Chester Alan Arthur

Elected vice president on the Republican ticket of 1880, Chester Arthur acceded to the presidency on the assassination of President James A. Garfield, who died at Elberon, New Jersey, on 19 Sep 1881. On 20 Sep 1881, Vice President Arthur received a group at his home in New York City to take the oath of office, administered by New York Supreme Court Judge John R. Brady. On 22 Sep 1881, he again took the oath of office, administered by Chief Justice Morrison Waite, in the Vice President's Office in the Capitol in Washington, D.C.

Acceding to the presidency in a period of intense factional controversy, Arthur is said to have been deeply wounded by public apprehension over the prospect of an administration in the hands of so confirmed an adherent of the spoils system. He did replace six of the seven members of Garfield's cabinet with his own appointees, but his appointments were generally unexceptionable, and he displayed an unexpected independence by his veto in 1882 of an $18,000,000 rivers and harbors bill that contained ample funds for projects that could be used for political patronage. He also vetoed a Chinese exclusion bill barring Chinese nationals from admission as immigrants to the United States. Both presidential vetoes were overridden by Congress, however. Another law passed during his administration was the Anti-Polygamy Act, aimed at the Mormons in Utah. He particularly confounded his critics and dismayed his friends among the Stalwarts by his support of the Pendleton Act (1883), which created a federal merit-based civil-service system applying to a limited number of specified offices. He and his secretary of the navy, William E. Chandler, recommended the appropriations that initiated the rebuilding of the U.S. Navy toward the strength it later achieved at the time of the war with Spain.

In 1884 Arthur, who was secretly suffering from Bright's disease, an incurable kidney ailment, allowed his name to be presented for the Republican presidential nomination. Defeated by James G. Blaine, he retired to New York City at the end of his term.