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
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)