SO, WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE!

By Edwin Cooney

As of this writing, fifteen Republicans, four Democrats, seventeen men and two women, have made it clear that they would like to be president of the United States come Friday, January 20th, 2017.  Each of them (note: I don’t say all of them but rather each of them!) believes that he or she could do a better job than has President Obama.  Well, maybe, just maybe, they’re right, but why, except for their ideological bents, might they be right?

Of course, no presidential candidate in history has owned a crystal ball assuring them success, but usually the reason a president is successful has to do with how they and their inclinations and actions have fit the social, economic, and political foreign and domestic landscape of the time.

George Washington, who was after all the daddy of all our Founding Fathers, had the advantage of being allowed to put together the executive branch of the government.  Additionally, he possessed sufficient respect that enabled him to set certain precedents proscribing socio/political executive behaviors such as only two presidential terms and the wisdom of picking from outside the Supreme Court even for chief justices.  Thomas Jefferson, the nation’s first presidential “strict constructionist” of the constitution, had the advantage of being so linked to constitutional strict interpretation that he could blatantly violate the constitution when he made that famous treaty with Napoleon to purchase Louisiana. (Note: no provision in the U.S. Constitution authorized the president on his own to sign a treaty with a foreign power. Jefferson would never have allowed John Adams or even President Washington to get away with such behavior!) Audacious Andy Jackson got away with Indian genocide because otherwise church-going federal, state and local officials and speculators regarded themselves (like Andy himself) as so moral that their greed for land and money wouldn’t really hurt their prospects on judgment day.  President Lincoln, who really was a cut above most of us but didn’t quite realize it, succeeded because most of the time during that terrible war he dared to make decisions with which he was himself often uncomfortable but were strategically crucial.  An example of that was when he was forced to order the military commander of the Union army in Missouri John C. Fremont to withdraw his slave emancipation proclamation in September of 1861.  Fremont’s emancipation was the moral path to follow, but Lincoln had evidence that if freeing the slaves rather than preservation of the union was the stated purpose of the war, he’d lose Kentucky.  “I must have Kentucky,” he asserted again and again.  Thus he surrendered morality to practicality and won the future for morality.

Theodore Roosevelt was successful because he, for the most part, accurately assessed when his and Congress’s sense of well being matched.  Franklin D. Roosevelt took office at a time when everyone was out of ideas as to how to halt the creeping depression and looked solely to him to open the banks, provide employment, and relieve the private sector of responsibility for the economy it was incapable of providing.

Ronald Reagan succeeded because he eloquently, and largely without malice, articulated America’s anxieties.  Bill Clinton succeeded because he was more in tune with people’s aspirations while his opponents were more interested in destroying him rather than cooperating with him.  The same is largely true with President Obama.  The question is:  what will it take for the next president to responsibly master the future at home and abroad?

Earlier in this commentary, I referred to each rather than all of the candidates because “mastering” the future rather than merely managing a successful presidential campaign is what ultimately really matters.  Even more, anyone who offers him or herself to national service owes the public the courtesy of his or her educated understanding as to what the drawbacks as well as the advantages would be as a result of their problem-solving proposals.  In other words, each person’s candidacy constitutes his or her promissory note of accountability to the American voter. What we hear too little of on the campaign trail is how each candidate perceives the results of actions he or she proposes to take.  Our failure in Vietnam was due to Eisenhower’s, Kennedy’s, Johnson’s, and Nixon’s preoccupation with global perceptions and politics, thus they never adequately understood that the motives of the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong weren’t ideological but nationalistic.  Our failure in Iraq was largely due to assumptions George W. Bush made about the reaction of the Iraqis once Saddam Hussein was eliminated.  There apparently was little appreciation of the various religious and political forces that would struggle to fill the vacuum created by his ouster.  Hussein, to a much greater degree than we knew, actually was keeping the lid on a dangerously bubbling Middle Eastern caldron.  Political candidates who would replace “Obamacare” with “Cruz, Trump, Fiorina, Bush, or even single payer care” should describe to the American people, as precisely as possible, what drawbacks as well as gains will occur by the adoption of such proposals.

