The Unexpected President: The Life and Times of Chester A. Arthur

It is the last Sunday of the month, meaning it is time for the next president, making this week’s book of the week The Unexpected President: The Life and Times of Chester A Arthur by Scott S Greenberger.  

 Chester Alan Arthur was born October 5, 1829, in Fairfield, Vermont to William and Malvina Arthur. William Arthur was a preacher and an avid abolitionist, at a time when abolitionists were seen as extremists and were really unpopular with their neighbors...everywhere, not just in the south William Arthur was chased out of more than one town in New York for his views. 

 But this meant that Arthur was raised with a strong moral sense of the evils of slavery. Arthur was a big, affable guy, well liked and popular with his classmates. He attended Union College where he received a classical education including languages and philosophy. He was a teacher for a bit before moving to New York City and becoming an attorney at the office of family friend Erastus Culver, eventually becoming junior partner. It was as junior partner that he received his first high profile case, 100 years ahead of Rosa Parks and the Alabama bus boycott. Elizabeth Jennings was an African American school teacher and was late for church one day when she boarded a streetcar in New York that had been designated white people only. The driver seemed cool with it at first, but the ticket taker or guard, I don’t remember which, took exception and ordered her off the bus. She basically said no, I’m late for church, let’s get moving, and a scuffle ensued.

 She ultimately won and was allowed to ride until white people needed the seats. She was again ordered to leave and again refused, at which point the guard called for a police man to remove her. She was not arrested but was removed from the transport.  She wrote about her experience in a local paper, and it created a sensation. And Arthur agreed to bring a suit on her behalf against the transport company. She won and was awarded $225 plus $25 in court costs, an amount equivalent to $7,737 today. Sounds like small potatoes but this set the precedence for all public transport in New York to be desegregated.  

 In 1856 he met Ellen Herndon and fell in love, quickly becoming engaged. He then decided to move to Kansas, during the height of the bleeding Kansas actions. This is not a bad plan for an up-and-coming lawyer. Where there is lots of crime being committed, there is room for quick advancement and a chance to make a real name for yourself.  

 But while he was in Kansas, his prospective father-in-law, Commander William Lewis Herndon, died. Herndon is actually quite famous, and Herndon, VA is named for him and his courage in how he died, which is that he went down with his ship. Doesn’t sound like much, a captain is expected to go down with his ship, but he made damn sure all the women and children were off that ship and safely aboard the rescue vessel before the fateful moment happened.  

 However, his death precipitated two things. First, a financial panic ensued. The ship had an enormous amount of gold on board, and with that gold now at the bottom of the sea, the banks and people panicked. Second, Ellen Herndon asked Arthur to return to New York to be with her and her mother. And this return to New York is one of those pivotal moments in history. Had Arthur stayed in Kansas and later sent for Ellen to join him, he would never have become embroiled in the Republican political machine that later elevated him to the Vice Presidency. 

 They did marry in 1859, having three children, the oldest died when he was two, but the other two made it to adulthood.  

 Now, the Republican Party in its modern iteration was founded in 1854. It fielded its first presidential candidate in 1856, John C Fremont, and its first presidential win in 1860 with Abraham Lincoln. And Arthur was on the ground floor of this budding political party. He was 27 years old in 1856 and found his first political patron in Edwin Morgan. Other political patrons included Thomas Murphy and the infamous Roscoe Conkling.  

 In 1860, with the outbreak of Civil War, Arthur, like many civil minded men of his age, enlisted, and was made quartermaster general of the New York Militia. He was quite good at this job, organized and efficient. The only downside was that his southern bride and mother-in-law were southern sympathizers. At one point, Arthur made the trip to Maryland to visit his brother, who had been wounded in action, and visited his in-laws. The visit was cordial if a bit stiff.  

 Throughout all of this, the political machine in New York is growing. And at the center of the power base is the position of Collector of the Port of New York. Millions of dollars.... like millions of dollars in 19th century money, came through the port of New York annually. And the collector was responsible for ensuring the tariffs on these imports were collected. This was an exceptionally powerful patronage position, because whoever was collector was able to help his party tremendously by leveraging all the tariff collector positions into jobs for friends. Cargo inspectors were jobs for friends. And you could have party contributions be a requirement of these posts. 

 Thomas Murphy was the collector initially, and he used his post to get Arthur a job as an attorney for the Port of New York with a pretty hefty salary of $10,000 per year, which was like $343k in today’s dollars. Eventually, Murphy was removed as collector, a not uncommon occurrence, but Murphy was particularly prone to greed and levied some unjust fines that had the shipping magnates pushing back. Conkling stepped up and recommended Arthur as his replacement, and Arthur was collector of the Port of New York from 1871 to 1878, which is an enormous length of time. Most collectors lasted barely 2 years.  

 He was ultimately removed by Rutherford Hayes in Hayes’s attempt to overhaul the patronage system. A little over a year later he was made chairman of the Republican Party in New York under Conkling’s direct patronage. In 1880, Ellen died, leaving Arhtur a widower and sole parent to their young daughter, and that’s what he was doing during the 1880 republican convention when Garfield was nominated. And because Garfield knew he needed New York to win, he asked Arthur to balance his ticket. Conkling was none too pleased, but Garfield, having no experience with congress or the senate, realized this was his chance to make the leap to national politics and that the vice-presidency was likely the highest honor he would ever achieve. So, he accepted. 

 And used his enormous networks of contacts he made as collector to chivvy more donations and more votes, ultimately securing New York for the republicans and thus ensuring a victory for the Garfield/Arthur ticket. 

