What was the spoils system in US history?

The term "spoils system" is most commonly associated with Andrew Jackson.  It refers to the practice of giving government jobs to people because of who they supported for high office, not because of what kinds of qualifications they have.  President Jackson is associated with this because he was the first president to appoint mostly political supporters of his to government jobs.  The term "spoils system" came to be used because of the idea that "to the victors go the spoils."  The government jobs were seen as spoils that were to be distributed to the people who supported the winning candidate.

Define the spoils system and its impact on US politics. Give one example.

To help you get started on this question, let’s review the spoils system and talk about the effect it had on politics and the government during the nineteenth century.

The spoils system is also called the patronage system. Basically, when a new president (or any other government official with the power to appoint others to jobs) was elected, that president would sometimes replace current federal workers with his own supporters, those who helped him get elected. This, some said, was the “spoils” of victory, the reward for winning the election.

However, the spoils system caused a great deal of upheaval at times. People who were perfectly good at their jobs were nudged out of the way and replaced by people who really did not know how to fill the position. This led to confusion and inefficiency in the bureaucracy. Benjamin Harrison, for example, appointed over 30,000 new postmasters in a year’s time to reward his supporters.

Sometimes the spoils system even turned violent. James Garfield was assassinated by a man who was not appointed to the job he wanted. In 1883, the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act started to change the way office holders got their jobs, beginning to shift the bureaucracy to merit-based hiring rather than the spoils system.