Chester Alan Arthur (October 5, 1829 – November 18, 1886)
was an American attorney and politician who served as the 21st president of the
United States from 1881 to 1885. He previously was the 20th vice president of
the United States, and he succeeded to the presidency upon the death of
President James A. Garfield in September 1881, two months after Garfield was
shot by an assassin.
Arthur was born in Fairfield, Vermont, grew up in upstate
New York, and practiced law in New York City. He served as quartermaster
general of the New York Militia during the American Civil War. Following the
war, he devoted more time to Republican politics and quickly rose in New York
Senator Roscoe Conkling's political machine. Appointed by President Ulysses S.
Grant to the lucrative and politically powerful post of Collector of the Port
of New York in 1871, Arthur was an important supporter of Conkling and the
Stalwart faction of the Republican Party. In 1878, the new president,
Rutherford B. Hayes, fired Arthur as part of a plan to reform the federal
patronage system in New York. When Garfield won the Republican nomination for
president in 1880, Arthur, an eastern Stalwart, was nominated for vice
president to balance the ticket. Four months into his term, Garfield was shot
by an assassin; he died 11 weeks later, and Arthur assumed the presidency.
At the outset, Arthur struggled to overcome a negative
reputation as a Stalwart and product of Conkling's machine. To the surprise of
reformers, he took up the cause of civil service reform. Arthur advocated and
enforced the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act. He presided over the rebirth
of the United States Navy, but was criticized for failing to alleviate the
federal budget surplus, which had been accumulating since the end of the Civil
War. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which resulted in denying
citizenship to Chinese Americans until 1898 and barring Chinese immigration
until 1943. Building on the 1875 Page Act, which barred Chinese women from
entering the country, it was the first total ban on a nation or ethnic group
from immigrating to the country.
Suffering from poor health, Arthur made only a limited
effort to secure the Republican Party's nomination in 1884; he retired at the
close of his term. Journalist Alexander McClure later wrote, "No man ever
entered the Presidency so profoundly and widely distrusted as Chester Alan
Arthur, and no one ever retired ... more generally respected, alike by
political friend and foe." Although
his failing health and political temperament combined to make his
administration less active than a modern presidency, he earned praise among
contemporaries for his solid performance in office. The New York World summed
up Arthur's presidency at his death in 1886: "No duty was neglected in his
administration, and no adventurous project alarmed the nation." Mark Twain wrote of him, "[I]t would be
hard indeed to better President Arthur's administration." Over the 20th and 21st centuries, however,
Arthur's reputation mostly faded among the public.
Early life
Birth and family
Chester Alan Arthur was born October 5, 1829, in Fairfield,
Vermont. Arthur's mother, Malvina Stone,
was born in Berkshire, Vermont, the daughter of George Washington Stone and
Judith Stevens. Her family was primarily
of English and Welsh descent, and her grandfather, Uriah Stone, had served in
the Continental Army during the American Revolution. Arthur's father, William Arthur, was born in
Dreen, Cullybackey, County Antrim, Ireland to a Presbyterian family of
Scots-Irish descent; he graduated from college in Belfast and emigrated to the
Province of Lower Canada in 1819 or 1820. Malvina Stone met William Arthur when Arthur
was teaching school in Dunham, Quebec, near the Vermont border. They married in Dunham on April 12, 1821, soon
after meeting. The Arthurs moved to
Vermont after the birth of their first child, Regina. They quickly moved from Burlington to Jericho,
and finally to Waterville, as William received positions teaching at different
schools. William Arthur also spent a
brief time studying law, but while still in Waterville, he departed from both
his legal studies and his Presbyterian upbringing to join the Free Will
Baptists; he spent the rest of his life as a minister in that sect.[6] William
Arthur became an outspoken abolitionist, which often made him unpopular with
some members of his congregations and contributed to the family's frequent
moves. In 1828, the family moved again,
to Fairfield, where Chester Alan Arthur was born the following year; he was the
fifth of nine children. He was named
"Chester" after Chester Abell], the physician and family friend who
assisted in his birth, and "Alan" for his paternal grandfather. The family remained in Fairfield until 1832,
when William Arthur's profession took them on the road again, to churches in
several towns in Vermont and upstate New York. The family finally settled in
the Schenectady, New York area.
