In the early hours of September 20, 1881, Chester A. Arthur was sworn in as the twenty-first president of the United States after the death of President James A. Garfield. At approximately 2:15 a.m., New York Supreme Court Justice John R. Brady administered the presidential oath in the front parlor of Arthur’s brownstone at 123 Lexington Avenue in Manhattan, before a small gathering of friends and local witnesses.
The abrupt transition came amid profound national mourning. Garfield had endured an approximately eighty-day struggle after being shot by assassin Charles J. Guiteau, and his death brought Arthur—then vice president—into office at a moment of considerable political unease. Arthur was closely associated with the patronage-based Republican machine surrounding New York’s Custom House, causing many Americans to worry that his presidency would reinforce the era’s “spoils system.”
The modest late-night ceremony nevertheless offered an immediate public expression of constitutional continuity. Arthur later took the oath again in Washington, D.C., on September 22 before Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite, helping dispel questions about the propriety of an oath administered by a state judge.
As president, Arthur surprised many critics by supporting civil-service reform. In 1883, he signed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, which established merit-based selection and competitive examinations for covered federal positions, restricted political coercion of employees, and created the Civil Service Commission. Although the law initially covered only part of the federal workforce, it became a foundational step away from patronage in national government.
Arthur’s first oath at his Manhattan home remains a memorable episode in presidential history: a quiet, improvised ceremony in the middle of the night that marked the peaceful transfer of executive power during a national crisis.
Image via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
