I have gone round and round with Arthur too many times that I don’t want to do so again, but I can point to a small item of irony, if you are inclined to do as I do and pluck Grant next to Arthur for my pointless Presidents Day exercise.\u00c2\u00a0 As we know, Garfield’s assassin — a Charles J. Guiteau — announced triumphantly upon the shooting, “I am a Stalwart, and Arthur is now President!”\u00c2\u00a0 Hence, the political possibilities of Arthur were limited down to not acting as a Stalwart would.<\/p>\n
The Republican Party had formed with its two wings — the Radical Republicans, upholders of civil rights for the Freedman and desiring a Reconstruction that would overturn the Southern Aristocracy that had been upholding the Slavery tradition — and a conservative wing, seeking conciliation with the old Slave states in reforming the Union.\u00c2\u00a0 The two wings evolved as Radical leaders Sumner and Stevens passed from the political scene into “Stalwarts” and “Half Breeds”.\u00c2\u00a0 Grant’s newly rising Historical reputation rests on his having been the last President to take seriously the rights of the Freedmen, fighting the KKK and Red Shirts — a good part of his negative legacy of corruption with regard to the Southern states rests on the fact that Blacks voting was described in many corners as Corruption — at any rate, the post-Reconstruction governments proved no less corrupt than the “Carpet-baggers” they overturned.\u00c2\u00a0 Grant gave up the ghost of Civil Rights around the seventh year of his presidency, at which point the two wings of the party eased into simply two armies of office seekers.<\/p>\n
Four years later, Grant lost his attempted third term nomination, and to appease Stalwart leader Roscoe Conkling, the Republicans and nominee Garfiled handed the Stalwart machine creation of a post master Chester Arthur the vice-president slot.\u00c2\u00a0 When Garfield was shot, Arthur was rather hemmed in, and threw Conkling under the bus, and signed civil service reform to make the Stalwart \/ Half-Breed fight more irrelevant.\u00c2\u00a0 Thus ended this particular Republican Party factionalization…<\/p>\n
… Almost.\u00c2\u00a0 It continued in the South, where the two factions evolved into the “Black and Tan” faction and the “Lily White” factions — the names telling the crux of who they each were.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Republican nominees bought the factions up as needed, and gave them post-master jobs — eventually President Herbert Hoover would more or less settle the matter by siding with and building up the Lily White factions — though the party remained “on the order of an esoteric masonic lodge and not so much a political party”.<\/p>\n
So, the lesson of plucking Grant and Arthur is somewhat at odds with each other.\u00c2\u00a0 One was supposedly corrupt, but what is corruption — the other the Reformer cleaning up the corruption that was synonmous with Grant.<\/p>\n