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Chester
Alan Arthur was the 5th child and first son of Malvina
(Stone) and William Arthur. William Arthur was born
in 1796 in County
Antrim, Ireland. Because of a childhood injury,
his family encouraged him to concentrate on his schooling.
After graduation from Belfast College, William emigrated
to the Province of Quebec and taught school near the
Vermont border. In 1821, he married 18-year-old Malvina
Stone. Malvina’s family was originally from Vermont
and New Hampshire; family tradition says Malvina’s
mother, Judith Stevens, was part Native American.
After
a time the young couple moved to Burlington, Vermont,
where William studied law in addition to teaching
school. The growing family lived in Jericho and Waterville,
Vermont, in the years before 1828. Sometime during
this period William experienced a religious conversion
and became a Baptist.
In
1828, William Arthur was ordained as a Baptist minister.
North Fairfield’s 46-member congregation was his first
post. The Arthur family lived in a small cabin for
more than a year while the Fairfield congregation
finished the frame parsonage on the site of the reconstruction.
Chester Arthur was born October 5, 1829, in the temporary
parsonage.
The
Arthur family moved to New York State in 1835. That
year William Arthur co-founded the New York Anti-Slavery
Society and began to increasingly promote his abolitionist
and temperance views. Chester was strongly influenced
by his father.
In
1845, after graduating from the academy in present
day Greenwich, New York, “Chet” Arthur entered Union
College in Schenectady. Described as a tall, genial,
good-looking and sociable student, he pursued a classical
education and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in his
senior year.
After
graduation from Union College, Chester Arthur became
a schoolmaster and studied law at the newly opened
State and National Law School. In 1851, he became
principal of an academy that met in the basement of
his father’s church in North Pownal, Vermont. Coincidentally,
three years after Arthur left the North Pownal Academy,
his future presidential running mate, James A. Garfield,
was hired to teach penmanship at this same school.
Chester
A. Arthur was admitted to the New York bar in May
1854 and distinguished himself as a champion of civil
rights for blacks. In the “Lemmon Slave Case” he secured
the decision that slaves brought into New York while
in transit to a slave state were free. He won another
case which entitled blacks in New York to the same
accommodations as whites on public transportation.
Later,
as Quartermaster General of New York, and with the
rank of Brigadier General, he skillfully organized
the provision of food and supplies to Union Civil
War soldiers. In 1871, he was appointed Collector
of Customs in the New York Customhouse by President
Ulysses S. Grant, a leader of a faction of the Republican
Party known as the Stalwarts. Chester Arthur became
a major figure in that wing of the party and a master
at political persuasion.
The
Collector of Customs oversaw the movement of goods
into the busy New York harbor, collected duties and
fines and regulated the business of merchants. A major
responsibility of the Customs Collector was to meet
with party bosses to place supporters in patronage
jobs. The assessment system forced holders of patronage
jobs to donate a percentage of their salaries to the
political party in power.
In
1878, in an intraparty struggle, newly elected President
Rutherford B. Hayes suspended Arthur as Customs Collector
and appointed one of his own followers to the position.
The
1880 Republican National Convention, deadlocked between
supporters of Ulysses S. Grant and proponents of Maine’s
Senator James G. Blaine, compromised, on the 36th
ballot, on Senator James A. Garfield of Ohio. To make
peace within the party, and to balance the ticket,
Chester A. Arthur was selected as Garfield’s running
mate.
On
July 2, 1881, less than four months after the inauguration
of President Garfield, a disgruntled office seeker
shot the President at the Baltimore and Potomac train
station in Washington, D.C. The assassin shouted:
“I did it and will go to jail for it. I am a Stalwart
and Arthur will be President.” Some believed these
remarks implied he had shot Garfield for Arthur’s
benefit.
President
Garfield lingered near death for 80 days. Arthur was
reportedly brought to tears by the charges that he
was linked to the assassin and by the suggestion he
assume the duties of the presidency prior to Garfield’s
death. When Garfield died on September 19, Arthur’s
sincere grief was apparent when he was sworn in as
President at his home in New York City.
At
the beginning of his presidency many expected Chester
Arthur to be a political puppet.
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Arthur
insisted on redecorating the White
House before he would occupy it.
He commissioned Louis C. Tiffany
as designer. Twenty-four wagonloads
of furniture dating back to the
Adams Administration were removed
and sold at public auction. This
was replaced by the finest contemporary
furniture, fabrics, rugs, and wallpapers
promoting the American Victorian
Aesthetic Movement.
Despite
critics who saw in him all the evils
of the patronage system, Chester
A. Arthur was an example of how
the office of the presidency can
remake its occupant. In the words
of his biographer, Thomas Reeves,
Arthur underwent a “genuine transformation
from a spoils-hungry, no-holds barred
Conkling henchman into a restrained,
dignified Chief Executive.” His
administration’s accomplishments
seem to support this view. Elihu
Root, present at Arthur’s swearing-in
and later to be President McKinley’s
Secretary of War, described Arthur
on the occasion of the unveiling
of the Chester Arthur statue in
New York City in 1899. “He was wise
in statesmanship, and firm and effective
in administration...Good causes
found in him a friend, and bad measures
met him an unyielding opponent...In
him, many came to recognize the
grace and charm of his courtesy,
his grave and simple dignity, and
his loyal and steadfast friendship.”
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However, the nation’s highest
office brought out Arthur’s best. President Arthur,
the former spoilsman, backed and signed the Pendleton
Civil Service Act. This act prohibited salary kickbacks
from public employees as well as their firing for political
reasons. It also established a bipartisan Civil Service
Commission, which administered competitive examinations
for Federal jobs. Arthur also ordered the U.S. Attorney
General to prosecute a series of fraud cases in the
Post Office Department which included many of Arthur’s
friends and associates. He advocated tariff reform and
appointed a commission to examine the issue of high
tariffs. His administration is also credited with the
modernization of the American Navy.
These
actions alienated his former supporters and left the
Republican Party in total disunity. Arthur was virtually
a president without party support. He was also not
physically well, although he attempted to appear vigorous
and covered up reports of a terminal kidney ailment.
Because of his ill health, Arthur did not actively
pursue his re-nomination in 1884. At the Republican
Convention James G. Blaine received, on the fourth
ballot, the party’s nominations. Arthur immediately
endorsed Blaine. In the election, however, Blaine
was defeated by the Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland.
Stoic
to the end, Arthur concealed his deteriorating health.
Following Cleveland’s inauguration, he returned to
his home in New York City. On November 18, 1886, he
died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage. Chester A.
Arthur was buried in Albany, New York, in the family
plot at the Rural Cemetery.
Chester
Arthur was the quintessential man of the Gilded Age.
Despite his country background, he enjoyed life’s
finer pleasures. Arthur was always impeccably dressed
and his homes were furnished in the most fashionable
styles. Uncomfortable with official duties, Arthur
was at his best in the drawing room and at social
gatherings.
Arthur
married Ellen Lewis Herndon, the daughter of a wealthy
Virginia family, in 1859. “Nell” readily assumed the
duties of social director for the household. The Arthurs
had two children, Chester Alan II and Ellen Herndon
Arthur, and maintained a fine residence at 2123 Lexington
Avenue in New York City.
Mrs.
Arthur died in 1880, prior to her husband’s vice presidential
nomination. Arthur never overcame this loss, once
telling a relative, “Honors to me now are not what
they once were.” Every day in the White House he had
roses placed next to his wife’s photograph. During
his presidency Arthur’s younger sister, Mary Arthur
McElvoy, served as his official hostess.
For more information
on the Presidency in general, visit The
American Presidency.
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