Thomas Reeves - The Gentleman Boss

FREEDOM AND THE FOUNDATION :
The Fund for the Republic in the Era of McCarthyism (1969)

FOUNDATIONS UNDER FIRE

(Editor)

(1970)

M c CARTHYISM

(Editor)

(1973)

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC .

Copyright 1975 by Thomas C. Reeves
All rights reserved
under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.

Permissions acknowledgments appear on .

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Reeves, Thomas C. (date)
Gentleman boss: the life of Chester Alan Arthur.
Bibliography: .
1. Arthur, Chester Alan, Pres. U.S., 18301886.
I. Title.
E692.R43 973.840924 [B] 747760
eISBN: 978-0-307-82891-0

v3.1

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint privately owned material:

The New York Public Library: For the Silas Burt Papers, Levi P. Morton Papers, and Roscoe Conkling Letters from the Manuscripts and Archives Division, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

Chicago Historical Society: For quotes from David Davis letter to Walter Q. Gresham, June 25, 1884.

New York State Library, Albany: For quotes from the Edwin D. Morgan Papers.

The Historical Society of Wisconsin: For quotations from the Timothy O. Howe Papers.

The Rutherford B. Hayes Library: For quotations from the Hayes Papers.

Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, California: For Letter from Roscoe Conkling to Benjamin Perley Poore: HM 23742.

Charles Pinkerton Jr. and Peyton R. H. Pinkerton: For material from the Charles Pinkerton Collection.

George F. Howe: For quotations from the William Arthur Jr. Papers.

New Hampshire Historical Society: For quotations from the following letters:

Chester A. Arthur to E. D. Morgan, 71272; George W. Marston to Chandler, 91580; James G. Blaine to Chandler, 11282; and Chester A. Arthur to Chandler, 10486.

The New-York Historical Society: For quotes from the Chester A. Arthur, George Bliss, Silas Burt, and Augustus Porter Greene collections.

Anne Eustis Emmet and Margaret Eustis Finley: For quotations from three letters from and to Levi P. Morton: William E. Curtis to Levi P. Morton, 72080; Roscoe Conkling to Levi P. Morton, 8180; and Levi P. Morton to Roscoe Conkling, 3281.

All photographs in this volume are reproduced courtesy of the Library of Congress.

TO KATHLEEN

Formal presidential photograph, 1882

Rev. William Arthur

Chester A. Arthur at about twenty-one

Chester Arthur, James Masters, and Henry Haynesworth

Ellen Herndon Arthur

Mr. and Mrs. Arthur and friends

Vice-President Arthur

President Clevelands inauguration

Thomas C. Platt

James G. Blaine

Arthur in military uniform

Arthur, c. 1859

Edwin D. Morgan

William E. Chandler

Roscoe Conkling

Mary Arthur McElroy

Arthur, in 1882

Julia Sand

T HE POLITICS of late nineteenth-century America have attracted few historians in recent years. Polemicists of the Progressive Era and the Great Depression, amplifying the shrill condemnations and oversimplifications of such contemporary critics as Henry Adams and Lord Bryce, were profoundly influential in persuading succeeding generations of scholars that the Gilded Age required little study. Scores of major political figures of the period lack competent, up-to-date biographies, and much work remains to be done on party structures, campaign financing, voter behavior, and so on. Even the Presidents of the era have been generally ignored and forgotten. Chester A. Arthur? The name brings smiles. One might as well consider Rutherford B. Hayes or Benjamin Harrison, other supposedly nondescript, undistinguished, bland, bearded politicos of serious interest surely to no one in a swiftly changing era that has long known powerful Chief Executives, multibillion-dollar budgets, and a stupendous array of national and international responsibilities.

Disinterest alone does not account for Arthurs obscurity, for he scrupulously attempted to keep aloof from the press during his years in politics and ordered the great bulk of his personal and official papers destroyed shortly before his death. Many of his closest associates took similar steps to protect themselves from historians. Until now only a single scholarly biography of perhaps our least-known President has appeared, published in 1934, and fewer than a half-dozen articles. One leading encyclopedia carries an account of Arthurs life that contains twenty-one factual errors.

In December 1967, a graduate student of mine at the University of Colorado, who doubled as an attorney, broached the possibility of studying some documents owned by a client. He was unsure of the origin of the papers and could say only that they had something to do with President Arthur. I smiled and said I would like to see them. Several months later I undertook their examination and discovered that they were Arthurs personal letterbooks from the campaign of 1880a contest in which the New Yorker was both the vice-presidential candidate of the Republican Party and chairman of the New York Republican State Committee. The Arthur I encountered was decidedly not the mildly bumbling, ineffectual, pristine dandy common to traditional biographical accounts.

My curiosity aroused, I began to pursue other Arthur materials that had come to light in recent years. Library research disclosed relevant collections at the New York Historical Society and the Library of Congress, and Arthur letters were scattered in archives all across the country. Papers of Cabinet members and close friends had also surfaced, and it was not long before I realized that I was faced with a fascinating, intensely human, and significant story. A biography was inevitable. The search led to the former Presidents grandson, who owned boxes bulging with family documents and photographs, and had many stories to share of his fathers life in the White House. President Arthurs son-in-law soon turned up, alert and witty at ninety-nine, and he too possessed important historical materials. Portions of Arthurs Civil War correspondence were found in Cheyenne, Wyoming. His family Bible and White House scrap-books were in New York City. A rare and valuable collection of newspaper clippings once belonging to Arthurs nieces was discovered lying open to the public in the tiny replica of the Arthur birthplace in Fairfield, Vermont. And so it went. Knowledge usually dissolves indifference, and in this case the experience was exceptionally rewarding.