Political appointments in the United States federal government until 1883. In 1820 Congress limited federal administrators to four-year terms, which led to constant turnover; by the 1860s and the Civil War, patronage had led to widespread inefficiency and political corruption. Although it used to be confined to cabinet positions, department heads, and foreign ambassadorships, by the 1860s patronage had spread to low-level government positions. This meant that when the incumbent political party lost a presidential election, the federal government underwent wholesale turnover. On July 2, 1881, Charles J. Guiteau, a disaffected and mentally unstable political office seeker, assassinated President James Garfield. This highlighted how much the
1881 Michigan Wolverines football team brothers), the Upper Peninsula (fullback William J. Olcott), and even Florida (Purl Woodruff). In 1881, Michigan scheduled games against the top American football teams—the Eastern powerhouses of Harvard, Yale and Princeton. Every year between 1870 and 1893, only Yale, Princeton, or Harvard has been credited with the consensus or shared national championship except Columbia in 1875. Retrospective historical power ratings have ranked them as the top three college football teams of 1881. The Michigan-Harvard game, which was played on Halloween 1881, was the first time any of the elite Eastern teams had played a team from the West. In his