In some quarters, official incumbents
neglected public duty to do political work and especially in
Southern States, they frequently were not only inordinately
active in questionable political work, but sought to do party
service by secret and sinister manipulation of colored votes, and
by other practices inviting avoidable and dangerous collisions
between the white and colored population."*
*Cleveland, "Presidential Problems," pp. 42-43.
The Administration began its career in March, 1885. The Senate
did not convene until December. Meanwhile, removals and
appointments went on in the public service, the total for ten
months being six hundred and forty-three which was thirty-seven
less than the number of removals made by President Grant in seven
weeks, in 1869.
In obedience to the statute of 1869, President Cleveland sent in
all the recess appointments within thirty days after the opening
of the session. They were referred to various committees
according to the long established custom of the Senate, but the
Senate moved so slowly that three months after the opening of the
session, only seventeen nominations had been considered, fifteen
of which the Senate confirmed.
Meanwhile, the Senate had raised an issue which the President met
with a force and a directness probably unexpected. Among the
recess appointments was one to the office of District Attorney
for the Southern District of Alabama, in place of an officer who
had been suspended in July 1885, but whose term of office
expired by limitation on December 20, 1885.
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