Farkas v. Thornburgh

MEMORANDUM

TROUTMAN, District Judge.

Orating to the United States Senate early in 1832, William Learned Marcy 1 of New York quipped “To the victors belong the spoils of the enemy!”. 2 Unwittingly, he captured in this ben trovato apostrophe the common misunderstanding of the practice of patronage, 3 which Thomas Jefferson, a Republican, 4 first used as strategy to conciliate the then recently displaced Federalist party. 5 Andrew Jackson later accepted patronage as an effective measure to propitiate dissenters and consolidate factions in the still nascent and undisciplined Democratic party. 6…