Chester Arthur: The navy, civil service, and the Chinese Exclusion Act

Chester A. Arthur became the 21st president of the United States following the assassination of President James Garfield in 1881. During his presidency, Arthur signed the country’s first civil service law and modernized the U.S. Navy.

Chester Alan Arthur was born in Vermont in 1829. His father, an abolitionist Baptist minister, moved the family frequently before settling in eastern New York. When Chester was 18, he graduated from Union College in Schenectady and began studying law.

Arthur was admitted to the bar in 1854 and joined a law firm in Brooklyn. The firm’s head was active in the antislavery movement, which led to Arthur working on two influential civil rights cases. His arguments helped to persuade the New York Supreme Court to uphold the verdict in the Lemmon slave case, which stated that slaves passing through New York became free. Then in 1855 he represented a black woman named Lizzie Jennings, who had been forcibly removed from a Manhattan streetcar by its conductor. Jennings and Arthur won a civil suit against the streetcar company, with the court ruling that black passengers “had the same rights as others.”

Arthur started his own practice and became an important figure in the New York Republican party. When the American Civil War began in 1861, he was appointed quartermaster general of New York City. He became known for running an efficient organization and refusing bribes.

Arthur was a strong ally of the state’s Republican boss, Senator Roscoe Conkling. In 1868 they helped Ulysses S. Grant win the presidency. President Grant rewarded Arthur by appointing him customs collector for the port of New York. The New York Custom House was largely run using the spoils system, in which government jobs were granted as rewards for political support. Arthur collected the customs duties with integrity, but he also continued the practice of giving jobs to Conkling’s supporters, who were known as Stalwart Republicans.

In 1877 Rutherford B. Hayes became president. He attacked the spoils system, which included removing Arthur and another Conkling associate from their offices.

In 1880 Hayes declined to run for reelection. The Republicans split over who should be their presidential candidate. Eventually James A. Garfield was nominated. Arthur was picked to run as vice president in order to assure the votes of the Stalwarts.

Garfield and Arthur won the election and took office in 1881. President Garfield continued Hayes’s disruption of the spoils system, putting him at odds with Arthur and Conkling, who resigned from the Senate. It appeared that Arthur would be a powerless vice president. Then, on July 2, 1881, Garfield was shot by a crazed office seeker who declared himself a Stalwart and wanted Arthur to be president.

Garfield died of his wounds two months later, elevating Arthur to the presidency. Arthur surprisingly continued the reforms started by Presidents Hayes and Garfield against the spoils system. In 1883 he signed the country’s first civil service law, the Pendleton Act. This act set up a commission to conduct open competitive examinations for people seeking government jobs.

Arthur also took an interest in modernizing and expanding the U.S. Navy, which had declined following the Civil War. In 1882 Congress appropriated money for the country’s first all-steel vessels. For his efforts, Arthur earned the nickname “Father of the Steel Navy.”

Arthur’s term also saw the passage of the first laws to restrict immigration. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 restricted the immigration of Chinese laborers for a ten-year period. Arthur had previously vetoed a bill that restricted immigration for 20 years.

Arthur’s popularity grew with each year of his presidency, but he did not put much effort into seeking another term. He knew that he had Bright’s disease, a then-incurable kidney ailment. Arthur left office in 1885 and died the following year, on November 18, 1886.