Chester A Arthur Essay Research Paper Chester

Chester A. Arthur Essay, Research Paper

Chester Alan Arthur was born on October 5, 1830 in Fairfield, Vermont. The son of Malvina Arthur and the Reverend William Arthur, a passionate abolitionist, young Chester and his family migrated from one Baptist parish to another in Vermont and New York. The fifth of eight children, Chester had six sisters and one older brother. Before beginning school in Union Village (now Greenwich), New York, he studied the fundamentals of reading and writing at home.

In 1845, young Arthur entered Union College in Schenectady as a sophomore. There he studied classical languages, arts, and the sciences. He supplemented his tuition by teaching during winter vacations at various schools in the area. During the school year, Arthur spent a lot of time in campus extracurricular activities. He enjoyed participating in student political demonstrations on issues ranging from abolitionism to school elections, and playing school pranks. Hence, it is understandable that Arthur wasn’t an outstanding student. Nevertheless, he graduated in the top third of his class in 1848.

After college, Arthur spent several years teaching school and reading law, but he was clear about what he wanted to do with his life. He would be a lawyer, a public servant, a resident of Manhattan, a gentleman, and rich. After passing his bar exam in 1854 he used his father’s influence to gain a clerkship in a New York legal firm headed by the prominent Erastus C. Culver.

Culver’s firm had achieved fame in 1852 when it supported a plea by a group of free blacks to liberate seven slaves. In transport from Virginia to Texas, these slaves had been brought to New York by their master. Known as the Lemmon Case, Erastus D. Culver successfully argued for a writ of habeas corpus, freeing the slaves from incarceration in the city jail—where their owner had placed them for safe-keeping—and thus bondage. This court ruling allegedly violated the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Law and called into question the agreements made in the Compromise of 1850. Arthur spent much of his time as clerk in Culver’s firm handling details of the appeal. He made numerous trips to the state capital to assist in arguments before the New York Supreme Court. The final court decision in 1860 upheld the initial ruling, and Arthur’s work put him in touch with the leading legal minds in the state, as well as most of the prominent New York politicians of the day.

In a second case, also instrumental in advancing Arthur’s public profile, the firm defended a black woman, Lizzie Jennings, who had been forced out of the white section of a Brooklyn street car when she refused to give her seat to a white passenger. Jennings’ case predated Rosa Parks’ case in the 1950s by over one hundred years. The case forced the streetcar company to accept and seat black passengers without prejudice on their streetcars.

As was common in those days, young unmarried men frequently lived in boarding houses, where they took meals in family-style settings, socialized with fellow boarders, and tried to establish the appearance of a home life. Arthur lived in such a family hotel on Broadway. While there he befriended a young medical student from Virginia, Dabney Herndon, who frequently visited with relatives living nearby in Manhattan. Arthur occasionally accompanied his friend on these family visits, and Herndon’s cousin, the young Ellen Lewis Herndon, soon caught Arthur’s eye. The two, aged twenty-two and thirty, fell in love and were married on October 25, 1859.

When the Civil War broke out, Arthur, who had joined the state militia in 1858 principally out of a desire for companionship and political connections, stood primed for duty. In a rush to staff key positions, the Republican governor appointed Arthur to be quartermaster general for the New York Volunteers. He served in that post with great efficiency, obtaining the rank of brigadier general before his retirement in 1863. Responsible for provisioning and housing the several hundred thousand soldiers supplied by the state to the federal cause, as well as for the defenses of New York, Arthur dealt with hundreds of private contractors and military personnel. The military service played to his advantage; he gained a reputation for efficiency, administrative genius, and reliability.

Although eager to serve in a battlefield position, Arthur never pressed his case. His wife, a Virginian with family members in the Confederacy, could not tolerate the thought of her husband taking up arms against them.

Upon his retirement from duty, Arthur threw himself into his law practice, representing clients in suing for war-related damages and reimbursements. His practice thrived, making him a wealthy man by the end of the war. He also worked actively for Roscoe Conkling, a New York Republican Party Boss and U.S. senator who used patronage and party discipline to advance his power in the New York. By 1867, Arthur had become one of Conkling’s top lieutenants, serving as the chief counsel to the New York City Tax Commission from 1869 to 1870, at an annual salary of $10,000, a significant sum of money in those days. By comparison the wages of a skilled worker ranged from $400 to $650 annually in 1870.

In 1871 President Ulysses S. Grant appointed Arthur to the position of Collector of the Port of New York. Arthur served in this capacity until 1