Copyright Copyright © 2017 by Scott S. Greenberger Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights. Da Capo Press Hachette Book Group 1290 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10104 www.dacapopress.com First Edition: September 2017 Published by Da Capo Press, an imprint of Perseus Books, LLC, a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher. Print book interior design by Amy Quinn Library of Congress Cataloging-in- Publication Data Names: Greenberger, Scott S., author. Title: The unexpected president : The life and times of Chester A. Arthur/ Scott S. Greenberger. Description: Boston, MA : Da Capo Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017014581 | ISBN 9780306823893 (hardback) | ISBN 9780306823909 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Arthur, Chester Alan, 1829–1886. | Arthur, Chester Alan, 1829–1886—Political and social views. | Presidents— United States—Biography. | United States—Politics and government—1881– 1885. | BISAC: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY Political. | HISTORY United States / 19th Century. Classification: LCC E692 .G74 2017 | DDC 973.84092 [B]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017014581 ISBNs: 978-0-30682389-3 (hardcover), 978-0-30682390-9 (ebook) LSC-C E3-20170727-JV-PC Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Author’s Note Epigraph Prologue 1 Elder Arthur 2 “This Is the Place” 3 Bleeding Kansas 4 Playing the Game 5 Barracks and Blankets 6 The Shoddy Aristocracy 7 The Lordly Roscoe 8 The Collector 9 From Grant to Hayes 10 His Fraudulency the President 11 “The One I Loved Dearest” 12 Dark Horse 13 “A Great Deal of Soap” 14 “An Ugly Wound” 15 A Mysterious Correspondent 16 “He Is Our President” 17 “A Splendid Henry V” 18 A Surprise Visit 19 An Attack in Savannah 20 “Between Two Stools” 21 “Fame Is a Bubble” Epilogue Photos Acknowledgments Bibliography Notes Index For Michele Author’s Note CHESTER ARTHUR, OUR nation’s 21st president, frequently lands on lists of the country’s most obscure chief executives. Few Americans know anything about him, and even history buffs mostly recall him for his distinctive facial hair. People who flock to Arthur’s former home in Manhattan, a brownstone that still stands, typically come to shop at a store that sells Indian and Middle Eastern spices and foods, not to see the only site in New York City where a president took the oath of office. Arthur’s statue in Madison Square Park, erected by his friends in 1899, is ignored. Arthur’s fascinating and surprising story had a lasting impact on the country—so why have we forgotten it? The first reason is that Arthur rose to power and served in the White House during an era that is a bit foggy in the minds of most Americans. We frequently dissect and rehash the events of the Civil War (and rightly so), but we often ignore the crucial decades immediately following the war. We shouldn’t. The social, political, and economic changes that shook America during the 1870s and 1880s were the birth pangs of the society we have today. Arthur became president 136 years ago, but the era Mark Twain dubbed the “Gilded Age” doesn’t feel distant at a time when political corruption, economic inequality, and corporate malfeasance are once again shaking people’s faith in the American experiment. The second reason is that Arthur had a deep distrust of the press and paid little attention to cultivating his public image, either for his contemporaries or for posterity. Newspapers treated him harshly before he assumed the presidency, and he remained wary of reporters even after attitudes shifted in his favor. But the main reason Arthur’s story is unknown is that he left little behind, creating a challenge for historians. Shortly before he died, he ordered most of his letters, journals, and private papers to be destroyed, for reasons that will be revealed in the pages ahead. For many years, Arthur was represented in the Library of Congress by a single document, a letter he had written during the Civil War and that the library purchased in 1902. Painstaking work by chief librarians over many years gradually added to the holdings, but the collection is meager compared to what is available for most presidents. In writing this book, I have relied on the letters and papers that do survive, together with the memories—published and unpublished—of the men and women who knew Arthur and the wonderfully vivid descriptions that filled the newspapers of the time. Anything between quotation marks comes from a letter, memoir, or other written document, and when I ascribe feelings to Arthur I do so based on his own statements or those of the people around him. Despite the relative scarcity of writings by Arthur himself, I hope I have done justice to his story. It is the tale of a good man who veered off the right path, but rediscovered his better self with the help of an ordinary young woman who believed in him. Garfield, Arthur, Harrison, and Hayes… were the lost Americans: their gravely vacant and bewhiskered faces mixed, melted, swam together in the sea-depths of a past intangible, immeasurable, and unknowable. THOMAS WOLFE, “The Four Lost Men”