Roscoe Conkling

His father Alfred was a congressman and a federal judge, so Roscoe grew up shaking hands with Martin Van Buren, John Quincy Adams and Thurlow Weed. At 17 he moved to Utica to read law with two of the best attorneys in the state. At 18 he was on platforms across central New York raising money for the Irish famine, calling slavery man's inhumanity to man and calling himself a Seward Whig. He made his name winning an acquittal for a man charged with forgery by proving he could not read. District attorney at 20, mayor of Utica at 28, Congress the same year. He was temperate, detested tobacco, and kept himself in condition with boxing, an odd hobby for a politician of that era.

He took his Senate seat in March 1867 and spent 14 years running New York for the Republican Party. The lever was the New York Custom House, the largest patronage trove the federal government had, and the men who owed him their jobs were the Stalwarts. He called reform snivel service reform. In 1880 he put Grant's name up for a third term and held his delegates through 36 ballots against James G. Blaine, who had once mocked him in the House for his turkey-gobbler strut. Then President Garfield removed Conkling's collector at the Custom House and installed William H. Robertson. On May 16, 1881, Conkling resigned his seat and Thomas Platt resigned with him, expecting Albany to send them both straight back. Albany chose Elbridge Lapham. He never held office again.

Twice he was handed the Supreme Court and twice he said no. Grant offered him the Chief Justiceship in 1873 — I could not take the place, Conkling answered, for I would be forever gnawing my chains. In 1882 Chester Arthur, the protege he had installed at the Custom House, nominated him as an associate justice. The Senate confirmed him. He declined, and no confirmed nominee has done it since. What he did instead was practice law. Arguing for the Southern Pacific Railroad, he told the Court that he had helped draft the Fourteenth Amendment and that its authors chose the word person to take in corporations, and he produced his own diary as proof. Howard Jay Graham, the amendment's leading scholar, concluded the story was untrue and that Conkling may have perjured himself.

On March 12, 1888, with the Great Blizzard shutting New York down, he set out to walk the three miles home from his Wall Street office. He got as far as Union Square. Pneumonia came first, then a bone infection behind the ear, then meningitis after surgery to drain it, and he died in the early hours of April 18 and was buried at Forest Hill Cemetery in Utica. The machine he ran is chiefly remembered as the thing the Pendleton Act of 1883 was written to kill. His name outlasted him on other people's children — parents across the country named boys Roscoe Conkling, among them the father of Roscoe Conkling Arbuckle, who chose it as an insult.

Roscoe Conkling's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Fourteenth Amendment law
  One of its drafters on the Joint Committee on Reconstruction 1868
• Electoral Commission Act law
  Helped write and pass the bill that settled the Hayes-Tilden dispute 1877
• The Stalwart machine other
  New York Republican politics built on Custom House appointments 1871
• Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad case
  Where he told the Court the amendment's framers meant person to include corporations 1886

• 1846 aged ~17 At 17 he moves to Utica to read law
• March 2, 1858 aged 28 Elected mayor of Utica after a five-day campaign He won Congress the same year.
• March 4, 1867 aged 37 Takes his seat in the United States Senate
• 1873 aged ~44 Turns down the Chief Justiceship I could not take the place, he said, for I would be forever gnawing my chains.
• 1880 aged ~51 Nominates Grant for a third term and holds his delegates for 36 ballots The convention took James A. Garfield instead.
• May 16, 1881 aged 51 Resigns from the Senate over the Custom House collectorship Thomas Platt resigned with him. Both expected the legislature to return them at once.
• July 22, 1881 aged 51 The New York legislature picks Elbridge Lapham instead Garfield had been shot on July 2 by a man who called himself a Stalwart.
• February 24, 1882 aged 52 Nominated to the Supreme Court by Chester Arthur, confirmed, and declines
• March 12, 1888 aged 58 Collapses at Union Square walking home through the Great Blizzard He died five weeks later.

• Chester A. Arthur 1829–1886
  Twenty-first president who signed the Pendleton Act establishing merit-based federal hiring. promoted
• Chester A. Arthur 1829–1886
  Twenty-first president who signed the Pendleton Act establishing merit-based federal hiring. mentor
• James A. Garfield 1831–1881
  Twentieth president assassinated months into office prompting federal civil service reform. opposed
• Ulysses S. Grant 1822–1885
  18th President and Union Army general whose leadership was decisive in winning the Civil War. allied with