A Forgotten Duo

James Garfield never wanted to be president.  Chester Arthur likely never thought he was up for being president.  However, in one brief moment in United States history, these two men worked together to revolutionize the nature of government work and highlight the epitome of the disinterested politician.  However, lumped in with the hirsute presidents of the Gilded Age, they are often forgotten and their achievements disregarded and not considered by the typical survey history student.  Yet, as is often the case with American history, the greatest stories have the smallest build-up and appreciation.   

Entering the 1880s, the Republican Party was a divided one.  On one hand, a group known as the Stalwarts felt that the old system of patronage established by Andrew Jackson was the best way to staff the government.  Government jobs in exchange for political support guaranteed a certain level of political participation, money and therefore power.  The champion of the Stalwarts was Senator Roscoe Conklin of New York.  Representative James Blaine of Maine championed the cause of the Half-breeds – a group who wanted to phase in a civil service system that would allow meritocracy to government service.  For the Stalwarts, the Half-breeds represented a threat, not just to the current political structure but, to their personal statuses and futures.   

With this backdrop, the Republicans met in Chicago to decide their presidential candidate with President Rutherford B. Hayes not considered a serious option.  For President Hayes, running again was not a serious option for him either.  He wanted out and the Republicans obliged him.  During the actual convention, many were considered, including a serious push to bring Ulysses S. Grant back from retirement.  However, Rep. James Garfield (R-OH) emerged as a candidate for his rebuke for a Conklin plan on who should be considered (and not considered) for the presidency.  A surely shocked Garfield was given Rep. Chester Arthur (R-NY), a Stalwart, as a vice-presidential candidate to help heal the wounds with king-maker manqué Sen. Conklin and that faction of the party. 

The 1880 election was not much of a contest as Rep. Garfield defeated General Winfield Scott Hancock (D-PA), a competent military governor of Louisiana and Texas during Reconstruction.  As president, James Garfield initiated the formation of a civil service reform but tragedy, as it is wont to do, interfered.  While at a train station in the capital, a deranged office-seeker, Charles Guiteau, shot the president, who later died from the attack.  (A recent book by Candice Millard suggests the president’s death had more to do with medical incompetence than a madman’s bullets*).  Charles Guiteau felt that the ascendency of Chester Arthur to the presidency would re-establish the patronage system but, in fact, it did just the opposite.  Roscoe Conklin thought he would be able to control the new president as he did when Chester Arthur was a New York official.  However, Sen. Conklin had misread the tea leaves and missed the overwhelming public support for the fallen president and his ideas, including the civil service plan.  President Arthur shook off his former boss’ influence and pushed for what later became known as the Pendleton Civil Service Act.  

Chester Arthur, still a Stalwart, set aside his personal convictions in lieu of what the people wanted – something that is not always a given by presidents.  Before the overwhelming call for the act’s passage, the president knew the people had voted for change with James Garfield and he felt it was his duty to see this challenge through.  In doing so, Chester Arthur, a small New York politician who stood tall in a big moment, was a unique man of personal strength at a time when presidents seldom displayed such traits.  What these two men highlight is the power of little-known stories and people and the roles they played in American history.  Still, there is much more to this story, despite the seeming completeness of my riveting narrative.  There is so much more to explore and is that not what is amazing and cool about history?   

*For a striking new account of President Garfield and his assassination, check out Destiny of the Republic:  A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard