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The 1880 Republican National Convention was coming apart at the seems as a bitter division threatened to split the party in half. The compromise ticket of James Garfield for president and Chester Arthur for vice president kept the party together and profoundly changed the country—and Chester Arthur.
Compelling Stories And Life's Lessons. By Rabbi Nachum Meth of LasVegasKollel.org
Hi there and welcome. I'm Rabbi Nachomath with the Las Vegas Co Well. The 18/80 Republican National Convention was coming apart at the seams. There was a huge division between 2 groups within the Republican Party, the half breeds and the stalwarts. What were they arguing about?
Speaker 1:When the federal government was first established in 17/89, there were only a handful of employees running the federal government. Fast forward a few decades later when General Jackson becomes President Jackson, the federal government's now pretty substantial. And when Andrew Jackson became president, he instituted a system called the spoils system. He would say, to the victor belongs the spoils. He was just elected president and he realized aside from being commander in chief, aside from being the head of state, he's also the CEO of a pretty big corporation.
Speaker 1:And, he realized he can fire everyone in the federal government and replace them with his friends, friends of friends, people who he owed favors to, anybody and everybody. And he used the federal government as a way of instituting cronyism, putting in people who weren't necessarily the most competent it's And it's interesting if you fast forward to when Abraham Lincoln becomes president, if you read his diary you would think, you know, he's probably the biggest thing he had to deal with was that war, right? If you read, one of the biggest frustrations he had was dealing with office seekers because it had become such a culture that the president's role was to give out jobs to friends, to cronies, to buddies, to people who he owed favors to, people within his political party. And there were people who would line up literally for days outside of the White House just for a chance to meet the president and ask him for a job, to be the head of a post office in Kansas City, to be a minister to some foreign country. And these are people who are not necessarily qualified and exhausted even Lincoln.
Speaker 1:Fast forward to 18/80 and the system was totally out of hand. The federal government was humongous and the head of the of the federal government, the president, one of his biggest responsibilities and one of the greatest sources of power that he had was filling the entire federal government with people who he wanted to do favors to so that he would get favors in return. You see, once I appoint someone, if I'm the president and I appoint them to a federal post, well, now they're gonna root for me. And it became a real real corrupt system. You had people who were incompetent, people weren't qualified and they were getting all sorts of positions and every time the president would be elected, they would clean house, get rid of a huge chunk of the federal government and replace them with buddies, friends and it was system was completely corrupt.
Speaker 1:And in 18/80, there was a faction within the Republican Party that decided we've got to reform the civil service. We've got to go ahead and clean this up. And these were called the half breeds, and their major platform was civil service reform. We gotta make sure that people who are hired within the government civil service, it's a merit based system. These are the most qualified people and it shouldn't have anything to do with party affiliation.
Speaker 1:The stalwarts on the other hand, they liked how the system was. They wanted to keep it in place. They wanted to make sure whoever if we win, we become the president. We wanna make sure that we're able to dole out jobs to people who are loyal to us, to our friends, to our cronies, to our buddies. And the half breeds and the stalwarts were tearing the Republican Party apart in the convention of 18/80.
Speaker 1:They finally decided on a compromise. They decided that the nominee for the president would be a half breed, someone who was interested in civil service reform. His name was James Garfield. But to balance the ticket and to keep the Republican Party together, they decided to nominate for vice president a stalwart, someone who was not interested in civil service reform, and they decided they would nominate Chester Arthur. Who was Chester Arthur?
Speaker 1:He was the head at one point of the New York City Custom House, which was an incredibly lucrative and influential job. At one point, Chester Arthur was the most heavily compensated federal employee and not only was he compensated well, he himself controlled many, many jobs underneath him. If anyone ever benefited from the patronage, from this spoil system, it was Chester Arthur. And that's how the Republican National Convention in 18/80, that's what they decided. A compromise between the half breeds and the stalwarts.
Speaker 1:If you read in Sefer Boisius, the book of Genesis, we read about Abraham, we read about Avraham, and he has a righteous son, Yitzchok, Isaac. He's pious, he's a wonderful guy. But Avraham has another son, Yeshmael, Ishmael. And the Torah tells us about Ishmael. At one point when he's young, it says that he's Metzachek.
Speaker 1:We find that he's mocking. Rashi explains, you know what Metzachek is an allusion to? Rashi says it's an allusion to the fact that he was an idolater, he was an adulterer, and he was a murderer. The 3 cardinal sins in Judaism, Yeshmal had transgressed them. He was a villain.
