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U.S Presidents — Chester A. Arthur

OVERVIEW Name: Chester A. Arthur President: # 21 Term Number(s): 24 Term Length: 3.5 Took Office: September 19, 1881 Left Office: March 4, 1885 Age when Elected: 51 Party: Republican Also Known As: "The Gentleman Boss" BIOGRAPHIC INFORMATION Education: Union College Occupation: Lawyer, Civil servant, Educator (Teacher) Other Governmental Position: 20th Vice President of the United States. Military Service: Brigadier General in the United States Army (Union Army) Religion: Episcopalian Spouse(s): Ellen Lewis Herndon Arthur (October 25, 1859) Children: William Lewis Herndon Arthur, Chester Alan Arthur II, Ellen Hansbrough Herndon Arthur Birthdate: October 5, 1829 Birthplace: Fairfield, Vermont Deathdate: November 18, 1886 Deathplace: New York, New York Age at Death: 57 Cause of Death: Bright's disease, apoplexy (cerebral hemorrhage, stroke) Place of Internment: Albany Rural Cemetery in Menands, New York Signature FIRST ELECTION Election: Not elected President, succeeded President James Garfield CABINET AND COURT APPOINTMENTS Vice President: vacant Secretary of State: James G. Blaine (1881), Frederick Theodore Frelinghuysen (1881–1885) Secretary of the Treasury: William Windom (1881), Charles J. Folger (1881–1884), Walter Q. Gresham (1884), Hugh McCulloch (1884–1885) Secretary of War: Robert T. Lincoln (1881–1885) Secretary of the Navy: William H. Hunt (1881–1882), William E. Chandler (1882–1885) Secretary of the Interior: Samuel J. Kirkwood (1881–1882), Henry M. Teller (1882–1885) Attorney General: Wayne MacVeagh (1881), Benjamin H. Brewster (1881–1885) Postmaster General: Thomas L. James (1881), Timothy O. Howe (1881–1883), Walter Q. Gresham (1883–1884), Frank Hatton (1884–1885) Supreme Court Assignments: Samuel Blatchford (1882), Horace Gray (1882) PRESIDENT'S BIOGRAPHY Dignified, tall, and handsome, with clean-shaven chin and side-whiskers, Chester A. Arthur "looked like a president." The son of a Baptist preacher who had emigrated from northern Ireland, Arthur was born in Fairfield, Vermont, in 1829. He was graduated from Union College in 1848, taught school, was admitted to the bar, and practiced law in New York City. Early in the Civil War he served as Quartermaster General of the state of New York. President Grant in 1871 appointed him collector of the Port of New York. Arthur effectively marshalled the thousand Customs House employees under his supervision on behalf of Roscoe Conkling's Stalwart Republican machine. Honorable in his personal life and his public career, Arthur nevertheless was a firm believer in the spoils system when it was coming under vehement attack from reformers. He insisted upon honest administration of the Customs House, but staffed it with more employees than it needed, retaining them for their merit as party workers rather than as government officials. In 1878 President Hayes, attempting to reform the Customs House, ousted Arthur. Conkling and his followers tried to win redress by fighting for the renomination of Grant at the 1880 Republican Convention. Failing, they reluctantly accepted the nomination of Arthur for the vice presidency. During his brief tenure as vice president, Arthur stood firmly beside Conkling in his patronage struggle against President Garfield. But when Arthur succeeded to the presidency, he was eager to prove himself above machine politics. Avoiding old political friends, he became a man of fashion in his garb and in his associates, and often was seen with the elite of Washington, New York, and Newport. To the indignation of the Stalwart Republicans, the onetime collector of the Port of New York became, as president, a champion of civil service reform. Public pressure, heightened by the assassination of Garfield, forced an unwieldy Congress to heed the president. In 1883 Congress passed the Pendleton Act, which established a bipartisan Civil Service Commission, forbade levying political assessments against officeholders, and provided for a "classified system" that made certain government positions obtainable only through competitive written examinations. The system protected employees against removal for political reasons. Acting independently of party dogma, Arthur also tried to lower tariff rates so the government would not be embarrassed by annual surpluses of revenue. Congress raised about as many rates as it trimmed, but Arthur signed the Tariff Act of 1883. Aggrieved Westerners and Southerners looked to the Democratic Party for redress, and the tariff began to emerge as a major political issue between the two parties. The Arthur Administration enacted the first general federal immigration law. Arthur approved a measure in 1882 excluding "paupers, criminals, and