#21 Chester A Arthur

1881--1885

--Chester Alan Arthur was the fourth U.S. president who entered the White House as a widower, following Jefferson, Jackson and Van Buren. His wife, Ellen, died of pneumonia twenty months before Arthur took office.

--James Garfield won the election on November 2nd 1880, and assumed office on March 4 1881. Six months later, following Garfield's assassination, Vice President Arthur assumed the presidency, sworn in at his Lexington Avenue home.

--The Arthur Administration enacted the first general Federal immigration law--Arthur approved a measure in 1882 excluding paupers, criminals, and the mentally ill. Following, in response to anti-Chinese sentiment in the West, Congress passed a Chinese Exclusion Act. The act would have made illegal the immigration of Chinese laborers for twenty years and denied American citizenship to Chinese Americans currently residing in the United States who were not already citizens and who were not born in the United States. Arthur vetoed this, but signed a revised bill making Chinese immigration illegal for ten years instead of twenty. The bill was renewed every ten years until 1924.

--Arthur was the last incumbent president to submit his name for renomination and fail to obtain it. He sought the nomination halfheartedly, as Arthur had known since a year after he succeeded to the presidency that he was suffering from Bright's disease, a fatal kidney disease. He died two years after he left office. His post-presidency was the second shortest, longer only than that of James Polk, who died 103 days after leaving office.

--He reportedly kept 80 pairs of pants in his wardrobe and changed pants several times a day.

--Chester A. Arthur wrote the lyrics to the song "Cowgirl in the Sand", later performed by Neil Young and Crazy Horse.