21. CHESTER ARTHUR 1881-1885
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
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."
