By some measures, Chester Alan Arthur is the least known, most forgotten United States President. Even when he is not the ultimate on such a list, he is always on the list of variously most-forgotten, sometimes least-effective Presidents. It’s a shame, because his administration and the times he lived in were a period of quiet yet dramatic changes in American politics, and Chester A. Arthur’s role was largely to be a steady influence as the political parties re-aligned in the tail end of Reconstruction.
For Chester A. Arthur, I read “Gentleman Boss: The Life of Chester A. Arthur”. It was a Christmas gift, as my family basically worked out a secret Santa list, and the hardcover edition was the gift I received. It’s a robust and exhaustive book, going into great detail about the political battles of the time. This is important because, until he became President, Arthur was, more or less, what we would nowadays refer to as a political hack, and to understand the man, you must understand the machine.
Arthur was a lawyer by training, the son of a minister born in rural Vermont. After a brief stint as a schoolteacher, he worked as a lawyer in New York City, notably representing a black woman who was denied a seat on the streetcar because of her race, and was also on a legal team that argued that since slavery was not legal in New York, any slave in New York was automatically freed.
During the Civil War, Arthur served in the New York militia, rising through patronage to be the Quartermaster of New York. This was essentially a logistics management role, ensuring that soldiers passing through New York received their supplies and were sent onwards in a timely matter. Arthur had married a Southern woman, and when her brother was captured and imprisoned as a POW on Davids Island, near New Rochelle, he visited his brother-in-law from time to time.
Shortly before and during the war, Arthur had aligned himself politically with a group headed by Edwin Morgan and later by Roscoe Conkling, the latter a man who cut a long, highly visible figure in New York and national politics. This faction of the Republican Party came to be known as the Stalwarts, and they were generally conservative, pro-business, and pro-patronage. Arthur became an expert at analyzing political data and helping the Stalwarts win elections, and he became one of the most influential back benchers in the Stalwart faction.
After the war, there were two key issues in American politics. The first was Reconstruction, and the overall posture of the North over the South. On the one hand, Lincoln and Grant had both countenanced a non-vindictive approach, bringing the South back into the Union, while maintaining a military presence to enforce the law, in particular civil rights for African-Americans. On the other hand, there were more radical Republicans, who wanted to punish the South, treating it as a conquered nation instead of a wayward sibling, as it were.
Put a pin in that and turn to the second big issue: patronage. This period in American history takes patronage as a fact of life. When the Republicans are in power, Republican supporters are appointed into key, sometimes lucrative, government jobs. When Democrats are in power, those Republicans likely lose their jobs in favor of Democratic appointees. This isn’t just for positions like cabinet members; this goes down to individual postmaster jobs in specific towns, though the lower down the rung, the more likely it’s a list of recommendations from the local political machines, and generally from someone who could advocate for the prospective appointee.
Patronage was one of the tools a faction could use to build power and trade favors. There is a lot of detail in Reeves’ book about this but suffice it to say that Arthur became a master at trading political favors, and he got the attention of Conkling when Conkling was elected to the US Senate. In 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant gave Conkling control over all New York patronage, control which Conkling was able to use to reward loyalty and trade for favors. Conkling appointed Arthur to be the Collector for the Port of New York, a job overseeing a massive operation ripe for further patronage and corruption.
Imagine a government office of hundreds of employees, all of whom may be required to be loyal to the party in power. Not only that, but they are required to hand over a portion of their salaries to that political party. While there was a practical limit, in that if the fist was squeezed too tightly, appeals to higher authorities might result in a political backlash, fundamentally this situation was the norm. Arthur was in position to vet all the employees and to set the rates they would pay into the party. Furthermore, his salary was supplemented by a system that rewarded him with a percentage of the value of fines and other penalties levied against merchants attempting to avoid tariffs. Arthur lived very well for four years in this job, and a little while longer after being appointed to a second term.
This was not to last, however. Shortly after Rutherford B. Hayes was elected President, having campaigned in favor of eliminating or reforming patronage, Hayes targeted the Conkling political machine. There were hearings, a demand for resignations, and eventually making a recess appointment to replace Arthur and his lackeys. Conkling and the Stalwarts would not forget this betrayal.
Along the way, shortly after the Civil War, Arthur and his wife lost their firstborn son, and in 1880, Arthur’s wife passed away. It’s evident that Arthur took both events hard, even though in his political activities he’d rarely been home, and in fact his wife almost left him. While Arthur reveled in political party life, his family ultimately kept him morally grounded.
