Roscoe Conkling was a successful politician and an able lawyer. But the colorful and irascible senator had no desire to serve on the high court.
More disappointment followed. During the campaign, Hayes endorsed civil service reform and vowed to put an end to patronage jobs in the federal government — aiming directly at the basis of Conkling’s political power. Conkling struck back hard. During a speech to the New York Republican convention in 1877, he denounced his foes as the “man-milliners, the dilettanti and carpet knights of politics" whose crusades reeked of hypocrisy.
As Conkling’s grip on power weakened, he found himself at the center of another controversy. A long affair with Kate Chase Sprague — daughter of the late chief justice — burst into the headlines in 1879 after former senator William Sprague chased Conkling from his Rhode Island estate, where he discovered the senator visiting his wife. “Are you armed?” the enraged Sprague reportedly demanded of Conkling, who answered he was not.
Guiteau was “totally unknown” to Conkling and obviously disturbed, Conkling biographer David Jordan wrote, “but all of these factors were resolutely ignored by the public in fixing blame for the attempt on Garfield’s life.” New York legislators, mortified by the attempted assassination and fed up with Conkling’s autocratic style, refused to return him to Washington.
his former boss wanted the job, according to Greenberger, he nominated Conkling for a seat on the Supreme Court. The Senate hastily approved the nomination and then waited to see if Conkling would accept.