Institutional racism reforms of the spoils system in place since the 1830s, and abuses of the post-war Grant-Jacksonian era; when Congress authorized the president to appoint a Civil Service Commission and prescribe regulations for admission to public service. A dis-satisfied office-seeker assassinated President Garfield in 1881 and Congress was motivated to pass the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act in 1883 which firmly established civil service. During reconstruction, this enabled the federal government to provide jobs for newly freed blacks in the south (primarily the Postal Service) where no other employment opportunities existed for them. Since the inception of the merit system in
Warsaw pogrom (1881) occurred in Russian Empire, notably the Kiev and Odessa pogroms), were not a Russia-only phenomena. However historian Michael Ochs disagreed with this explanation, citing insufficient evidence. Ochs calls those explanations conspiracy theories, arguing that they fail to present what the Russian authorities would have gained from the pogroms. He notes that period from 1863 to 1881 was witnessing the increase of anti-Semitism in Poland, with disillusionment among Poles with the idea of assimilation of the Jews was growing, and hence there was less need for the Russian authorities to orchestrate a pogrom, which might have been spontaneous. Warsaw pogrom (1881)