Chester A. Arthur
Siblings
Regina
(1822–1910), the wife of William G. Caw, a grocer, banker, and community leader
of Cohoes, New York who served as town supervisor and village trustee
Jane (1824–1842)
Almeda
(1825–1899), the wife of James H. Masten, who served as postmaster of Cohoes
and publisher of the Cohoes Cataract newspaper
Ann (1828–1915), a
career educator who taught school in New York, as well as working in South
Carolina in the years immediately before and after the Civil War.
Malvina
(1832–1920), the wife of Henry J. Haynesworth, who was an official of the
Confederate government and a merchant in Albany, New York before being
appointed as a captain and assistant quartermaster in the U.S. Army during
Arthur's presidency
William
(1834–1915), a medical school graduate who became a career Army officer and
paymaster, he was wounded during his Civil War service. William Arthur retired
in 1898 with the brevet rank of lieutenant colonel, and permanent rank of
major.
George (1836–1838)
Mary (1841–1917),
the wife of John E. McElroy, an Albany businessman and insurance executive, and
Arthur's official White House hostess during his presidency
The family's frequent moves later spawned accusations that
Chester Arthur was not a native-born citizen of the United States. When Arthur
was nominated for vice president in 1880, a New York attorney and political
opponent, Arthur P. Hinman, initially speculated that Arthur was born in
Ireland and did not come to the United States until he was fourteen years old.
Had that been true, opponents might have argued that Arthur was
constitutionally ineligible for the vice presidency under the United States
Constitution's natural-born-citizen clause. When Hinman's original story did not take
root, he spread a new rumor that Arthur was born in Canada. This claim, too,
failed to gain credence.
Education
Arthur spent some of his childhood years living in the New
York towns of York, Perry, Greenwich, Lansingburgh, Schenectady, and Hoosick. One of his first teachers said Arthur was a
boy "frank and open in manners and genial in disposition." During his time at school, he gained his first
political inclinations and supported the Whig Party. He joined other young
Whigs in support of Henry Clay, even participating in a brawl against students who
supported James K. Polk. Arthur also
supported the Fenian Brotherhood, an Irish republican organization founded in
America; he showed this support by wearing a green coat. After completing his college preparation at
the Lyceum of Union Village (now Greenwich) and a grammar school in
Schenectady, Arthur enrolled at Schenectady's Union College in 1845, where he
studied the traditional classical curriculum. As a senior, he was president of the debate
society and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. During his winter breaks, Arthur served as a
teacher at a school in Schaghticoke.
After graduating in 1848, Arthur returned to Schaghticoke
and became a full-time teacher, and soon began to pursue an education in law. While studying law, he continued teaching,
moving closer to home by taking a job at a school in North Pownal, Vermont.
Coincidentally, future president James A.
Garfield taught penmanship at the same school three years later, but the two
did not cross paths during their teaching careers. In 1852, Arthur moved again, to Cohoes, New
York, to become the principal of a school at which his sister, Malvina, was a
teacher. In 1853, after studying at
State and National Law School in Ballston Spa, New York, and then saving enough
money to relocate, Arthur moved to New York City to read law at the office of
Erastus D. Culver, an abolitionist lawyer and family friend. When Arthur was admitted to the New York bar
in 1854, he joined Culver's firm, which was subsequently renamed Culver, Parker,
and Arthur.
Early career
When Arthur joined the firm, Culver and New York attorney
John Jay (the grandson of the Founding Father John Jay) were pursuing a habeas
corpus action against Jonathan Lemmon, a Virginia slaveholder who was passing
through New York with his eight slaves. In Lemmon v. New York, Culver argued that, as
New York law did not permit slavery, any slave arriving in New York was
automatically freed. The argument was
successful, and after several appeals was upheld by the New York Court of
Appeals in 1860. Campaign biographers
would later give Arthur much of the credit for the victory; in fact his role
was minor, although he was certainly an active participant in the case. In another civil rights case in 1854, Arthur
was the lead attorney representing Elizabeth Jennings Graham after she was
denied a seat on a streetcar because she was black. He won the case, and the verdict led to the
desegregation of the New York City streetcar lines.
