President Chester A. Arthur: Redemption in Office?

American History Hit

History Hit

America, History

4.3 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 23 May 2024

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Vice President to a narrow election winner, Chester Arthur was a very unlikely President. But on September 20th 1881 he took his seat as the 21st President of the United States at the dawn of the modern administrative state and presidency.

So what kind of President did he become? Was he progressive? What was his role in the creation of the Civil Service? And how did the Presidency impact him as a person?

Don is joined by Michael J. Gerhardt for this episode in our Presidential series. Michael is the Samuel Ashe Distinguished Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law in Chapel Hill. He is the author of The Forgotten Presidents: Their Untold Constitutional Legacy and FDR's Mentors: Navigating the Path to Greatness.

Produced by Sophie Gee and Freddy Chick. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	In 1881, Puck magazine published a cartoon featuring newly inaugurated President
0:07.2	Chester A Arthur. It's a caricature portraying Arthur in dandy plaid trousers and a top hat. A few years earlier
0:14.8	when he was Roscoe Concline's collector in that beating heart of all American graft,
0:19.6	the New York Custom House. Having just been kicked off the front stoop of the Custom House,
0:24.8	Arthur will momentarily land in a splatter of mud. The man doing the kicking with an oversized shoe,
0:31.2	President Rutherford B. Hayes, on his crusade to clean up federal corruption.
0:36.1	The caption below reads, From the tow path to the White House, with tow spelled T.O.E.
0:42.3	But what was obviously a satirical dig at Chester Arthur,
0:45.3	here's our new president once kicked to the curb, could in hindsight be
0:49.6	interpreted another way. It also suggests the redemptive road Chester Arthur would travel as a once
0:56.4	dodgy dealer of New York politics and route to a higher-minded destiny in the
1:01.2	nation's capital. From towpath to the And the Oh, Glad to you're with us. This is American History Hit and I'm Don Wildman. Today again we
1:40.9	join the ever rolling train that is our U.S. presidential series.
1:45.6	Now departing all aboard, it's Chester Arthur.
1:48.8	Number 21, 1881 to 1885. Chester A Arthur, A is for Alan,
1:55.0	born in 1859 in Fairfield, Vermont.
1:58.0	Yet another log cabin president
2:00.0	from way up there in the woods of New England.
2:02.0	Arthur enters the presidential pantheon through the back door,
2:05.4	or at least the door no reasonable person wishes to use
2:08.7	when President James Garfield was shot in the back
2:11.5	in only his fourth month in office and died in his seventh.
	...

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