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 Ozama (1881) SS Ozama (1881) The American steamer Ozama, 1028 tons, was the former British steamer "Craigallion", built by Ramage & Ferguson in 1881 at Leith, Scotland. She had a colorful history, with a mutiny and gunrunning. She was shipwrecked twice, the first time in 1885 in the Bahamas, and the last in 1894 on the outer shoal of Cape Romain, South Carolina. She was named for the Ozama River in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, which was one of her regular ports of call. This steamer was definitely a powerful and well built ship as evidenced by the fact that she was