21st President • 1881–1885
Chester A. Arthur
A product of New York’s patronage machine who surprised the nation as president, Arthur signed landmark civil-service reform and began rebuilding the Navy—while also approving one of America’s most consequential restrictions on immigration.
The Road to the Presidency
Lawyer, Organizer, and Machine Politician
Arthur’s early life included antislavery influences and civil-rights advocacy, but his national rise came through the partisan patronage system.
Born in Fairfield, Vermont, Arthur was the son of William Arthur, a Baptist minister and outspoken abolitionist. He graduated from Union College, taught school, studied law, and established a legal practice in New York City.
Arthur participated in civil-rights litigation early in his career. He represented Elizabeth Jennings after she was forcibly removed from a segregated New York streetcar; her successful case helped challenge segregation in the city’s transit system.
During the Civil War, Arthur served as quartermaster general of New York, organizing supplies and transportation rather than commanding troops in battle. His administrative ability and Republican connections brought him into Senator Roscoe Conkling’s powerful political organization.
President Grant appointed Arthur collector of the Port of New York in 1871. The customs house collected enormous revenues and supported a network of patronage jobs. President Hayes removed Arthur in 1878 while challenging Conkling’s machine.
From Vice President to President
An Accidental Succession
Arthur joined the 1880 ticket to balance Republican factions, not because the party expected him to become president.
Republicans nominated James A. Garfield for president and Arthur for vice president. Arthur represented the Stalwart faction associated with Grant, Conkling, and the spoils system.
Charles Guiteau shot Garfield. The wounded president survived for eighty days, creating uncertainty about executive authority while Arthur remained vice president.
After Garfield died, Arthur took the presidential oath at his New York home before Judge John R. Brady. He repeated the oath in Washington two days later before Chief Justice Morrison Waite.
Arthur entered the presidency burdened by public suspicion that a machine politician would reverse Garfield’s reform efforts.
Arthur’s presidency became a test of whether a politician formed by patronage could place the responsibilities of the office above the faction that elevated him.
Defining Decision
The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act
Garfield’s assassination by a disappointed office seeker transformed civil-service reform from a limited movement into a national demand.
Patronage and assessments
Government jobs were commonly awarded for party loyalty. Federal employees could be pressured to contribute part of their salaries to political organizations, tying public administration to campaign machinery.
Merit examinations
Signed in January 1883, the Pendleton Act created a bipartisan Civil Service Commission, authorized competitive examinations, and protected covered employees from removal for political reasons.
A limited beginning
The law initially covered only about one-tenth of federal positions. It nevertheless established a durable system that later presidents expanded through executive orders.
Arthur enforces reform
Arthur appointed respected commissioners and implemented the law seriously. His support demonstrated a striking independence from the patronage culture that had built his career.
A change in the meaning of public office
The Pendleton Act did not end patronage, but it established the principle that government employment should increasingly depend on competence rather than partisan service. It remains Arthur’s most important achievement.
Immigration & Citizenship
The Chinese Exclusion Act
Arthur’s administration helped establish the first major federal system for excluding immigrants according to nationality and class.
Anti-Chinese hostility was especially powerful in the West, where Chinese laborers were blamed for wage competition and economic insecurity. Congress initially passed a bill suspending Chinese labor immigration for twenty years.
Arthur vetoed that version because he believed a twenty-year prohibition violated the recently negotiated Angell Treaty with China. Congress then passed a ten-year restriction, which Arthur signed on May 6, 1882.
The Chinese Exclusion Act suspended immigration by Chinese laborers and made Chinese immigrants already in the country vulnerable to extensive documentation requirements and discrimination. Later laws extended and hardened the policy, which remained foundational to federal immigration restriction until its repeal in 1943.
The central judgment: Arthur moderated the original twenty-year proposal but accepted nationality-based exclusion. The law institutionalized racial discrimination in federal immigration policy and separated Chinese residents from the opportunity for naturalized citizenship.
Economy & Government
Tariffs, Spending, and Federal Administration
The Immigration Act of 1882
The law imposed a federal head tax on arriving immigrants and excluded certain categories, including people considered likely to become public charges. It strengthened the federal government’s role in regulating immigration.