In 1856, Arthur courted Ellen Herndon, the daughter of
William Lewis Herndon, a Virginia naval officer. The two were soon engaged to be married. Later that year, he started a new law
partnership with a friend, Henry D. Gardiner, and traveled with him to Kansas
to consider purchasing land and setting up a law practice there. At that time, the state was the scene of a
brutal struggle between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces, and Arthur lined
up firmly with the latter. The rough frontier life did not agree with the
genteel New Yorkers; after three or four months the two young lawyers returned
to New York City, where Arthur comforted his fiancée after her father was lost
at sea in the wreck of the SS Central America. In 1859, they were married at Calvary Episcopal
Church in Manhattan. The couple had
three children:
·
William Lewis Arthur (December 10, 1860 – July 7,
1863), died of "convulsions"
·
Chester Alan Arthur II (July 25, 1864 – July 18,
1937), married Myra Townsend, then Rowena Graves, father of Gavin Arthur
·
Ellen Hansbrough Herndon "Nell" Arthur
Pinkerton (November 21, 1871 – September 6, 1915), married Charles Pinkerton
After his marriage, Arthur devoted his efforts to building
his law practice, but also found time to engage in Republican Party politics.
In addition, he indulged his military interest by becoming Judge Advocate
General for the Second Brigade of the New York Militia.
Civil War
In 1861, Arthur was appointed to the military staff of
Governor Edwin D. Morgan as engineer-in-chief. The office was a patronage
appointment of minor importance until the outbreak of the Civil War in April
1861, when New York and the other northern states were faced with raising and
equipping armies of a size never before seen in American history. Arthur was commissioned as a brigadier general
and assigned to the state militia's quartermaster department. He was so efficient at housing and outfitting
the troops that poured into New York City that he was promoted to inspector
general of the state militia in March 1862, and then to quartermaster general
that July. He had an opportunity to
serve at the front when the 9th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment elected
him commander with the rank of colonel early in the war, but at Governor
Morgan's request, he turned it down to remain at his post in New York. He
also turned down command of four New York City regiments organized as the
Metropolitan Brigade, again at Morgan's request. The closest Arthur came to the front was when
he traveled south to inspect New York troops near Fredericksburg, Virginia, in
May 1862, shortly after forces under Major General Irvin McDowell seized the
town during the Peninsula Campaign. That
summer, he and other representatives of northern governors met with Secretary
of State William H. Seward in New York to coordinate the raising of additional
troops, and spent the next few months enlisting New York's quota of 120,000
men. Arthur received plaudits for his work, but his
post was a political appointment, and he was relieved of his militia duties in
January 1863 when Governor Horatio Seymour, a Democrat, took office. When Reuben Fenton won the 1864 election for
governor, Arthur requested reappointment; Fenton and Arthur were from different
factions of the Republican Party, and Fenton had already committed to
appointing another candidate, so Arthur did not return to military service.
Arthur returned to being a lawyer, and with the help of
additional contacts made in the military, he and the firm of Arthur &
Gardiner flourished. Even as his
professional life improved, however, Arthur and his wife experienced a personal
tragedy as their only child, William, died suddenly that year at the age of
two. The couple took their son's death
hard, and when they had another son, Chester Alan Jr., in 1864, they lavished attention
on him. They also had a daughter, Ellen,
in 1871. Both children survived to adulthood.
