Chester A. Arthur

His father preached and would not keep quiet about slavery, which cost the family congregation after congregation across Vermont and upstate New York. William Arthur had come from County Antrim, and when his son was nominated for vice president in 1880 an opponent set out to prove the son was foreign-born as well — first Ireland, then Canada. He was born in Fairfield, Vermont. Arthur went to Union College, taught school while reading law, and joined an abolitionist firm in New York. In 1854 Elizabeth Jennings, a Black schoolteacher, was thrown off a Third Avenue streetcar. Arthur took the case as lead counsel and won it, and the city's streetcars opened. He married Ellen Herndon in 1859 and went to work for Roscoe Conkling's machine.

Three and a half years, begun by an assassin. He signed the Pendleton Act and turned federal hiring into an examination system, signed the first federal law barring a nationality from immigrating, put a 50-cent head tax on arriving passengers, let his own Justice Department prosecute the postal Star Route frauds that reached his friends, and began building a navy out of steel. He dedicated the Washington Monument in February 1885 and went home. The reversal and the reform are laid out on BriefHistory. The question here is what the job cost a man who was already dying.

Within months of taking office Arthur learned he had Bright's disease, an incurable failure of the kidneys, and told almost no one. By 1883 he was visibly thinner and the rumors had started. He went to Florida that April to recover and came back in worse pain than he left with, then spent two months in Yellowstone that summer with reporters along, which helped his health and advertised the new park system at the same time. In 1884 he made a token effort at his own renomination, which he did not want and could not have won. His wife Ellen had died on January 12, 1880, at 42, 10 months before the election that made him vice president. Their first son had died at two. He never remarried.

On November 16, 1886, too ill to leave the house, Arthur ordered nearly all his papers burned, official and personal alike. The next morning he had a cerebral hemorrhage and never regained consciousness. He is buried at Albany Rural Cemetery in Menands under a bronze angel laying a palm leaf on his sarcophagus. The fire did most of the work on his reputation, because there is so little left to argue with. Historians place him in the middle and note how thin the record is. Mark Twain wrote that it would be hard indeed to better President Arthur's administration. In 2025 Nick Offerman played him on Netflix, the most attention he has had in a century.

Chester A. Arthur's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Chinese Exclusion Act law
  He vetoed the 20-year version as a treaty violation and signed a 10-year one 1882
• Immigration Act of 1882 law
  The first general federal immigration law, funded by a 50-cent head tax 1882
• Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act law
  Competitive examinations and a commission to administer them 1883
• The ABCD ships other
  Atlanta, Boston, Chicago and Dolphin — the beginning of the steel navy 1883
• Alaska Organic Act law
  Gave Alaska its first civil government 1884

• 1854 aged ~25 Wins the Elizabeth Jennings streetcar case in New York The verdict opened the city's streetcars to Black riders.
• 1859 aged ~30 Marries Ellen Lewis Herndon in Manhattan
• 1871 aged ~42 Grant appoints him Collector of the Port of New York The post paid him more than 50,000 dollars a year.
• July 1878 aged 48 Hayes removes him from the custom house
• January 12, 1880 aged 50 Ellen dies at 42, 10 months before the ticket wins
• September 20, 1881 aged 51 Takes the oath at 2:15 in the morning after Garfield dies
• January 16, 1883 aged 53 Signs the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act
• November 16, 1886 aged 57 Orders nearly all of his papers burned
• November 18, 1886 aged 57 Dies of a cerebral hemorrhage at 57

• Roscoe Conkling 1829–1888
  Senate boss of the Stalwart patronage machine who resigned in a fight over one customs house. mentor
• Mark Twain 1835–1910
  Author of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, often called the father of American literature. praised by
• Roscoe Conkling 1829–1888
  Senate boss of the Stalwart patronage machine who resigned in a fight over one customs house. patron