The youngest of three living children, James Abram Garfield was born on November 19, 1831, on a frontier farm in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. He spent his youth helping his near penniless, widowed mother, Eliza, work her farm outside of Cleveland, Ohio. He never knew his father, Abram Garfield, a strong man known for his wrestling abilities, who had died when James was scarcely an infant. Like his father, James was good with his fists and loved the outdoors, but he never liked farming. He dreamed instead of becoming a sailor. At age sixteen, Garfield ran away to work on the canal boats that shuttled commerce between Cleveland and Pittsburgh. During his six weeks on the boats, he fell overboard fourteen times, finally catching such a fever that he had to return home. While recovering, Garfield vowed to make his way in the world using brains rather than brawn.
Education, Early Career, and Civil War Service
Determined to succeed, Garfield worked as a carpenter and part-time teacher while attending Geauga Academy, located in Chester, Ohio. He supported himself with a part-time teaching position at a district school. From 1851 to 1854, he studied at the Eclectic Institute in Hiram, Ohio, and earned his living as a school janitor. In 1854, at the age of twenty-three, James entered Williams College in western Massachusetts as a junior; he was one of the oldest students enrolled in this institution.
In 1850, at age eighteen, Garfield experienced a religious conversion and was baptized into the denomination of his parents, the Disciples of Christ. He thrived intellectually at Williams. He relished the opportunity to hear Ralph Waldo Emerson and the challenge of confronting the strong personality of Williams's president, Mark Hopkins. He fancied himself a reformer, identifying with the antislavery beliefs of the new Republican Party.
Though a serious student, James enjoyed hunting, fishing, billiards, and drink in moderation, refusing to take the temperance pledge or to join in its cause. He also enjoyed the ladies, dating three young women simultaneously. Garfield eventually fell in love with Lucretia "Crete" Rudolph, one of his classmates at the Eclectic Institute. An attractive young lady, she possessed a keen intellect and equaled Garfield in her appetite for knowledge. While Garfield finished his studies at Williams, she taught school.
After graduating from Williams with honors in 1856, Garfield returned to the Eclectic Institute. Though formally an instructor in classical languages, he taught a wide variety of courses, including English, history, geology, and mathematics. By this time, he was a Disciples minister. From 1857 to 1861, he served as president of the institute, though he found the faculty bickering intolerable. In 1858, he and Lucretia got married. Studying law on his own, he passed the Ohio bar exam in 1861.
In 1856, Garfield campaigned in Ohio for John C. Frémont, presidential candidate of the newly formed Republican Party. Three years later, he threw himself into state politics, becoming the youngest member of the Ohio legislature.
An enthusiastic abolitionist, Garfield believed that under no circumstances could the institution of slavery be allowed to extend into any of the western territories. Although he did not condone John Brown's bloody raid on Harpers Ferry, he believed that Brown's trial and execution would "be the dawn of a better day." In the presidential election of 1860, Garfield campaigned for Abraham Lincoln. When Southern states began to withdraw from the Union, Garfield came out strongly against secession and urged the federal government to respond with force. He said, "I am inclined to believe that the sin of slavery is one of which it may be said that without the shedding of blood there is no remission." He welcomed the fall of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, believing it would unite Northern sentiment in support of waging war on the Confederacy.
In mid-August 1861, Garfield organized the 42nd Ohio Infantry, rising from lieutenant colonel to full colonel within a few weeks. Twice he gained distinction: In January 1862 at the battle of Middle Creek, his greatly outnumbered brigade defeated the Confederates, thereby leaving him in control of eastern Kentucky. In September 1863 at Chickamauga, he made a daring ride under enemy fire. By then, he was a major general, the youngest officer to hold this rank. Garfield served as chief of staff under Major General William S. Rosecrans, commander of the Army of the Cumberland, though he undermined his superior by supplying negative information to the War Department. In December 1863, Garfield resigned from the Army to take his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, to which the war hero had been elected the previous November without ever having campaigned.
Congressman Garfield
During the war years, Garfield distinguished himself as one of the most radical Republicans in Congress. Even though he had campaigned for Lincoln, he never really liked the President and considered him a "second-rate Illinois lawyer" who had failed to vigorously prosecute the war. Garfield supported the seizure of rebel property in the North and the execution or exile of Confederate leaders. In the election of 1864, while campaigning for reelection, he scarcely mentioned the President.
Over time, during his eight terms of office, Congressman Garfield tempered his youthful radicalism, becoming a seasoned politician. He developed an ability to work for compromise while still defending the core interests of his Western Reserve constituency. To some observers, Garfield's ability to walk a middle road smacked of opportunism. To others, it was the mark of a practical politician. During Reconstruction, Garfield differed from his more radical colleagues, often supporting moderation toward the defeated South. However, he eventually voted for the impeachment of President Johnson. In 1868 and 1872, he backed Ulysses S. Grant for President, though he possessed grave reservations about the general's administrative abilities and political wisdom.
