Taking office Arthur arrived in
Washington, D.C., on September 21. On September 22, he re-took the oath of office, this time before Chief Justice
Morrison R. Waite. Arthur took this step to ensure procedural compliance; there had been a lingering question about whether a state court judge (Brady) could administer a federal oath of office. He initially took up residence at the home of Senator
John P. Jones, while a White House remodeling he had ordered was carried out, including addition of an elaborate fifty-foot glass screen by
Louis Comfort Tiffany. '' cartoon, Arthur faces the
cabinet after President Garfield was shot. Arthur's sister,
Mary Arthur McElroy, served as White House hostess for her widowed brother; Arthur became Washington's most eligible bachelor and his social life became the subject of rumors, though romantically, he remained singularly devoted to the memory of his late wife. His son, Chester Jr., was then a freshman at
Princeton University and his daughter, Nell, stayed in New York with a
governess until 1882; when she arrived, Arthur shielded her from the intrusive press as much as he could. Arthur quickly came into conflict with Garfield's cabinet, most of whom represented his opposition within the party. He asked the cabinet members to remain until December, when Congress would reconvene, but Treasury Secretary
William Windom submitted his resignation in October to enter a Senate race in his home state of Minnesota. Arthur then selected
Charles J. Folger, his friend and fellow New York Stalwart as Windom's replacement. Attorney General
Wayne MacVeagh was next to resign, believing that, as a reformer, he had no place in an Arthur cabinet. Despite Arthur's personal appeal to remain, MacVeagh resigned in December 1881 and Arthur replaced him with
Benjamin H. Brewster, a Philadelphia lawyer and machine politician reputed to have reformist leanings. Blaine, nemesis of the Stalwart faction, remained Secretary of State until Congress reconvened and then departed immediately. Conkling expected Arthur to appoint him in Blaine's place, but the President chose
Frederick T. Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, a Stalwart recommended by ex-President Grant. Frelinghuysen advised Arthur not to fill any future vacancies with Stalwarts, but when Postmaster General James resigned in January 1882, Arthur selected
Timothy O. Howe, a Wisconsin Stalwart. Navy Secretary
William H. Hunt was next to resign, in April 1882, and Arthur attempted a more balanced approach by appointing Half-Breed
William E. Chandler to the post, on Blaine's recommendation. Finally, when Interior Secretary
Samuel J. Kirkwood resigned that same month, Arthur appointed
Henry M. Teller, a Colorado Stalwart to the office. Of the Cabinet members Arthur had inherited from Garfield, only Secretary of War
Robert Todd Lincoln remained for the entirety of Arthur's term. Arthur could not appoint a new vice president to fill the vacancy, as this was prior to the
25th Amendment to the Constitution.
Civil service reform In the 1870s,
a scandal was exposed, in which contractors for
star postal routes were greatly overpaid for their services with the connivance of government officials (including Second Assistant Postmaster General
Thomas J. Brady and former senator
Stephen Wallace Dorsey). Reformers feared Arthur, as a former supporter of the spoils system, would not commit to continuing the investigation into the scandal. But Arthur's Attorney General, Brewster, did in fact continue the investigations begun by MacVeagh, and hired notable Democratic lawyers William W. Ker and
Richard T. Merrick to strengthen the prosecution team and forestall the skeptics. Although Arthur had worked closely with Dorsey before his presidency, once in office he supported the investigation and forced the resignation of officials suspected in the scandal. An 1882 trial of the ringleaders resulted in convictions for two minor conspirators and a
hung jury for the rest. After a juror came forward with allegations that the defendants attempted to bribe him, the judge set aside the guilty verdicts and granted a new trial. Before the second trial began, Arthur removed five federal office holders who were sympathetic with the defense, including a former senator. The second trial began in December 1882 and lasted until July 1883 and, again, did not result in a guilty verdict. Failure to obtain a conviction tarnished the administration's image, but Arthur did succeed in putting a stop to the fraud. Garfield's assassination by a deranged office seeker amplified the public demand for civil service reform. Both Democratic and Republican leaders realized that they could attract the votes of reformers by turning against the spoils system and, by 1882, a bipartisan effort began in favor of reform. In 1880, Democratic Senator
George H. Pendleton of Ohio introduced legislation that required selection of civil servants based on merit as determined by an
examination. This legislation greatly expanded similar civil service reforms attempted by President
Franklin Pierce 30 years earlier. In his first
annual presidential address to Congress in 1881, Arthur requested civil service reform legislation and Pendleton again introduced his bill, but Congress did not pass it. Republicans lost seats in the 1882 congressional elections, in which Democrats campaigned on the reform issue. As a result, the
lame-duck session of Congress was more amenable to civil service reform; the Senate approved Pendleton's bill 38–5 and the House soon concurred by a vote of 155–47. Arthur signed the
Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act into law on January 16, 1883. In just two years' time, an unrepentant Stalwart had become the president who ushered in long-awaited civil service reform. At first, the act applied only to 10% of federal jobs and, without proper implementation by the president, it could have gone no further. Even after he signed the act into law, its proponents doubted Arthur's commitment to reform. To their surprise, he acted quickly to appoint the members of the
Civil Service Commission that the law created, naming reformers
Dorman Bridgman Eaton,
John Milton Gregory, and
Leroy D. Thoman as commissioners. The chief examiner,
Silas W. Burt, was a long-time reformer who had been Arthur's opponent when the two men worked at the New York Custom House. The commission issued its first rules in May 1883; by 1884, half of all postal officials and three-quarters of the
Customs Service jobs were to be awarded by merit. That year, Arthur expressed satisfaction with the new system, praising its effectiveness "in securing competent and faithful public servants and in protecting the appointing officers of the Government from the pressure of personal importunity and from the labor of examining the claims and pretensions of rival candidates for public employment." The Chinese Exclusion Act attempted to stop all Chinese immigration into the United States for ten years, with exceptions for diplomats, teachers, students, merchants, and travelers. It was widely evaded.
