“The chief business of the executive had become the distribution of patronage.”26 In an era when strangers could walk straight into the White House, Abraham Lincoln had been besieged by job seekers who cluttered the stairs and corridors day and night. One day a friend asked Lincoln whether he was depressed because the Union army had suffered a military setback. He smiled wanly and said, “No, it isn’t the army. It is the post office in Brownsville, Missouri.”
