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
Moses J. Liddell loss of slave labor. As a result of these conditions the Jones-Liddell feud came to a boil when Liddell's father, St. John Richardson Liddell, was assassinated by the Jones family on February 14, 1870. In ratalliation of his father's murder, on February 18, 1870, when Moses J. Liddell saw the accused assassin of his father, Col. Charles Jones, Liddell shot him while Jones was being transported to the boat in custody at Harrisonburg. Jones did not die as a result of the gunshot wounds. As a result of the political unrest due to the sensationalized feud, Moses J. Liddell along