1881 United States Senate special elections in New York March 4. On May 16, 1881, both U.S. Senators from New York resigned in protest against the distribution of federal patronage in New York by President James A. Garfield, a Half-Breed, without being consulted. The confrontation between the Stalwart and the Half-Breed (in the press now usually referred to as the "Administration men") factions of the Republican Party arose when the leader of the New Yorker Half-Breeds, President pro tempore of the State Senate William H. Robertson, was appointed Collector of the Port of New York, the highest paying federal office in New York. Conkling preferred that Collector Edwin Merritt
Thomas J. Campbell (university president) completing his studies, he returned to St. Francis Xavier College to teach rhetoric in 1876. He left St. Francis in order to study French literature, ecclesiastical history, and theology at Louvain University, Belgium. He was ordained in 1881, and returned to Frederick, Maryland in the US to spend his third year of probation. In 1885 he became the president of the college, and was the youngest president in over a hundred years. He continued the plans for a new science building, and during his administration the first bachelor of sciences degree was awarded. Campbell also wanted to help the mentally