“Chet Arthur? President of the United States? Good God!” was spoken in 1881.

Why is Chester Arthur relevant in 2024? He is the LAST incumbent president not to receive his party’s nomination and would have accepted it. When President Biden withdrew from the race on July 21st, voters were reminded how Lyndon Johnson dropped out in 1968, and perhaps also that Harry Truman did in 1952. The very verbose (not) Calvin Coolidge additionally did in 1928 simply issuing the statement “I do not choose to run for president in 1928.”

From 1888 to 2020, America has held 34 presidential elections. The incumbents won 15 times, lost 8 times, were term limited five times, and those three men mentioned dropped out. Who was Chester Arthur, an obscure but unique chief executive.

Arthur was born in northern Vermont in 1829. His birthplace was near enough to the Canadian border that allegations that he was born there, not the U.S., began in 1880 and have persisted, and a book was even written about it. “Birtherism” began then, not the 21st century.

“Chet” Arthur was never elected to any office except the vice-presidency in 1880. After dark horse James Garfield was selected as the Republican nominee on the 36th ballot. Arthur was chosen as a running mate to mollify one of the New York political factions and secure its 35 electoral votes, nearly ten percent of the total. He was known as a fashionable dresser and spared no expense on clothing or maintenance of his hair, including his whiskers.

He was a very skilled political operative and essentially managed the Garfield Arthur campaign to a very, very narrow victory. After their inauguration, the two men were not particularly close. On July 2nd, everything changed when Garfield was shot at a Washington DC train station.

For seventy-nine excruciating and sad days, the president suffered. There was no 25th Amendment yet, and Arthur could do little except wait. Finally, on September 19th, Garfield died after losing nearly eighty pounds. Chester Alan Arthur became the 21st President of the United States.

He proved to be a better chief executive than expected, but the bar was set rather low. The onetime civil servant signed the Pendleton Act, which reformed the very system Arthur had thrived in. Arthur sits in the middle of the pack in a 2024 survey of historians ranking the presidents by ability, which may surprise people.

Arthur became his own man once he became president and broke with his friend and political associate in New York Roscoe Conkling. That earned him the respect of the nation, but would prove his undoing in his attempt at securing the GOP nomination in 1884 where Maine’s James G. Blaine was the favorite. Another split in New York’s party factions- the Half Breeds and Stalwarts (his side), also affected Arthur’s chances. In the Republican convention of 1884, the president finished second on all four ballots to Blaine, the nominee, who would lose to New York Grover Cleveland in November.

Arthur, a widower (his wife died suddenly in early 1880), saw his health decline during his presidency. He had been diagnosed with Bright’s disease (which affected the kidneys and at that time was usually fatal), possibly from too many rich meals and a lavish lifestyle. Chester Arthur died in November 1886, living less than two years after his presidency ended. He was the second youngest ex-president at the time of his passing.

Take one more look, the man had some awesome mutton chops.