Roscoe Conkling

Roscoe Conkling (1829-88), American politician and lawyer, born in Albany, New York, and educated in law. After three terms as a U.S. congressman (1859-63 and 1865-67), Conkling was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1867. He was a senator until 1881, becoming the undisputed leader of the Republican Party in New York State by virtue of his control of political patronage. In 1876 he contended unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination. Ohio Governor Rutherford B. Hayes won the nomination and the election, and was opposed by Conkling throughout his administration, especially on the issue of civil-service reform. In the 1880 election Conkling opposed his party's nomination of U.S. Senator James Garfield. When Garfield, after becoming president, made an appointment to a federal office in New York State without consulting Conkling, the latter resigned from the Senate in protest. Defeated when he ran for reelection, Conkling returned to his law practice, refusing a nomination by President Chester A. Arthur in 1882 to be an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.