Unexpected President

Chester A. Arthur was a highly effective political lacky who became wealthy supporting New York political boss Roscoe Conkling. When James Garfield got the dark horse, compromise Republican nomination for president in 1880 instead of the nomination of Grant for a third term that Conkling was supporting, Conkling's lacky Chester A. Arthur was selected for VP to pacify Conkling and attempt to unite the sharply divided Republican party. Arthur was not at all qualified and his performance during his three and a half years as president place him as the second worst president in America's history. Strangely, most presidential historians rate Arthur above that ineffective series of presidents between Van Buran and Lincoln, but that's only because Arthur was not nearly as bad as everyone feared when Garfield died. It's quite an accomplishment for a biographer to produce such an outstanding biography about such a bad president.

There are three challenges confronting this book. The first challenge is historiographical: It probably didn’t need to be written. Not much in the way of new evidence has been uncovered since Thomas Reeves’s “Gentleman Boss” some 30 years ago. So Arthur’s life doesn’t really require reassessing at this point. Still, we live in a different time than that in which Reeves wrote, and every generation should retell old stories through its own lens. In this case, Greenberger’s lens focuses on a two things: first, Arthur’s rise as a machine politician; second, the “ordinary young woman who believed in him.” They serve as a literary device to justify a retelling of Arthur’s life.

The device presents a dual contradiction. One contrasts Arthur’s corrupt machine days, in which he was an ardent supporter of the spoils system. Yet his major claim to presidential fame is that, having become vice president through machine politics and then succeeded to the top office on Garfield’s assassination, Arthur signed the civil service reform bill that accelerated the end of the spoils system. (This gives a double meaning to him as an “unexpected president.”) The other contrast is that the emotion expressed by Julia Sand, the ordinary woman, is an odd complement to the Arthur persona the book presents. She has more of a full, well-developed personhood, while he comes across as two-dimensional, going from event to event without really participating in any of them.

That the book so often feels like only a narrative of select bland stories reflects the second challenge. There simply isn’t a whole lot of material out there on which to base a biography of Arthur. Greenberger warns us of this in the “Author’s Note” at the beginning. The lack of information is because Arthur destroyed most of his correspondence and other papers that could have been useful in understanding him. But that’s the issue; why did he do that? The obvious answer is that if we had the documents, we would know why he wanted them destroyed. Greenberger would then have written the deeper evaluation I want to read.

Clearly, Arthur did not want history to understand him, or perhaps understand what he did. If he had something to hide, it must have been more than merely the fact that he was a Conkling machine operator because everyone knew that. No, there was something else he didn’t want us to know, possibly personal, or emotional — or sensational? Maybe he was closer to Garfield’s murder than is thought. Or maybe he was just a jerk. Or maybe documents would have shown that he wasn’t very smart, or interesting, and the evidence would demonstrate that he was exactly as flat and superficial as he comes across in Greenberger’s account.

So the reason there isn’t much evidence about Arthur is the very reason I would like to get to know him further than what we have, and I wish the author had gone deeper, if he could have. In fact, there are a lot of places where I felt he could have looked further. For example, the Pendleton Act that accelerated the end of the spoils system. Greenberger could have spent much more space on this, even without reference to Arthur’s signature. The reader would have benefited from several more pages of additional history — the background, the debates, the winners and losers, the results, and so on — of that bill. The book is, after all, a life *and* times, and a deeper look at the times (political and social) might have helped elucidate the life.

Of course, doing all that would have made the Arthur we know something of a lesser character in his own story. At times the book reads like that anyway. It sets various players and circumstances in shallow orbit around a man who seems at times as though he’s not really there. Chester Arthur is a (very expensive) empty suit.

As for Julia Sand, it’s really unclear what role she played in Arthur’s surprise discovery of doing right because we have nothing from Arthur or anyone else on that. It’s tempting to think that this is exactly what he wanted to hide: that it was a random woman who helped him achieve an ethical epiphany. But it is more likely that we have nothing because there was nothing. It doesn’t seem he ever wrote her back. If there had been letters from him, she would have saved them. So her presence in the narrative shows that Arthur’s role in history as a (mostly) unremarkable president is supplemented by the fact that he was a mostly unremarkable man. Still, she is the most sympathetic and nuanced person here.

But my critiques are only really meaningful if you want more than what the author gives. If you don’t know anything about Arthur, the book serves as a good introduction. It’s readable, and written for anyone — a pleasant weekend diversion. The author is by profession a writer, not a historian, so while his Arthur lacks depth, such depth is not really necessary to enjoy the read.

The third challenge was presented by another reviewer, showing obvious similarity between Greenberger’s wording and that of Reeves from 30 years ago. I no longer have my own Reeves, so I can’t comment directly on the accusation of plagiarism, but if the reviewer is correct, then Greenberger’s writing is at best sloppy and at worst a deception that makes one wonder about his other work. The author needs to address this issue, probably here in reply to that reviewer, and in print through comment and revision should Arthur earn a new edition.