Too often successful presidential candidates win by demonization rather than by constructive clarification, education or information.  What a candidate believes may be a reasonable path to what he or she will do, but how they perceive the risks and rewards of their proposals for absolutely everyone is what really and truly counts.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

THE PRESIDENT FROM “HACKSVILLE” (PART THREE)

By Edwin Cooney

The gravity of Chester Alan Arthur’s story lies not so much in the historic legacy of his administration, but rather in the drama and dignity of his assumption of the presidency and his conduct in office.  That the public, from its elected officials, down through its press, its clergy and the plain people, were not only skeptical of, but even feared this political hack’s assumption of the presidency is not only obvious but downright reasonable.  That he was allowed to serve and finish his term a respectable chief executive is to this observer an amazing story.

No vice president before or since Chet Arthur has been as openly and as unashamedly disloyal to his chief as was Chet Arthur to James A. Garfield.  Presidents and vice presidents, Aaron Burr and Thomas Jefferson, John C. Calhoun and Andrew Jackson, as two examples, had quarreled over their political differences.  Although historians generally conclude that Garfield’s Secretary of State James G. Blaine and Arthur’s political boss United States Senator from New York Roscoe Conkling were the real puppet masters of this political feud, Arthur’s conduct was seen by a significant portion of the public as grossly political.  To many, the vice president’s behavior lacked policy or principle.  After all, wasn’t an elected vice president, for all his traditional anonymity, expected to show loyalty to the nation’s elected president?  Then, as it happened, even as Charles Guiteau’s two bullets violated the president’s body, his vice president was on a steamer between Albany and New York City with the president’s most determined political enemy.  Even more ironic is the likelihood that Arthur and Garfield probably felt less personal antagonism toward one another than had President Thomas Jefferson felt toward Aaron Burr, or Andrew Jackson felt toward John C. Calhoun.  (Note: As he was dying at the Hermitage on Sunday, June 8th, 1845, General Jackson was asked if he had any regrets. “The only regret I have,” responded the old general “is that I didn’t hang John Calhoun.”) The fundamental circumstantial difference between the Jefferson-Burr and the Jackson-Calhoun quarrels was that neither Burr nor Calhoun would face the enormous and critical challenge of succeeding a president assassinated in their name.

At 12:45 a.m., Tuesday, September 20th, 1881, Arthur received an official message signed by the Garfield Cabinet certifying the President’s death.  Shortly thereafter, reporters arrived at 123 Lexington Avenue to inquire as to the Vice President’s immediate plans.  “I daren’t ask him,” replied Alec Powell, the doorkeeper. “He is sitting alone in his room sobbing like a child with his head on his desk and his face buried in his hands.”

Like John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, and Andrew Johnson before him, Chet Arthur found it necessary, with one exception, Secretary of War Robert Todd Lincoln, to replace his entire cabinet.  Most of them, including Attorney General Wayne McVeagh, perhaps the most openly hostile to Arthur, Secretary of the Treasury William Windom who left to seek a senate seat, and of course Secretary of State Blaine all resigned their positions.  Blaine, the late president’s closest friend and advisor, who would defeat Arthur and become the GOP’s presidential nominee in 1884, would obviously never be subordinate to Chet Arthur.  Most important of all, the new president would have to walk a fine line between Stalwart and Half Breed Republicans, neither of whom felt they could, nor would they ever, fully trust him.  Although hardline Stalwarts pushed Arthur to nominate Roscoe Conkling to be Secretary of State, fully realizing that to do so would seal his reputation as a mere politician, President Arthur flatly refused.  He did put some Stalwarts such as Frederick T. Frelinghuysen as Secretary of State, Charles J. Folger as Treasury Secretary, and Benjamin H. Brewster as Attorney General.  However, when he lost his friend William James as Postmaster General to a lucrative New York City bank position, he replaced him with William E. Chandler, a Half Breed recommended by James Blaine.

President Arthur’s first annual message to Congress is interesting.  Many of these proposals wouldn’t be realized for years, but they do reflect, I think, President Arthur’s outlook on late 19th Century America’s legitimate needs.  Here are a few items on Arthur’s agenda:

Since the treasury was collecting sufficient funds through the tariff, Arthur proposed a reduction on taxable revenue except on alcohol and tobacco products.

