User:Arne Eickenberg/Chester Arthur

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Bibliography

Concerns about Chester Arthur's Presidential ineligibility

Allegations of foreign birth

Arthur P. Hinman: The initial controversy

During Chester Arthur's Vice-Presidential campaign alongside James A. Garfield, Arthur P. Hinman, an attorney who had been hired by members of the Democratic party, explored the "rumors that Arthur had been born in a foreign country, was [therefore] not a natural-born citizen of the United States, and was thus, by the Constitution, ineligible for the vice-presidency." When Hinman's initial claim of a birth in Ireland failed to gain traction, he maintained instead that Arthur was born in Canada and lobbied the press for support while searching in vain for Arthur's birth records. Hinman's allegations were widely known due to several national publications. In 1881 the New York Sun maintained after an independent inquest that Hinman's claims were unsubstantiated, whereas Samuel J. Tilden stated in 1882 that the evidence showed that Arthur was Canadian-born and was therefore a usurper to the Presidency.

Chester Arthur's responses

1880: The Brooklyn Eagle debate

Chester Arthur continuously gave false information on his family's history, thereby obscuring the circumstances and chronology of his own birth. Arthur knew of Hinman and his allegations and defended himself against the original claim that he was not a native-born citzen by stating that his father "came to this country when he was eighteen years of age, and resided here several years before he was married", whereas in reality his father William emigrated from Ireland to Canada at the age of 22 or 23. Arthur further claimed that "his mother was a New Englander who had never left her native country—a statement every member of the Arthur family knew was untrue." In a second interview he repeated some of the historical revisions and further stated that his father had been forty years of age at the time of his birth, which was revealed by Hinman to be a lie. Furthermore Arthur falsified the year of his birth for ambiguous reasons (see below).

1881: Arthur's post-election speech

In what is possibly Chester Arthur's only recorded public speech, held in February 1881 before his inauguration, the Vice-President-elect referred to the past election campaign and declined to comment on his alleged foreign places of birth to avoid potential negative repercussions from the press:

I don't think we had better go into the minute secrets of the campaign, so far as I know them, because I see the reporters present, who are taking it all down; and, while there is no harm in talking about some things after the election is over, you cannot tell what they make of it, because the inauguration has not yet taken place, and while I don't mean to say anything about my birthplace, whether it was in Canada or elsewhere, still, if I should get to going about the secrets of the campaign, there is no saying what I might say to make trouble between now and the 4th of March.

Hinman's new theory: Chester Abell Arthur

After Arthur had become President due to Garfield's assassination, Hinman resumed his research and published a booklet that was aimed at casting doubt on Arthur's presidential eligibility during his re-election campaign. Since President Arthur was disowned by his party and did not run for a second term, Hinman's pamphlet went widely unnoticed.

XYZ: Content of Hinman's book

Primary sources and historiography

No member of the Arthur family is referenced in the town records of Fairfield, Vermont. There are also no official records of Arthur's birth in Vermont, because neither the state nor the town of Fairfield began receiving and archiving birth records before 1857. The Arthurs' family bible provides the only written primary source that Arthur was born in Fairfield on October 5, 1829, and the vast majority of his later biographers has never argued or assumed otherwise. It is commonly assumed that he was born as Chester Alan Arthur, although this assumption does not accord to many contemporary historiographical sources and witness testimonies.

Chester Arthur's birth name is unclear. The earliest independent written source states that Arthur was born in Franklin County, Vermont, on October 5, 1830, as Chester Absalom Arthur. A 1888 a biographical dictionary maintains that Arthur was born as Chester Absalom Arthur, however in St. Albans, Vermont. Many sources also misspell one of his known names as Chester Allan Arthur or Chester Allen Arthur. A 1903 genealogical source states that Arthur was born in Fairfield on October 5, 1830, as Chester Abell Arthur. This middle name is in accordance with Hinman XYZ.

