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
SS Coptic (1881) SS Coptic (1881) SS "Coptic" was a steamship built in 1881, which was successively owned by the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company, the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, and the Japanese Oriental Steam Ship Co. ("Toyo Kisen Kabushiki Kaisha") before being scrapped in 1926. She was filmed by Thomas Edison in 1897 in one of his early movies. The movie is currently stored in The Library of Congress, archive.org and other internet archives. A sister ship to , "Coptic" was built at the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Ireland, for service with the Oceanic Steam Navigation Company's White Star Line. Launched