He accepted Robert Lincoln’s recommendation to fund the army to its 30,000-man capacity to protect settlers from Indian attacks.

Additionally however, he called for legislation to prevent intrusion onto Indian Territory and for assistance to provide Indians with sufficient help to become full citizens with rights as well as responsibilities.

He asked for revenue to establish effective government in Alaska.

He proposed much needed updating and reform of our Navy and Merchant Marine.  President Arthur asked for federal aid to education to assist the literacy of southern Negroes. He called for the construction of a new building for the Library of Congress as well as for other improvements in the District of Columbia.

Perhaps most significantly, he called for a review of the Electoral College process and for recommendations about the role of the vice president.  This topic was especially important as Arthur himself had created a near crisis when he adjourned congress before it had elected officers sufficient to succeed him had he also been assassinated before he reached Washington to assume the presidency.

Finally, he recommended adoption of a Civil Service Commission.

All of these proposals should be understood as merely that.  Throughout the 19th Century presidents were expected to execute rather than to create laws.  Not until Theodore Roosevelt some 20 years later did that expectation begin to change.

Meanwhile, Arthur began to create a record as president.  In 1882, he drew widespread praise when he vetoed a huge rivers and harbors bill passed by congress which he regarded as nothing more than a raid on the national treasury.  The self-indulgent congress however passed the bill over his veto.  Also in 1882 he modified a Chinese immigration restriction bill passed by congress because he believed the new proposal was a violation of the 1880 treaty with the Chinese government allowing us to limit but not entirely ban Chinese immigration.  The original bill vetoed by the president restricted Chinese immigration for 20 years.  Arthur insisted that such a ban be for merely 10 years.  Congress concurred.

Finally, in 1883 there came passage of the Pendleton Act creating a three man Civil Service Commission.  Sponsored by Democratic Senator George Pendleton of Ohio, the act banned politics, alcoholism and nepotism from the civil service.  No longer could politicians solicit government employees in support of partisan activities.  President Arthur angered his old Stalwart friends and delighted reformers when he not only signed the measure, but appointed a long time civil service reform advocate Dorman B. Eaton as the commission’s chairman. (Note: six years later Theodore Roosevelt would be appointed to the Civil Service Commission in the Benjamin Harrison administration - which was 22 years after TR’s father had been unsuccessfully nominated by President Rutherford B. Hayes to succeed Arthur as Collector of the Port of New York.)

Thus, the Arthur administration’s official legacies to history, direct and indirect are: the attempt to restrain government spending; a modified rather than a severe restriction against Chinese immigration; the beginnings of our modern navy; and civil service reform.; (Note: another step forward that occurred during the Arthur administration was the designation of our four time zones for the purpose of establishing reliable railroad schedules.)

Arthur biographer Thomas Reeves writes that during that most painful period when Vice President Arthur realized the gravity of the tasks and responsibility he would face should the President die, he got a letter from a lady named Julia Sand.  Although sympathetic toward him, she wrote frankly and truthfully to him.  Here’s what she wrote in part:

“The hours of Garfield’s life are numbered, before this meets your eye, you may be president. The people are bowed in grief, but do you realize it, not so much that he is dying, but because you are his successor. What president ever entered office under circumstances so sad?  The day he was shot, the thought raised in a thousand minds was that you might be the instigator of the foul act. Is that not a humiliation that cuts deeper than any bullet can pierce?” Pointing out that neither his best friends nor kindest opponents thought he could succeed under such suspicion she wrote further: “Great emergencies awaken generous traits which have lain dormant half a life…If there is a spark of nobility in you, now is the occasion to let it shine. It is not the proof of highest goodness never to have done wrong—but it is a proof of it, sometime in one’s career, to pause and ponder, to recognize the evil, to turn resolutely against it and devote the remainder of one’s life to that only which is pure and exalted.  Rise to the emergency. Disappoint our fears. Force the nation to have faith in you…Your name now is on the annals of history…You cannot slink back into obscurity if you would…It is for you to choose whether your record will be written in black or in gold. For the sake of your country, for your own sake and for the sakes of all who have ever loved you, let it be pure and bright.”