Naval resurgence In the years following the Civil War,
American naval power declined precipitously, shrinking from nearly 700 vessels to just 52, most of which were obsolete. The nation's military focus over the fifteen years before Garfield and Arthur's election had been on the
Indian wars in the
Western United States, rather than the high seas, but as the region was increasingly pacified, many in Congress grew concerned at the poor state of the Navy. Garfield's Secretary of the Navy,
William H. Hunt advocated reform of the Navy. In his 1881 annual message, Arthur advocated a stronger Navy. He gave full authority to his new Secretary of Navy
William E. Chandler, Hunt's successor. Chandler, an aggressive administrator, purged the Navy of wood-and-canvas warship supporters and created the
Naval War College. Chandler appointed an advisory board to prepare a report on modernization, whose goal was to create a Navy that would protect America thousands of miles away, rather than just coastal waters. Based on the suggestions in the report, Congress appropriated funds, signed into law by Arthur, for the construction of three steel
protected cruisers (
Atlanta,
Boston, and
Chicago) and an armed dispatch-steamer (
Dolphin), collectively known as the
ABCD Ships or the
Squadron of Evolution. The contracts to build the ABCD ships were all awarded to the low bidder,
John Roach & Sons of
Chester, Pennsylvania, even though Roach once employed Secretary Chandler as a lobbyist. Democrats turned against the "New Navy" projects and, when they won control of the
48th Congress, refused to appropriate funds for seven more steel warships. Even without the additional ships, the state of the Navy improved when, after several construction delays, the last of the new ships entered service in 1889. Chandler scrapped costly outdated vessels, exclaiming he did his "best work in destroying the old navy". During Arthur's term, the U.S. Signal Corps promoted the
Lady Franklin Bay Expedition, a scientific polar expedition to the Arctic. During the expedition, two members of the crew reached a new
Farthest North record, but of the original twenty-five men, only seven survived to return.
Civil rights pressed civil rights in Virginia Like his Republican predecessors, Arthur struggled with the question of how his party was to challenge the Democrats in
the South and how, if at all, to protect the civil rights of black southerners. Since the end of
Reconstruction, conservative white Democrats (or "
Bourbon Democrats") had regained power in the South, and the Republican party dwindled rapidly as their primary supporters in the region, blacks,
were disenfranchised. One crack in the
solidly Democratic South emerged with the growth of a new party, the
Readjusters, in Virginia. Having won an election in that state on a platform of more education funding (for black and white schools alike) and abolition of the
poll tax and the
whipping post, many northern Republicans saw the Readjusters as a more viable ally in the South than the moribund southern Republican party. Arthur agreed, and directed the federal patronage in Virginia through the Readjusters rather than the Republicans. He followed the same pattern in other Southern states, forging coalitions with independents and
Greenback Party members. Some black Republicans felt betrayed by the pragmatic gambit, but others (including
Frederick Douglass and ex-Senator
Blanche K. Bruce) endorsed the administration's actions, as the Southern independents had more liberal racial policies than the Democrats. Arthur's coalition policy was only successful in Virginia, however, and by 1885 the Readjuster movement began to collapse with the election of a Democratic president. Other federal action on behalf of blacks was equally ineffective: when the Supreme Court struck down the
Civil Rights Act of 1875 in the
Civil Rights Cases (1883), Arthur expressed his disagreement with the decision in a message to Congress, but was unable to persuade Congress to pass any new legislation in its place. Arthur did, however, effectively intervene to overturn a
court-martial ruling against a black
West Point cadet,
Johnson Whittaker, after the
Judge Advocate General of the Army,
David G. Swaim, found the prosecution's case against Whittaker to be illegal and based on racial bias. The administration faced a different challenge in the West, where the
LDS Church was under government pressure to stop the practice of
polygamy in
Utah Territory. Garfield had believed polygamy was criminal behavior and was morally detrimental to family values, and Arthur's views were, for once, in line with his predecessor's. In 1882, he signed the
Edmunds Act into law; the legislation made polygamy a federal crime, barring polygamists both from public office and the right to vote.
