. I remember that as Chairman of the local Board of Education, I conducted the first, very simple examination given under the new system for applicants for school janitorships. That little exam was devised by the city engineer and the building inspector of the time. All I did was hand out the papers and proctor the exam in what was then the Junior High School building on Pleasant Street.<\/p>\n
That local diversion from our Boutelle story has been merely to bring home what the old spoils system was like. Now back to that Maine Legislature of 1831. Timothy Boutelle was then Waterville’s representative. Although he represented only 2,200 people, that number made Waterville one of the state’s fifteen largest communities. There were then fewer than 400,000 people in the entire State of Maine.<\/p>\n
Cognizant of what had been happening in Washington, where the Jacksonians had taken over every office on which they could lay their hands, Timothy Boutelle was determined that such reckless grabbing of spoils should not happen in Maine. Boutelle knew very well the Jacksonians were unlikely to stay in office forever, and he didn’t want his own Whig party to practice any such policy when they returned to power. Yet he well knew that, if the spoils system once prevailed in any single year in Maine, it would take firm hold on both parties.<\/p>\n
Timothy Boutelle therefore introduced a bill: “Be it enacted by the Senate and the House of Representatives in Legislature assembled that no civil officer heretofore appointed. or who may hereafter be appointed by the Governor and Council, and whose term is limited to four years, be subject to be removed from office unless the reason for removal shall be stated and entered in the records of the Governor and Council. and a copy furnished the removed officer so that he may have a hearing in his defense. This act shall take effect from and after the first day of May, 1831.”<\/p>\n
Boutelle pointed out that a Maine law passed in 1824 provided that civil officers should hold office for four years unless removed by the Governor and Council. The new law that Boutelle sought simply presented the possibility of dismissal by whim or political preferment and made removal possible only for cause and after legal hearing.<\/p>\n
The old record tells us that Mr. Perkins and Mr. Parks, two Jacksonian leaders, spoke against the bill. Then Boutelle replied in these words: “The opposition says that my bill intrudes upon the power of the Governor and Council. Nonsense! I know that we read of the Divine Right of Kings, but I have never heard it applied to a Governor and his Council. Whence are their powers derived? Definitely from the people. Ours is a government of the people, and all our officers serve under our constitution and laws, which confer divine right upon nobody. I tell you I am no friend of this doctrine of irresponsibility to the people.”<\/p>\n
When Boutelle concluded his speech, an opposition representative moved for indefinite postponement of Boutelle’s bill and the motion prevailed 80 to 57. Thus Timothy Boutelle’s attempt to alleviate the evils of the pernicious spoils system did not succeed. Mr. Boutelle and his fifty-six supporters in the House had to submit to defeat, but they issued a resounding public statement that gave ammunition to those who, many years later, fought for the establishment of the Maine Personnel Bureau and for its civil service regulations. That old indignant statement said: “A majority of the House have sanctioned the corrupt principle that a President or a Governor has a right to reward his friends and punish his enemies. That is a violation of the plainest dictates of democracy and is proper only in a despotic form of government.”<\/p>\n
Boutelle’s predictions were right. No sooner had his Whig party taken control of the Governor’s office and the Legislature than they threw out every Jacksonian office holder. Allover the nation the situation became so bad that there had to be a change. It began with President Chester Arthur, a Republican, reached major proportions with President Cleveland, a Democrat, and finally came to fruition in the Civil Service system, now recognized in all but the top echelons in both federal and state offices.<\/p>\n
What I hope listeners to this program find especially interesting is that more than half a century before Civil Service reforms got effectively underway, a man in the far northeast corner of the nation rose in the Maine Legislature to denounce the spoils system. Waterville has reason indeed to be proud of Timothy Boutelle.<\/p>\n
Year: 1967<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #726, Broadcast on April 16, 1967<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[752,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8706"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8706\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}