Chester A. Arthur

Biography

Chester Alan Arthur was born in Fairfield, Vermont, in 1829, the son of an Irish-born father, and spent his childhood in a series of towns in upstate New York. He graduated from Union College in Schenectady in 1848, taught school, studied law and was admitted to the New York bar in 1854, joining the firm of the abolitionist lawyer Erastus Culver, which was then pursuing the Lemmon slave case.

During the Civil War he served in the New York militia's quartermaster department, becoming its quartermaster general in 1862. Afterwards he rose in Senator Roscoe Conkling's Republican organisation, and in 1871 President Grant appointed him Collector of the Port of New York, a post rich in patronage. President Hayes removed him in 1878 as part of a push for civil service reform, and from 1879 Arthur chaired the New York State Republican committee.

The 1880 Republican convention chose him as James Garfield's running mate to placate Conkling's Stalwart faction, and the ticket won. Arthur became president when Garfield died of an assassin's bullet in September 1881. In office he supported rebuilding the navy, signed a Chinese Exclusion Act after vetoing an earlier version, and, to the surprise of reformers, signed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act in 1883.

In failing health, Arthur made only a limited effort to win renomination in 1884, and he left office in March 1885. He died in New York City in November 1886.