Once the agony of President Garfield’s terrible ordeal passed and the shock of Arthur’s succession wore off, Americans began to know the real Chester Alan Arthur.  Handsome, always nattily dressed, well-mannered toward most everyone he met, Chet Arthur was good company even to those who opposed him.  “I hold no grudge against anyone who has opposed me,” he asserted, “but I will appoint only those dedicated to my administration.”  As for Conkling, although he refused to appoint him Secretary of State, he tried early in 1882 to appoint him to the Supreme Court.  The senate actually confirmed the nomination, but Conkling ultimately turned down the appointment and became a permanent enemy of the president.

Social Washington delightedly attended lavish White House dinners, many of them late night affairs.  In the absence of his late wife Ellen, Mary McElroy, his youngest sister, more than adequately hosted for her brother.  His daughter Ellen, though still a child and who was usually called Nell, charmed many dinner guests.  Arthur’s first State Dinner was held in honor of President and Mrs. Grant in 1882.  The finest wines, cigars and most elaborate flower arrangements were a part of every Arthur social gathering.

As 1884 approached, although it became pretty clear that the president’s reasonable evenhandedness had enabled the administration to turn in a respectable performance, neither Half Breeds nor Stalwarts trusted the president enough to support his efforts to obtain a term in his own right.  Then, there was his health.  He suffered from a fatal kidney malady, Bright’s disease, which he sought to keep a secret.

Ultimately, although he ran a reasonably respectable administration, he failed primarily as a politician.  Never comfortable with the press, he seldom invited newsmen on his travels around the country, an amazing failing for a politician.

Chester Alan Arthur turned the presidency over to Grover Cleveland on Wednesday, March 4th, 1885 and returned to New York City to practice law.  Late that year he suffered his final political humiliation when he failed to get adequate support for election by the New York State legislature to a seat in the U. S. Senate.

Before his death on Thursday, November 18th, 1886, he ordered all of his private papers burned, perhaps a reflection of his bitterness over his last two political defeats.

Since reading Arthur’s story many years ago, I’ve wondered and am still wondering if Chet Arthur’s presidency could occur today!  Are we too cynical in 2015 to let someone with such a checkered past be of service to us?  Are we a better people than those who allowed Chet Arthur to serve as president?  Were they too naive and are we realistic?  Or, might it be the other way around?  Perhaps we’re too emotionally, intellectually and spiritually self-righteous to tolerate a mere mortal as our chief executive!  An immensely human being, Chet Arthur was, beneath his polished exterior, a very emotional man.  For his sake and ultimately the nation’s sake, he transferred his loyalty from his friends to his country.  Perhaps the fact that the country didn’t return that loyalty was the cause of that final bitterness.

Chet Arthur was not a great president.  He was ranked tenth among “average presidents” in Arthur M. Schlesinger’s 1962 ranking of presidents among scholars.  He ranked above Dwight Eisenhower and below Benjamin Harrison. (Note: Eisenhower has risen considerably since that poll while Arthur ranks pretty much the same.)  Arthur’s service certainly demonstrates that some individuals can, and do, rise to the demands of national service despite past errors.  That most people were ready to accept his service is what fascinates this student of history.  Chet Arthur certainly proved to be a remarkable person even though he may only have been an average president.  Early in 1884, Mark Twain observed that although he was only one of 55 million voters, he believed that it would be pretty hard for anyone to govern better than had President Arthur.  The fates of some of Arthur’s contemporaries and family seem appropriate here:

Roscoe Conkling practiced law in New York City from 1881 to 1888 when he became “the most famous victim of the blizzard of 1888.”  On Monday, March 12th he attempted to walk three miles from his law office to his home in New York City through the blizzard.  He collapsed at Madison Square and soon after developed pneumonia.  He died on Wednesday, April 18th,1888.

James G. Blaine, although defeated by Grover Cleveland for president in 1884, became Secretary of State under President Benjamin Harrison and served from 1889 to 1892 when he resigned due to what was called a nervous condition --  perhaps dementia or even Alzheimer’s disease.  Blaine died on Friday, January 27th, 1893.

