25-06-2025
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
Give Chester Arthur His Due
In his review of the third season of 'The Gilded Age' (Arts in Review, June 20), John Anderson refers to the 'undistinguished political era of Chester Alan Arthur.' Yet Arthur's less than one full-term in office (he succeeded James A. Garfield, who died in September 1881, after having been shot in July), included major civil-service reform and naval expansion. It saw the Pendleton Act of 1883, which established the Civil Service Commission; the establishment of the Office of Naval Intelligence (1882), the oldest military intelligence service in the country; and the creation of the Naval War College (1884). The main black mark against his administration was the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), which he signed reluctantly after having vetoed an earlier version.
The same period also saw the entry into politics of another New Yorker whose career would be anything but 'undistinguished:' Theodore Roosevelt.
