CHAPTER XXII. CHESTER ALLAN ARTHUR. ANCESTRY AND BOYHOOD. RESIDENT ARTHUR, now (1884) occupying the executive chair of the republic, was born in Fairfield, Franklin county, Vermont, October 5, 1830, and is in the fifty-fourth year of his age. He is the only son of Vermont who has attained this distinction. Vermont has produced many noted men, and has, from the days of the revolution, taken an active and efficient part in national affairs; has usually been forward and vigorous in the fields of war; strong in Congress; intelligent and high-minded in the conduct of her own public affairs; had a hardy and robust people, independent and vigorous in mind and action; staid, order-loving, law-abiding and truth-seeking. Their patriotism has been intense, and their devotion to the public welfare a strong and steady impulse. Among such people President Arthur came into being and received his early influences and education. The strong climate and fine scenery did their part in giving vigor to his body and mind, and activity and taste to his imagination. His father, Reverend William Arthur, was a Baptist clergyman who came to this country from Ireland when eighteen years old. He had had charge of a church in New York city for a number of years; had published a work of considerable merit on "Family Names," and had held a good place in the ministry of his denomination before his son became much known. He died in 1875. Chester was the eldest of a family of five children, two sons and three daughters. He fitted himself for college in the Vermont academies, which have done and are still doing excellent service in educating the youth of that state. At the early age of fifteen he entered Union college at Schenectady, New York, where he graduated in the class of 1849, when nineteen years old. During his college course he partly paid his way by teaching a part of the time and continuing his studies. After his graduation, he returned to Vermont and continued teaching for a few years. For a time he was principal of the Pownal academy. But while teaching he had begun the study of law. MR. ARTHUR THE LAWYER. Having saved sufficient money to carry him through his professional studies, he went to New York and entered the office of ex-Judge Culver. Having pursued the prescribed course, he was admitted to the bar, and concluded to accept Mr. Greeley's wholesale advice to the young men of the east to go west, as though young men were no longer needed in the east. After a wide tour through the west with his young friend, H. D. Gardiner, to find the place that needed them and that they needed, in which to grow up to fortune and distinction, they returned to New York city, convinced that the prophetic gift was not theirs to divine the places for the great future cities of the west. The western fever cured, the two young men formed a partnership, opened an office and began the practice of law at the foot of the hill. Little by little their business grew, and they grew with it, till in a few years they were well established in a lucrative practice. When well established in his profession, he married a daughter of Lieutenant Herndon, of the United States navy, who, with his ship, was lost at sea. His widow was voted a gold medal by Congress for his fidelity. Mrs. Arthur died in 1880, before his election to the vice-presidency. In 1852, when slaveholders claimed the right to take and hold their slaves wherever they chose to go, a Virginia slaveowner, with eight slaves, went to New York on his way to Texas. While awaiting the sailing of the vessel on which he was expecting to go, a writ of habeas corpus was obtained for the slaves, and the law took them in charge. Their case was tried before Judge Paine, Mr. Arthur and William M. Evarts serving them as advocates. It was held by the court that they could not be held as bondmen in New York, nor returned as slaves to Virginia under the fugitive slave law. They were not fugitives from service, but were held by their pretended owner in New York without law. They were liberated. The Virginia legislature sought to recover them, and brought suit in a New York court for that purpose. The case was tried and decision given for the colored people. An appeal was made to the supreme court, and the decision of the court below was sustained. The case gave Mr. Arthur much notoriety, and won him the friendship of the colored people and their friends, and of the friends of humanity, as far as the matter was known. Another case of a similar kind is recorded to his credit as a man of justice and humanity. A colored girl was ejected from a New York street car after she had paid her fare. Mr. Arthur brought suit for damages, and recovered five hundred dollars for the girl. It brought the whole matter before the public through the press, and resulted in reversing the street railroad order against passengers of color. As a young man, Mr. Arthur was a whig, and a great admirer of Henry Clay. His Vermont education, perhaps, had something to do with this, as Vermont always stood stoutly for that line of political opinions represented by the federalists, whigs and republicans. MR. ARTHUR THE POLITICIAN. When the convention met at Saratoga which organized the republican party of New York, Mr. Arthur was a delegate. In that party he was, therefore, at home, having assisted in forming Its ideas and purposes were his. Its opposition to the it. extension of slavery, its disbelief in slavery, its recognition of human rights in colored people, its belief in the Union as a permanent national power, under the government of which the states exist; its adhesion to a national currency, and its repudiation of the state rights heresy were all his. On the basis of these ideas he has shaped his political life. Hence, when the pro-slavery and state rights rebellion broke out he was a national government man by personal affinity and political affiliation, and gave his help to save the Union and redeem it from the slave curse. He was made judge advocate of the second brigade of the state militia. The governor of New York, in 1860, appointed Mr. Arthur to the position of engineer-in-chief on his staff. He was afterward inspector-general for a time. Later he was quartermastergeneral of the militia forces of the state to the close of Governor Morgan's term of office, in 1863. The work of equipping, supplying and transporting the immense number of troops sent to the army by that state tested his business ability. His immense accounts were so systematically kept that they were audited and allowed at Washington without deduction, a thing not very usual then, in the confusion of putting an immense army into the field. His contracts every year reached millions of dollars, and yet his accounts were so exact as to show the most scrupulous integrity in all his dealings. Personally, he profited nothing by his great opportunities to use to his benefit a tariff on his trade. He rejected presents; kept clean hands and just accounts, and made a war record for integrity as creditable as that of bravery on the field. The bravery of an honest conduct of such a great business in one's country's behalf is indeed most worthy, and is to be set down as one of the morally grand things that grand men do. In 1862, in one of the dark hours of the war, when the loyal governors had a meeting for counsel, Mr. Arthur was invited to sit with them, on account of his great experience in the conduct of army matters. His record was a very honorable and helpful one in the hour of his country's peril. After his work in the army was over, Mr. Arthur returned to the practice of law, and gained in a few years a large business, a large portion of which was in collecting claims against the government. He was interested much both in state and national legislation, and drafted many bills in the interest of both. He inclined to politics and to associate with politicians, and hence took a more or less active part in local politics. He had lived long in the city and knew its people and interests and was public spirited. He had skill as an organizer and manager of local partisan matters. In 1871, Mr. Arthur was appointed by President Grant collector of customs at the port of New York. So satisfactory was his work that he was reappointed four years later. He was continued under President Hayes, and in this showed the large business qualities previously manifested in army affairs. But now came a break in the smooth current of his affairs. From early in President Grant's administration his party, having come to be powerful, came much under the management of party leaders, and some of them not creditable to the party; greedy, selfish men, who were in the party for place and gain. By such men were soon formed rings of their kind. In a short time these rings came to be managed by single men, these single men playing skillfully into each others hands. At Washington, at each state capital, in each large city, these rings came to hold the party management. They could easily combine, and this combination readily constituted a sort of secret conclave to cut and dry appointments, measures, and the general conduct of state and national affairs. This combination soon came to be a machine for working up the jobs of the ringleaders, who came to be termed "bosses." President Grant's hail-fellow-well-met qualities and natural incompetency for business made him just the ruler under which such a system could easily grow up into a mighty combination. And under him many of the people came to believe such a system had grown up. It was believed by many, that after President Hayes was elected, Grant was made. an unconscious agent of this combination, to travel round the world and come home by way of California just in time to receive the enthusiastic welcome from his country and be nomi |