n of Wayne
MacVeagh, a Pennsylvania lawyer, to the post of Attorney-General. A
friend of Conkling, who had made a striking record in the New York
Post-Office through two terms, Thomas L. James, became Postmaster-General.
The sensibilities of the West, always jealous of the East in matters of
finance, were appeased by the selection of William L. Windom, of
Minnesota, as Secretary of the Treasury, for "any Eastern man
would be accused of being an agent or tool of the 'money kings' and
'gold-bugs' of New York and Europe." The Cabinet as a whole was received
with favor, but the harmony which its members promised was soon
disturbed.

The appointment of Blaine as Secretary of State, which Garfield had
determined upon a few days after his election, was a blow to Roscoe
Conkling. Hayes had struck at Conkling in removing Arthur and Cornell.
Now when Garfield decided to please himself in the New York
collectorship, Conkling saw in the act the hand of Blaine. He fell back
upon the practice of senatorial courtesy, and held up the confirmation
of the appointment. When he found himself unable to coerce the
President, he broke with him as he had broken with Hayes, and this time
he and his colleague from New York, Thomas Collier Platt, resigned their
seats and appealed to the New York Legislature, then in session. The
move was not without promise. Cornell was now Governor of New York.
Arthur, with the prestige of the Vice-Presidency, left his chair in the
Senate to work for the reelection and triumphant return of Conkling and
Platt, on the doctrine that the appointments of a President must be
personally acceptable to the Senators from the State concerned. But the
New York Legislature failed to give the martyrs their vindication, and
permitted them to remain in private life. Their friends, the
"Stalwarts," ceased to support Garfield.

James, who was not enough a follower of Conkling to emulate him,
remained in the Post-Office, where he had already found wholesale
corruption. It had been the practice of the Post-Office to classify the
mail routes according to their method of transportation, and to mark
those running by stage or rider by a star on the general list. These had
come to be known as the "star routes." The contracts for the star routes
were flexible in order to meet the shifting needs of the Western
population that lived away from railways and depended upon the
stage-coach. When the business of any route justified a better se