Category Archives: Chester A. Arthur

Rutherford B. Hayes at South Mountain

14 Friday Sep 2018

Posted by in Chester A. Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Incorporating New York (book manuscript project), Roscoe Conkling, Rutherford B. Hayes, Theodore Roosevelt Sr (Father), Ulysses S. Grant (General and President)

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Rutherford B. Hayes was wounded at the Battle of South Mountain on this date in 1862. South Mountain is not as well known as it should be because it took place three days prior to the Battle of Antietam. Historians, accurately or not, usually interpret it not as its own set piece but as the prelude to the bloody day at Sharpsburg. That is entirely understandable but has also lessened the focus on the events of September 14. Hayes at the time was an officer in the 23rd Ohio. He and his men were eager to avenge the loss at Second Bull Run and were spoiling for a fight. They found it at Fox’s Gap, where Hayes received his wounds early in the morning. Of course he eventually recovered fully and became a general before entering the world of politics after the war.

Rutherford B. Hayes, seen here as a major in 1861, was wounded at the Battle of South Mountain on September 14, 1862.

In August 1885 now former president Rutherford B. Hayes attended Ulysses. S. Grant’s funeral. There too among the many other dignitaries was President Cleveland and former president Chester A. Arthur. I came across an interesting old newspaper article the other day that claimed that Arthur and Hayes were not selected as honorary pallbearers to avoid Hayes’s involvement in such a capacity. I have no idea if that is conjecture or if the writer of that piece in the 1880s had more information to go on. The standard narrative of the funeral is that former high-ranking officers were selected from the North and South as a reconciliationist gesture to aid in the reuniting of the country. Of course Arthur and Hayes had both been Civil War generals in their own right, so that theory would not necessarily preclude them from participating in such a capacity.

Arthur would have been a good fit for honorary pallbearer. he had been a long time Grant supporter, an ally and protégé of Grant ally Roscoe Conkling, and the first leader of the Grant Monument Association. Hayes’s involvement would have been a little more complicated. He had tried remove Arthur as Collector of the Port of New York in 1877 and replace him with Theodore Roosevelt Sr. That did not come to pass, in large part because of the political machinations of Senator Conkling. If the idea was to keep Hayes out then the idea of excluding Arthur would make sense: to ask one ex-president to be honorary pallbearer would mean having to ask the other. Arthur himself was a forgiving sort who rarely held grudges for long. A good illustration of that is that he attended Theodore Roosevelt Sr.’s funeral in February 1878 just weeks after the Collector controversy. So if a decision was made on Hayes it was probably made by someone else. Both former presidents did participate in the funeral, riding in carriages in the procession. The decision-making in how to incorporate Arthur and Hayes into Grant’s funeral is a rabbit hole worth going down. I am sure the answer is out there somewhere in the literature on the Gilded Age.

(image/Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center)

No more of those hideous monuments!

19 Sunday Aug 2018

Posted by in Chester A. Arthur, General Grant National Memorial (NPS), Monuments and Statuary, Ulysses S. Grant (General and President), Winfield Scott Hancock

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Puck magazine, August 19, 1885

I hope everyone is having a good weekend. Blogging will continue to be light for the next week as I squeeze out some last days of R&R before the academic year begins a week from tomorrow. We visited the Newseum in Washington yesterday. I will have more to say about it when I get back from vacation. Today I wanted to share this centerfold from the August 19, 1885 edition of Puck magazine. Grant had died three weeks previously and his funeral was now eleven days in the past when this hit the newsstands. Literally within hours after his death, discussion had begun about the size, location and type of monument he might receive. There was no shortage of ideas; suggestions ranging from the sublime to the surreal were pouring in from across the country.

It is difficult to tell how cheeky or sincere the Puck editors are being here with their recommendation in the lower right hand corner. My favorite part of the cartoon is the statue of William Seward on the left. The statue still stands where it was dedicated in Madison Square Park in 1876. President Grant himself donated to the construction of the statue. Chester Arthur, Grant’s appointee as Collector of the Port of New York, and Winfield Scott Hancock both attended the Seward dedication and also participated in Grant’s funeral nine years later, a few weeks before this Puck cartoon’s release. Arthur himself was the first leader of the Grant Monument Association but, like Hancock, died in 1886 the year after Grant did. The Grant Monument Association and American people would spend the next twelve years hashing out the scope and design of what became Grant’s Tomb.

