The son of an Irish-born Baptist minister who immigrated to the United States, Chester Arthur was born in Fairfield, Vermont in 1829. He graduated from Union College in 1848, taught school, was admitted to the bar, and practiced law in New York. City. At the outbreak of the Civil War he served as Quartermaster General of the State of New York.

When Vice President Arthur became president on September 20, 1881, following the death of James Garfield, he sought to prove that he was above machine politics. He became fashionable in both his clothes and his friends, and was often seen among the elite of Washington, New York, and Newport, Rhode Island. He became a champion of civil service reform; Public pressure, heightened by Garfield’s assassination, forced Congress to cooperate.

In 1883, Congress passed the Pendleton Act, which established the bipartisan Civil Service Commission; prohibited the collection of political contributions from officials; and provided for a «secret system» whereby certain government positions could only be obtained through competitive written examinations. The system protected employees from being fired for political reasons. Arthur’s administration also passed the first general federal immigration law. Suffering from a fatal kidney disease, President Arthur nevertheless ran for the presidency in 1884, but was unsuccessful and died just two years later.

You can compare this coin with the country’s other issues in the VPcoins catalogue.