Chester A. Arthur

1829-1886

Chester A. Arthur served as the 21st president of the United States. The Vermont native was elected vice president on the Republican ticket of 1880, and acceded to the presidency upon the assassination of President James A. Garfield in 1881, as told in Netflix’s Death by Lightning.

As president, Chester A. Arthur (portrayed by actor Nick Offerman in Death by Lightning) supported the Pendleton Civil Service Act, which provided for the open appointment and promotion of federal employees based on merit rather than patronage. Arthur died of Bright’s disease in November 1886.

FULL NAME: Chester Alan Arthur
BORN: October 5, 1829
DIED: November 18, 1886
BIRTHPLACE: Fairfield, Vermont
SPOUSE: Nell Arthur (1859-1880)
CHILDREN: William, Chester Alan Jr., and Ellen
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Libra
HEIGHT: 6 ft. 2 in.

Chester Alan Arthur was born on October 5, 1829, in Fairfield, Vermont to Malvina Stone Arthur, a Canadian, and Reverend William Arthur, a passionate Baptist abolitionist preacher from Ireland. Growing up, his family moved throughout New York and Vermont, as his father preached in various towns and villages. Throughout Arthur's political career, it was rumored, though never proven, that he had actually been born in Bedford, Quebec, Canada. One of nine children, Arthur had an older brother, William, and six sisters: Regina, Jane, Almeda, Ann, Malvina, and Mary. His younger brother, George, died in infancy.

A young Arthur showed more interest in extracurricular activities and politics than his studies. Finding himself aligned with the Whig Party, he even got into a schoolyard fight over the 1844 presidential election. Still, he excelled academically, surpassing many of his peers. At 15 years old, Arthur enrolled in Union College in Schenectady as a sophomore. There, he received a classical education and became a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity. To pay for his tuition, Arthur worked as a teacher at a local school during his winter breaks. By his senior year, he had joined the school's debate society and became a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society.

After graduating with honors in 1848, Arthur worked as a full-time teacher for several years in both New York and Vermont and later became a school principal. During this time, he studied law at the State and National Law School in Ballston Spa, New York, and eventually moved to New York City to clerk at he law firm of prominent abolitionist Erastus D. Culver in 1853. Arthur passed the bar in 1854 and soon became a partner at Culver's firm.

Arthur was 6 feet 2 inches tall, making him one of the tallest U.S. presidents. In addition to his stature, he was known for his muttonchops and fashionable style.

As a lawyer in New York City, Arthur worked on cases dealing with slavery and civil rights. In his first major case, Lemmon v. New York, his firm successfully argued that, under state law, enslaved people became free when they arrived in New York. This was a major break from the federal law known as the Fugitive Slave Act, which required Northern states to return enslaved people who had run away from slave-owners. While Arthur's involvement in the case was minor, it was an enormous victory against laws that enforced slavery.

In 1854, the young lawyer became the lead attorney in the cvil rights cases Jennings v. Third Avenue Railroad Company, representing a Black woman named Elizabeth Jennings, who had been kicked out of a street car due to her race. The following year, a judge ruled that Black passengers had the same right to ride public transportation as their white counterparts. The decision ultimately led to the desegregation of all NYC public transit by 1861.

Arthur left his firm in 1856 to start a law partnership with his friend, Henry D. Gardiner. The two men set up shop in Kansas, which was rife with violent conflict over the legality of slavery in the wake of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Arthur and Gardiner returned to New York just a few months later after growing frustrated with the state's lawlessness. In 1857, Arthur joined the state's militia and served as a judge advocate-general, providing legal advice to military commanders.

After the start of the Civil War in 1861, Arthur was appointed to engineer-in-chief of the militia, and was tasked with planning the state's defenses. The following year, he was named the Inspector General of the New York troops, before ascending to the rank of quartermaster general, which put him in charge of housing and equipping soldiers. Im 1863, Arthur retired from military service and resumed his law practice, during which time he represented clients with cases involving war-related damages.

At the end of the war, Arthur became an associate of Republican Party boss and U.S. Senator Roscoe Conkling, who used political patronage and party discipline to advance his power and the Republican Party in New York. With his superb organization and administration skills, Arthur helped deliver support to the Conklin political machine. As collector of the New York Customs House, he overstaffed positions with political operatives who were loyal to Conklin. In 1878, President Rutherford B. Hayes attempted to reform the patronage system and ousted Arthur from office.

After a deadlock in choosing a presidential nominee at the Republican National Convention in 1880, dark horse candidate James A. Garfield was selected as a compromise, and Arthur was unexpectedly nominated as his vice president to balance the ticket. The move aimed to appease the conservative Stalwart faction of the party, to which Arthur belonged. That November, Garfield and Arthur narrowly won the election with less than 10,000 votes.

In March 1881, Garfield was inaugurated as the 20th vice president of the United States. During his term, he stood by the patronage system, clashing with Garfield over cabinet appointments. Garfield was in favor of civil service reform and aimed to hire federal employees based on merit.

Arthur’s time as second-in-command was rather short-lived, however. Six months after his inauguration, Garfield was assassinated, and Arthur subsequently became the 21st president of the United States, as told in Netflix’s Death by Lightning.

As president, Arthur shed his image as a slick political operator. While the Republican Party usually protected big business, Arthur advocated lowering tariff rates to help relieve indebted farmers and middle-class consumers. In 1882, he vetoed a pork-barrel project known as the Rivers and Harbor Act, believing that federal surpluses should go to tax relief rather than government expenditures.

Facing a shift in political priorities, Arthur also ended his working relationship with Conkling. Later that year, however, the president signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned the immigration of Chinese laborers for 10 years and prevented Chinese immigrants from becoming U.S. citizens.

Arthur soon became a champion of social service reform, signing into law the Pendleton Civil Service Act in 1882, which established a bipartisan Civil Service Commission to establish a merit-based system for federal employment. During his tenure, he also supported the modernization of the U.S. Navy, pursued economic relationships with Latin American countries, and made significant renovations to the White House.

After failing to receive his party's nomination for a second presidential term, Arthur returned to his law practice in New York City in 1885.

Arthur spent more time on his social life and political career than with his family. In 1859, he married Ellen “Nell” Herndon, with whom he had three children. Their eldest child, William, was born in 1860, but unexpectedly died two years later. They went on to have an another son, Chester Alan Jr., in 1864, and a daughter, Ellen, in 1871.

Arthur's wife died in 1880, and he entered the White House a widower. He became a bit of a dandy in his dress and his social circle in Washington, D.C. He lamented the dilapidated condition of the White House, and hired Louis Comfort Tiffany to remodel it into a show place.

By the time Arthur left the White House, he had been secretly suffering from Bright's disease, a fatal kidney ailment, for several years. As his health declined, he ordered that all of his papers, both personal and professional, be destroyed.

On November 18, 1886, Arthur died of a stroke in his home at the age of 57. He was survived by his children, Ellen and Chester Jr.

• The extravagant expenditure of public money is an evil not to be measured by the value of that money to the people who are taxed for it.
• I may be president of the United States, but my private life is nobody's damned business.
• Men may die, but the fabric of our free institutions remains unshaken.
• Be fit for more than the thing you are now doing. Let everyone know that you have a reserve in yourself; that you have more power than you are now using. If you are not too large for the place you occupy, you are too small for it.
  
• I trust the time is nigh when, with the universal assent of civilized people, all international differences shall be determined without resort to arms by the benignant processes of civilization.
  

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