Arthur's political prospects improved along with his law practice
when his patron, ex-Governor Morgan, was elected to the United States
Senate. He was hired by Thomas Murphy, a
Republican politician, but also a friend of William M. Tweed, the boss of the
Tammany Hall Democratic organization. Murphy was also a hatter who sold goods
to the Union Army, and Arthur represented him in Washington. The two became
associates within New York Republican party circles, eventually rising in the
ranks of the conservative branch of the party dominated by Thurlow Weed. In the presidential election of 1864, Arthur
and Murphy raised funds from Republicans in New York, and they attended Abraham
Lincoln's inauguration in 1865.
New York politician
The end of the Civil War meant new opportunities for the men
in Morgan's Republican machine, including Arthur. Morgan
leaned toward the conservative wing of the New York Republican party, as did
the men who worked with him in the organization, including Weed, Seward (who
continued in office under President Andrew Johnson), and Roscoe Conkling (an
eloquent Utica Congressman and rising star in the party). Arthur rarely articulated his own political
ideas during his time as a part of the machine; as was common at the time,
loyalty and hard work on the machine's behalf was more important than actual
political positions.
At the time, U.S. Custom Houses were managed by political
appointees who served as Collector, Naval Officer and Surveyor. In 1866, Arthur
unsuccessfully attempted to secure the position of Naval Officer at the New
York Custom House, a lucrative job subordinate only to the Collector. He continued his law practice (now a solo
practice after Gardiner's death) and his role in politics, becoming a member of
the prestigious Century Club in 1867. Conkling, elected to the United States Senate
in 1867, noticed Arthur and facilitated his rise in the party, and Arthur
became chairman of the New York City Republican executive committee in 1868. His ascent in the party hierarchy kept him
busy most nights, and his wife resented his continual absence from the family
home on party business.
Conkling succeeded to leadership of the conservative wing of
New York's Republicans by 1868 as Morgan concentrated more time and effort on
national politics, including serving as chairman of the Republican National
Committee. The Conkling machine was solidly behind General Ulysses S. Grant's
candidacy for president, and Arthur raised funds for Grant's election in 1868. The opposing Democratic machine in New York
City, known as Tammany Hall, worked for Grant's opponent, former New York
Governor Horatio Seymour; while Grant was victorious in the national vote,
Seymour narrowly carried the state of New York.
Arthur began to devote more of
his time to politics and less to law, and in 1869 he became counsel to the New
York City Tax Commission, appointed when Republicans controlled the state
legislature. He remained at the job until 1870 at a salary of $10,000 a year. Arthur resigned after Democrats controlled by
William M. Tweed of Tammany Hall won a legislative majority, which meant they
could name their own appointee. In 1871,
Grant offered to name Arthur as Commissioner of Internal Revenue, replacing
Alfred Pleasonton; Arthur declined the appointment.
In 1870, President Grant gave Conkling control over New York
patronage, including the Custom House at the Port of New York. Having become
friendly with Murphy over their shared love of horses during summer vacations
on the Jersey Shore, in July of that year, Grant appointed him to the Collector's
position. Murphy's reputation as a war
profiteer and his association with Tammany Hall made him unacceptable to many
of his own party, but Conkling convinced the Senate to confirm him. The Collector was responsible for hiring
hundreds of workers to collect the tariffs due at the United States' busiest
port. Typically, these jobs were dispensed to adherents of the political
machine responsible for appointing the Collector. Employees were required to
make political contributions (known as "assessments") back to the
machine, which made the job a highly coveted political plum. Murphy's unpopularity only increased as he
replaced workers loyal to Senator Reuben Fenton's faction of the Republican Party
with those loyal to Conkling's. Eventually, the pressure to replace Murphy grew
too great, and Grant asked for his resignation in December 1871. Grant offered the position to John Augustus
Griswold and William Orton, each of whom declined and recommended Arthur. Grant
then nominated Arthur, with the New York Times commenting, "his name very
seldom rises to the surface of metropolitan life and yet moving like a mighty
undercurrent this man during the last 10 years has done more to mold the course
of the Republican Party in this state than any other one man in the
country."