Charles Guiteau claimed that his act was “God-willed” and that he thus couldn’t be held responsible for it.  He also argued that the president had died of malpractice on the part of his doctors rather than of the shooting.  He also argued that the court trying him had no jurisdiction in the case since the president had died in Elberon, New Jersey rather than in Washington D.C.  Guiteau was hanged for the murder of President James A. Garfield on Friday, June 30th, 1882.

Chester Alan Arthur Jr. (called Alan) followed his father’s advice and avoided politics.  However, he spent most of his life as a well-to-do playboy.  He died at age 82 on Saturday, July 17th, 1937 in Colorado Springs, Colorado just eight days before his 83rd birthday.

Ellen (Nell) Herndon Arthur married Charles Pinkerton and died on Monday, September 6th, 1915, two months and fifteen days before her 43rd birthday.

Thomas Reeves writes that on his way to the train station to begin his presidency, Chet Arthur quoted some unpublished lines from Tennyson an English friend had sent him:

“Not he that breaks the dams, but he

That through the channels of the State

Convoys the people’s wish, is great,

His name is pure, his fame is free.”

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

THE PRESIDENT FROM “HACKSVILLE” (PART TWO)

By Edwin Cooney

The political activities of most presidential and vice presidential candidates had less of an effect in the nineteenth century than they do today.  Except for lingering Civil War quarrels and resentments, there were few substantial differences between Republicans and Democrats. 

As Wednesday, November 3rd, 1880 dawned on 123 Lexington Avenue, the New York City home of the Vice President-Elect, Chet Arthur had 120 days to prepare for his vice presidential responsibility of presiding over the United States Senate.  President-Elect Garfield, on the other hand, faced the Herculean task of appointing a cabinet which would hopefully unite rather than divide conservative Stalwart and liberal Half-Breed sections of his party.  Two men who were not on the November ballot were James G. Blaine of Maine and Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York, the recognized leaders of these party factions.  Blaine would become Secretary of State in the Garfield cabinet.  Senator Conkling, Chet Arthur’s friend and ally, would give President Garfield a monumental political migraine throughout the first four months of his administration. Secretary Blaine would be the president’s trustworthy friend and political ally.

In public, Chet Arthur was, as he had been throughout his career, affable, polished in his behavior and courteous to everyone who came in contact with him.  However, from the very outset it was obvious that high office had not altered Arthur’s behavior in politics.  As 1881 began, the vice president-elect was in Albany, New York doing all he could to make his friend Richard Crowley, of Lockport, New York, a United States senator.  In the wake of Crowley’s loss to Thomas Platt, a Republican testimonial dinner for GOP Arkansas Senator Steven W. Dorsey was held.  The dinner, at Delmonico’s in New York City, honored Dorsey for his successful management of the election in Indiana. As treasurer of the Republican National Committee, Dorsey had been given the job of engineering Republican efforts in Indiana during the late campaign. He had been successful in bringing the Hoosier state into the GOP column.

Seated at the head table with former President Grant on his immediate right and the lauded Dorsey immediately to Grant’s right, Arthur thrilled the 400 guests by acknowledging that Republicans had utilized special “secrets” to bring about a favorable result.  Avoiding specifics, Arthur merely paused as he addressed knowledge of that “secret” as his audience laughingly asserted what that secret must have been.  The code word for money in GOP secret communications had been “soap.”  Thus, everyone knew what GOP special tactics and secrets amounted to during Arthur’s pregnant pauses.  “Soap! Soap! Soap!” chanted that well-healed GOP audience as the vice president-elect smiled knowingly throughout his remarks and reporters looked on.  By Friday, March 4th, 1881, Garfield’s and Arthur’s Inauguration Day, much of the nation regarded their 51-year-old vice president as the politician he truly was.

