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Rising 1880s Springfield congressman caught in web of political intrigue

Rise to power ends rapidly

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By Tom Stafford, Staff Writer Updated 12:05 PM Monday, November 9, 2009

At first whiff, the editorial in the Monday, Dec. 12, 1881, Springfield Republic has the smell of home cooking.

But nosing through the Republic’s analysis of Springfielder J. Warren Keifer’s election as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives shows the newspaper may have detected a shift in the nation’s political winds.

A Republican from the party’s formation before the Civil War, Keifer had served as a Union general and was entering his third Congressional term when he was nominated to be speaker of the 47th Congress.

Although he led at each polling of the Republican caucus, it took 16 ballots for the Springfield attorney to prevail over his chief rival, New York congressman Frank Hiscock.

“The result was not unexpected,” the New York Times wrote in its Dec. 3, 1881 edition, “although it was not brought about as easily as those who were instrumental in manipulating the Pennsylvania delegation anticipated.”

Stalwarts vs. Half-Breeds

The Times identified the chief manipulator as Pennsylvania Sen. James Cameron.

Cameron’s political pedigree went back to his father, Simon, who served as President Abraham Lincoln’s first secretary of war until he was forced to resign because of a corruption scandal.

Newspaper reports and editorials linked Keifer’s selection to another well known politician — former Sen. Roscoe Conkling of New York.

More than a lieutenant, Conkling was something like a general in the Stalwart wing of the Republican Party.

By name, the Stalwarts were associated with former President U.S. Grant in holding true to Republican principles born during the Civil War.

By practice, they were associated with the corruption of the Grant administration and the spoils system that had allowed members to build power at home by awarding government jobs to political friends.

Conkling was tied to the patronage New York politicians controlled through appointments to New York City’s Customhouse.

Challenging the Stalwarts for control was a faction that favored civil service reform to fight corruption — a group the Stalwarts derisively called “Half-Breeds” to distinguish them from full-blooded, pure-bred Republicans.

Conkling vs. Blaine

A year before Keifer’s selection, the Stalwarts and Half-Breeds squared off at the 1880 Republican National Convention.

The official U.S. House of Representatives history reports that Conkling tried to get Grant back on the top of the GOP ticket in 1880 in part to defeat the other front runner, James G. Blaine, the head of the Half-Breed wing. Conkling and Blaine were such long-time enemies, they hadn’t spoken to one another for years.

Conkling’s strategy was to pass a rule requiring the New York delegation to vote for Grant as a block, reasoning that he was favored by a majority of the delegates. Half-Breed William Robertson, a New York state senator, blocked the move. Then, to head off Conkling’s effort to renominate Grant, Blaine eventually surrendered his own ambition to head the ticket and threw his support to darkhorse candidate James A. Garfield of Ohio.

He succeeded, but Conkling’s power didn’t disappear.

After being nominated on the 38th ballot, Garfield balanced naming Blaine as secretary of state by tapping Conkling protege Chester A. Arthur of New York as his running mate. The Empire State was too crucial to Garfield’s election to ignore Conkling.

Not to form?

The next year, the Congregationalist newspaper saw the contest for Speaker in classic Stalwart-Half Breed terms.

It identified Keifer’s rival, Hiscock, as “the candidate of those who believe in civil service” and Keifer as a soldier in the Stalwart system.

The Springfield Republic answered on Keifer’s behalf.

“Neither Mr. Conkling nor Mr. Cameron has any grip at all on the House of Representatives or any on General Keifer.”

The paper said because Half-Breed Republican votes were required to elect Keifer, his leadership “would have a tendency to obliterate the lines between the ... factions.”

The paper also vouched for Keifer’s character: “We know him thoroughly and can assure those who do not ... that one of his chief characteristics is a habit of acting promptly on his own responsibility.”

The Republic said the Stalwart and Half-Breed battle “represents a quarrel that has passed away,” a term the editors used advisedly.

Shakespearean casting

Keifer’s election came in the shadow of President James A. Garfield’s assassination — a killing which indelibly stained the Stalwart cause.

After naming Blaine, Conkling’s long-time enemy, as secretary of state, Garfield moved to appointed Conkling’s new enemy, Robertson, to an important New York post.

Conkling exploded.

A large, handsome man who boxed to stay in shape and approached politics in the same way, Conkling resigned his Senate seat to protest Garfield’s appointment and convinced fellow New York Senator Tom Platt to do the same.

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