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 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
re-nominated, 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."
-
Chester
Arthur