page_title: Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act
section_title: Passage
hierarchical_section_title: Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act / Passage
caption_attribution_description: English: A portrait of Chester A. Arthur located inside the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.
context_page_description: The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act is a United States federal law passed by the 47th United States Congress and signed into law by President Chester A. Arthur on January 16, 1883. The act mandates that most positions within the federal government should be awarded on the basis of merit instead of political patronage.
  By the late 1870s, American politics operated on the spoils system, a political patronage practice in which officeholders awarded their allies with government jobs in return for financial and political support. Proponents of the spoils system were successful at blocking meaningful civil service reform until the assassination of President James A. Garfield in 1881. The 47th Congress passed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act during its lame duck session and President Chester A. Arthur, himself a former spoilsman, signed the bill into law.
  The Pendleton Civil Service Act provided for the selection of some government employees by competitive exams, rather than ties to politicians or political affiliation.
context_section_description: In 1880, Democratic Senator George H. Pendleton of Ohio introduced legislation to require the selection of civil servants based on merit as determined by an examination, but the measure failed to pass. Pendleton's bill was largely based on reforms proposed by the Jay Commission, which Hayes had assigned to investigate the Port of New York. It also expanded similar civil service reforms attempted by President Franklin Pierce 30 years earlier.
  Hayes declined to seek a second term as president, and was succeeded by fellow Republican James A. Garfield, who won the 1880 presidential election on a ticket with former Port Collector Chester A. Arthur. In 1881, President Garfield was assassinated by Charles Guiteau, who believed that he had not received an appointment by Garfield because of his own affiliation with the Stalwarts. Garfield died on September 19, 1881, and was succeeded by Vice President Arthur. Many worried about how Arthur would act as president; the New York Times, which had supported Arthur earlier in his career, wrote "Arthur is about the last man who would be considered eligible for the position."
  Garfield's assassination by a deranged office seeker amplified the public demand for reform. Civil service reformers established the National Civil Service Reform League and undertook a major public campaign for reform, arguing that the spoils system had played a major role in the assassination of Garfield. In President Arthur's first annual address to Congress, Arthur requested civil service reform legislation, and Pendleton again introduced his bill, which again did not pass. Democrats, campaigning on the reform issue, won control of the House of Representatives in the 1882 congressional elections.
  The party's disastrous performance in the 1882 elections helped convince many Republicans to support the civil service reform during the 1882 lame-duck session of Congress. The election results were seen as a public mandate for civil service reform, but many Republicans also wanted to pass a bill so that they could craft the legislation before losing control of Congress, allowing the party to take credit for the bill and to protect Republican officeholders from dismissal. The Senate approved Pendleton's bill, 38–5, and the House soon concurred by a vote of 155–47. Nearly all congressional opposition to the Pendleton bill came from Democrats, though a majority of Democrats in each chamber of Congress voted for the bill. Arthur signed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act into law on January 16, 1883.
caption: Ole Peter Hansen Balling's 1881 portrait of Chester A. Arthur
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