Once upon a time, in a parallel American universe, there was an accidental president who was expected to reflect the worst of his country’s politics, but instead embraced professional, non-partisan governance.
The accidental president was Chester Alan Arthur, who is the subject of today’s #stampoftheday because he was born on October 5, 1829. He’s pictured on 21-cent stamp, issued as part of a presidential series in 1938. (The “Electric Eye” highlighted on the envelope does not refer to a hi-tech spying scheme but rather to a process, developed in the mid 1930s that used an electrified optical scanner to align the sheets before they were perforated.)
Arthur’s story is a delightfully twisted tale of late 19th century American politics. A native Vermonter who became a successful lawyer in New York City, Arthur became an ally of US Senator Roscoe Conkling, an upstate Republican who was coming to dominate state and national politics. Conkling, who headed the party’s so-called “Stalwart” wing backed Ulysses S. Grant’s successful presidential campaign and Arthur helped raise money for Grant as well. As a reward, Grant appointed Arthur to the lucrative and powerful position of Collector of the Port of New York, where about 70 percent of the taxes raised on imported goods came were collected. The position controlled about 1,000 patronage jobs.
In 1876, Arthur supported Conkling’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination, which went to Rutherford B. Hayes, the reform-conscious governor of Ohio. Arthur threw the support of his office behind Haye. But the new president appointed a commission to investigate the New York customhouse. The group, recommended cutting the staff by 20 percent and urged Hayes to professionalize the office. Hayes issued an order forbidding federal officeholders to take part in political activities. Arthur, who was a member of the Republican State Committee, refused so Hayes fired him.
As the election of 1880 approached, Hayes, lacking party support, did not to seek a second term. Conkling threw his support behind former president Grant, in part to block the nomination of his longtime rival, Senator and former House Speaker James G. Blaine of Maine. The convention deadlocked until Blaine’s supporters swung their support behind James A. Garfield, a respected Congressman from Ohio. The nominee’s supporters realized that they needed a New Yorker on the ticket, not only to help secure the state’s many electoral votes but also to mollify Conkling. Garfield offered the post to Levi P. Morton, a Conkling ally who had served with Garfield in the House. But he declined when Conkling made it clear that no friend of his should join the ticket.
Garfield then turned to Arthur, who agreed, supposedly telling Conkling: “No man can refuse it, and I will not.”
Party reformers were upset by Garfield’s choice because Arthur was a symbol of corrupt machine politics. Enumerating his “good” qualities, one campaign tract observed that his face was “full, fat and fair,” that he did not talk with “offensive accents,” that he dressed “in perfect good taste,” and that he was “fairly corpulent as his pictures very well suggest.” Arthur’s selection also didn’t pacify Conkling, whom Garfield knew was a man “inspired more by his hates than his loves.” To make peace, in August 1880, Garfield met with Arthur and other machine leaders. In return for assurances that Garfield would take their wishes into consideration when making federal appointments in New York, they agreed to actively support his campaign, aid that helped him narrowly win the race.
Much to Conkling’s dismay, Garfield named Blaine as his secretary of state and refused to appoint Conkling or one of his allies to be secretary of the treasury, which had jurisdiction over the collector of the Port of New York. Conkling, along with Arthur met with Garfield, who noted in his diary, that Conkling seemed “full of apprehension that he had been or was to be cheated.”
Conkling had good reason for to be wary. Not long after he was inaugurated, Garfield nominated New York state senator William H. Robertson, one of Conkling’s local foes, to be collector of the port of New York. Arthur actively opposed him, telling J. L. Connery, the editor of the New York Herald, that “Garfield-spurred by Blaine, by whom he is easily led-has broken every pledge made to us; not only that, but he seems to have wished to do it in a most offensive way.”
While Conkling initially was able to stall Robertson’s nomination, it began to look as if Senate Democrats and along with some Republicans who backed the president would provide the votes needed to confirm him. In response, Conkling and his colleague NY Senator Thomas Platt resigned from the Senate and returned to New York, where they expected the state legislature to reelect them, which they hoped would show Garfield that he needed to back down. But instead the legislature deadlocked for over a month. On July 2, Platt withdrew from the race in a last-ditch attempt to improve Conkling’s chances of reelection. That same day, on the brink of victory, as Garfield walked with Blaine through Washington’s Baltimore and Ohio railroad station, a crazed assassin shot the president. Justifying his actions, he reportedly said “I am a Stalwart, and I want Arthur for President.”
After lingering throughout the summer, the mortally wounded Garfield died on September 19. Arthur became president and political observers assumed that he would do Conkling’s bidding. In fact, less than a month later, Conkling met with Arthur and demanded that he be appointed as treasury secretary and that Robertson be fired. But the assassination had shocked and sobered Arthur, who Platt described as “overcome with grief.” So Arthur rejected Conkling’s demands. Conkling’s mistress, unsuccessfully tried to intercede, supposedly reminding Arthur of “the vital importance of placing a robust, courageous, clear-headed man at the head of the Treasury.” In addition, Arthur accepted Blaine’s resignation as secretary of state.
Since the martyred President Garfield was regarded as a “victim of that accursed greed for spoils of office,” his death increased public support for civil service reform legislation. In Arthur’s first annual message to Congress in December 1881, he said he would sign any reform legislation that Congress might enact that was modeled on the British civil service system. He ultimately signed a bill establishing a bipartisan Civil Service Commission that would set rules for filling about 14,000 federal jobs (about a tenth of total federal employment at the time). Although it by no means ended the spoils system, it was a major step forward.
He had a few other modest successes but, as one journalist noted, “Arthur has given us a good administration, but it has been negatively rather than positively good. He has done well, in other words, by not doing anything bad.” Suffering from poor health, Arthur made only a modest effort to secure the Republican Party’s nomination in 1884. In a strange twist of fate, that nomination went to Blaine. Conkling, now a successful attorney, refused to support Blaine who narrowly lost New York-and with it the election to Grover Cleveland the only Democrat to win the presidency in the second half of the 19th century.
Arthur was by no means a stellar president. But, unlike others who have held the office, he was much better than most people expected. Would that we should be so lucky.
Stay safe, be well, fight for justice and work for peace.