lunatics." Congress suspended Chinese immigration for ten years, later making the restriction permanent. Arthur demonstrated as president that he was above factions within the Republican Party, if indeed not above the party itself. Perhaps in part his reason was the well-kept secret he had known since a year after he succeeded to the presidency, that he was suffering from a fatal kidney disease. He kept himself in the running for the presidential nomination in 1884 in order not to appear that he feared defeat, but was not renominated, and died in 1886. Publisher Alexander K. McClure recalled, "No man ever entered the Presidency so profoundly and widely distrusted, and no one ever retired ... more generally respected." FIRST LADY'S BIOGRAPHY Ellen Lewis Herndon Arthur Chester Alan Arthur's beloved "Nell" died of pneumonia on January 12, 1880. That November, when he was elected vice president, he was still mourning her bitterly. In his own words: "Honors to me now are not what they once were." His grief was the more poignant because she was only 42 and her death sudden. Just two days earlier she had attended a benefit concert in New York City—while he was busy with politics in Albany—and she caught a cold that night while waiting for her carriage. She was already unconscious when he reached her side. Ellen Lewis Herndon's family connections among distinguished Virginians had shaped her life. She was born at Culpeper Court House, the only child of Elizabeth Hansbrough and William Lewis Herndon, U.S.N. They moved to Washington, D.C., when he was assigned to help his brother-in-law Lt. Matthew Fontaine Maury establish the Naval Observatory. While Ellen was still just a girl, her beautiful contralto voice attracted attention; she joined the choir at St. John's Episcopal Church on Lafayette Square. Then her father assumed command of a mail steamer operating from New York; and in 1856 a cousin introduced her to "Chet" Arthur, who was establishing a law practice in the city. By 1857 they were engaged. In a birthday letter that year he reminded her of "the soft, moonlight nights of June, a year ago... happy, happy days at Saratoga—the golden, fleeting hours at Lake George." He wished he could hear her singing. That same year her father died a hero's death at sea, going down with his ship in a gale off Cape Hatteras. The marriage did not take place until October 1859; and a son named for Commander Herndon died when only two. Another boy was born in 1864, and a girl, named for her mother, in 1871. Arthur's career brought the family an increasing prosperity; they decorated their home in the latest fashion and entertained prominent friends with elegance. At Christmas there were jewels from Tiffany for Nell, and the finest toys for the children. At the White House, Arthur would not give anyone the place that would have been his wife's. He asked his sister Mary (Mrs. John E. McElroy) to assume certain social duties and help care for his daughter. He presented a stained-glass window to St. John's Church in his wife's memory; it depicted angels of the Resurrection, and at his special request it was placed in the south transept so that he could see it at night from the White House with the lights of the church shining through. MAJOR EVENTS 1882: Shufeldt Treaty. U.S. becomes the first Western country to establish diplomatic ties with Korea. 1882: Standard Oil Trust. John D. Rockefeller and associates organize their separate oil companies into one group modeling the "trust" form. 1882: Chinese Exclusion Act. President Arthur signs this act suspending Chinese immigration. 1883: Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act. A law establishing the United States Civil Service Commission and replacing the "spoils system" with the merit system for federal government employees. 1883: Civil Rights Cases. Five similar cases ruling that the Congress does not have the authority to prohibit racial discrimination. Results in the relegation of African Americans to second-class citizenship in many parts of the U.S. and which is not to be reversed until the 1960s. 1884: International Meridian Conference. President Arthur initiates this conference to designate the location of the Prime Meridian. 1886: Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific Railway Company v. Illinois, a case in the Supreme Court limiting states control over interstate commerce. The Interstate Commerce Commission is established as a result. TRIVIA 1. Chester A. Arthur was a man of refined taste and refused to move in to the White House until he approved of its renovation. 2. Arthur's father was born in Northern Ireland. 3. Arthur was a night owl and enjoyed taking friends on late night strolls around Washington, D.C., occasionally at three in the morning.