Arthur’s path to the Presidency was remarkable, and really required Reeves’ thorough painting of the political picture at the time to understand. I found myself riveted as the narrative wound itself through the Republican primary. Here is the short version.
By 1880, there had been two terms of Ulysses S. Grant as President, followed by one from Rutherford B. Hayes. Grant had been immensely popular, suffered a fall from grace, but recovered and was once again popular in his post-Presidency. Hayes had sworn to only serve a single term as President, and Grant had been coy about whether he would even agree to run for a third term. Hence, the field was wide open.
The Stalwarts supported Grant, and another Republican faction known as the Half-Breeds supported Conkling’s archrival, James G. Blaine, who would later run and lose against Democrat Grover Cleveland. Blaine was the favored Republican candidate in the primary, with other factions sharing ambivalence about an unprecedented third term from Grant, or favoring a variety of other candidates.
During the Republican convention, ballots were taken that were repeatedly non-decisive. Typically, balloting would winnow out the also-rans, as numbers slipped and those who expected to lose would pledge their support to one of the other candidates. The Stalwarts held out for Grant, and after thirty-six ballots the convention was still deadlocked. Finally, in a series of compromises, James A. Garfield was selected as the Presidential candidate, and Arthur was offered the position of Vice President. While Conkling opposed this, Arthur accepted, and so became the Vice President of the United States when Garfield was elected President.
Garfield won the nomination and Stalwart support in part by making vague promises to put Stalwarts in positions of power. Whether and to what level he made any guarantees, he didn’t really follow through once in office, frustrating relations within the Republican Party. This put Arthur in the position of being the Stalwart lobbyist within the administration, and his early days were spent navigating loyalties to the Stalwarts and duties as Vice President. Eventually, Conkling and the other New York Senator, Thomas C. Platt, resigned in protest, expecting they would be re-appointed by the New York legislature, which they were not. Arthur traveled with Conkling to Albany, to lobby the state legislature to re-appoint Conkling, and around this time, Garfield was shot by an assassin, Charles J. Guiteau, who shouted, “I am a Stalwart, and Artur will be President!”
Just let that sink in. After Arthur was in a relatively public fight for his faction to get patronage jobs from President Garfield, Garfield is shot by a man 1) claiming to be a member of Arthur’s faction and 2) huzzah, Arthur will now be President!
According to Reeves, no one really believed there was any connection between the two, but it was hard to avoid talking about. On the one hand, Guiteau was already known in Washington, D.C. as a bit of a kook, but on the other hand – well, what he said. Garfield would linger on for a few months, and his post-assassination life is its own agonizing story, but eventually he expired. Owing in part to the political situation, Arthur was reluctant to act as President while Garfield was too weak, so for a couple of months, the United States had no effective chief executive.
Odd Fact: Robert Todd Lincoln, son of assassinated President Abraham Lincoln, was an eyewitness to Garfield’s assassination, and was outside the building where later President William McKinley was assassinated in 1901. This Lincoln served as Garfield and Arthur’s Secretary of War and was the only cabinet member to serve both Presidents.
After being sworn in as President in September 1881, Arthur invited his sister to serve as White House hostess and had the White House remodeled. The nineteenth century has more than a few Presidents who wound up in the White House sans wife, so this was not too unusual an arrangement. One must wonder what would happen in the event there was no sister around for these duties.
Arthur was sensitive to the appearance of being a Stalwart loyalist filling the administration with members of his faction. In short order, several of Garfield’s cabinet resigned, and Arthur replaced them with his own choices, but not all Stalwarts, and in some cases, reformists, and Half-Breeds.
Having risen to the top largely due to patronage, as President, Arthur took steps to reform the civil service. This may have been a practical turn as reform became a popular political issue. In any case Arthur took specific steps to address the appearance of corruption in a case referred to as the Star Postal Routes. Basically, the post office contracted routes out to low bidders who would then raise prices and bilk the government. Garfield requested of Congress a bill on civil service reform, and within a couple of years a partial reform bill was passed.
Like most Republicans, Arthur supported tariffs but wanted to lower excise taxes; the idea being that tariffs protected industry and therefor higher wages. He also held against major increases in Federal spending. The broader conditions were, due to taxes imposed during the Civil War, the Federal government had a lot more money than ever before, and the first real debates about “big government” spending were starting to take shape.
