Passed Presidents - # 21 – Chester Alan Arthur

This one can be called a story of redemption. Our 21st president was a shady character. The poster boy for the political spoils system, he held no elective office until he became James Garfield’s vice president. Before that, he was appointed the head of the New York Customs House, the patronage plum given to him by his benefactor, the fabulously foul Roscoe Conkling. The powerful senator and New York kingpin ran a tight machine that was the envy of that corrupt era. Why do you think this period was called the ‘Gilded Age’?

Even today, some politicians understand that this is the way to keep it all together. You start with a powerful, elected official who rewards his friends with government jobs. The friends are there to serve the needs of the guy who put them there...not the public. They make a decent living, maybe skimming some graft for themselves...not a problem as long as they pass some of it up the food chain to their patrons AND support the party at election time. Is this a great country or what?

Especially because of their common whisker style I can’t help but

see Chester as Mr. Smee to Roscoe Conkling’s Captain Hook

The future president was fired from his Port Collector job by President Hayes and continued to be Conkling’s toady until the 1880 Republican convention. At the time, the Republican Party included some powerful machine factions. The ‘Stalwarts’, led by the sleazo Conkling, favored the spoils system and wanted Ulysses S. Grant to run for a third term. The ‘Half-Breeds’ wanted to reform patronage politics and pushed for Maine Senator James Blaine to be nominated. The deadlocked convention continued to choose ‘None of the Above’ and finally nominated James Garfield after 36 ballots. As a concession to the Stalwarts, they added Chester Arthur to the ticket. The Vice Presidency was his only elected office and a few months after the election, he was president.

As much as Conkling liked that his boy was VP, the job was, then more than now, a pretty meaningless endeavor. Meanwhile, President Garfield, like Hayes before him, wanted to reform the spoils system and install a merit-based civil service system where workers were not allowed to support the political parties. Little did anyone expect Garfield’s term to be over in months and Arthur to become president.

(A fun footnote – Garfield’s assassin Guiteau wrote a letter to Arthur before he was convicted. He thought the vice president should have been grateful that Guiteau cleared the way for his rise to the Oval Office. Meanwhile, Roscoe Conkling’s smarmy reputation took another hit as he was widely suspected of orchestrating the assassination so his puppet could be president)

President Arthur Grave, Albany Rural Cemetery, 

Albany, NY (12 October 2009)

Chester Alan Arthur was born in northern Vermont in 1829. In the ‘What is Old is New Again’ Department, his detractors tried to spread rumors that he was really born in Canada and thus, disqualified from being president.

(One wonders if this ‘Birther’ nonsense that has plagued our current president ought to fade now that Tea Party darling Ted Cruz acknowledges he actually WAS born in Canada. He says that since his mother was a U.S. citizen, he was automatically a Naturalized American Citizen. I see. Just as long as it doesn’t apply to the black guy who was born in Hawaii)

Angel of Sorrow, Chester A. Arthur Grave

Albany Rural Cemetery, Albany, NY (12 October 2009)

Since August, when I changed the presentation of Passed Presidents blog posts to the dates of their demise, we’ve had tales of murder, family tragedy and political ineptitude. This one has a happier ending. The Gilded Age was a time when Congress was the real power in Washington and so many of these guys were corrupt. Patronage jobs and doling out pork to their districts was what they believed they were elected to do. After a career as a patronage pol, Arthur turned into a reformer. His primary accomplishment was signing the Pendleton Act that created the modern Civil Service system.

Some sources note that Arthur was one of five incumbent presidents who sought re-election but failed to secure the nomination from their party. I’m sure Chet lost the support of his patronage pals in Congress when he became a reformer. Also, I suspect he didn’t try very hard for a second term since he knew he had terminal kidney disease. His retirement period of less than two years is the second shortest of all the presidents and he died 127 years ago today in 1886.

President Arthur Grave, Albany Rural Cemetery, 

Albany, NY (12 October 2009)

One last vanity from “Elegant Arthur”, the New York dandy who proudly owned eighty pairs of pants. When he was in his 40’s, he decided to change his birth year from 1829 to 1830.

Chester Alan Arthur

21st President; Served 1881-1885

Born: October 5, 1829, Fairfield, VT

Died: November 18, 1886, New York, NY

Grave Location: Albany Rural Cemetery, Albany, NY

Dates Visited: 9/26/2004; 10/12/2009