Chester Alan Arthur (5 October 1829 – 18 November 1886) was President of the United States from 19 September 1881 to 4 March 1885, succeeding James A. Garfield and preceding Grover Cleveland. He previously served as Vice President from 4 March to 19 September 1881, succeeding William A. Wheeler and preceding Thomas A. Hendricks. A member of the center-right Stalwart faction of the Republican Party, he succeeded the Half-Breed president Garfield upon his assassination, and he completed Garfield's civil service reforms.
Biography[]
Chester Alan Arthur was born in Fairfield, Vermont on 5 October 1829, and he grew up in upstate New York before practicing law in New York City. He served as Quartermaster General of the New York Militia during the American Civil War, and, after the war, he entered Republican politics as part of US Senator Roscoe Conkling's political machine. President Ulysses S. Grant appointed Arthur to serve as Collector of the Port of New York from 1871 to 1878, and he was an important supporter of the Stalwarts. In 1878, President Rutherford B. Hayes fired Arthur during his reforms of the federal patronage system in New York, but, in 1880, Arthur was chosen as the running mate for Half-Breed Republican presidential candidate James A. Garfield to balance the ticket. They narrowly defeated Democrat Winfield Scott Hancock, taking office in 1881.
Presidency[]
President Garfield was mortally wounded by assassin Charles J. Guiteau just four months into his term and died 11 weeks later, leading to Arthur assuming the presidency. Despite being the product of machine politics, he took up the cause of civil service reform and successfully advocated and enforced the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, which his predecessor had pushed for. Arthur also expanded the US Navy, but he failed to alleviate the federal budget surplus, which had been accumulating since the end of the American Civil War. On 6 May 1882, he signed the Chinese Exclusion Act into law to bar Chinese immigration, denying them citizenship until 1898 and barring Chinese immigration until 1943. In 1884, in poor health, Arthur was unable to secure the Republican nomination for President, and he retired as a generally respected president. He died in Manhattan in 1886 at the age of 57 from a cerebral hemorrhage.