Chester A. Arthur

Chester A. Arthur was the 21st President of the United States, serving from 1881 to 1885 after assuming the office following the September 19, 1881 death of President James A. Garfield from the gunshot wounds inflicted by assassin Charles J. Guiteau. He was born Chester Alan Arthur on October 5, 1829, in Fairfield, Vermont, into a Scotch-Irish-American Baptist-minister family. His father William Arthur was a Northern Ireland-born Baptist minister and abolitionist, and his mother Malvina Stone was a homemaker.

His education at Union College in Schenectady, New York (B.A., 1848) launched his early-career path. His 1854 admission to the New York bar produced his early-career New York City attorney public profile. His 1856 marriage to Ellen Lewis Herndon and his subsequent late-1850s and 1860s New York City attorney career produced his pre-Civil-War political-and-legal public profile. His 1862–1863 Civil-War service as the New York State Quartermaster General, under Republican Governor Edwin D. Morgan, launched his early-career New York Republican-Party public profile.

His 1871 appointment as the Collector of the Port of New York under President Ulysses S. Grant — across which he supervised approximately 1,000 federal customs employees and approximately 75% of all U.S. federal customs revenues at the time — produced his 1870s New York Republican-Party Stalwart-faction public profile. His 1878 Hayes-administration removal from the Collector of the Port of New York position (during President Rutherford B. Hayes's civil-service-reform investigation of the New York Custom House) preceded his 1880 nomination as the Republican vice-presidential candidate alongside James A. Garfield.

His July 2, 1881 assumption of presidential duties (after President Garfield was shot at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C.) and his September 19, 1881 succession to the U.S. Presidency upon Garfield's death produced his 1881–1885 single-term presidency. The January 16, 1883 Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act — which Arthur signed despite his Stalwart-faction-spoils-system political background — produced one of the foundational documents of late-19th-century American civil-service reform. He retired from the presidency on March 4, 1885, after losing the 1884 Republican-Party nomination to James G. Blaine. He died on November 18, 1886, at age 57, in New York City, of complications from Bright's disease (kidney disease).

His name Chester derives from the Old English place-name meaning "camp" or "fortress." Chester was a popular American boys' name through the early 20th century.