As a congressman, Garfield became an expert on financial matters by serving on key committees. He held various positions, including chairman of the Banking and Currency Committee, the Appropriations Committee, and the Military Affairs Committee. He was also a member of the House Ways and Means Committee. In that capacity, he advocated hard money policies despite the soft money, or inflationary, sentiment of his home district. He opposed all efforts to inflate the supply of money through the issuance of paper currency unbacked by gold; use of the unbacked greenback dollars (printed during the Civil War) to redeem government bonds; or free and unlimited coinage of silver into coins. This hard money stance made him a favorite with eastern "Gold Bug" Republicans in their fight to keep the nation's money supply from expanding. As creditors, "Gold Bugs," usually bankers and wholesalers, did not want the money they had loaned out to be paid back with less valuable or inflated paper dollars—dollars that were worth less in their purchasing power than the dollars they had advanced to their debt-owing customers and business clients. (See the Cleveland and Harrison presidential biographies for further discussion of the money issue during the Gilded Age.)Garfield also disliked the various cooperative farm programs supported by the Grange, the major voice of the embattled farmers and a group that advocated legislation ("Granger laws") regulating railroads. To the Ohio congressman, they represented "communism in disguise." On the tariff issue, Garfield took a middle line, advocating moderate and low tariff rates in response to the demands of his rural constituents for cheap European manufactured goods. However, when it came to the interests of his own district, he drew the line, for example, when they demanded a high tariff on pig iron. He opposed labor unions, fought the eight-hour workday for federal workers, and believed that federal troops should be used to break up strikes. During the economic depression of the 1870s, he was so concerned about government spending that he opposed federally funded relief projects.
During his congressional tenure, Garfield was also identified as one of several congressmen who had accepted stock in Credit Mobilier, a construction company for the transcontinental Union Pacific Railroad that had received loans and land grants from the government. The congressmen involved were accused of using their influence to weaken congressional oversight of the company, thereby permitting the company officers to pay themselves huge expenses and salaries. Garfield admitted that he had received only $329 from the company. He also drew opposition because he voted for a retroactive salary increase and was linked to a corrupt paving contract. In 1874, his constituents returned him to the House, but this time the election was hard fought.
In the presidential election of 1876, Garfield supported Ohio's governor, Rutherford B. Hayes, for President, in part because of Hayes's "sound money" position and in part because his sheer blandness might make him stronger than such polarizing rivals as Senators Roscoe Conkling of New York and James G. Blaine of Maine. Garfield served on the electoral commission that investigated the disputed electoral college returns from South Carolina, Louisiana, Florida, and Oregon. He voted with the seven other Republicans on the controversial fifteen-member committee to give Hayes the election by awarding all the delegates from these disputed states to the Republicans. Indeed, he was one of the "visiting statesmen" who approved the official Republican returns of the contested state of Louisiana. To soothe enraged Democrats who controlled the House of Representatives, Garfield worked behind the scenes in support of the Compromise of 1877, which ended military occupation of the South and brought at least one southern Democrat into Hayes's cabinet.
During Hayes's administration, Garfield served as the Republican minority leader of the House, earning a reputation as a political strategist able to achieve compromise among the various factions within the increasingly splintered party. One group of Republicans rallied around Senator Conkling of New York, who, along with Senators J. Donald Cameron of Pennsylvania and John A. Logan of Illinois, concentrated on a harsh southern policy and sought the return of Ulysses S. Grant to the White House. They called themselves "Stalwarts," while labeling their party rivals mere "Half-Breeds." The "Half-Breeds," led by Senator Blaine, focused their attention on the need for a high tariff. But little separated the two factions—both sought the spoils of power and patronage.
The Campaign and Election of 1880:
President Rutherford B. Hayes had vowed to be a one-term President, and he kept his pledge. When Republicans convened in Chicago in June 1880, the fight for the nomination stood between former President Ulysses S. Grant, a Stalwart, and James G. Blaine, the Half-Breed senator from Maine. Garfield, head of the Ohio delegation and chairman of the Convention Rules Committee, backed Treasury Secretary John Sherman of Ohio, a veteran of both the House and the Senate. Though he bore the cross of dullness, Sherman might emerge as the ideal compromise candidate. Garfield nominated Sherman. The convention deadlocked through the next thirty-three ballots, with Grant leading, followed by Blaine and Sherman.
Throughout the convention balloting, Garfield had received one or two courtesy votes on each roll call. On the thirty-fourth ballot, Wisconsin cast sixteen votes for Garfield. On the next ballot, Garfield received fifty votes. The move became a stampede on the thirty-sixth ballot as the Blaine and Sherman forces rallied to the Ohio congressman, who had been elected by the Ohio state legislature to the U.S. Senate just prior to the Republican convention. Garfield won 399 votes to Grant's 306, putting him over the top and giving him the Republican nomination.
