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Chester A. Arthur Facts

Chester A. Arthur Facts
Chester A. Arthur was a New York attorney and politician who served as the twentieth Vice President of the United States of American under President James Garfield and then the twenty-first President of the United States from 1881 to 1885 after Garfield was assassinated. Arthur is little remembered by most American but to presidential historians he is largely seen as an ineffective president who was plagued by problems associated with the spoils/patronage system, which he supported. Arthur was born Chester Alan Arthur on October 5, 1829 in Fairfield, Vermont to William and Malvina Arthur, who were immigrants from Canada. After graduating from Union College in 1848, Arthur worked as a teacher and lawyer in the state of New York. Arthur married Ellen Herndon, a native of Virginia, in 1859; the couple would have three children.
Interesting Chester A. Arthur Facts:
Both of Arthur's parents were Irish Protestant immigrants.
Chester was first a member of the Whig Party and when that party became defunct he joined the Republican Party in the mid-1850s.
Arthur served in the Union Army during the American Civil War in administrative roles and never saw combat.
After the war, Arthur returned to New York and joined the Roscoe Conkling political machine, which essentially ran the Republican Party in the state.
In 1870, Arthur was appointed by President Grant to run the Custom's House in New York City.
After the 1876 Presidential Election, Reconstruction was over and the dominant Republican Party split into the Stalwarts and so-called Half-Breeds or moderates: Arthur was a Stalwart.
Although James Garfield was neither a Stalwart nor a Half-Breed when he won the Republican presidential nomination in 1880, he chose Stalwart Arthur as his running mate to gain that faction's support.
The Garfield-Arthur ticket defeated the Democrat Party's Winfield Hancock-William English ticket by only just over 7,000 votes in the popular count, but by fifty-nine votes in the Electoral College, where it really mattered.
President Garfield's assassin, Charles Guiteau, proclaimed "I am a Stalwart and Arthur will be president" before he shot the president on July 2, 1881.
President Garfield died on September 19 and took the oath of president at 2:19 am on September 20.
The federal government had a surplus during Arthur's presidency.
Arthur was a major proponent of tariffs.
Perhaps the most important legislation that President Arthur signed into law was the Immigration Act of 1882 and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which greatly restricted immigration from east Asia.
Arthur was the subject of the original "birther" controversy in 1880 when he was accused by his political opponents of being born in Ireland when he was the vice presidential candidate for the Republican Party.
Arthur died on November 18, 1888 from the effects of a cerebral hemorrhage in New London, Connecticut at the age of fifty-seven. He was buried in a family plot in Menands, New York.


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