[BroJoeK]

[President Lincoln]... "He has no system or method whatever, but allows his time and strength to be exhausted in listening to office-seekers, and doing other drudgery, which belongs to the Departments. "

Exhausting on Lincoln or not, the end result was that Lincoln's government was not at war against him in anything like the manner of President Trump's administration.

In 1883 Congress passed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, which greatly reduced the numbers of patronage jobs, but also created a class of civil servants we know today as "the Deep State".

[Homer_J_Simpson]

Brilliant observation. Civil service reform eventually resulted in things like mid-level gatekeepers with the ability to implement or thwart administration policy based on their own careerist or activist interests. That became terribly clear in the State Dept., intel agencies and elsewhere during Trump’s term.