During that era, nearly every commander in chiefs’ administration was committed to the preservation of the spoils system — the tradition of sweeping political patronage. The cronyism of the ...

William Marcy of New York. The senator’s boast became a platitude and provided a label for the politics of the era: the spoils system. The spoils system propagated like a pernicious weed.

This plan would reproduce the spoils system’s worst corruption, grift, and inefficiencies. The spoils system is the colloquial term for the period from roughly 1828 to 1883 when political ...

In many ways, Trump is seeking to return the country to the spoils system that existed in the 19th century. Pioneered by President Andrew Jackson, that system awarded tens of thousands of civil ...