(image/Library of Congress)

Brooks Brothers, 1818-2018

11 Saturday Aug 2018

Posted by in Chester A. Arthur, Edwin D. Morgan, Incorporating New York (book manuscript project), New York City, Style

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I was in the city running a few errands and having a little fun yesterday, buying a chambray shirt, renewing my library card at NYPL, and taking in the Brooks Brothers exhibit on display through September 5 in Grand Central Terminal’s Vanderbilt Hall. Brooks Brothers began in 1818 on the more southern portion of Manhattan, where most New Yorkers still lived and worked. Grand Central opened in 1913 and Brooks Brothers opened its now-flagship store across the street at 346 Madison in 1915 to serve the commuting businessmen. It was fortunate for the Great War effort the the spacious train terminal was built when and where it was, accommodating as it did the mass influx of men and material on their way to France.

an October 24, 1861 letter from Assistant Quartermaster Chester A. Arthur letter to Brooks Brothers…

Taking in the Brooks Brothers exhibit was a journey in time and made me a little rueful at how far the once iconic temple of men’s style has fallen. Really it is not all Brooks’s fault; societal changes, many of them for the better, have rendered much of traditional men’s styling obsolete. That said, when they put me in charge of the world, jackets and repp ties will again be required for all men. There were many striking and iconic things to see but two that struck me the most were these. The first is a letter to Brooks Brothers from New York State Assistant Quartermaster Chester Alan Arthur requisitioning 300 overcoats. The letter is from October 24, 1861, three days after the Battle of Ball’s Bluff.

…and a contract signed by the four Brooks brothers and Governor Edwin D. Morgan on August 3, 1861, two weeks after First Bull Run. Note the fabric swabs in the upper right corner.

The second is a contract signed by Governor Edwin D. Morgan two month and a half months earlier. It is a mark of the great import of the transaction that all four actual Brooks brothers signed the document. This came at an important time in the war effort, just two after the fiasco at Bull Run. I write about this moment in the manuscript of Incorporating New York. By early August men like Morgan and Arthur were cleaning up the mess and preparing for what everyone now knew would be a long war. I know the images are not that great, having been taken through the glass in the display case, but note the red wax next to each signature marking it official. Governor Morgan’s is on top and then the four brother’s below. I don’t know for certain but my guess would be that the fabric swabs were included in the contract after earlier incidents of clothiers–including Brooks Brothers–providing the Army with inferior shoddy goods.

Interpreting Grant

11 Friday May 2018

Posted by in Chester A. Arthur, General Grant National Memorial (NPS), Theodore Roosevelt Sr (Father), Ulysses S. Grant (General and President)

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Grant’s Tomb, May 2018

I was in Upper Manhattan this afternoon for a meeting. I took the #1 train to 116th Street and when I emerged to street level Columbia students were packing their belongings into their parents’ cars and heading home for the summer. As I continued along I saw the doors open at Riverside Church and, with about fifteen minutes on my hands, went in to give it a look. As it happened, I stumbled into the Columbia University graduation ceremony, which I could hear and see going on inside the church from the lobby. A student in cap and gown standing in the lobby even asked me if I needed help but I politely said no, wished him well, and went on my way.

The reason I was in the area was because I had a meeting at Grant’s Tomb. As it turns out, I’ll be volunteering there at least over the summer. I am excited about this. I feel that in many ways things have been guiding me towards this for some time. I am already contemplating a number of interpretive possibilities. My first order of business though will be to ground myself in the basics of the site and its historic provenance. I have already just about completed the historic resource study written by a Park Service historian in the early 1980s.

Grant’s Tomb is a good fit because it ties in neatly with my book manuscript about Civil War Era New York City. Theodore Roosevelt Sr, Chester Arthur, Winfield Scott Hancock, Roscoe Conkling, Rutherford B. Hayes: the lives of all of these figures and others intertwined with Grant’s in substantial ways. I feel I’m well-positioned to take this on. I will not be starting until early June but after I do I will have regular updates about what is going on.

The papers of Chester A. Arthur

15 Tuesday Apr 2014

Posted by in Chester A. Arthur, Libraries

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I was back at the Library of Congress today. I was looking for some information about Chester Arthur and so began my search in the Presidential Papers indexes. Arthur, like all of the Gilded Age presidents, has been forgotten by history. This is unfortunate because the chief executives sandwiched in between Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt have more to tell us than we realize. Arthur lived less than ten block from the Roosevelts and knew them well. All were members of the Union League Club for one thing. They were also political friends and foes over the years as circumstances varied.

A portion of what remained of Chester Arthur's papers were stored in his Manhattan home at 123 Lexington Avenue in the 1880s and 1890s before disappearing.

After Arthur’s death a portion of what remained of his papers were stored in his Manhattan home at 123 Lexington Avenue before disappearing for good.

One of the most unfortunate aspects of the Chester Arthur story is that the former president had the bulk of his papers destroyed while he lay on his deathbed. Apparently three trash cans full of material were destroyed the very day before he died in 1886. The family kept a few things while the small remainder was sent from Washington to the basement of his New York City house.

There have been some first rate biographies of Arthur over the years but the full story will never be told. I had known the story of the Arthur Papers for many years, but it was struck home this morning when I saw his index in juxtaposition to Theodore Roosevelt’s.

I took the photo below this morning for comparison. On the left is the full record of Arthur’s papers in the Library of Congress and on the right is Roosevelt’s.

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