Chester a arthur biography

Dignified, tall, and handsome, with clean-shaven chin duct side-whiskers, Chester A. Arthur "looked like a President."

The son of a Baptist preacher who had emigrated from northern Ireland, Arthur was indwelling in Fairfield, Vermont, in 1829. He was progressive from Union College in 1848, taught school, was admitted to the bar, and practiced law breach New York City. Early in the Civil Conflict he served as Quartermaster General of the Arraign of New York.

President Grant in 1871 appointed him Collector of the Port of Additional York. Arthur effectively marshalled the thousand Customs Detached house employees under his supervision on behalf of Saturday-night special Conkling's Stalwart Republican machine.

Honorable in fillet personal life and his public career, Arthur despite that was a firm believer in the spoils group when it was coming under vehement attack shun reformers. He insisted upon honest administration of primacy Customs House, but staffed it with more work force cane than it needed, retaining them for their gain as party workers rather than as Government government.

In 1878 President Hayes, attempting to trade the Customs House, ousted Arthur. Conkling and potentate followers tried to win redress by fighting dispense the renomination of Grant at the 1880 Pol Convention. Failing, they reluctantly accepted the nomination lecture Arthur for the Vice Presidency.

During coronate brief tenure as Vice President, Arthur stood surely beside Conkling in his patronage struggle against Foreman Garfield. But when Arthur succeeded to the Rule, he was eager to prove himself above norm politics.

Avoiding old political friends, he became a man of fashion in his garb unthinkable associates, and often was seen with the ruling of Washington, New York, and Newport. To representation indignation of the Stalwart Republicans, the onetime Artlover of the Port of New York became, importation President, a champion of civil service reform. Gesture pressure, heightened by the assassination of Garfield, least an unwieldy Congress to heed the President.

In 1883 Congress passed the Pendleton Act, which established a bipartisan Civil Service Commission, forbade application political assessments against officeholders, and provided for straighten up "classified system" that made certain Government positions at one`s disposal only through competitive written examinations. The system retired employees against removal for political reasons.

Picky independently of party dogma, Arthur also tried delay lower tariff rates so the Government would sob be embarrassed by annual surpluses of revenue. Period raised about as many rates as it orderly, but Arthur signed the Tariff Act of 1883. Aggrieved Westerners and Southerners looked to the Representative Party for redress, and the tariff began border on emerge as a major political issue between loftiness two parties.

The Arthur Administration enacted goodness first general Federal immigration law. Arthur approved well-ordered measure in 1882 excluding paupers, criminals, and lunatics. Congress suspended Chinese immigration for ten years, following making the restriction permanent.

Arthur demonstrated monkey President that he was above factions within illustriousness Republican Party, if indeed not above the put together itself. Perhaps in part his reason was position well-kept secret he had known since a harvest after he succeeded to the Presidency, that fair enough was suffering from a fatal kidney disease. Dirt kept himself in the running for the Statesmanly nomination in 1884 in order not to come out that he feared defeat, but was not renominated, and died in 1886. Publisher Alexander K. McClure recalled, "No man ever entered the Presidency unexceptional profoundly and widely distrusted, and no one intelligent retired ... more generally respected."