As Chet Arthur took his place as presiding officer of the U.S. Senate, there were 37 Republicans and 37 Democrats plus two independents holding office in that “most deliberative body.”  The two independents split their loyalties between the two parties thereby increasing the vice president’s potential power.   Thus, in the event of a tie, Arthur had the deciding vote.  Within weeks of the inauguration, the old struggle for control of the New York Republican Party (which                      just three years earlier had cost Arthur his job and tarnished Senator Conkling’s pride) was freshly renewed.  In mid March, Conkling, summoned to the White House by the president, was informed that five of his favorites would be appointed attorneys, marshals and collector of Buffalo.  When Conkling inquired about the Collectorship of the Port of New York, the president urged him to leave the subject alone just then.  However, the following day when Vice President Arthur was handed a list of presidential appointments while presiding, he discovered the name of William Robertson of Jamestown, New York to be the president’s choice to be Collector of the Port of New York.  Robertson was a bitter enemy of Conkling’s and an ally of Secretary Blaine.  As Commerce Committee chairman, Conkling was determined to block Robertson’s nomination.  Throughout March, April and early May, there were efforts to talk the president out of the Robertson nomination.  On Wednesday, April 14th, Vice President Arthur, in a long meeting with the president, urged him to withdraw the Robertson nomination and appoint Robertson to another position in New York State.  The president politely but firmly refused.

Conkling asserted in a speech before his colleagues on the senate commerce committee that he had a document that would cause the president “to bite the dust.” While he insisted he prayed to God he wouldn’t have to release it, he said he would do so if necessary in defense of his stance against the president’s appointment of Robertson.  When informed of Conkling’s threat, Garfield, after only a short pause, released a copy of the letter itself.  All it turned out to be was a casual inquiry during the previous campaign about the political fortunes of Thomas Brady who was being investigated for his part in a national scandal.  By mid May, it was clear that Conkling was going to lose to Garfield as he had to Hayes.  As he saw it, the only way Conkling could regain his authority would be to win immediate re-election by the New York State Legislature.  Thus, on Monday, May 16th, 1881, Roscoe Conkling and his New York Senate colleague, the newly elected Thomas Platt, resigned their U.S. Senate seats.  Thus, the Republicans automatically lost their senate majority.  With Conkling and Platt gone, the senate confirmed Robertson two days later.  As things stood, if the senate organized under the Democrats with their new majority, a Democrat rather than a Republican would be president of the senate and in line for the presidency behind Arthur himself.  Hence, Conkling and Platt went back to Albany followed by the vice president.  From Tuesday May 31st through Friday, July 1st, the two former senators sought re-election with Arthur’s aid.  Late in the effort, Thomas Platt was discovered living with a woman who wasn’t his wife.  Therefore, as Roscoe Conkling and Chester Alan Arthur headed to New York City from Albany on the morning of Saturday, July 2nd, 1881, Conkling was the only one still scheming to retain his seat in the United States Senate.

Upon their arrival in New York, they learned that at approximately nine-thirty that morning, President Garfield had been shot as he strolled through the Baltimore and Union railroad station arm-in-arm with Secretary Blaine.  A shabbily dressed little man named Charles Giteau had fired twice at the president.  The first bullet grazed the president’s arm, but the second bullet lodged in his back near his spinal column.  Even worse, Giteau had declared “I am a Stalwart of Stalwarts. Now, Arthur is president.”  Horrified by the president’s fate and alarmed about his own, Chet Arthur was to be quite a different man politically if not personally.

Urged by Secretary of State Blaine to come to Washington, Arthur visited the White House a week later.  Although he apparently didn’t see the president, he did visit Lucritia Garfield.  By then, it was pretty clear that Charles Giteau was not part of a conspiracy as some had speculated.  Neither Arthur nor Conkling’s personal and political opponents, however they felt about either man, suspected them of plotting against President Garfield.  As the president’s health appeared to improve in mid July, Chet Arthur asserted, “The better the president feels, the better I feel.”

James A. Garfield, who was once a vigorous man with Lincolnesque muscles and who also possessed the intellectual capacities Jefferson, both Adams and Lincoln, spent 79 days in terrible agony.  Each time he rallied, his doctors would probe his wound with unsanitary fingers.  The weather in Washington was tropical and several tons of ice were shipped in to keep the president somewhat cool under fans.  At one point, Alexander Graham Bell, who had invented a Geiger counter, visited the president to see if the bullet could be detected, but he was unsuccessful.  By September 1^st, new infections had set in and parts of the president’s face were actually rotting away.