George F. Howe dismissed Hinman's book as fiction, while biographer Richard L. Tobin reported more thoroughly on Hinman's accusations and stated that it is "conceivable that Chester Alan Arthur was […] literally ineligible for the office". Thomas C. Reeves dismissed Hinman's theory, but noted that

Vermont Historical Society debate.

1829 accepted (Reeves, family bible: 1829, but no Chester Abell Arthur, only doctor, p. 435)

Legal situation: Citizenship and foreign birth

At the time of Chester Arthur's birth a child born outside of U.S. jurisdiction only received U.S. citizenship, if both parents were citizens. Since Arthur's father was at the time still a British subject (v.i.), Arthur would not have been a U.S. citizen at birth and therefore ineligible for the office of President, had it been verified beyond doubt that he was born in Canada. However, the fact that William Arthur had not naturalized at the time of Arthur's birth, was unknown to Arthur's opponents (v.i.), and the allegations concerning Arthur's ineligibility were therefore based on a different legal fact.

A child born outside of U.S. jurisdiction of two citizen parents was for a short time declared a natural born citizen of the United States. First Congress had enacted this statute in the Naturalization Act of 1790, applying a legal principle from British common law that had always declared children born of a British subject father outside of the crown's dominion to be natural born subjects. Five years later Third Congress specifically repealed the natural born citizen clause in the Naturalization Act of 1795. Since then a child born outside of U.S. jurisdiction of U.S. citizen parent(s) has only been declared a citizen, not a natural born citizen, and the 1790 Naturalization Act remains the only instance of statutory natural born citizenship in American history. So even under the assumption that Arthur's father was a U.S. citizen at Chester Arthur's birth, Arthur would only have been a statutory citizen, not a natural born citizen, and was therefore slandered as an ineligible candidate by his adversaries, who alleged that he was born in Canada.

William Arthur's certificate of naturalization

British subjecthood

Due to the public focus on the unprovable allegations regarding Chester Arthur's foreign place of birth, it remained unknown that Arthur was nevertheless a natural-born subject of the British monarch by ius sanguinis, because his British-Irish father William Arthur did not naturalize as a U.S. citizen until August 1843, when Chester Arthur was thirteen years of age, and had not even been a denizen of the State of Vermont at the time of Arthur's birth. William Arthur's late naturalization was first noted in passing by Gregory J. Dehler in his 2006 biography of Chester Arthur, while the endamaging ramifications on Arthur's Presidential eligibility were uncovered in late 2008 by attorney Leo C. Donofrio.

Legal situation: Ius sanguinis and foreign subject father

The British common law status of natural-born subject and the concept of natural born citizen of the United States, the latter being one of the constitutional requirements for the offices of President and Vice-President, were specificially differentiated in United States v. Rhodes. In Minor v. Happersett the Supreme Court granted the status of natural born citizen only to persons born on U.S. territory of two citizen parents. With regard to "children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents" the court would not use the term natural born citizens, while fundamentally stating that there were doubts that these children were even U.S. citizens to begin with.

Chester Arthur was born a British subject and a subject of Vermont under the common law of the state, long before the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment, which codified federal citizenship rule for U.S. territory. Even if applied retroactively, the 14th Amendment at the time was equivalent to Section 1992 of the Revised Statutes and only covered citizens born under complete U.S. jurisdiction, whereas Arthur's status at birth was governed by British common law. Section 1992 and the 14th Amendment in its original meaning did not confer citizenship on persons born in the United States as foreign subjects. Therefore Chester Arthur's only available path to U.S. citizenship was by his 1843 co-naturalization as the minor of his naturalized father in accordance with Section 2172 of the Revised Statutes.

These strict citizenship laws … Collins, contemporary legal opinion.

