One of the few presidents to serve without being elected to the post was remembered Sunday as not only a president but also a war veteran who deserved acknowledgement on Memorial Day.
Like many veterans, President Chester A. Arthur has been largely forgotten. But his grave is decorated every year with the other veterans buried at Albany Rural Cemetery, and it is at his final resting place that members of the Capt. William Dale O'Brien detachment of the Marine Corps League gather on Memorial Sunday to remember all fallen soldiers.
“We gather here at the site of a former commander in chief because he was a veteran. He was a quartermaster general during the Civil War,” said league member George Nealon. “Today we want to remember all veterans . . . he's part of that sister and brotherhood of service that has made our country great.”
Newcomers to the annual event said they came because they were interested in learning about a president who had close ties to the Capital Region.
“I didn't know we had a President Arthur, much less that he was buried here,” said Jill Viola. “I'm hoping to learn a bit of history here.”
Others confessed that they, too, knew nothing about Arthur, many only remembering vaguely that his presidency had something to do with an assassination.
Some also recalled that he reformed civil service, an act that surprised many people in politics at the time.
According to Arthur's official biography, he was a firm believer in the spoils system before becoming vice president to President James Garfield in 1881. He felt hardworking party loyalists deserved political patronage jobs.
But when Garfield was assassinated four months into his term by a supporter who had not been given a job after the election, Arthur had a change of heart. As president, he pushed Congress to reform civil service, requiring among other changes a written exam to determine who would qualify for each position.
His administration also enacted the first general federal immigration law, excluding all “paupers, criminals and lunatics.”
Throughout it all, he kept a secret: He was dying of kidney disease. To keep his political opponents from learning the truth, he even went through the motions of asking the Republican Party to nominate him for a second term. But the party chose James G. Blaine instead, allowing Arthur to leave office at the end of his term and quietly die less than a year later, in 1886.
His body was brought to Menands so that he could be buried near family members and half an hour from his alma mater, Union College.