Now, there was more information on Arthur’s vice-presidency in last month’s book, but Arthur essentially played second fiddle to Conkling, following the dictates of the Republican Machine and doing as he was told. This lasted until July 2, 1881, when word reached him of the assassination attempt on Garfield. Especially when Arthur heard assassin Charles Guiteau’s words on being arrested, it made Arthur’s blood run cold. He knew the entire nation was watching, and basically no one was happy at the thought of an Arthur presidency. 

 Into this moment in history, a curious connection was made. In the three months between Garfield being shot and his actual death, Julia Sand, youngest daughter of the wealthy New York family of Christian Henry Sand, began writing letters to Arthur. It wasn’t a correspondence, in that Arthur never wrote back to her. But we know he did receive and read her letters because a stack of 23 letters was found by his son Chester Alan after Arthur’s death. They had been specifically set aside and kept together, so there’s no doubt that something about these letters spoke to Arthur and provided him with some comfort and guidance. 

 So, Julia Sand expressed several things, pretty consistently, in her letters. First, condolence at the difficult spot he now found himself in. She recognized that he never wanted the presidency and certainly did not want it in these circumstances. She acknowledged that most American’s did not want an Arthur presidency at all. That America in general feared a Conkling presidency, that Arthur would be nothing more than a figure head for Conkling to push through his own patronage powers. And that she believed he was his own man and would be an excellent president, if he would shake off Conkling, and follow his own conscience into doing the right thing. 

 I think if she hadn’t started by acknowledging the difficult spot he found himself in and expressing sympathy for his sorrow, he might have ignored them. But the fact that she DID see this, DID know that he never wanted this, it hit him hard. And made him think. So, when the fateful day came that Garfield shuffled off this mortal coil, and Arhtur took the oath of office, his speech during his official inauguration a few days later indicated that he was going to carry on Garfield’s legacy. Basically, he was just a placeholder for Garfield, and this was still Garfield’s presidency. 

 And he lived up to that. He began immediately talking about civil service reform. And signed the first civil service reform act in 1883. And in addition to signing it, he went about enforcing it, following the provisions of the law as it was written. All of this contributed to Arthur rebuilding his good name with the American People.  

 Arthur did not enjoy the White House. And he did everything he could to keep his young daughter out of the public eye, cutting off conversations that asked about her. He also tried to keep his own life as private as he could, which might be why he never wrote back to Julia Sands. However, he did visit her in New York one time. Surprised the family at home while he was in New York and spent an evening engaged in conversation with the family, a visit that went down in family lore and was confirmed to Chester Alan Jr in the 1930’s when he reached out to the Sand family to ask about the letters Julia wrote. One of her nephews, who had been present during the visit, told Chester Alan Jr about it.  

 The downside of Arthur keeping his private life private is that he did not want the nation to know that he had Bright’s disease. This is a kidney disease, modernly known as Nephritis, in which the tissues of the kidney become inflamed and have a hard time filtering waste from the blood. Nephritis can be the result of toxins, infection, or autoimmune disorders. It could be a combination of all three; however, Arthur liked to drink. Drinking was a big part of politics in the 19th century and given that Arthur had spent the better part of 20 years as part of the political machine in New York, where entertaining until 3am and drinking the whole time was part and parcel, it’s entirely possible his Bright’s disease was alcohol related. Not guaranteed, but possible.  

 So, when his Secretary of the Navy, William E Chandler, approached Arthur about using the machine to get him re-elected in 1884, Arthur told him no. If he was nominated as the will of the people, then he would accept, but he didn’t want anyone mobilizing on his behalf. Subsequently, James G Blaine of Maine was nominated for the Republican national ticket in 1884, losing to Democrat Grover Cleveland, the first time a democrat had sat in the White House since Buchanan lost to Lincoln in 1860.   

With some relief, Arthur retired to private life. He was quite wealthy. While he didn’t have much of his White House salary left, he had made considerable investments during his time as Collector of the Port of New York and was able to live quite comfortably until he died on November 18, 1886.   

This book was ok. I always love a good redemption story arc, and this certainly had that, outlining his fall from a preacher’s son to a corrupt politician and how Arthur raised himself up, with guidance from a friend, Miss Julia Sand, and became a president the country was sad to see go when he left the White House. And when he died, the nation mourned his passing.   

The only thing that sort of bugged me at first was the constant harping on Republican corruption, because the fairness button in me was pushed and I was like “but what about Tammany Hall? Democrats suck just as badly.” But then it occurred to me...shockingly late in the book...that the book was about the corruption in the Republican party because without that corruption, Arthur would not have been Vice President when Garfield was shot. Without that corruption, Garfield might not have ever been shot. Remember from last month’s book, the reason Guiteau shot Garfield is Guiteau believed he was owed a patronage position. So yes, the democrats used it just as fiercely when they were in office. But they were not in office when this all went down. Republican’s were. And so that was the story that needed to be told.  

This book was not bad overall. I think Arthur found himself in a difficult spot. He really did not want to be president. He especially did not want to be president as the result of an assassination. ESPECIALLY when the assassin cited Arthur as the reason for the assassination. I think he was not surprised the people did not trust him. I think he was surprised to see how well regarded he came to be and how much the people came to embrace him following his following of Garfield’s path and the rejection of the political machine. I’m not sure where I would rank him in my personal list. Somewhere near the middle. The list certainly gets harder to manage as there are more presidents. Maybe 12th or 13th? I’ll update it and post it on my website. Which I need to overhaul. 

This review was originally posted on YouTube on February 26, 2023, but is now available on Rumble and PodBean.