Chester Alan Arthur

Republican - New York
1881

A former protégé of New York kingmaker Senator Roscoe Conkling, Chester Arthur broke from his patron and accepted the Republican nomination for the Vice Presidency in 1880. Arthur attempted to make amends and use his new office to help his erstwhile benefactor, but after a series of public rebellions and rebuffed power plays by the Republican party he had previously wielded so much control over, Conkling’s power was now diminished to the extent that not even the aid of a sitting Vice President could help him. Arthur paid dearly for his efforts, though, and was portrayed in the press as a Conkling errand boy who skipped through the statehouse halls in Albany, forever trying to pull strings and open doors for his former mentor.

“THE DELEGATE FROM NEPTUNE CASTS HIS VOTE FOR…” - Arthur’s image problems were only exacerbated on July 2, 1881, when mentally ill attorney Charles J. Guiteau shot Garfield in the back at a Washington D.C. rail station, proclaiming, “I am a Stalwart of the Stalwarts! Arthur is President now!” Naturally, this didn’t play well with anyone who might already have been suspicious of the Stalwart Vice President’s ambitions. In truth, though, Guiteau’s own train had left the station long ago. He’d taken an old speech he’d written in support of Ulysses S. Grant’s bid for the Presidency, entitled “Grant v. Hancock,” and changed its title to “Garfield v. Hancock” after Garfield won the 1880 Republican nomination (Guiteau changed only Grant’s name in the body of the speech, however, thus nonsensically ascribing Grant’s cited achievements to Garfield). He delivered the speech a few times in public, and then credited his own efforts when Garfield was elected President later that year. As such, he felt he was due a job in Garfield’s administration, but was eventually told sternly and personally by Secretary of State James Blaine to go away and not come back. You know, Guiteau decided, this means war. He held Garfield personally responsible for such ingratitude and decided that the Half-Breed President needed to die and the Stalwart Arthur installed in his place.*

“AND GET VINCENT GALLO TO PLAY ME AFTER THEY INVENT MOVIES” - Had he not gone insane and decided to anoint himself Chester Arthur’s kingmaker by murdering James Garfield, there’s no telling where Charles Guiteau could have excelled in life. Consider the care and preparation he put into the Garfield assassination: he studiously selected the firearm he would use—a silver-handled .44 Webley British Bulldog—based on what he thought would look best in a museum after the assassination. He taught himself to shoot and practiced extensively, often in the woods near the White House. He spent several weeks stalking Garfield, carefully selecting the location where he would shoot the President, and even aborted one attempt because he didn’t want the physically fragile Mrs. Garfield to witness her husband’s murder. He reconnoitered the Washington D.C. jail to fully assess its appointments and accommodations, as he knew well he’d be spending a good deal of time there. He even made sure to have his shoes shined while he waited for Garfield at the train station, so he’d look his sharpest when he was apprehended. On the morning of his execution he took time to compose a poem, I Am Going To The Lordy, to read from the gallows.

“WHO DIED AND MADE YOU PRESIDENT?” - Of course, Arthur was never implicated in the assassination. The nattily dressed party man from New York surprised them all, first and foremost by not handing the keys to the government over to that ravenous creature of the machine, Roscoe Conkling, who was sorely disappointed that his boy would have the audacity to try and run his own Presidency. Which Arthur did, with distinction, for the three and a half years after Garfield died, even going so far as to champion Garfield’s civil service reform, which kneecapped the patronage that lo these many years had so handsomely benefited Conkling (as well as Arthur himself).