Conkling's friend and protege, Chester A. Arthur, former customs collector at the Port of New York, received the party's nomination for vice president with Garfield's endorsement. Conkling warned Arthur against accepting the slot, predicting Garfield's defeat and urging him to "drop it as you would a red hot shoe from the forge." Arthur responded that the "office of the Vice-President is a great honor than I ever dreamed of attaning." Arthur's nomination had been organized behind Garfield's back. Garfield reluctantly approved, knowing he needed Stalwart support to emerge victorious.
When Samuel J. Tilden, former New York governor and the Democratic nominee in 1876, withdrew his name from consideration, the Democrats nominated Winfield S. Hancock, a Civil War hero and career Army officer. Hancock had seen Civil War action at Antietam and Gettysburg, where he had blunted Pickett's Charge. He also fought in the Wilderness campaign and at a dozen other engagements as well. He served as the military governor of Louisiana and Texas during Reconstruction, running afoul of Radical Republicans when his policies supported whites and Democrats over blacks and carpetbaggers.
The presidential campaign revealed few differences between the candidates, except for the tariff. Hancock stumbled when he dismissed the tariff issue as "a local question." Democrats attacked Garfield for his part in the Credit Mobilier scandal. Following President Hayes's advice, Garfield kept a low profile during the campaign.
Since Garfield was, quite correctly, perceived as tied far more to the Half-Breeds than to the Stalwarts, he immediately realized that he had to mend political fences. On August 5, he met with party leaders, though not Conkling, in New York City. During an exchange of views, Garfield promised to recognize all party factions, including the Stalwarts, when presidential appointments were made. Though the terms were vague and ambiguous, pundits dubbed the conference the "Treaty of Fifth Avenue." Both Conkling and Garfield knew that the electoral votes in New York might well prove decisive in the election.
In one of the closest elections on record, Garfield beat Hancock by a mere 7,368 votes, less than one-tenth of one percent of the total votes cast. Taking such minor parties as the Greenbackers and Prohibitionists into account, Garfield received only 48.3 percent. His support was much stronger in the electoral college, where he received 214 votes to Hancock's 155. Each candidate carried nineteen states. Garfield won the northern and midwestern states while Hancock carried the South and most of the border states. Had New York gone Democratic, resulting in a shift of a few thousand votes in each state, Hancock would have won in the electoral college.
The great American novelist Thomas Wolfe, in his book From Death to Morning (1935), once referred to Garfield as one of the "lost presidents": Garfield, Arthur, Harrison, and Hayes, time of my father's time, blood of his blood, life of his life, . . . were the lost Americans: their gravely vacant and bewhiskered faces mixed, melted, swam together in the sea depths of a past intangible, immeasurable, and unknowable as the buried city of Persepolis. And they were lost. For who was Garfield, martyred man, and who had seen him in the streets of life? Who could believe that his footfalls ever sounded on a lonely pavement? Who had heard the casual and familiar tones of Chester Arthur? Where was Harrison? Where was Hayes? Which had the whiskers, which the burnsides: Which was which? Were they not lost?"Struck down by an assassin's bullet just one hundred days after his inauguration, Garfield had little time to achieve much. A good deal of time was spent over one appointment, the collectorship of the Port of New York. The port served as the greatest patronage plum in the nation, as the city's harbor collected more revenue than all other American ports combined. Garfield replaced General Edwin A. Merritt, a reformer, with William H. Robertson, president pro tem of the New York Senate and a strong Half-Breed. Since the Stalwarts saw the collectorship as a reward for support during the campaign, they were outraged. Over the years, Conkling's machine had relied upon "senatorial courtesy" to select the individual to occupy this key position. By this practice, senators, rather than the President, could choose or veto federal officials from their states. For several months, the Senate of the United States was tied up. Only when Conkling and his senatorial colleague, Thomas C. Platt of New York, resigned their offices in protest did Garfield win the fight, thereby becoming the undisputed party leader.
Garfield was able to put his financial expertise, which was acquired through his congressional committee experience, to work by recalling government bonds that were paying 6 percent interest. The Treasury was able to refinance them at 3.5 percent, which saved $10 million annually—about 4 percent of the overall budget at that time.
Amid tremendous intraparty strife, Garfield managed to appoint his cabinet. In a most polarizing move, the new President insisted upon having James G. Blaine as secretary of state. In the important Treasury post, Garfield broke openly with Conkling when he appointed William Windom of Minnesota; Garfield insisted that he wanted someone free from the influence of eastern bankers. Garfield appointed the son of Abraham Lincoln, Robert T. Lincoln, as his secretary of war, principally because of the prestige associated with the Lincoln name. For attorney general, Garfield named Wayne McVeagh, a Philadelphia lawyer and a member of the anti-Grant faction of the party. The sixty-seven-year-old Samuel J. Kirkwood, wartime governor of Iowa, took the Interior slot while William Henry Hunt, an attorney from New Orleans, was chosen as secretary of the Navy.
