
Chester A. Arthur
21st U.S. President
Education
- Graduated - Belfast
Overview
Chester Alan Arthur was an American politician who served as the 21st president of the United States from 1881 to 1885. He was a Republican lawyer from New York who previously served as the 20th vice president under President James A. Garfield. Arthur assumed the presidency after Garfield's death on September 19, 1881, and served the remainder of his term until March 4, 1885.
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 New York Republican politics and quickly rose in Senator Roscoe Conkling's political organization. President Ulysses S. Grant appointed him to the post of Collector of the Port of New York in 1871, and he was an important supporter of Conkling and the Stalwart faction of the Republican Party. In 1878, following bitter disputes with President Rutherford B. Hayes, Hayes fired Arthur as part of a plan to reform the federal patronage system in New York. In June 1880, the Republican Party nominated Arthur for vice president to balance the ticket as an Eastern Stalwart. Arthur and presidential nominee James A. Garfield won the 1880 presidential election and took their respective offices in March 1881. Four months into his term, President Garfield was shot by an assassin; he died 11 weeks later, and Arthur assumed the presidency.
As president, Arthur did not appoint a vice president to fill the vacancy, as this was prior to the 25th Amendment to the Constitution. He presided over the rebirth of the US Navy, but he was criticized for failing to alleviate the federal budget surplus which had been accumulating since the end of the Civil War. Arthur vetoed the first version of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, arguing that its twenty-year ban on Chinese immigrants to the United States violated the Burlingame Treaty, but he signed a second version, which included a ten-year ban. He appointed Horace Gray and Samuel Blatchford to the Supreme Court. He also enforced the Immigration Act of 1882 to impose more restrictions on immigrants and the Tariff of 1883 to attempt to reduce tariffs. Arthur signed into law the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883, which came as a surprise to reformers who held a negative reputation of Arthur as a Stalwart and product of Conkling's organization.
Suffering from poor health, Arthur made only a limited effort to secure the Republican Party's nomination in 1884, and he retired at the end of his term. Arthur's failing health and political temperament combined to make his administration less active than a modern presidency, yet he earned praise among contemporaries for his solid performance in office. Journalist Alexander McClure 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." 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, "It would be hard indeed to better President Arthur's administration."Evaluations by modern historians generally rank Arthur as a mediocre or average president. Arthur has also been described as one of the least memorable presidents
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.
Early Life
Chester Alan Arthur born on 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 maternal grandfather, Uriah Stone, had served in the Continental Army during the American Revolution.
Arthur's father, William Arthur, was born in 1796 in Dreen, Cullybackey, County Antrim, Ireland to a Presbyterian family of Scots-Irish descent. William's mother was born Eliza McHarg and she married Alan Arthur. William graduated from college in Belfast and migrated 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. 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 to churches in several towns in Vermont and upstate New York. The family finally settled in the Schenectady, New York, area.
Arthur had seven siblings who lived to adulthood:
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 and worked 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 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 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 during the 1844 United States presidential election. 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 Union College there in 1845, where he studied the traditional classical curriculum. He was a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity, and as a senior he was president of the debate society and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. During his winter breaks, he served as a teacher at a school in Schaghticoke.
The home in Manhattan where Arthur spent most of his adulthood years
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.
Career
- United States - 21st President