“Arthur is one of the forgotten presidents. Mention him to the proverbial man-on-the-street, and blankness is a likely response. ‘You’re writing a biography of who?’ was the most common refrain when this particular author mentioned that he was writing about this particular president. Even among those who consider themselves well educated, Chester Arthur remains a cipher, one of those late-nineteenth-century inhabitants of the White House whose echo has been muffled by the more memorial individuals and whose footprint—and in the case of the rotund gourmand Arthur a rather large footprint—has been trampled on and all but erased” (Karabell, p. 2).
Like the good gentleman mentions above, I had no clue about Arthur either even though I certainly place myself in the ‘well-educated’ category. Of course I had seen bits and pieces of Arthur as he made his way through the Hayes and Garfield administrations respectively but that’s really it. He was another vice president who took over the highest office in the land with the death of the incumbent but I’m not sure he did anything special to mark his time in the White House. To find out more, I read Chester A. Arthur: American Presidents Series by Zachary Karabell (New York: Times Books, 2004).
Chester Alan Arthur was born on October 5, 1829 in North Fairfield, Vermont to a Baptist minister. As a minister, Mr. Arthur Senior moved around a great deal but finally settled down in Schenectady, New York. At the age of fifteen, Chester went off to Union College where he became an ardent abolitionist but stayed a pretty mediocre student. After graduating in 1848, he taught for several years and then changed professions to become a law clerk.
Because of his abolitionist leanings, Arthur was excited about the turmoil currently rocking the state of Kansas and so in 1856, he and a friend moved out there to help out. Unfortunately, Kansas was so lawless and violent that Arthur almost immediately moved back to New York and into the arms of the Republican Party. He then met Ellen Lewis Herndon, who was from Virginia and an ardent Confederate, and October 1859 they were married in Manhattan.
During the war, Arthur was appointed chief engineer and quartermaster of the state of New York with the rank of brigadier general. “Arthur was responsible for the feeding, housing, and supplying of several hundred thousand troops, and he proved to be an able manager of the complicated task” (p. 15). In 1862, however, he lost this job when elections put the Democrats in office so he returned to his profession as a lawyer.
Arthur, increasingly, found himself pulled into the Stalwart side of the Republican Party and became a good minion of the leader, Roscoe Conkling. With the help of these new friends, Arthur, in 1871, was given the most important plum in the New York patronage system: the Collector of NY Customs. The reason that this job was so posh was due to the fact that millions of dollars came through the port of New York and Arthur, as the head collector, would earn a portion of that. Although Arthur’s work ethic was never very stringent—he would arrive late and leave early—he stepped on no toes and was friends with just about everybody. In fact, in 1875, he had been appointed to an unprecedented second term. That is, until President Hayes decided to crack down on corruption while using the Collector of NY Customs position as the scapegoat. “Secretary of the Treasury Sherman launched an investigation of corrupt practices at the major customhouses in the United States and appointed John Jay, the grandson of the first chief justice of the United States, to head a commission specifically targeting New York. And with that, Chester Arthur, who had kept a relatively low profile in spite of his lofty position, suddenly became the center of a national crisis” (p. 28).
“Much like Conkling, Arthur was seen as part of a corrupt system rather corrupt himself. He had taken advantage of moiety kickbacks, true, but he had stayed within the system” (p. 29). A battle royale began between Hayes on the one side, asking for Arthur’s resignation, and Conkling on the other, stoutly defending his friend and the system of patronage. In 1878, Hayes had his way though and Arthur was removed from office. “Rather than ruining Arthur’s career, Hayes vendetta catapulted him to national attention. He became the darling not only of the Stalwarts but of a motley assortment of the administration’s opponents” (p. 33).
Arthur again went back to his law business and also became the Chairman of the New York Republican Party, another high profile and very powerful position. “But it’s likely that in spite of the furor over his removal as collector, these years were among the happiest in his life. He was wealthy; he was happily married; he was engaged in work he cared about on behalf of the party he loved; and he enjoyed the ironclad support of one of the most powerful politicians in the country” (p. 34). Although he worked hard for the Republican Party as the election of 1880 began to loom nearer, he was devastated in early 1880 when his wife died of pneumonia.
At the Republican National Convention, he was nominated as the vice presidential candidate, alongside James Garfield, and thereafter worked steadily on behalf of their ticket. “Arthur was a brilliant fundraiser and a persuasive manager, and he was a central factor in the eventual victory” (p. 47). New York voted Republican and James Garfield and Chester Arthur were sent to Washington DC. Arthur was sworn in as vice president on March 4, 1881 with an Inaugural Ball held later at the Smithsonian Institute.
It did not take long though for the honeymoon to end between president and the vice president and a general dislike descended on the relationship. It was with some relief that Arthur was able to remove to New York after Congress ended. He was still there on July 2, 1881 when James Garfield was shot at a Washington train station. Arthur immediately made his way back to the capital but was unable to see or speak with the president due to the fear that Arthur had something to do with the assassination attempt. Garfield wasted away a few months later and on September 9, 1881 at 2:15 am Arthur was sworn in as the 21st President of the United States.
“He [Arthur] was respected and respectable. Save for his miscue in the spring of 1881 he had earned a reputation for integrity in a system known for corruption. But that didn’t make him presidential, yet there he was, the president of the United States” (p. 68). After several months, Arthur was finally able to move into the White House with his sister, Mary, as hostess. It was time for Arthur to pick up the pieces of government and nobody thought that he had potential to do a good job. It thus surprised nearly everyone when he made fairly good selections for his cabinet positions and with governmental patronage.
Because of the fact that Garfield was shot by a frustrated office seeker (insane or not), Congress pushed through the first civil service reform called the Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883. “Its best in 1883 left much to be desired, but the Pendleton Act, for all its flaws, forever altered the complexion of the US government. It put the old spoils system on a path to obsolescence and it was a necessary prelude to the government-led reforms of the Progressive era and beyond” (p. 111).
Arthur also had to deal with several other issues during his presidency. For instance, immigration was becoming a heated issue with the influx of Chinese people taking over jobs on the west coast. The Chinese Exclusion Act was passed by Congress which forced Arthur to diplomatically handle the situation with China. He also dealt with national funding issues, including where the US government stood on governmental control and funding of harbors and rivers. There was also tariff reform (the Mongrel Tarriff) and the very important re-growth of the Navy. It was during this time that Congress declared the Civil Rights Act unconstitutional which was directly to blame for segregation in the South.
Arthur, for all the good he did in office, was not re-nominated. He had estranged the Stalwart side of the party and thus he had very little backing going into the 1884 Republican National Convention. When Grover Cleveland became president, Arthur moved back to New York City and took up the reigns of his law business once again. He was diagnosed with Bright’s disease, which was a kidney disease that caused him much pain and impeded his gourmand lifestyle. He died on November 18, 1886 from a ruptured artery in the brain. “In everything he did, Chester Alan Arthur was a gentleman, and that is rare and precious. It reminds us that adversaries can be treated with respect, that democracy can survive differences, and that leadership isn’t just great words and deeds. Arthur managed to be a decent man and decent president in an era when decency was in short supply” (p. 143).
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