Thomas L. James, postmaster of New York, assumed the postmaster general's office. James had been a Stalwart, but he was loyal to Garfield. In 1881, the Post Office Department was the largest department in the federal government, housing over half the federal bureaucracy. Not surprisingly, it was prone to much corruption. As Garfield assumed the presidency, what was known as the Star Route Scandal erupted. It centered on the granting of federal contracts to private stagecoach and wagon agencies involved in serving isolated areas of the West. The affair shocked the nation, implicating members of Garfield's own party in the sale of postal route contracts in return for payoffs.
On July 2, 1881, at 9:20 a.m., James A. Garfield was shot in the back as he walked with Secretary of State Blaine in Washington's Baltimore and Potomac train station. The proud President was preparing to leave for Williams College—he planned to introduce his two sons to his alma mater. The shots came from a .44 British Bulldog, which the assassin, Charles J. Guiteau, had purchased specifically because he thought it would look impressive in a museum. Garfield's doctors were unable to remove the bullet, which was lodged in the President's pancreas. On September 19, 1881, the President died of blood poisoning and complications from the shooting in his hospital rooms at Elberon, a village on the New Jersey shore, where his wife lay ill with malaria.
Guiteau, age thirty-nine at the time, was known around Washington as an emotionally disturbed man. He had killed Garfield because of the President's refusal to appoint him to a European consulship. In planning this violent act, Guiteau stalked Garfield for weeks. On the day Garfield died, Guiteau wrote to now President Chester A. Arthur, "My inspiration is a godsend to you and I presume that you appreciate it. . . . Never think of Garfield's removal as murder. It was an act of God, resulting from a political necessity for which he was responsible." At his trial, the jury deliberated one hour before returning a guilty verdict. Sentenced to be hanged, Guiteau climbed the scaffold on June 30, 1882, convinced that he had done God's work.
Because Garfield never knew his father, he always held a special place in his heart for his mother, to whom he credited his success. Eliza Ballou Garfield, the first mother of a President to attend her son's inauguration, survived her son's death by seven years. She lived at the White House with her son's family during Garfield's brief term of office. She was a frail woman who dressed only in black and wore a lace handkerchief on her head to hide her thinning white hair. Garfield, a strong man, standing over six feet in height, personally carried his mother up and down the White House stairs.
When Garfield was assassinated in 1881, he had four sons and one daughter who ranged in age from nine (Abram) to nineteen (Harry). Two other children had died in infancy. His daughter Mary "Mollie", age fourteen in 1881, met her husband, Joseph Stanley-Brown, who was Garfield's presidential secretary, while living in the White House. The other two boys, James, age sixteen, and Irvin, age eleven, kept the President and his wife busy and happy with their youthful escapades.
The children all grew up to be successful and productive citizens. In 1908, Harry, a professor of politics at Princeton, became the president of Williams College. During World War I, he also served as Woodrow Wilson's fuel administrator. In 1907, James became secretary of the Interior under President Theodore Roosevelt. Irvin became a successful corporate lawyer in Boston, and Abram, a graduate of MIT, worked as an architect in Cleveland. Mary, whose husband became a prominent investment banker, was active in civic affairs in New York and Pasadena, California.
In the decade prior to Garfield's election in 1880, Republicans and Democrats were nearly equal in number in the Senate and the House of Representatives. In most years, a slight majority of Democrats in the House faced a bare majority of Republicans in the Senate. This equal division in government reflected a similar division among the nation's 50.2 million people. The population had increased by 10 million in the 1870s—of which nearly 3 million were immigrants. As had been the case for most of the century, the two national parties neatly divided the nation's states in the presidential elections—nineteen states to nineteen.
Republicans, Democrats, and Party Bosses
Voters who cast Republican ballots typically identified with the party's claim to having saved the Union from the rebels. They responded to "waving the bloody shirt," a reference to a Republican congressman who had displayed the bloody shirt of a Northerner beaten by Southern white supremacists. Republicans supported federal pensions to Union Army veterans and cultivated the Grand Army of the Republic, the national organization of Union veterans. They also liked to think of themselves as morally superior to Democrats, usually supporting temperance and calls for decency and morality in politics. On the money issue, most Republicans were opposed to paper currency and the free coinage of silver. On tariffs, they usually came down on the side of protection.
Democrats, on the other hand, more frequently defined themselves in terms of what they opposed rather than what they supported. Most Democrats rejected government intervention in the economy, especially protective tariffs and government land grants to railroads. In the North, Irish and German Democrats opposed prohibition, and southern Democrats opposed federal enforcement of voting rights for African Americans.
