subject: The Early Years Of Chester Arthur [print this page] Chester Arthur was the first man born in Vermont to become president. (The only other one was Calvin Coolidge.) Arthur was born on October 5, 1830, in Fairfield, Vermont, a very small town in the northwest part of the state, about forty miles from the Canadian border. It was a farming community, and he was the son of the town's Baptist minister. He attended Union College in Schenectady, New York, studied law, and became a lawyer in New York City when he was 23 years old. As a lawyer, Arthur was quite successful and also attracted some notice. Those were the years just before the Civil War. In the South, nearly four million Negroes were slaves; in the northern states, there was no slavery. Arthur succeeded in freeing a slave who had run away from a southern slave state to the free northern state of New York. It was an important case because there were many runaway slaves and the Fugitive Slave Laws were bitterly argued. When he was 29 years old, Arthur married Miss Ellen Lewis Herndon of Virginia. They had three children, but one died as a baby. The Civil War broke out in 1861, and Chester Arthur joined the militia of New York State. He was promoted finally to the position of quartermaster general, which meant he was in charge of supplying the New York troops with uniforms, food, and other supplies.Chester Arthur, who before his elevation to the Presidency was considered the very epitome of patronage politics, had ashis major accomplishment the reform of the civil service system.
