Chester A. Arthur

Chester Alan Arthur was the 21st president of the United States from 1881 to 1885. He succeeded to the presidency upon the death of President James A. Garfield in September 1881. Arthur’s failing health and political temperament combined to make his administration less active than a modern presidency. Despite this, modern historians generally rank Arthur as a mediocre President, as well as the least memorable.

About Chester A. Arthur in brief

Summary Chester A. ArthurChester Alan Arthur was the 21st president of the United States from 1881 to 1885. He succeeded to the presidency upon the death of President James A. Garfield in September 1881. Arthur was born in Fairfield, Vermont, grew up in upstate New York and practiced law in New York City. He served as quartermaster general of the New York Militia during the American Civil War. Arthur’s failing health and political temperament combined to make his administration less active than a modern presidency, yet he earned praise among contemporaries for his solid performance in office. Despite this, modern historians generally rank Arthur as a mediocre President, as well as the least memorable. He was the 20th vice president and the last Republican to hold the office of president before his death in 1886. He is buried in Mount Vernon, New York, with his wife, Malvina Stone, and their five children, including Chester Alan Arthur, who was named after his paternal grandfather, Abell Arthur, the physician and family friend who assisted in his birth, and his son, Chester Alan, who became a lawyer. The family moved to Vermont in 1828, where Chester Alan was born; he was the fifth of nine children. Chester Arthur died in 1885 at the age of 83. He had a son, William, who served as a U.S. Navy officer during the Second World War, and a daughter, Regina, who died in a car accident in 1968. He died in New Jersey in 1989.

He leaves behind a wife, two daughters, a son-in-law, a daughter-in law, and two step-children. He also leaves a son and a step-daughter, William Arthur, Jr., who was a New York State Supreme Court Justice and served as New York’s attorney general from 1879 to 1883. He later died in his home town of Schenectady, New Jersey. His son was named Chester Arthur, after his grandfather’s friend and family physician and friend, the late Abell Abell, who helped in Chester Alan’s birth and helped in his father’s legal practice. Arthur is survived by his wife and four children. His great-great-grandson, Chester Arthur Jr., was born on November 17, 1881, in Fairfied, Vermont. Arthur served as Collector of the Port of New York in 1871, and was an important supporter of Senator Roscoe Conkling and the Stalwart faction of the Republican Party. In 1878, President Rutherford B. Hayes fired Arthur as part of a plan to reform the federal patronage system in NewYork. He presided over the rebirth of the US Navy, but he was criticized for failing to alleviate the federal budget surplus which had been accumulating since the end of the Civil war. Arthur vetoed the first version of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, arguing that its twenty-year ban on Chinese immigrants to the U States violated the Burlingame Treaty. He signed a second version, which included a ten-year banned.