Meanwhile, the vice president remained in seclusion at 123 Lexington Avenue.  Periodically, contemplating the possibility that he might become president, he’d burst into tears.  As for Conkling, by late July it became clear that he could not retain his senate seat.  Thus, the New York State legislature elected one Half-Breed congressman, Warner Miller, and one Stalwart Congressman, Elbridge Lapham, to the two United States Senate seats originally held by Conkling and Platt.  Miller would fill Platt’s term while Lapham would hold Conkling’s seat.

At 10:35 on the night of September 19th, 1881, James Abram Garfield breathed his last.  The president died at Elberon, New Jersey where Mrs. Garfield had gone earlier in the year to recover from malaria and where the president had been moved on September 1st with the hope that the fresh salt sea air would cure him.  Only a short time before, he had spoken his last words to David H. Swaim, his Chief of Staff, “Oh Swaim,” gasped the president “can’t you do anything about this pain? “Oh, Swaim!”

It was 11:30 pm in New York when Vice President Arthur received the word from a messenger that President Garfield had passed away.

President Arthur was sworn in by New York State Judge John R. Brady at 2:15 a.m. on the morning of Tuesday, September 20th, 1881.

All of President Garfield’s ordeals were over.  President Arthur’s ordeals were about to begin.

To be continued.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

THE PRESIDENT FROM HACKSVILLE

MONDAY, OCTOBER 5TH, 2015

By Edwin Cooney

Today, October 5th, 2015, marks the 186th anniversary of the birth of the most successful pure politician in American history.  No president before or since Chester Alan Arthur has owed his accession to the presidency solely to politics.  Every other occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue’s executive mansion, before and since Chet Arthur, has used his political career before the presidency to some social benefit.  Not Chet Arthur.  Hence, due to his reputation as a “political hack,” he was in big trouble even before assuming that most troublesome of public offices — the presidency of the United States of America.

Arthur was born on Monday, October 5th, 1829 (late in life he insisted that he was born in 1830) in Fairfield, Vermont, the son of an Irish-born immigrant father William Arthur and Malvina (Stone) Arthur.  Chet Arthur was handsome, charming, affable, a marvelous raconteur and an excellent administrator.  Arthur entered New York society in the 1850s having graduated from Union College in Schenectady, New York in 1848.  He received his law degree in 1854 and became the junior partner of Culver, Parker and Arthur in New York City.  The son of an adamantly abolitionist preacher father, Arthur represented a black woman named Lizzie Jennings when she brought suit against a whites-only Brooklyn streetcar company which had forcibly ejected her from one of its vehicles.  Arthur won an award of $500 for Ms. Jennings, and, even more significant, that suit led to the end of all discrimination against blacks on New York public transit systems.  For the most part however, Chet Arthur was anxious to fit into high society.  To that end, he joined the right clubs, married a southern belle, Ellen Lewis Herndon, who was a well-known singer and a member of New York’s Glee Club, and above all joined the growing New York Republican Party.  Miss Herndon’s father, a ship captain, gained for himself and his surviving family considerable national fame in 1857 when he deliberately went down with his ship after saving all the passengers and crew during a severe storm off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.

The Civil War brought young Chet Arthur notoriety for his considerable administrative skills as well as for his personal integrity.  As assistant engineer, chief engineer, assistant Quartermaster General and eventually chief Quartermaster General, Chet Arthur kept the New York State Militia adequately supplied with munitions, other equipment and transportation facilities between 1861 and 1863.  New York Governor Edwin D. Morgan asserted that he depended on young Chet Arthur for all the reliable facilities for equipping the New York State Militia during the war.  Even more interesting, Morgan observed that Arthur had the rare ability to say “no” without giving offense — a most invaluable political tool.  They remained cordial lifelong friends.

Following the war, Arthur became increasingly and effectively involved in Republican Party politics at both the city and state levels.  A supporter of the conservative or “Stalwart” wing of the GOP, Arthur backed the candidacies of Congressman Roscoe Conkling for the U.S. Senate and of course General Ulysses S. Grant’s 1868 bid for President.  He had supported Lincoln in both 1860 and 1864 and was behind the move to make Andrew Johnson Vice President in 1864.  (What his stand was in 1868 when Johnson was being impeached by radical Republicans is not recorded even by Thomas Reeves, his authoritative biographer.  Political bosses, Arthur included, weren’t philosophers or social do-gooders.  They worked solely for the party’s success.)  When in 1871 Chet Arthur accepted the collectorship of the Port of New York, he well understood that he’d be judged not only by the revenue from import dues, the primary responsibility of the customs house, but for another very vital task.  It was his job to see to it that his employees adequately financed the endeavors of the GOP machine that had secured their employment.

