Abstract
This paper aims to explore the relationship between Union veterans of the American Civil War and the federal bureaucracy, and how that relationship was impacted by both the spoils-system and the civil service reform movement. Union veterans faced certain vulnerabilities in the civil service due to the spoils-system, difficulties which went unaddressed and unremedied by the reformers, in their fervent pursuit of meritocracy. The years covered by this study span the war itself, the passage of the preferred hiring statute for wounded Union veterans in 1865, and the passage of the Pendleton Act in 1883. A scandal that occurred at the custom-house in Providence, Rhode Island, in which several veteran civil servants were suddenly dismissed from their positions, will serve as a case study for this paper.