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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
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