The close election of Ohio Governor Rutherford Burchard Hayes, a powerfully built, thickly red-bearded teetotaler, ended the era of southern reconstruction.  The fate of American blacks had been surrendered to Jim Crow.  Still President Hayes, a man of deeply held Methodist principles, needed a moral cause.  Hence, he chose civil service reform.  To that end, he established a commission to investigate possible corruption in America’s customs houses — especially the Port of New York.  The commission called Arthur as its main witness.  Try as he did during his testimony, Arthur was unable to convince the commission to abandon a recommendation to end the practice of requiring employees to give back portions of their annual salaries to finance the party which had provided their employment in the first place.  The commission found no corruption on Arthur’s part, but it recommended a thorough housecleaning of the agency.  Next came the political crisis.

An ongoing dispute between the executive and legislative branches of the government was political patronage.  Presidents were, and still are, expected to pay attention to senators and representatives in a state wherein federal appointees function.  By dismissing Chet Arthur, the President was picking a territorial quarrel with Senator Roscoe Conkling who would surely oppose anyone nominated to succeed Arthur.  When the president nominated Theodore Roosevelt, Sr. to succeed Arthur, the nomination was defeated in the Senate by a vote of 31-25.  (Sadly, Theodore Roosevelt soon thereafter died of intestinal cancer while his namesake son was a student at Harvard.)  President Hayes offered to make Chet Arthur counsel to the American legation at Paris.  When Arthur refused the appointment, undoubtedly as ordered by Senator Conkling, the President moved.  On Thursday, July 11th, 1878, President Hayes used his authority to finally dismiss Arthur; there was nothing either Conkling or Arthur could do.

Between July of 1878 and June of 1880, Chet Arthur practiced law, although according to biographer Reeves, he really wasn’t much of a lawyer.  His new firm was Arthur, Phelps, Knevels and Ransom.

As Republicans met in Chicago to nominate a presidential candidate for 1880, the party was divided into conservative Stalwarts and liberal Half Breeds.  The Half Breeds split their support between Ohio Senator John Sherman and Maine Senator James G. Blaine while the Stalwarts were strongly supporting Ulysses S. Grant for a third term.  After 35 ballots, General Grant had 306 votes, about 78 votes shy of the nomination.  On the 36th ballot, Garfield was nominated with 399 votes, 42 for Blaine, 5 for Elihu Washington of Illinois and 2 for Senator John Sherman.

Needing Stalwart support to win the election, Garfield offered Levi P. Morton the vice presidential nomination, but was turned down.  Then he decided to ask Chet Arthur.  Arthur would be advised by an angry Roscoe Conkling to turn down the offer “…as you would drop a hot horseshoe from the forge.”  Arthur reportedly responded: “The vice presidency is a higher honor than I’ve ever dreamed of attaining.  I therefore will accept the nomination and I shall carry the New York delegation with me.”

The presidential campaign was close between James A. Garfield and General Winfield Scott Hancock of Pennsylvania and William English of Indiana.  The turning point of the campaign was a meeting on Friday, August 5th in New York between Garfield, Arthur and other members of the New York Stalwart machine, the purpose of which was to agree how both sides would settle questions of patronage once Garfield was elected.  Conkling did not attend the meeting, but everyone came away sufficiently satisfied to work for the ticket.

November 2nd 1880 was Election Day.  Garfield and Arthur received 4,454,416 votes.  That was 48.6% of the popular vote.  Hancock and English received 4,444,592 votes, 48.2% of the votes.  In the Electoral College, Garfield and Arthur received 214 votes to Hancock and English’s 155.

The Garfield Arthur team was elected.  What neither fully understood was that the political fat was in the fire.

(TO BE CONTINUED.)

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY