Chester A. Arthur

Chester Alan Arthur was born on October 5, 1829, in a small log cabin in Fairfield, VermontVermontVermont is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States; its capital is Montpelier and its largest city is Burlington. It joined the Union on March 4, 1791, as the 14th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 643,077.Open the full entry, the fifth of eight children of Malvina Arthur and the Reverend William Arthur. His father was a Baptist minister and passionate abolitionist, and the family moved among Baptist parishes in New York and Vermont.⁠[1][2][3]

Arthur learned to read and write at home before attending school in Union Village (now Greenwich), New York. In 1845 he entered Union College in Schenectady as a sophomore, graduating in 1848 in the top third of his class and being elected to Phi Beta Kappa; during winter breaks he taught school in a nearby town.⁠[1]

After college Arthur taught school for several years while reading law; he passed the bar in 1854 and, through his father’s influence, obtained a clerkship at the New York law firm of Erastus D. Culver.⁠[1]

From 1852 Culver’s firm worked on the Lemmon case, helping to free seven enslaved people who were being taken from VirginiaVirginiaVirginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state whose capital is Richmond. It entered the Union on June 25, 1788, as the 10th state, and had a population of 8,631,393 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry to TexasTexasTexas is a U.S. state in the south-central United States, with its capital at Austin and its largest city Houston. It was admitted to the Union on December 29, 1845, as the 28th state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 29,145,505 residents.Open the full entry and were held temporarily in New York; Culver won a writ of habeas corpus, and Arthur handled much of the appeal, including trips to Albany. The final New York decision in 1860 upheld the initial ruling.⁠[1]

The firm also represented Elizabeth Jennings, a Black woman forced off a New York streetcar. Arthur, by then a partner, won her $225 from the streetcar company and $25 from the court, and the case led New York City railroad companies to seat Black passengers without prejudice. The Miller Center’s essay notes that the case came more than 100 years before Rosa Parks’s 1955 protest.⁠[1][2]

Arthur joined the New York state militia in 1858. During the Civil War he was appointed engineer-in-chief with the rank of quartermaster general of the New York Volunteers, responsible for provisioning and housing several hundred thousand soldiers and for the state’s defenses, and he rose to brigadier general. He wanted a battlefield command but never pressed for one, partly because his wife had Confederate relatives and a sister of his had married a Confederate official. He retired from duty in 1863.⁠[1]

Arthur met Ellen “Nell” Lewis Herndon through his friend Dabney Herndon, a medical student from Virginia, and they married on October 25, 1859, when she was 22 and he was 30.⁠[1]

In 1863 Arthur returned to a lucrative law practice handling war-related claims. He worked closely with Roscoe Conkling, the New York Republican boss and U.S. senator who built power through patronage and party discipline, and by 1867 he was one of Conkling’s top lieutenants. From 1869 to 1870 he was chief counsel to the New York City Tax Commission at $10,000 a year.⁠[1]

In 1871, through Conkling’s efforts, President Ulysses S. GrantUlysses S. GrantUlysses S. Grant (1822–1885) was an American soldier and politician who commanded the Union armies in the final years of the Civil War (1864–1865) and served as the 18th president of the United States from 1869 to 1877.Open the full entry appointed Arthur collector of the Port of New York; Conkling pointed to Arthur’s Civil War service as New York’s quartermaster general and his legal success. He oversaw nearly 1,300 agents who collected about 75 percent of the nation’s import duties; his salary was $12,000 a year, and with his share of fines on undervalued imports he earned about $50,000 annually.⁠[1][2]

The Miller Center’s essays find no evidence that Arthur took bribes himself, but state that he routinely collected salary “assessments” from customs employees to fund Conkling’s machine and the Republican Party.⁠[1][2]

President Rutherford B. HayesRutherford B. HayesRutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) was an American lawyer, soldier and politician who served as a U.S. representative and governor of Ohio and was the 19th president of the United States from 1877 to 1881.Open the full entry investigated the port and offered Arthur the consulship in Paris in exchange for his resignation. On July 11, 1878, while Congress was not in session, Hayes suspended Arthur and replaced him with Edwin A. Merritt; Arthur and Conkling resisted in the Senate, but Hayes prevailed when the Senate reconvened in January 1879.⁠[1][4]

In 1880 Arthur and Conkling tried to draft former President Grant to run again. After James A. Garfield won the Republican presidential nomination on the 36th ballot, Conkling’s lieutenants, without Conkling’s knowledge, sounded Arthur out for vice president, and Garfield reluctantly accepted him because New York’s party machine was crucial to his election. Conkling, expecting Garfield to lose, urged Arthur to refuse, but Arthur accepted, saying “the office of the Vice-President is a great honor.”⁠[1][5]

During the campaign Arthur coordinated mass meetings and organized tours of the Midwest for Grant and Conkling, and as chairman of the New York State Republican Committee he assessed city, state and federal employees 3 percent of their annual salaries. The Garfield–Arthur ticket won 214 electoral votes to 155 and led the popular vote by less than one-tenth of 1 percent.⁠[5][6]

Arthur became vice president in 1881. When Garfield appointed William H. Robertson, a member of the Half-Breed faction, as collector of the Port of New York, ending Conkling’s power, Conkling resigned from the Senate in protest and Arthur broke with Garfield; the two were nearly estranged when Garfield was shot in July 1881.⁠[2][5]

After Garfield died on September 19, 1881, Arthur was sworn in by a New York state judge in the early hours of September 20 at his Manhattan home at 123 Lexington Avenue. On September 22 he took the oath again in the Vice President’s room at the Capitol and read his inaugural address, and he issued Proclamation 250 declaring September 26 a day of mourning for Garfield.⁠[7][8]

The Miller Center’s essay notes that Arthur surprised observers by acting independently of his former party faction once in office.⁠[2]

On April 4, 1882, Arthur vetoed the first Chinese exclusion bill, judging a twenty-year suspension of immigration too extreme. On May 6 he signed a revised Chinese Exclusion Act that suspended the immigration of Chinese laborers for ten years, the first major federal law restricting immigration; its Section 14 barred state and federal courts from admitting Chinese people to citizenship.⁠[8][9]

When the act expired in 1892 the Geary Act extended it for ten years; the extension was made permanent in 1902, and in 1943 Congress repealed all the exclusion acts while retaining an annual quota of 105 Chinese immigrants.⁠[9]

On August 1, 1882, Arthur vetoed the River and Harbor Act, judging its appropriations excessive; he argued that federal surpluses should be reduced through tax cuts rather than spending.⁠[8][2]

In his second annual message, on December 4, 1882, Arthur urged Congress to pass civil service reform. On January 16, 1883, he signed the Pendleton Act, which required federal jobs to be awarded on merit through competitive examinations, protected covered employees from being fired or demoted for political reasons or required to give political service or contributions, and created the Civil Service Commission to enforce it. When it took effect its hiring rules covered only 10 percent of the government’s 132,000 employees.⁠[8][10]

Encyclopaedia BritannicaEncyclopædia BritannicaEncyclopædia Britannica is a general English-language encyclopedia first published in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1768; the name also refers to its publisher, Chicago-based Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. (which presents itself as The Britannica Group). The print edition ended in 2012, and the company’s main businesses since then have been the online encyclopedia Britannica.com, digital education products for schools and libraries, and Merriam-Webster dictionaries.Open the full entry notes that Arthur supported the act despite opposition from some Stalwart friends, and the National Archives and Records Administration describes him as having become a strong supporter of reform after Garfield’s assassination.⁠[3][10]

On March 3, 1883, Arthur signed the Tariff Act, known as the “Mongrel Tariff,” which reduced internal-revenue taxes and many tariff rates; he had pushed for tariff reductions to relieve indebted farmers and middle-class consumers. The same day he signed an act increasing naval appropriations, and on March 26, 1884, he sent Congress a special message requesting funds to rebuild the Navy.⁠[8][2]

On May 24, 1883, Arthur attended the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge, and on February 21, 1885, he addressed the dedication of the Washington Monument.⁠[8]

Arthur had been diagnosed in 1882 with Bright’s disease, a kidney ailment then fatal, and kept it secret. Knowing his condition was incurable, he made little effort to win renomination; former Stalwart allies, including Grant and Conkling, opposed him, and reformers were suspicious of his appointments. At the 1884 Republican convention in Chicago he lost the nomination to former Secretary of State James G. Blaine on the fourth ballot.⁠[11][5]

On March 3, 1885, the day before leaving office, Arthur proposed placing Ulysses S. Grant on the Army retired list with a pension. His term ended on March 4, 1885, and he was succeeded by Grover ClevelandGrover ClevelandGrover Cleveland (1837–1908) was an American politician and Democrat who served as President of the United States from 1885 to 1889 and from 1893 to 1897, as the 22nd and 24th president, the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms.Open the full entry. He tried to resume his law practice, but ill health kept him from doing much work.⁠[8][11]

Bright’s disease seriously weakened Arthur’s heart. He died at his home in New York City on November 18, 1886, at age 57, with his children and sisters nearby. After a funeral in Manhattan he was buried with full ceremonies in the Arthur family plot at Albany Rural Cemetery in Menands, New York, beside his wife; his successor, Grover Cleveland, attended.⁠[11][3][7]

Ellen Lewis Herndon Arthur (1837–1880) died before her husband became president. Their children were Chester Alan Arthur II (born in New York City on July 25, 1864, an 1885 graduate of Princeton UniversityPrinceton UniversityPrinceton University is a private university and Ivy League member in Princeton, New Jersey. Chartered on October 22, 1746 as the College of New Jersey, it moved to Princeton in 1756 and adopted its present name in 1896. Undergraduate education leads to A.B. and B.S.E. degrees and emphasizes small-group discussion, independent research and residential college life. Graduate education spans the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and engineering. As of October 2026, Christopher L. Eisgruber was president. Its 2026–27 operating budget was $3.407 billion, including $342 million for undergraduate aid.Open the full entry, died in Colorado Springs, ColoradoColoradoColorado is a U.S. state classified as one of the Mountain states, with Denver as its capital. It was admitted to the Union on August 1, 1876, as the 38th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 5,773,714.Open the full entry, on July 18, 1937) and Ellen Herndon Arthur (1871–1915).⁠[7][12][2]

Known as “The Gentleman Boss” for his elegant taste and lavish parties, Arthur hired Louis Comfort Tiffany to refurbish the White House. He enjoyed fishing, dining with associates and administrative work, and showcased his two children at White House events.⁠[2]

The Chester Arthur State Historic Site is at 4588 Chester Arthur Road in Fairfield, Vermont, and is operated by Vermont State Historic Sites. The National Portrait Gallery holds an 1881 oil portrait of Arthur by Ole Peter Hansen Balling.⁠[13][14]

The Miller Center’s essay characterizes Arthur’s administration as a period of transition, in which women were increasingly active in pushing for suffrage and prohibition and civil service reform began to weaken traditional ethnic and party loyalties; despite his machine background, it judges, he showed flexibility and embraced reform, making him a transitional figure in the nation’s reunification after the Civil War and Reconstruction.⁠[2]

Chester Arthur State Historic Site: Official website: https://historicsites.vermont.gov/node/104 (opens in a new window).⁠[13]