On election day, each party turned out massive numbers of voters. In 1880, nearly 80 percent of the eligible voters cast ballots. Open voting enabled party bosses to check how their people voted and to punish disloyal voters with the loss of jobs and other forms of political intimidation. Most voters supported one party or the other on the basis of ethnicity, race, or religion. Catholic immigrants generally voted Democratic, as did most southern whites. Old-stock Protestants in the North, most Scandinavian and British immigrants as well as most African Americans generally voted for Republican candidates.
Agrarian Votes
In the 1870s, thousands of midwestern and southern farmers found little reason to support either the Republicans or the Democrats in because neither party seemed able to address the depression in agricultural prices. Farmers who had borrowed heavily to modernize their farms in the 1860s and 1870s found the prices they received for corn, wheat, and cotton dropping badly. At first, many discontented farmers joined the Grange movement, which supported state legislation to regulate rail rates for farm products, cooperative retail and wholesale stores, and the cooperative marketing of crops. When, in the mid-1870s, internal bickering doomed the organization, angry farmers joined the Greenback movement, which ran third-party candidates in the congressional elections of 1878 and the presidential election of 1880. The Greenback Party supported printing paper currency unbacked by gold, which had been done during the Civil War, as a means of raising farm prices. They reasoned that if currency grew more rapidly than the economy (the production of goods), prices would rise as more dollars chased fewer and fewer goods. This would be good for farmers and most debtors. In the presidential election of 1880, Greenback candidate James B. Weaver of Iowa, a Greenback congressman, got only 3.4 percent of the popular vote, or 308,578 votes. (For more information on the electorate in the post-Civil War era to 1900, see the American Franchise section in the Grover Cleveland biography.)
Murdered within months of his inauguration, Garfield served as President too briefly for him to have left much of an impact. Still, his legacy is far more ambiguous than most people realize. His replacement of Merritt shows him not only lacking judgment but acting as a spoilsman himself. His secretary of state, James G. Blaine, conducted foreign policy in, at best, an offhand manner, adding to the burdens of his successor, Chester A. Arthur. Nevertheless, Garfield appeared to be increasingly dependent upon Blaine as his short-lived presidency emerged. Since Garfield was passionately devoted to hard money and a laissez-faire economy, it is doubtful whether he could have really coped with the recession that began in 1881. He might have advanced the cause of civil rights, but without again stationing federal troops in the South, his options were limited.
For his reputation, it might have been just as well that he died when he did. He died in the prime of his life, still politically untested. The times did not demand a President in the heroic mold, and Garfield could therefore be remembered as a martyr above all else, as one who truly gave his life for his nation.
Chester Arthur was the fifth child of a fervent abolitionist preacher who moved his family from one Baptist parish to the next throughout New York and Vermont. Attending Union College, Arthur showed far more interest in extracurricular activities and political demonstrations than in his studies. As a young man, Arthur worked for one of the most prominent law firms in New York City. He was involved in two cases focusing on African American rights. One involved fugitive slaves while the other centered on segregated streetcars.
Political Machine Operator
Arthur also worked actively for Roscoe Conkling, a New York Republican Party boss and U.S. senator who used patronage and party discipline to advance his power. Conkling headed a major party faction, the Stalwarts. Recognizing the administrative genius that Arthur demonstrated as quartermaster general for all of New York during the Civil War and his success as a lawyer, Conkling helped Arthur get appointed as collector of the Port of New York under Republican President Ulysses S. Grant. While there is no evidence of blatant corruption on Arthur's part, the New York Customs House had close ties to Boss Conkling's political machine; Arthur routinely collected kickbacks of salary called "assessments" from customs house employees to support the Republican Party.
In 1881, Arthur became vice president under the moderate Republican candidate, James Garfield. Under President Rutherford B. Hayes's administration, there had been attempts to reform New York's corrupt civil service system, and Arthur broke with President Garfield when Garfield appointed a member of the rival Republican faction, the Half-Breeds, to the post of collector of the Port of New York. The move destroyed Conkling's power once and for all. Arthur and Garfield were nearly estranged when Garfield was assassinated and Arthur found himself President.
Reform and Refurbish President
As President, Arthur surprised everyone by acting independently, defying his state-based reputation as a slick machine politician who would advance the agenda of his own party faction and ignore the needs of the nation at-large. Domestic affairs dominated his presidency. In reforming civil service, Arthur supported the Pendleton Act, which attempted to counter patronage and cronyism by requiring competitive exams for government office. Specifically, the law banned salary kickbacks and ensured that promotion would be based on merit, not connections. While the Republican Party usually worked to protect big business and manufacturing, Arthur pushed for tariff reduction to relieve indebted farmers and middle-class consumers. He also vetoed the notorious pork-barrel Rivers and Harbors Act of 1882, arguing that the growing surplus of federal funds should be decreased by tax reductions rather than government expenditures. After vetoing a more restrictive bill, Arthur supported the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, banning Chinese immigration for ten years and forbidding Chinese citizenship.