The Senate confirmed Arthur's appointment; as Collector he
controlled nearly a thousand jobs and received compensation as great as any
federal officeholder. Arthur's salary
was initially $6,500, but senior customs employees were compensated
additionally by the "moiety" system, which awarded them a percentage
of the cargoes seized and fines levied on importers who attempted to evade the
tariff. In total, his income came to
more than $50,000—more than the president's salary, and more than enough for
him to enjoy fashionable clothes and a lavish lifestyle. Among those who dealt with the Custom House,
Arthur was one of the era's more popular collectors. He got along with his subordinates and, since
Murphy had already filled the staff with Conkling's adherents, he had few
occasions to fire anyone. He was also popular within the Republican Party
as he efficiently collected campaign assessments from the staff and placed
party leaders' friends in jobs as positions became available. Arthur had a better reputation than Murphy,
but reformers still criticized the patronage structure and the moiety system as
corrupt. A rising tide of reform within the party
caused Arthur to rename the financial extractions from employees as
"voluntary contributions" in 1872, but the concept remained, and the
party reaped the benefit of controlling government jobs. In that year, reform-minded Republicans
formed the Liberal Republican party and voted against Grant, but he was
re-elected in spite of their opposition.
Nevertheless, the movement for civil service reform continued to chip
away at Conkling's patronage machine; in 1874 Custom House employees were found
to have improperly assessed fines against an importing company as a way to
increase their own incomes, and Congress reacted, repealing the moiety system
and putting the staff, including Arthur, on regular salaries. As a
result, his income dropped to $12,000 a year—more than his nominal boss, the
Secretary of the Treasury, but far less than what he had previously received.
Clash with Hayes
Arthur's four-year term as Collector expired on December 10,
1875, and Conkling, then among the most powerful politicians in Washington,
arranged his protégé's reappointment by President Grant. By 1876, Conkling was considering a run for
the presidency himself, but the selection of reformer Rutherford B. Hayes by
the 1876 Republican National Convention preempted the machine boss. Arthur
and the machine gathered campaign funds with their usual zeal, but Conkling
limited his own campaign activities to a few speeches. Hayes's opponent, New York Governor Samuel J.
Tilden, carried New York and won the popular vote nationwide, but after the
resolution of several months of disputes over twenty electoral votes (from the
states of Florida, Louisiana, Oregon, and South Carolina), he lost the presidency.
Hayes entered office with a pledge to reform the patronage
system; in 1877, he and Treasury Secretary John Sherman made Conkling's machine
the primary target. Sherman ordered a
commission led by John Jay to investigate the New York Custom House. Jay, with whom Arthur had collaborated in the
Lemmon case two decades earlier, suggested that the Custom House was
overstaffed with political appointments, and that 20% of the employees were expendable,
Sherman was less enthusiastic about the reforms than Hayes and Jay, but he
approved the commission's report and ordered Arthur to make the personnel
reductions. Arthur appointed a committee
of Custom House workers to determine where the cuts were to be made and, after
a written protest, carried them out. Notwithstanding his cooperation, the Jay
Commission issued a second report critical of Arthur and other Custom House
employees, and subsequent reports urging a complete reorganization.
Hayes further struck at the heart of the spoils system by
issuing an executive order that forbade assessments, and barred federal office
holders from "...tak[ing] part in the management of political
organizations, caucuses, conventions, or election campaigns." Arthur
and his subordinates, Naval Officer Alonzo B. Cornell and Surveyor George H.
Sharpe, refused to obey the president's order; Sherman encouraged Arthur to
resign, offering him appointment by Hayes to the consulship in Paris in
exchange, but Arthur refused. In September 1877, Hayes demanded the three
men's resignations, which they refused to give.
Hayes then submitted the appointment of Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., L.
Bradford Prince, and Edwin Merritt (all supporters of Conkling's rival William
M. Evarts) to the Senate for confirmation as their replacements. The
Senate's Commerce Committee, chaired by Conkling, unanimously rejected all the
nominees; the full Senate rejected Roosevelt and Prince by a vote of 31–25, and
confirmed Merritt only because Sharpe's term had expired.