The Rivers and Harbors veto
Arthur vetoed an 1882 spending bill filled with local projects he considered excessive and unrelated to national responsibilities. Congress overrode his veto, but his objections highlighted the era’s “pork-barrel” politics.
The “Mongrel Tariff”
With federal revenue producing large surpluses, Arthur supported tariff revision. The Tariff Act of 1883 produced only modest and inconsistent reductions, satisfying neither strong protectionists nor advocates of meaningful reform.
The Star Route prosecutions
Arthur’s Justice Department continued cases against contractors and officials accused of defrauding the government through western mail contracts. The trials exposed corruption but resulted in few lasting convictions.
War & Foreign Policy
The Birth of a Modern Steel Navy
The post–Civil War Navy had declined as wooden ships aged and European powers adopted modern steel vessels. Arthur and Navy Secretary William E. Chandler supported a rebuilding program.
Congress authorized the first group of new steel warships—the cruisers Atlanta, Boston, and Chicago, and the dispatch vessel Dolphin. Known collectively as the “ABCD ships,” they marked the beginning of the modern American steel Navy that later expanded dramatically.
Reciprocity agreements
Arthur’s administration pursued closer commercial relations in the Western Hemisphere, although the Senate rejected or delayed several proposed agreements.
Limited foreign activism
Arthur retreated from some of Secretary of State James G. Blaine’s more ambitious diplomatic initiatives and generally pursued a cautious foreign policy centered on trade and naval preparedness.
Civil Rights & Federalism
A Retreating National Commitment
Arthur expressed support for Black civil and voting rights and criticized Southern violence. His administration prosecuted some election-law violations, but federal enforcement had weakened significantly after Reconstruction.
In 1883, the Supreme Court struck down major portions of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, ruling that the Fourteenth Amendment limited state action rather than private discrimination in public accommodations. Arthur criticized the consequences and urged Congress to consider new legislation, but no effective replacement passed.
The administration therefore reflected the larger limits of the era: presidents could denounce racial discrimination, but neither the executive branch nor Congress sustained the political effort needed to protect equal access and voting rights across the South.
Health, Family & Character
A Private Illness Behind a Public Transformation
Arthur’s wife, Ellen “Nell” Arthur, died of pneumonia in 1880, before he became vice president. As president he kept her memory visible in the White House and asked his sister Mary McElroy to serve as hostess.
Known for elegant clothing, late-night social life, and extensive White House redecorating, Arthur was sometimes caricatured as a fashionable political operator. His conduct as president proved more disciplined and independent than many critics expected.
Arthur was diagnosed with Bright’s disease, a serious kidney condition, while president. He concealed the severity of his illness from the public. His declining health contributed to a limited effort for the Republican nomination in 1884, which went to James G. Blaine.
Arthur returned to New York after leaving office and died on November 18, 1886, at age fifty-seven.
Lasting Legacy
The Machine Politician Who Chose Reform
Civil-Service Reform
Arthur signed and faithfully implemented the Pendleton Act, beginning the transition from patronage toward a professional federal workforce.
Naval Modernization
His administration authorized the first steel ships of a rebuilding program that helped transform American naval power.
Chinese Exclusion
By signing the ten-year exclusion law, Arthur helped institutionalize nationality-based and racial restriction in federal immigration policy.
Better in office than his résumé predicted
Arthur entered the presidency closely identified with machine politics and left it associated with administrative reform. His defense of executive independence, implementation of the Pendleton Act, resistance to wasteful spending, and support for naval modernization deserve recognition. His record is also inseparable from Chinese exclusion and the era’s failure to protect Black civil rights. The surprise of Arthur’s presidency lies not in perfection, but in his willingness to rise above the faction that made him.
Sources & Further Reading
Trace the Evidence
- Chester A. Arthur — Library of Congress
- Chester A. Arthur — National Park Service
- The Pendleton Civil Service Act — U.S. Senate
- Chinese Exclusion Act — National Archives
- Chester A. Arthur — Miller Center, University of Virginia
- Chester A. Arthur: Presidential Documents — American Presidency Project
Editorial note: This assessment recognizes Arthur’s genuine reform record while also examining Chinese exclusion, weakened civil-rights enforcement, and the limitations of his economic program.