The Man Who Shot a President Over a Government Job: A Story Barely Told!

The Spoils System and Trump's Schedule F

Guiteau v.s Garfield

On July 2, 1881, Charles Guiteau walked into the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C., pulled out a revolver, and shot President James Garfield twice in the back.

This assassination was not an ideological one. Charles Guiteau was a Republican who campaigned for President Garfield to become the U.S. president.

So, what happened?

President Garfield promised to end the spoils system in the government. This system, designed in the 19th century and championed by President Andrew Jackson, aimed to hire political loyalists to the president and the party in the federal government.

Imagine that, every four years, when a president is elected, the employees of the executive branch have to be replaced with loyalists to the president. Crazy, right?

Charles Guiteau believed he deserved to be appointed U.S. Consul to Paris. He thought that because of his loyalty to the president and his campaigning efforts, he deserved this appointment. He had sent letters to the White House. He had shown up, repeatedly, to ask. He had been turned away, repeatedly, and ignored.

This incident was the last straw that led to the end of the spoils system. Two years later, Congress passed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883, which President Chester Arthur signed. The act established, for the first time, that federal jobs should be filled based on merit, tested through open, competitive exams, not political loyalty. It created the Civil Service Commission, protected workers from arbitrary political dismissal, and banned the requirement that federal employees make political contributions.

At first, it only covered about 10% of federal positions. But it created a ratchet: each outgoing president expanded it to protect their own appointees. Over the decades, the protected class grew. By the 20th century, the vast majority of federal employees were covered.

Why does this matter in 2026?

President Trump and his administration are strong believers in the need for federal employees to be loyal to the president and his/her policy agenda.

Trump signed an executive order creating Schedule F (Policy/Career). It is a new employment category that would reclassify tens of thousands of career federal employees in “policy-related” roles, stripping them of civil service protections and making them fireable at will. In easy words, making them easy to fire by the president.

Biden reversed it on day one. Trump reinstated it on day one of his second term.

What Schedule F does, structurally, is take career employees hired through competitive merit-based processes and move them into a category where they can be dismissed for any reason, including political loyalty.

That’s not a technical adjustment. That’s a direct challenge to the logic that has governed federal employment since 1883. Guiteau thought he deserved a government job because of what he had done for the winning side. The Pendleton Act said: That’s not how this works anymore.

Schedule F quietly reopens that question. Do we want a government full of loyalists to the president, or of employees who are experts in their field and loyal to the constitution and the rule of law, not to the individual?

In the next articles, I will share some quotes and opinions from federal employees about Schedule F and the Trump administration’s demands for loyalty

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