A member of his own party mocked his “grandiloquent swell” and “turkey-gobbler strut.” A former senator, discovering him in the company of the ex-senator’s wife, threatened to kill him. He despised good-government reformers.
Two presidents thought he merited a seat on the Supreme Court.
But Roscoe Conkling turned them both down — once for the chief justice job and once after his appointment had already been confirmed by the Senate.
Most of the men and women offered the chance to serve on the high court react with humility and awe. Few pass up the opportunity, and fewer still turn it down twice. But few figures in the history of American politics compare to Conkling, the charismatic, vain and belligerent boss of the New York Republican Party during the 1870s.
Conkling preferred the rough-and-tumble of politics to the arid business of writing opinions, weighing precedents and listening to arguments instead of making them. “I could not take the place,” he once said of the Supreme Court, “for I would be forever gnawing at my chains.”
Trained as a lawyer, Conkling was elected to Congress as a Republican in 1858, quickly establishing himself as a steadfast partisan and opponent of enslavement. In 1859, Conkling, a six-foot-tall physical fitness buff who liked to box to stay in shape, stood between Republican Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania and angry Democrats as debate over selection of a new House speaker threatened to turn violent. He denounced slavery as a “barbaric and detestable crime” in 1860. Defeated for reelection in 1862, Conkling returned to the House two years later.
Conkling’s tenure in the House was marked by a memorable skirmish with another up-and-coming Republican, James Gillespie Blaine, during which the normally affable Maine lawmaker savagely mocked Conkling for his “grandiloquent swell" and "majestic, super-eminent, overpowering turkey-gobbler strut.” The description stuck. Conkling never forgave Blaine and spent the better part of the next two decades battling his rival from Maine for supremacy in the Republican Party.
Conkling’s national profile grew after the New York legislature elected him to the Senate in 1867, where he allied with President Ulysses S. Grant and cut a distinctive figure among his fusty colleagues. While the fashion palette of the Senate ran the gamut from black to gray, Conkling favored colorful shirts and ties and light-colored slacks. A curl of blond hair fell across the top of his forehead.
“He is tall, well made, and has a florid complexion, with light sandy hair and beard," a contemporary wrote. “In short, Mr. Conkling is a very good-looking man — a fact of which he is not at all ignorant.”