(1) Arthur still Prez; according to Collins' own arguments, Prez Arthur would have been ineligible; but he didn't mention him, so he can't have known about his British subjecthood (2) Natural born citizens are not the same as natural born subjects (3) Framers followed the law of nations, which stated in vattel xyz

Evidence of Chester Arthur's Presidential ineligibility

In 1885, as Secretary of State under Grover Cleveland, Thomas F. Bayard decreed that a person born in the United States and subject to a foreign power was not a U.S. citizen under the Constitution or a federal statute, which not only indicates that Secretary Bayard knew nothing about President Arthur's foreign subjecthood at birth, but which also proves that Arthur would have been deemed ineligible for the office of President under the contemporary laws and the policies of the U.S. Department of State, had his citizenship status and British subjecthood been known.

Judicial legacy: Chester Arthur, Justice Horace Gray and Wong Kim Ark

In 1882 Chester Arthur nominated Horace Gray as U.S. Supreme Court Justice. A few months after George D. Collins had published his legal treatise on U.S. citizenship (v.s.), the Supreme Court ruled in Elk v. Wilkins that a person born in the United States subject to a foreign power was not a U.S. citizen, thereby affirming the prevalent interpretation of the 14th Amendment citizenship clause. Only one month later Chester Arthur addressed the topic of citizenship in his 1884 State of the Union address, where he reminded the legislature to revise the existing naturalization laws. He openly referred to sections 1992 and 2172 of the Revised Statutes, which had directly effectuated his own problematic citizenship status with regard to Presidential eligibility: Arthur pointed out that the statute granting citizenship to minors of naturalizing parents was "ambiguous", and that the rule of naturalization did not yet define "the status of persons born within the United States subject to a foreign power". Since Chester Arthur was himself a natural-born subject of the British monarch, his remarks before Congress prove that he considered himself to be a naturalized U.S. citizen at best.

It remains unknown if Horace Gray at some point learned about Chester Arthur's secret ineligibility problem, and if he ever attempted to retroactively legitimize his appointment as Supreme Court Justice, but a few years later Gray nevertheless about-faced on his previous decision in Elk v. Wilkins by writing the controversial ruling and majority opinion in the seminal case United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which used the citizenship regulations in British common law to redefine the meaning of "subject to [U.S.] jurisdiction" in the 14th Amendment, severed the previously joined concepts of territorial and complete political jurisdiction, and thereby managed to extend the right to 14th Amendment citizenship to children born on U.S. territory of foreign subject parents, who have permanent residence and domicile in the United States. If Arthur, already by appointing Gray, ever intended to sanitize his own eligibility problems, he failed posthumously, because the court under Justice Gray only ruled that Wong Kim Ark was a citizen, while Gray in fact indicated that Wong Kim Ark was not natural born.

Aftermath

Chester Arthur has been called "the most obscure President" in American history, which was largely "by design", because he was a "clever" and "at times unscrupulous" politician.

Biographical confusion: Forged year of birth

Along with Arthur's lies about his family's history and chronology (v.s.), he also created 1830 as a false year of his birth. Arthur himself apparently stated that he was born in 1830 in Waterville, Vermont. The forged year was introduced at the earliest in the 1870s and probably in 1880, when Arthur ran for Vice-President, which caused considerable biographical confusion, because it has been quoted in several publications to this day and had also been engraved on his tombstone (see image). Arthur's motivation for the one-year change from 1829 to 1830 is unknown, but there were several possible reasons:

1. The change was meant to cause confusion about the correct year of birth, keep Arthur's later biographers occupied with the imperfections of his biography and obscure his father's citizenship history.
2. The change was made out of vanity.
3. Abell connection???
4. jurisdiction/denizenship connection???
5. No change, but Arthur simply didn't know (Dehler)

Lost records

Documents from Chester Arthur's military career as well as his marriage records, which should be on file at the Calvary Church in New York, are "curiously missing". Shortly before his death Arthur caused several Presidential materials, which had been in his private possession, to be destroyed, which was overseen by his son Chester A. Arthur II on the President's orders, while other historical documents pertaining to Arthur's life and presidency, which had been transferred to a New York store house, were destroyed by the Custom House officer on duty at the personal request of the dying President.