Arthur supported moderate (for the time) constraints on immigration, such as an immigration tax and excluding the mentally ill and criminals. Around this time, concerns about Chinese immigrants came to the fore, with Congress attempting to exclude Chinese immigration. Arthur objected to exclusion, but in the end signed a compromise bill that excluded Chinese immigration for ten years rather than twenty. Arthur also supported expanded trade relations within the American hemisphere, and the US negotiating agreements between other South American nations.
Arthur supported civil rights for African-Americans. At this time in US history, this was predominantly a conversation about the South. Democrats dominated the south, and Conservative Democrats dubbed “Bourbon Democrats” were growing in their influence. However, in Virginia, a third Party known as Readjusters supported broad political reform that favored both black and white Americans – funding of schools, eliminating the poll tax – and Arthur directed political patronage in Virginia to be delivered to the Readjusters rather than the Republican Party.
Arthur supported a policy towards Native Americans that was, at that time, considered liberal. Referred to as “allotment”, individual Native American families would be granted land, rather than entire tribes. While this sounds positive, along the lines of “Forty Acres and a Mule”, it shared the same unintended consequence as that policy: land speculators, sometimes using unscrupulous tactics, would buy land from the individual owners. It didn’t help that one of Arthur’s cabinet officers was anti-allotment, and advised Arthur, incorrectly, that the Crow Creek Reservation was not protected land.
Arthur travelled extensively, in particular taking two long trips hoping to gain respite and rest after being diagnosed with Bright’s Disease, essentially a disorder of the kidneys that is ultimately fatal. His first trip was by train to Florida, a trip that proved to be an uncomfortable ride, with heat, humidity, and mosquitoes at the end. He later traveled to Yellowstone National Park, accompanied by reporters, and from this trip – arguably more rugged, on horseback at the end, camping in the elements – Arthur returned more invigorated and ready to finish his time in office.
While Arthur was nominally on the ballot for the Republican primary, he did not campaign hard and secretly opted out, ceding the field to James G. Blaine, who would go on to lose against Grover Cleveland.
One sidebar to Chester A. Arthur’s Presidency is the “little dwarf”, Julia Sand. Sand was not actually a dwarf; she was a housebound young woman who began writing letters to Arthur after Garfield’s assassination. She offered him advice, both personal and political, and invited him to visit. She referred to herself as the “little dwarf”, in reference to the role a dwarf jester would play in medieval courts, one who could speak truth to power.
Arthur did visit Ms. Sand once, by surprise and for about an hour, in the summer of 1882. She continued to write him afterwards, sometimes in support and sometimes to chastise him for political positions he took.
Having learned so much about Chester A. Arthur, I have to say that I think it’s a shame he is not better remembered, if not fondly remembered, by history. His administration was a sharp contrast to his previous political history. His policies were somewhat progressive for the time, and after the midterms he was much more assertive in fulfilling his Presidency, as opposed a caretaker administration for the late polymath Garfield.
Despite his earlier career, Arthur became one of the first reformers, with a voice for civil rights. He was an active President and deserves to be remembered as more than a punchline for Presidential trivia.
I believe one reason Arthur is not well-remembered – in addition to his asking that most of his notes and correspondence be burned – is that his accomplishments require understanding complex political issues. His entire pre-Presidential political career revolved around a system that doesn’t exist anymore. His efforts at supporting civil rights were framed and limited by the much more open and commonly-accepted racism of the day. Tariff reform, then and now, requires an understanding of local, national, and global economics, as well as the political alignment of those who would benefit or be harmed by tariff reform. Arthur didn’t fight any major wars or react to great national calamity (other than Garfield’s assassination), or face any other crisis easily depicted in a modern movie. Arthur’s success came in politics, in making arguments, and in finding compromises that advanced his agenda.
Could “Chet” Arthur be President today? Perhaps only in the same way that he became President. He was a solid back-bencher, not the kind of man who, like his mentor Roscoe Conkling, enjoyed getting up on stage and addressing an audience. He was a wonk, and perhaps if he’d been more ambitious earlier in life, he might have practiced putting on a glad-hander’s face. In modern terms, Arthur might have been an Al Gore, or perhaps a less-tragic Nixon, the kind of guy who understands politics but only comes into his own once placed on the spot. I think he would have bene a great advisor, perhaps a cabinet member, but on his own, unfortunately Arthur only becomes President through tragedy.
Maybe that is the one overarching lesson we can take from Arthur. He loses his son early on; nearly loses his family to the back-slapping work of politicking; loses his wife before becoming President, then comes into office on the back of assassination, only to die shortly after leaving office. We expect our candles to burn long and bright; sometimes, they only come on in the briefest of moments, with just enough light to get our bearings and take the next step forwards.