Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 1).djvu/123

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
ARTEAGA
ARTHUR
99

Fort Chartres. He administered the affairs of this coniinand for two years, when he was ordered to collect troops to lead against the Chickasaws. The expedition sailed in February, 1734, and the villages were reached in May. The expected forces from Louisiana under Bienville had not appeared, and D'Artaguiette attacked the Indians alone. The French were at first successful, but were finally overpowered, and with Vincennes and others he was made prisoner and burnt at the stake.


ARTEAGA, José Maria (ar-tay-ah'-ga), Mexican soldier, b. in Aguas Calientes in 1833 ; d. in Uruapan, 13 Oct., 1886. He had but little education, his parents being very poor, and at once began to learn the trade of a tailor; but when nineteen years old he entered the army as a sergeant. He took an active part in military operations during the long strifes between the different parties before the French invasion, and then he fought the invaders bravely. By successive promotions he attained the rank of general. The troops of Maximilian captured him in the battle of Amatlan and took him to Uruapan, where he was executed.


ARTEAGA, Sebastian de, Mexican painter, flourished about 1G43. He was one of the best artists of the old Mexican school. Among his best works are the "Apostle St. Thomas" and the "Marriage of the Virgin Mary," the former being in the museum of paintings of the city of Mexico. He was a high officer of the inquisition.


ARTHUR, Chester Alan, twenty-first president of the United States, b. in Fairfield, Franklin co., Vt., 5 Oct., 1830; d. in New York city, 18 Nov., 1886. His father was Rev. William Arthur (given below). His mother was Malvina Stone. Her grandfather, Uriah Stone, was a New Hampshire pioneer, who about 1763 migrated from Hampstead to Connecticut river, and made his home in Piermont, where he died in 1810, leaving twelve children. Her father was George Washington Stone. She died 16 Jan., 1869, and her husband died 27 Oct., 1875, at Newtonville, N. Y. Their children were three sons and six daughters, all of whom, except one son and one daughter, were alive in 1886.

Chester A. Arthur, the eldest son, prepared for college at Union Village in Greenwich, and at Schenectady, and in 1845 he entered the sophomore class of Union. While in his sophomore year he taught school for a term at Schaghticoke, Rensselaer co., and a second term at the same place during his last year in college. He joined the Psi-Upsilon society, and was one of six in a class of one hundred who were elected members of the Phi Beta Kappa society, the condition of admission being high scholarship. He was graduated at eighteen years of age, in the class of 1848. While at college he decided to become a lawyer, and after graduation attended for several months a law school at Ballston Spa, returned to Lansingburg, where his father then resided, and continued his legal studies. During this period he fitted boys for college, and in 1851 he was principal of an academy at North Pownal, Bennington co., Vt. In 1854, James A. Garfield, then a student in Williams college, taught penmanship in this academy during his winter vacation.

In 1853, Arthur, having accumulated a small sum of money, decided to go to New York city. He there entered the law office of Erastus D. Culver as a student, was admitted to the bar during the same year, and at once became a member of the firm of Culver, Parker & Arthur. Mr. Culver had been an anti-slavery member of congress from Washington county when Dr. Arthur was pastor of the Baptist church in Greenwich in that county. Dr. Arthur had also enjoyed the friendship of Gerrit Smith, who had often been his guest and spoken from his pulpit. Together they had taken part in the meeting convened at Utica, 21 Oct., 1835, to form a New York anti-slavery society. This meeting was broken up by a committee of pro-slavery citizens; but the members repaired to Mr. Smith's home in Peterborough, and there completed the organization. On the same day in Boston a women's anti-slavery society, while its president was at prayer, was dispersed by a mob, and William Lloyd Garrison was dragged through the streets with a rope around his body, threatened with tar and feathers, and for his protection lodged in jail by the mayor. From these early associations Arthur naturally formed sentiments of hostility to slavery, and he first gave them public expression in the Lemmon slave case. In 1852 Jonathan Lemmon, a Virginia slave-holder, determined to take eight of the slaves of his wife, Juliet — one man, two women, and five children — to Texas, and brought them by steamer from Norfolk to New York, intending to re-ship them from New York to Texas. On the petition of Louis Napoleon, a free colored man, on 6 Nov., a writ of habeas corpus was issued by Judge Elijah Paine, of the superior court of New York city, and after arguments by Mr. Culver and John Jay for the slaves, and H. D. Lapaugh and Henry L. Clinton for the slave-holder, Judge Paine, on 13 Nov., released the slaves on the ground that they had been made free by being brought by their master into a free state. The decision created great excitement at the south, and the legislature of Virginia directed its attorney-general to appeal to the higher courts of New York. The legislature of New York passed a resolution directing its governor to defend the slaves. In December, 1857, the supreme court, in which a certiorari had been sued out, affirmed Judge Paine's decision (People v. Lemmon, 5 Sandf., 681), and it was still further sustained by the court of appeals at the March term, 1860 (Lemmon v. People, 20 N. Y. Rep., 562). Arthur, as a law student, and after his admission to the bar, became an earnest advocate for the slaves. He went to Albany to secure the intervention in their behalf of the legislature and the governor, and he acted as their counsel in addition to attorney-general Ogden Hoffman, E. D. Culver, Joseph Blunt, and (after Mr. Hoffman's death) William M. Evarts. Charles O'Conor was employed as further counsel for the slave-holder, and argued his side before the court of appeals, while Mr. Blunt and Mr. Evarts argued for the slaves. Until 1855 the street-car companies of New York city excluded colored persons from riding with the whites, and made no adequate provision for their separate transportation. One Sunday in that year a colored woman named Lizzie Jennings, a Sabbath-school superintendent, on the way home from her school, was ejected from a car on the Fourth avenue line. Culver, Parker & Arthur brought a suit in her behalf against the company in the supreme court in Brooklyn, the plaintiff recovered a judgment, and the right of colored persons to ride in any of the city cars was thus secured. The Colored People's Legal Rights Association for years celebrated the anniversary of their success in this case.

Mr. Arthur became a Henry Clay whig, and cast his first vote in 1852 for Winfield Scott for president. He participated in the first republican state convention at Saratoga, and took an active part in the Fremont campaign of 1856. On 1 Jan., 1861, Gov. Edwin D. Morgan, who on that date entered upon his second term, and between whom and Mr. Arthur a warm friendship had grown up, appointed