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

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

President Grant in 1871 appointed him Collector of the Port of New York. Arthur effectively
marshalled the thousand Customs House employees under his supervision on behalf of Roscoe
Conkling's Stalwart Republican machine.

Honorable in his personal life and his public career, Arthur nevertheless was a firm believer in
the spoils system when it was coming under vehement attack from reformers. He insisted upon honest
administration of the Customs House, but staffed it with more employees than it needed, retaining
them for their merit as party workers rather than as Government officials.

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

During his brief tenure as Vice President, Arthur stood firmly beside Conkling in his patronage
struggle against President Garfield. But when Arthur succeeded to the Presidency, he was eager to
prove himself above machine politics.

Avoiding old political friends, he became a man of fashion in his garb and associates, and often
was seen with the elite of Washington, New York, and Newport. To the indignation of the Stalwart
Republicans, the onetime Collector of the Port of New York became, as President, a champion of
civil service reform. Public pressure, heightened by the assassination of Garfield, forced an
unwieldy Congress to heed the President.

In 1883 Congress passed the Pendleton Act, which established a bipartisan Civil Service Commission,
forbade levying political assessments against officeholders, and provided for a "classified system"
that made certain Government positions obtainable only through competitive written examinations.
The system protected employees against removal for political reasons.

Acting independently of party dogma, Arthur also tried to lower tariff rates so the Government
would not be embarrassed by annual surpluses of revenue. Congress raised about as many rates as it
trimmed, but Arthur signed the Tariff Act of 1883. Aggrieved Westerners and Southerners looked to
the Democratic Party for redress, and the tariff began to emerge as a major political issue between
the two parties.

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

Arthur demonstrated as President that he was above factions within the Republican Party, if indeed
not above the party itself. Perhaps in part his reason was the well-kept secret he had known since
a year after he succeeded to the Presidency, that he was suffering from a fatal kidney disease. He
kept himself in the running for the Presidential nomination in 1884 in order not to appear that he
feared defeat, but was not renominated, and died in 1886. Publisher Alexander K. McClure recalled,
"No man ever entered the Presidency so profoundly and widely distrusted, and no one ever retired
... more generally respected."