I read the sample of this bio before I went further. 3/4 of it was about life in New York and the spoils system. It had a smattering of President Arthurs's life.
How Arthur was Roscoe Conkling's puppet at the Custom House.
I had to skim over a lot of the chapters as it was boring!
240 plus pages of boring !
Sorry just my opinion

The Unexpected President: The Life and Times of Chester A. Arthur by Scott S. Greenberger is a biography recounting the life of America’s 21st President. Mr. Greenberger is a published author, and the editor of the news website Stateline.

The first time I heard of Chester A. Arthur was when I read an article in a Men’s Journal about manly presidents (at the time when it was still printed). I believe it was memorable because Mr. Arthur was given last place, much of it because of his insistence on having an indoor bathroom.

The Unexpected President: The Life and Times of Chester A. Arthur by Scott S. Greenberger recounts the important events in his life, as well as his rise to the highest office in the land. A political functionary who suddenly found himself in a place he never wanted.

Arthur was a lawyer, who successfully sued the Third Avenue Railway on behalf of Elizabeth Jennings Graham. Mrs. Graham, an upstanding African-American citizen was denied a seat. A high-profile case for a young lawyer, which helped lead to the desegregation of New York City’s public transportation.

As a NY political functionary, in an era of political patronage, Arthur held the post of customs collector for the Port of New York. This was an extremely powerful position, appointed by President Grant, with the nudge of Roscoe Conkling, NY’s political boss. Arthur was assistant quartermaster general of New York in the Civil War and rose to the rank of Brigadier General. Arthur was removed from his post by President Hayes, attempting to reform the spoils system.

During the 1880 Presidential election, James Garfield surprised everyone, himself included to get the nomination. Chester A. Arthur was selected to be his running mate, once again, surprising everyone including himself. As we all know, President Garfield was assassinated shortly after his election.

I always maintained that people see things differently once they’re the ones in charge, and Arthur was no different. Once sitting in that big White House, in that oval room, behind that big desk, he alienated machine politics. He signed legislation that forced government jobs to be distributed on merit and not political connections. And to the chagrin of many, also prohibited obligatory political donations from employees.
But what about the book?

I enjoyed this book, despite the lack of documents left to us by Arthur. He destroyed all his papers towards the end of his life. The few documents we do have, for example, his correspondence with Julia Sand, a handicapped New Yorker, were because she kept them. The letters fill out some of the book but frankly aren’t that interesting.

The book simply tells of significant events in Arthur’s life, and what was going on elsewhere. However, I felt that there was little insight by the author about Arthur. This is not the author’s fault, of course, but other biographies I read have much more source material which makes insights into the subject possible, as well as more enjoyable.

There are very few books about President Arthur, I’m glad I read this biography and learned more about him. The presidency years are around a sixth of the book, which I found strange. I still don’t know what made Arthur the man different from Arthur the President, but the story itself is certainly fascinating.

Chester A. Arthur was a little known president who only inherited his role when James Garfield was murdered. There are few biographies on him, but I think the author has shown a side of Arthur that was hidden from the public. He was the son of a Baptist preacher who made a fortune in the public service. After the assination of his partner, he decided to honor Garfield by instituting reform of the civil service by allowing a more professional assessment of candidates for appointed office. He went against his own people and friends in instituting this approach. Of course, he paid the political price by not being nominated again by his own party.

This is a nice short biography of a man who had political courage, something sadly lacking in Washington today.

Who would have thought that a biography of the obscure President Chester Arthur would be such a page-turner? And it would make a great movie. An idealistic young civil rights lawyer falls into a life of political corruption and does it well, and then, through an unlikely series of events, becomes a president for whom no one voted, and the nation holds its nose in disgust. Then he rediscovers his idealism. Unlikely and amazing.

Only 20 percent or so of this breezy, journalistic book is about Arthur's presidency: most of it is about Arthur's pre-presidential life as a New York political fixer. Arthur was seemingly happy as Vice President, a job that required him to do nothing but occasionally act as a political intermediary between President Garfield (who apparently favored a nonpartisan civil service) and his old friends in New York's Republican machine (who supported a patronage system). However, as President, he began to suffer both mentally (from what seems like depression) and physically (from the illness that eventually killed him).

The book seems mostly based on news stories about Arthur, and has lots of pointless guesses about what Arthur felt, and about the impact letters from a stalker-ish invalid had upon Arthur.

The author does mention the two major pieces of legislation signed by Arthur: the Pendleton Act (which created the modern civil service) and the Chinese Exclusion Act (which excluded Chinese from America for 10 years). But he doesn't really explain why Arthur signed the latter. However, he does devote more time to the former.

FIRST LINE REVIEW: "The 'St. John' sliced through the last wisps of haze and steamed south toward the Canal Street pier, where a messenger stood with a telegram clutched in his damp fingers." A telegram that would change the course of Chester Arthur in many ways. This was an unexpected pleasure, reading about the "unexpected president" who know one wanted to fill the vacated seat held by Garfield. Fascinating tale of the "turn-around," proving that people can change for the better.

I decided to start a project to read all Presidential bio's (t lest those Presidents I had not previously read about). I', Up to Arthur, one of those vgue presients between Grant and Roosevelt.

This was exceptionally well recoursed and written. It does have a novel-like feel to it. His coverage of Arthur brought new facts to light which both raised and lowered my estimation of his presidency. A good adition to the sries!