Speaker 1:He was a terrible guy, a Russia, a terribly wicked person. What's remarkable is if you look in the Talmud, you'll find some of the great sages found in the Talmud. Their names are Rabbi Ishmael. Now, why is that? You don't find many people nowadays named Saddam Hussein because we typically don't name our kids after villains.
Speaker 1:If Ishmael was such a villain, if if the Torah tells us that he was a terrible person, he's a murderer, an adulterer, an idolater, why in the world did Jewish people name their kids Yeshmael after someone who the Torah identifies as a villain? What's also remarkable is if you read a few chapters later, when Yeshmael dies, the Torah records Vayigva Vayamas. He expires and he dies. And Rashi points out the word Vayigva is an unusual word. It's a word, Sezarashi, that's reserved for the pious, for people who are righteous.
Speaker 1:That's the terminology when we use to describe the death of a great person. Why in the world does the Torah use that word, vayigva, to describe the death of Ishmael? He's a villain. He's a murderer. He's an adulterer.
Speaker 1:He's an idolater. Why in the world does the Torah use that terminology? And Rashi tells us, Mikan, you see from here that Yeshma'el, he repents. The end of his life, Yeshma'el changes. He becomes a good person.
Speaker 1:He gives up his bad ways. And that's why the Torah goes ahead and it says, Vayigva. When he dies, he was pious. He started off his life as a villain, as a terrible guy, an adulterer, an idolater, a murderer. But, later in his life, Yeshmel, he does shuvah.
Speaker 1:He repents. He changes his ways. And that's why we find many great sages in the Talmud, they're named Yeshmael because Yeshmael, at the end of his life, he was righteous. He was a great man. And the Torah tells us that by saying, Vayigva Vayamas.
Speaker 1:He dies using the language and the expression reserved only for the pious, only for the righteous. And it's such a remarkable lesson. If someone is terrible as Yeshma'el, someone who can live such a bad life and do so many terrible things, so many terrible transgressions, if he can change his way, if he can become a better person, isn't that an inspiration to all of us? If Yeshmel can turn that boat around, we can too. In 18/81, a frustrated office seeker named Charles Goutteau, He was really frustrated that now that Garfield got elected president, he wanted to be he wanted to go ahead and get appointed to be a minister to the for the government.
Speaker 1:He wanted to be a minister out in Paris. But Garfield is the president and Garfield, he's a half breed. He doesn't like that patronage system. And even though Guiteau had campaigned hard for Garfield, Garfield wasn't interested in giving any government jobs to his buddies and friends solely on a merit system. And Guiteau never got his job.
Speaker 1:And Guiteau had a great idea. You know what I'll do? I'll shoot and kill the president, and Chester Arthur, the stalwart, he'll become president. And Arthur, well, he's into this spoil system. He's into the patronage system.
Speaker 1:And that way, I couldn't get a I could get a job. And on June 2, 18 81, at a railroad depot in Washington DC, Charles Goutteau pulls out his revolver and he shoots Garfield who dies a few weeks later. Chester Arthur now becomes president and he realizes at that point that the system is totally broken. He was a stalwart. He believed in the patronage system.
Speaker 1:He believed in that spoil system. No one in the world had benefited more from that spoil system than Chester Arthur. But at that moment when he was president, after Garfield was assassinated by someone who was an office seeker, at that point, Chester Arthur had a realization that the system, it cannot continue. It's broken. And it was under Chester Arthur's administration that the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act was passed, which divides the federal government into political appointees.
Speaker 1:There are some jobs which the president, he can replace them by people who he feels are within his circle, his friends, people who are loyal to him, and those are political appointees. But, there's another half of the federal government, which is the civil service, and the civil service is a merit based system and you are not hired based on party affiliation, You're only you're only hired based on merit. And that law was passed by Chester Arthur, the greatest of the patronage, the person who benefited the most from the spoil system, Chester Arthur. Because you know what? He changed.
Speaker 1:He realized the system wasn't working. He realized it was wrong. He realized it was corrupt. If Chester Arthur can change, if Jeschmiel, that great villain, if he could change, we could change too. Let's not live static lives.
Speaker 1:The definition of our humanity is our ability to reform. It's our ability to grow. It's our ability to change. If Chester Arthur can do it, if Ypshmeil can do it, we can do it too.