Hawthorne's Dismissal from the Custom-House

Following the election of the Democrat James K. Polk to the Presidency in 1844, Hawthorne was able to get a position as Surveyor (or Supervisor) in the Salem Custom House through the influence of his friends within the Democratic Party. Hawthorne had no sea-faring experience, but he had worked at the Custom House in Boston; more importantly, he would be able to pocket a decent salary for working only three to four hours a day. He would, supposedly, have plenty of time to continue his writing.

Instead, Hawthorne came down with writer's block. More disastrously, after the election of a Whig (Zachary Taylor) to the Presidency in 1849, Charles W. Upham, a member of the Whig Party Committee in Salem, sent a petition to Washington urging the President to remove Hawthorne from his post. Hawthorne, according to Upham, had participated in Democratic Party functions while serving as Surveyor and therefore had no right to claim he was a non-partisan appointee. Hawthorne was removed by the end of the summer of 1849.

In "The Custom-House," his introduction to The Scarlet Letter , Hawthorne portrayed himself as victim of petty politics, an innocent who was the victim of a power struggle. Yet Hawthorne's introduction should not be taken as an accurate description of his role at the Salem Custom House, any more than his descriptions of some of the Inspectors should be taken as objective portrayals of actual people at the Custom House.

What apparently happened was far more complex than Hawthorne's account. Upham's attack came in two stages: his first petition charged Hawthorne with continued political activity and with ensuring that inspectors who were Democrats got a larger share of the fees than Whig inspectors. Hawthorne, rallying for support from prominent Whig friends like the Boston lawyer George Hillard, claimed that his political activities were nominal and that his immediate superior was responsible for the pay discrepancies. Then Upham revealed fouler evidence. The Democratic inspectors had been forced to contribute some of their inflated salaries to a local Democratic Party newspaper; when some had refused to do this, Hawthorne had written and signed an order suspending them without pay. When this document came to light, Hawthorne's Whig and literary supporters left him, and he was soon removed.

Historian Stephen Nissenbaum has traced the roots of the controversy to a political agreement beyond Hawthorne's control. Hawthorne's boss at the Custom House -- the Collector -- had made a deal with local Democrats: if they would allow him to retire and appoint his son to take his place, then his son would refrain from dismissing any Democrats in the Custom House. Nissenbaum argues that Upham knew of this arrangement; to get rid of the protected (and locally-appointed) Democrats, the Whigs would have to dismiss Hawthorne (the only federally-appointed Democratic official in the Salem Custom House), then replace him with someone who could in turn dismiss the Democrats. Hawthorne was to some extent a political amateur, but he was also aware of the shark-like nature of local party officials on both sides.

Source:

Stephen Nissenbaum, "The Firing of Nathaniel Hawthorne," Essex Institute Historical Collections, vol.114 (April 1978).