Chester A. Arthur

Chester Alan Arthur (October 5, 1829 – November 18, 1886) was the 21st president of the United States, serving from 1881 to 1885. He was a Republican from New York who previously served as the 20th vice president under President James A. Garfield. Assuming the presidency after Garfield's assassination, Arthur's administration saw the largest expansion of the U.S. Navy, the end of the so-called "spoils system", and the implementation of harsher restrictions for migrants entering from abroad.

Arthur was born in Fairfield, Vermont, and practiced law in New York City. He served as quartermaster general of the New York Militia during the American Civil War. Following the war, he devoted more time to New York Republican politics and quickly rose in Senator Roscoe Conkling's political organization. President Ulysses S. Grant appointed him as Collector of the Port of New York in 1871, and he was an important supporter of Conkling and the Stalwart faction of the Republican Party. In 1878, following bitter disputes between Conkling and President Rutherford B. Hayes over control of patronage in New York, Hayes fired Arthur as part of a plan to reform the federal patronage system.

During the 1880 Republican National Convention, the extended contest between Grant, identified with the Stalwarts, and James G. Blaine, the candidate of the Half-Breed faction, led to the compromise selection of James Garfield as president. Republicans then nominated Arthur for vice president to balance the ticket geographically and to placate Stalwarts disappointed by Grant's defeat. Garfield and Arthur won the 1880 presidential election and took office in March 1881. Four months into his term, Garfield was shot by an assassin; he died 11 weeks later, and Arthur assumed the presidency. As president, Arthur presided over the rebirth of the U.S. Navy, but he was criticized for failing to alleviate the federal budget surplus which had been accumulating since the end of the Civil War. Arthur vetoed the first version of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, arguing that its twenty-year ban on Chinese immigrants to the United States violated the Burlingame Treaty, but he signed a second version, which included a ten-year ban. He appointed Horace Gray and Samuel Blatchford to the Supreme Court. He also enforced the Immigration Act of 1882 to impose more restrictions on immigrants and the Tariff of 1883 to attempt to reduce tariffs. Arthur signed into law the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883, which came as a surprise to reformers who held a negative opinion of Arthur as a Stalwart and product of Conkling's organization.

Suffering from poor health, Arthur made only a limited effort to secure the Republican Party's nomination in 1884, and he retired at the end of his term. Arthur's failing health and political temperament combined to make his administration less active than a modern presidency, yet he earned praise among contemporaries for his solid performance in office. Arthur has been described as one of the least memorable presidents in the history of the United States.

Chester Alan Arthur was born in Fairfield, Vermont. Arthur's mother, Malvina Stone, was born in Berkshire, Vermont, the daughter of George Washington Stone and Judith Stevens. Her family was primarily of English and Welsh descent, and her maternal grandfather, Uriah Stone, had served in the Continental Army during the American Revolution.

Arthur's father, William Arthur, was born in 1796 in Dreen, Cullybackey, County Antrim, Ireland, to a Presbyterian family. William's mother was born Eliza McHarg and she married Alan Arthur. William graduated from college in Belfast and migrated to the Province of Lower Canada in 1819 or 1820. Malvina Stone met William Arthur when Arthur was teaching in Dunham, Quebec, near the Vermont border. They married in Dunham on April 12, 1821.

The Arthurs moved to Vermont after the birth of their first child, Regina. They quickly moved from Burlington to Jericho, and finally to Waterville, as William received positions teaching at different schools. William Arthur also spent a brief time studying law, but while still in Waterville, he departed from both his legal studies and his Presbyterian upbringing to join the Free Will Baptists; he spent the rest of his life as a minister in that denomination. William Arthur became an outspoken abolitionist, which often made him unpopular with some members of his congregations and contributed to the family's frequent moves.

In 1828, the family moved again, to Fairfield, where Chester Alan Arthur was born the following year; he was the fifth of nine children. He was named "Chester" after Chester Abell, the physician and family friend who assisted in his birth, and "Alan" for his paternal grandfather. The family remained in Fairfield until 1832, when William Arthur's profession took them to churches in several towns in Vermont and upstate New York. The family finally settled in Schenectady, New York, in 1844.