Arthur was most passionate about his project to refurbish the White House. Known as a man of elegant taste who loved to throw lavish parties, Arthur came to the presidency as "The Gentleman Boss." Disgusted with the shabby look of the executive mansion, Arthur hired the most famous designer in New York, Louis Comfort Tiffany, to transform it into a showplace befitting the office. His wife, Ellen Lewis Herndon, had died before he assumed office. And although Arthur loved to showcase his two children at White House social affairs, he much preferred fishing, feasting with his cronies, and administrative work to family life. Because he knew that he suffered from a fatal kidney disease, Arthur did not actively seek reelection for a second term and died less than two years after leaving office.
Chester A. Arthur's administration marks a period of transition in American politics. Women were beginning to take an active role, pressing strongly for women's suffrage and prohibition of alchoholic beverages. Above all, the era was characterized by civil service reform, which would eventually weaken the grip of traditional ethnic and party loyalties. Despite having advanced in his career through managing the New York political machine, Arthur showed tremendous flexibility and a willingness to embrace reform. He stands as an important transitional figure in the reunification of the nation after the bitter turmoil of the Civil War and Reconstruction.
Chester Alan Arthur was born on October 5, 1829, in a small log cabin in Fairfield, Vermont. The son of Malvina Arthur and the Reverend William Arthur, a passionate abolitionist, young Chester and his family migrated from one Baptist parish to another in Vermont and New York. The fifth of eight children, Chester had six sisters and one older brother. Before beginning school in Union Village (now Greenwich), New York, he studied the fundamentals of reading and writing at home.
In 1845, young Arthur entered Union College in Schenectady as a sophomore. There he pursued the traditional classical curriculum, supplementing his tuition by teaching at a nearby town during winter vacations. As a student, he engaged in undergraduate high jinks and enjoyed playing school pranks. Though not an outstanding student, he graduated in 1848 in the top third of his class and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
After college, Arthur spent several years teaching school and reading law, but he was clear about what he wanted to do with his life: He sought to reside in Manhattan as a wealthy lawyer and public servant, living the life of a true gentleman. With such goals in mind, he passed his bar exam in 1854 and then, using his father's influence, gained a clerkship in a New York legal firm headed by the prominent Erastus D. Culver.
Law Career
Culver's firm had achieved fame in 1852 when it supported a plea by a group of free blacks to liberate seven slaves. In transport from Virginia to Texas, these slaves had been brought temporarily to New York by their master. In what became known as the Lemmon Case, Erastus D. Culver successfully argued for a writ of habeas corpus, freeing the slaves from incarceration in the city jail, where their owner had placed them for safekeeping, and thus bondage. This court ruling allegedly violated the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Law and called into question the agreements made in the Compromise of 1850. Young Arthur spent much of his time as clerk in Culver's firm handling details of the appeal. Arthur made numerous trips to the state capital, Albany, to assist in arguments before the New York Supreme Court. The final court decision in 1860 upheld the initial ruling, and Arthur's work put him in touch with the leading legal minds in the state and the most prominent state politicians.
A second case was also instrumental in advancing Arthur's public profile. The firm defended a black woman, Elizabeth Jennings, who had been forced out of a New York streetcar and told to wait for the next one. Jennings's case predated Rosa Parks' case in the 1950s by over 100 years; Parks' defiant act involving racially segregated motor buses in Montgomery, Alabama, launched the historic civil rights movement led by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Arthur, now a partner in Culver's firm, won $225 from the streetcar company and $25 from the court. The case forced all New York City railroad companies to seat black passengers without prejudice on their streetcars.
As was common in those days, young unmarried men frequently lived in boardinghouses, where they took meals in family-style settings, socialized with fellow boarders, and tried to establish the appearance of a home life. Arthur lived in such a "family hotel" on Broadway. While there, he befriended a young medical student from Virginia, Dabney Herndon, who frequently visited with relatives living nearby. Arthur occasionally accompanied his friend on these family visits, and Herndon's cousin, the young Ellen "Nell" Lewis Herndon, soon caught Arthur's eye. The two—she was twenty-two and he was thirty—were married on October 25, 1859.
Civil War Service
When the Civil War broke out, Arthur stood primed for duty. In 1858, he joined the state militia principally out of a desire for companionship and political connections. In a rush to staff key positions, the Republican governor appointed Arthur to be engineer-in-chief with the rank of quartermaster general in the New York Volunteers. He served in that post with great efficiency, obtaining the rank of brigadier general. Responsible for provisioning and housing the several hundred thousand soldiers supplied by the state to the federal cause, as well as for the defenses of New York, Arthur dealt with hundreds of private contractors and military personnel. The military service played to his advantage; he gained a reputation for efficiency, administrative genius, and reliability.
Although eager to serve in a battlefield position, Arthur never pressed his case. His wife, a Virginian with family members in the Confederacy, could not tolerate the thought of her husband taking up arms against them. Moreover, his sister had married an official of the Confederate government who was stationed in Petersburg, Virginia.