Arthur's job was only spared until July 1878, when Hayes
took advantage of a Congressional recess to fire him and Cornell, replacing
them with the recess appointment of Merritt and Silas W. Burt. Hayes again offered Arthur the position of
consul general in Paris as a face-saving consolation; Arthur again declined, as
Hayes knew he probably would. Conkling opposed the confirmation of Merritt
and Burt when the Senate reconvened in February 1879, but Merritt was approved
by a vote of 31–25, as was Burt by 31–19, giving Hayes his most significant civil
service reform victory. Arthur
immediately took advantage of the resulting free time to work for the election
of Edward Cooper as New York City's next mayor.
In September 1879 Arthur became Chairman of the New York State
Republican Executive Committee, a post in which he served until October
1881. In the state elections of 1879, he and
Conkling worked to ensure that the Republican nominees for state offices would
be men of Conkling's faction, who had become known as Stalwarts. They were successful, but narrowly, as Cornell
were nominated for governor by a vote of 234–216. Arthur and Conkling campaigned vigorously for
the Stalwart ticket and, owing partly to a splintering of the Democratic vote,
were victorious. Arthur and the machine had rebuked Hayes and
their intra-party rivals, but Arthur had only a few days to enjoy his triumph
when, on January 12, 1880, his wife died suddenly while he was in Albany
organizing the political agenda for the coming year. Arthur
felt devastated, and perhaps guilty, and never remarried.
Election of 1880
Conkling and his fellow Stalwarts, including Arthur, wished
to follow up their 1879 success at the 1880 Republican National Convention by
securing the nomination for their ally, ex-President Grant. Their opponents in the Republican Party, known
as Half-Breeds, concentrated their efforts on James G. Blaine, a Senator from
Maine who was more amenable to civil service reform. Neither candidate commanded a majority of
delegates and, deadlocked after thirty-six ballots, the convention turned to a
dark horse, James A. Garfield, an Ohio Congressman and Civil War General who
was neither Stalwart nor Half-Breed.
Garfield and his supporters knew they would face a difficult
election without the support of the New York Stalwarts and decided to offer one
of them the vice presidential nomination. Levi P. Morton, the first choice of Garfield's
supporters, consulted with Conkling, who advised him to decline, which he
did. They next approached Arthur, and Conkling
advised him to also reject the nomination, believing the Republicans would
lose. Arthur thought otherwise and
accepted. According to a purported eyewitness account by journalist William C.
Hudson, Conkling and Arthur argued, with Arthur telling Conkling, "The
office of the Vice-President is a greater honor than I ever dreamed of
attaining." Conkling eventually
relented, and campaigned for the ticket.
As expected, the election was close. The Democratic nominee,
General Winfield Scott Hancock, was popular and, having avoided taking definitive
positions on most issues of the day, he had not offended any pivotal
constituencies. As Republicans had done
since the end of the Civil War, Garfield and Arthur initially focused their
campaign on the "bloody shirt"—the idea that returning Democrats to
office would undo the victory of the Civil War and reward secessionists.
1880 electoral vote
results
With the war fifteen years in the past and Union generals at
the head of both tickets, the tactic was less effective than the Republicans hoped. Realizing this, they adjusted their approach
to claim that Democrats would lower the country's protective tariff, which
would allow cheaper manufactured goods to be imported from Europe, and thereby
put thousands out of work. This argument struck home in the swing states
of New York and Indiana, where many were employed in manufacturing. Hancock did not help his own cause when, in
an attempt to remain neutral on the tariff, he said that "[t]he tariff
question is a local question," which only made him appear uninformed about
an important issue. Candidates for high
office did not personally campaign in those days, but as state Republican
chairman, Arthur played a part in the campaign in his usual fashion: overseeing
the effort in New York and raising money. The funds were crucial in the close election,
and winning his home state of New York was critical. The Republicans carried
New York by 20,000 votes and, in an election with the largest turnout of
qualified voters ever recorded—78.4%—they won the nationwide popular vote by
just 7,018 votes. The Electoral College
result was more decisive—214 to 155—and Garfield and Arthur were elected.
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