Chester A. Arthur: The 21st US President, The Great Metamorphosis, and the Steel Navy

1. Vermont Abolitionist Roots & The Landmark Jennings Streetcar Case

Chester Alan Arthur was born on October 5, 1829, in Fairfield, Vermont, to an abolitionist Baptist preacher from Northern Ireland. Graduating from Union College in 1848, Arthur studied law in New York City.

In 1854, the young lawyer represented Elizabeth Jennings Graham, a Black schoolteacher who had been violently ejected from a whites-only streetcar in Manhattan. Arthur won a historic verdict before the Brooklyn Supreme Court, winning $225 in damages and establishing the landmark ruling that desegregated all public transit streetcars in New York City.

4. The Pendleton Civil Service Act (1883): Abolishing the Spoils System

When Garfield's assassin declared he killed the president to make Arthur president, the nation feared Arthur would hand the federal government over to corrupt spoilsmen. Instead, Arthur underwent one of the most stunning moral transformations in presidential history.

Breaking with his former boss Roscoe Conkling, President Arthur championed and signed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act on January 16, 1883. The act outlawed political campaign kickbacks from federal workers, created the bipartisan Civil Service Commission, and established competitive examinations for federal jobs, laying the foundation for modern professional government. Publisher Alexander McClure famously remarked: "No man ever entered the Presidency so profoundly and widely distrusted as Chester Alan Arthur, and no man ever retired... more generally respected."

5. The "Father of the Modern Steel Navy": The ABCD Warships

Finding the US Navy consisting of rotting, obsolete Civil War-era wooden sailing vessels, Arthur established the Naval Advisory Board and signed legislation authorizing construction of America's first modern steel cruisers: the USS Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, and the dispatch boat Dolphin (the "ABCD Ships"). This revolutionized American maritime industry and laid the groundwork for the Great White Fleet.

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