Native American policy The Arthur administration was challenged by changing relations with western
Native American tribes. The
American Indian Wars were winding down, and public sentiment was shifting toward more favorable treatment of Native Americans. Arthur urged Congress to increase funding for Native American education, which it did in 1884, although not to the extent he wished. He also favored a move to the
allotment system, under which individual Native Americans, rather than tribes, would own land. Arthur was unable to convince Congress to adopt the idea during his administration but, in 1887, the
Dawes Act changed the law to favor such a system. The allotment system was favored by liberal reformers at the time, but eventually proved detrimental to Native Americans as most of their land was resold at low prices to white
speculators. During Arthur's presidency, settlers and cattle ranchers continued to encroach on Native American territory. Arthur initially resisted their efforts, but after Secretary of the Interior
Henry M. Teller, an opponent of allotment, assured him that the lands were not protected, Arthur opened up the
Crow Creek Reservation in the
Dakota Territory to settlers by executive order in 1885. Arthur's successor,
Grover Cleveland, finding that title belonged to the Native Americans, revoked Arthur's order a few months later.
Health and travel along with
Philip Sheridan and
Robert Todd Lincoln Shortly after becoming president, Arthur was diagnosed with
Bright's disease, a
kidney ailment now referred to as
nephritis. He attempted to keep his condition private, but by 1883 rumors of his illness began to circulate; he had become thinner and more aged in appearance, and struggled to keep the pace of the presidency. To rejuvenate his health outside the confines of Washington, Arthur and some political friends traveled to Florida in April 1883. The vacation had the opposite effect, and Arthur suffered from intense pain before returning to Washington. Later that year, on the advice of Missouri Senator
George Graham Vest, he visited
Yellowstone National Park. Reporters accompanied the presidential party, helping to publicize the new
National Park system. The Yellowstone trip was more beneficial to Arthur's health than his Florida excursion, and he returned to Washington refreshed after two months of travel.
1884 presidential election As the
1884 presidential election approached, James G. Blaine was considered the favorite for the Republican nomination, but Arthur, too, contemplated a run for a full term as president. In the months leading up to the
1884 Republican National Convention, however, Arthur began to realize that neither faction of the Republican party was prepared to give him their full support: the Half-Breeds were again solidly behind Blaine, while Stalwarts were undecided; some backed Arthur, with others considering Senator
John A. Logan of Illinois. Reform-minded Republicans, friendlier to Arthur after he endorsed civil service reform, were still not certain enough of his reform credentials to back him over Senator
George F. Edmunds of Vermont, who had long favored their cause. Business leaders supported him, as did Southern Republicans who owed their jobs to his control of the patronage, but by the time they began to rally around him, Arthur had decided against a serious campaign for the nomination. He kept up a token effort, believing that to drop out would cast doubt on his actions in office and raise questions about his health, but by the time the convention began in June, his defeat was assured. Blaine led on the first ballot, and by the fourth ballot he had a majority of 541 votes, while Arthur only received 207. Arthur telegraphed his congratulations to Blaine and accepted his defeat with equanimity. He played no role in the 1884 campaign, which Blaine would later blame for his loss that November to the Democratic nominee, New York governor
Grover Cleveland.
Judicial appointments Arthur made appointments to fill two vacancies on the
United States Supreme Court. The first vacancy arose in July 1881 with the death of
Associate Justice Nathan Clifford, a Democrat who had been a member of the Court since before the Civil War. Arthur nominated
Horace Gray, a distinguished jurist from the
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to replace him, and the nomination was easily confirmed. Gray would serve on the Court for over 20 years until resigning in 1902. The second vacancy occurred when Associate Justice
Ward Hunt retired in January 1882. Arthur first nominated his old political boss,
Roscoe Conkling; he doubted that Conkling would accept, but felt obligated to offer a high office to his former patron. The Senate confirmed the nomination but, as expected, Conkling declined it, the last time a confirmed nominee declined an appointment. Senator George Edmunds was Arthur's next choice, but he declined to be considered. Instead, Arthur nominated
Samuel Blatchford, who had been a judge on the
Second Circuit Court of Appeals for the prior four years. Blatchford accepted, and his nomination was approved by the Senate within two weeks. Blatchford served on the Court until his death in 1893. ==Post-presidency (1885–1886)==