snivel service reform

File:Roscoe Conkling c. 1868 (cropped).jpg

Snivel service reform was a pejorative term applied by United States senator Roscoe Conkling in reference to advocates of civil service reform.Lee, Frances E. (June 6, 2016). [https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/studies-in-american-political-development/article/abs/patronage-logrolls-and-polarization-congressional-parties-of-the-gilded-age-18761896/E39C08CDB2F3193434EEBE519C61D911 Patronage, Logrolls, and “Polarization”: Congressional Parties of the Gilded Age, 1876–1896]. Cambridge University Press. Retrieved March 12, 2022.[https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/the-remarkable-roscoe-friend-and-nemesis-of-presidents-part-i.htm The Remarkable Roscoe: Friend and Nemesis of Presidents (Part I)]. National Park Service. Retrieved March 12, 2022.Shribman, David (February 9, 2017). [https://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2017/02/09/rutherford-hayes/97668222/ A history lesson for Trump]. The Detroit News. Retrieved March 12, 2022. Conkling, the leader of congressional "Stalwarts," conservative Republicans who advocated the continuation of Radical Republicanism and the spoils system, used the phrase as a means of derision against reformers including Rutherford B. Hayes and particularly George William Curtis.

At the New York State Republican Convention in 1877, Conkling delivered a speech excoriating President Hayes and reform-minded allies as "snivel service" reformers.Truesdale, Dorothy S. (October 1940). [https://www.libraryweb.org/~rochhist/v2_1940/v2i4.pdf Rochester Views The Third Term 1880], p. 3. Rochester History. Retrieved March 12, 2022. Curtis, among the targets of Conkling's assails, subsequently responded:[https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/george-william-curtis George William Curtis]. Encyclopedia.com. Retrieved March 12, 2022.

{{cquote|It was the saddest sight I ever knew, [Conkling] glaring at me in a fury of hate, and storming out his foolish blackguardism. I was all pity. I had not thought him great, but I had not suspected how small he was.|||George William Curtis, 1877}}

The phrase "snivel service reform" was also used later in 1885 by the Democratic-aligned newspaper Register of Raleigh, North Carolina.September 23, 1885. [https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1885/09/23/103635831.pdf CIVIL SERVICE REFORM.; UNFAVORABLE COMMENTS ON THE SYSTEM IN THE SOUTHERN PRESS.] The New York Times. Retrieved March 12, 2022.