Upon his retirement from duty in 1863, Arthur threw himself into his law practice, representing clients suing for war-related damages and reimbursements. His practice thrived, making him wealthy by the war's end. He also worked actively for Roscoe Conkling, a New York Republican Party boss and U.S. senator who used patronage and party discipline to advance his power in the state. By 1867, Arthur had become one of Conkling's top lieutenants. From 1869 to 1870, he served as the chief counsel to the New York City Tax Commission, earning an annual salary of $10,000, a princely sum of money in those days—in 1870, the wages of a skilled worker ranged from $400 to $650 annually.
Collector of the Port of New York
In 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant appointed Arthur to the position of Collector of the Port of New York. Arthur served in this capacity until 1878, supervising nearly 1,300 agents responsible for collecting about 75 percent of the nation's import duties. His domain included the entire coast of New York State, the Hudson River, and parts of New Jersey. Paid a salary of $12,000 annually, Arthur augmented his income by sharing in a portion of all fines collected on undervalued imports. Indeed, given such "perks," Arthur grossed $50,000 a year, a salary equivalent to that of the President of the United States. While customs office agents frequently accepted bribes from importers, warehouse owners, and ship companies, there is no evidence of Arthur ever partaking in such graft. However, Arthur routinely collected salary kickbacks from customs house employees to support Boss Conkling's machine.
In 1877, soon after he was inaugurated, President Rutherford B. Hayes tackled Conkling's political empire. Eager to distance himself from the Grant administration's reputation for scandal, Hayes sought to reform the New York customs office as an example of his reform-minded agenda. He established a special commission to investigate corruption there. The commission found political favoritism and blatant patronage governing appointments, exposed the practice of salary kickbacks, and charged the port authority with being criminally overstaffed.
Armed with the commission's findings, Hayes sought to remove Arthur. In exchange for his resignation, the collector would receive the consulship in Paris. Conkling and Arthur viewed Hayes's assertion of authority as an open declaration of war, to which they mounted a stiff fight in the Senate. To counter Conkling's opposition, Hayes bided his time, finally suspending Arthur after Congress had adjourned for the summer. In 1880, Arthur and Conkling, determined to reassert their control of the port, moved to draft former President Grant as Hayes's successor in the White House.
The Campaign and Election of 1880:
Since President Rutherford B. Hayes had declared that he was only going to serve one term (1877-1881), the 1880 election was wide open. Party boss Roscoe Conkling's candidate, former President Ulysses S. Grant, and Senator James G. Blaine were the leading rivals at the Republican nominating convention. Blaine led the Half-Breed Republican faction that struggled against Conkling's Stalwarts faction for control of their party. On the thirty-sixth ballot, a compromise deal was made, and the Republicans rallied behind a political moderate, James Garfield of Ohio. Garfield led the Republican minority in the House of Representatives and, just prior to the convention, had been elected by the Ohio legislature to the United States Senate.
Because of the machinations of some Conkling lieutenants, who acted without the knowledge of their boss, Arthur was sounded out for the vice presidential slot. Garfield reluctantly acceded to Arthur's nomination, as he realized how crucial the New York machine was to his election. Conkling urged Arthur to reject the nomination, believing that Garfield was bound to be defeated at the polls, but his trusted lieutenant was both tempted and pleased by the prospect. In spite of Conkling's urgings, Arthur accepted, declaring that "the office of the Vice-President is a great honor than I ever dreamed of attaining."The Democrats nominated General Winfield S. Hancock of Pennsylvania, a hero of Gettysburg, as their presidential candidate and William H. English, former congressman from Indiana, as his running mate. Another Civil War general, James B. Weaver, ran on the Greenback-Labor ticket. Weaver, running on a soft-money platform, won over 300,000 popular votes but no electoral college delegates.
Arthur actively campaigned during the election, coordinating mass meetings and taking charge of tours made by Grant and Conkling in the Middle West. In fact, he might have been the first advance man in American politics. Furthermore, as chairman of the New York State Republican Committee, he assessed city, state, and federal employees for three percent of their annual salary. Such efforts helped Garfield win the presidency, and there was much talk in the air, although never proved, that Arthur had schemed to buy votes for Garfield in the crucial swing state of Indiana. In the election, the Garfiled-Arthur ticket beat the Democrats in the popular vote by less than one-tenth of 1 percent but dominated the electoral college with 214 votes to 155.
After the election, Arthur, often portrayed as under Conkling's control, openly broke with the President. Acting on the advice of James G. Blaine, whom he had appointed secretary of state, Garfield moved to destroy Conkling's power once and for all by appointing William H. Robertson for the collectorship of the Port of New York. Robertson, president pro tem of the New York Senate, was a strong Half-Breed. Needless to say, in the days before Garfield's assassination, Garfield and Arthur shared a mutual animosity, for Arthur remained firmly in the Stalwart camp. Conkling resigned from the Senate in protest, and it looked as though Arthur would become a powerless figurehead in the Garfield administration. However, Garfield's assassination in July of 1881 left Arthur far from powerless. On September 19, Chester Alan Arthur became the twenty-first President of the United States.
