{"id":632,"date":"2009-10-23T06:00:53","date_gmt":"2009-10-23T11:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/blog\/?p=632"},"modified":"2010-06-16T10:43:24","modified_gmt":"2010-06-16T15:43:24","slug":"election-of-1860-political-appointments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/2009\/10\/23\/election-of-1860-political-appointments\/","title":{"rendered":"Election of 1860 &#8211; Political Appointments"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu\/node\/24465\/zoomify\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-631\" title=\"statehouse\" src=\"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/files\/2009\/10\/statehouse-300x229.jpg\" alt=\"statehouse\" width=\"300\" height=\"229\" srcset=\"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/files\/2009\/10\/statehouse-300x229.jpg 300w, https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/files\/2009\/10\/statehouse.jpg 482w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>After his victory in the 1860 election, President-Elect <a href=\"http:\/\/hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu\/node\/6095\" target=\"_blank\">Abraham Lincoln <\/a>quickly started to work on filling the positions in the federal government that were political appointments. While selecting cabinet members was an important task, historian Harold Holzer explains that \u201cLincoln understood\u201d how critical it was \u201cto purge [the] Democrats\u201d and \u201cguarantee the loyalty of the federal bureaucracy.\u201d Even as Lincoln considered the appropriate response to the secession crisis, he held countless meetings with office seekers who showed up at his temporary office in the Illinois Statehouse (see image to the right \u2013 it is #1 on <a href=\"http:\/\/hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu\/node\/24465\/zoomify\" target=\"_blank\">this map<\/a>). Those unable to travel to Springfield sent numerous letters to recommend either themselves or their friends. Other letters offered Lincoln advice on the appointment process. \u201cDo not be led astray by corrupt Politicians,\u201d as one anonymous <a href=\"http:\/\/hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu\/node\/28973\" target=\"_blank\">author warned<\/a>. The significant amount of incoming mail even caught the eye of at least one reporter. After a meeting in December, the reporter\u2019s only comment about Lincoln\u2019s office was to note that \u201c[the secretary\u2019s] desk [was] heaped up with letters and documents.\u201d The political activity in Springfield did not escape the notice of Democratic papers like the New York Herald, which used the opportunity to portray their rivals as corrupt. The <a href=\"http:\/\/hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu\/node\/28971\" target=\"_blank\">Herald predicted <\/a>a \u201cgreat republican feast\u201d on all \u201cthe fat things\u201d and identified the two \u201ccooks\u201d who would direct \u201cthe distribution of federal offices\u201d in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After his victory in the 1860 election, President-Elect Abraham Lincoln quickly started to work on filling the positions in the federal government that were political appointments. While selecting cabinet members was an important task, historian Harold Holzer explains that \u201cLincoln understood\u201d how critical it was \u201cto purge [the] Democrats\u201d and \u201cguarantee the loyalty of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[77,171,172],"tags":[158],"class_list":["post-632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-antebellum-1840-1861","category-historic-periodicals","category-letters-diaries","tag-campaigns-elections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=632"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1998,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632\/revisions\/1998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/blogdivided\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}