The Campaign and Election of 1884
As Arthur's term in office came to a close, he made little effort to seek a second term. In early October 1882, he had fallen ill with Bright's disease, a fatal kidney ailment. His symptoms included inertness, mental depression, and spasmodic nausea, but the public was never aware of his condition. Since Arthur had converted to political form once he assumed office, his former Stalwart allies, including Grant and Conkling, opposed his nomination. Conversely, reformers remained suspicious, for certain appointments, such as secretary of the Navy, smacked of the old spoils system. Hence, at the 1884 Republican nominating convention in Chicago, Arthur lost his bid for his party's nomination to Blaine on the fourth ballot.
No President ever came to power who was better equipped to handle the management of a federal bureaucracy than Chester Arthur. His service as quartermaster general for New York and as the collector of the New York Customs House had provided him with a wealth of administrative experience. Those who knew him understood that few men in public life could match his administrative skills. Moreover, the number of federal employees remained relatively small. The secretary of state, for example, was served by three assistants, a chief clerk, and eight bureaus, each possessing a chief and several clerks. Hence, administration was a relatively easy task.
Reforming Civil Service Policies
From the first, Arthur made it clear that no one controlled him. Although he professed skepticism about civil service reform—the major reform issue of the day—in 1883, he signed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act. Arthur made this decision in part because of Republican mid-term defeats in the congressional elections of 1882. The Pendleton Act, written by the Democratic Ohio Senator George Pendleton, established a bipartisan five-member examination board. The law banned salary kickbacks, apportioned federal appointments among the states, and ruled that new employees must begin their service at the bottom of the career ladder, advancing only by merit exams.
Its initial impact, however, should not be exaggerated. As the legislation was not retroactive, present (primarily Republican) incumbents could remain in office even if the Democrats won the forthcoming presidential election. Hence, one Democratic senator caustically called the measure "a bill to perpetuate in office the Republicans who now control the patronage of the Government." Furthermore, the Pendleton Act exempted the vast majority of federal employees and all municipal and state workers.
Reducing Tariffs
In other matters, Arthur also exhibited a measure of independence and vision that neither his opponents nor his supporters had expected. Though he was extremely cautious, Arthur saw the need for a lower tariff. The Treasury had long shown an embarrassingly high surplus, a condition that presented a major financial problem when money was in short supply. Furthermore, discrepancies in duties made administration of the tariff both irrational and difficult. Consequently, his specially appointed tariff commission called for a 20 to 25 percent reduction across the board. Acting in defiance of the President, Congress instead passed the infamous "Mongrel" Tariff of 1883, which dropped rates on a varied list of items by an average of 1.47 percent, indicating that the nation was far from receptive to the creation of a "scientific" tariff. As in the past, Republicans generally supported high tariff rates in contrast to Democrats. On this measure, as on his attempts to limit patronage, Arthur marched out of step with Republican machine politicians and eastern manufacturers.
Limiting Expenditures and Chinese Immigration
Arthur also stepped out of line when he vetoed the notorious pork-barrel Rivers and Harbors Act of 1882, a measure that he believed unduly benefited the South. The bill, which passed over his veto, enraged him. He thereafter forcefully argued at every opportunity that the growing surplus of federal funds should be reduced by tax and rate reductions rather than by government pork-barrel-type expenditures. His position surprised many of his contemporaries, who had expected Arthur to use the federal surplus to support party patronage, the mother's milk of Gilded Age politics.
Bucking much party and national sentiment, Arthur vetoed a proposed Chinese Exclusion Act. On April 4, 1882, the President assailed the legislation, finding the twenty-year immigration ban unreasonable. Furthermore, he claimed, the Chinese had contributed a great deal to the American economy, and here he cited their labors on the transcontinental railroad. Moreover, he believed such legislation threatened a potentially rich market in China. When Congress lowered the ban to ten years, Arthur signed the bill.
Renovating the White House
Most dear to Arthur's heart as President, however, were his efforts to renovate the White House. Always known as a man of elegant taste—he is reputed to have owned eighty pairs of trousers—Arthur came to the presidency as the "Gentleman Boss." He greatly enjoyed his reputation for throwing elegant parties, for having an exquisite taste for fine food, and for socializing with the most suave and cultivated associates. Disgusted with the shabby look of the White House, he hired Louis Comfort Tiffany, the most fashionable designer in New York City, to completely refurbish the executive mansion into a showplace residence befitting the office. The price tag, funded by Congress, exceeded $30,000, which would be approximately $2 million in today's value.