December 6, 2008 6:36 PM

[I have collaborated on this with my sister and historian Greg Dehler, author of “Chester Allan Arthur”, Published by Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated, 2006 ISBN 1600210791, 9781600210792 192 pages. ]

I’ve been forwarded the actual naturalization record for William Arthur on microfiche, obtained from the Library of Congress. He was naturalized in New York State and became a United States citizen in August 1843.

Chester Arthur perpetrated a fraud as to his eligibility to be Vice President by spreading various lies about his parents’ heritage. President Arthur’s father, William Arthur, became a United States citizen in August 1843. But Chester Arthur was born in 1829. Therefore, he was a British Citizen by descent, and a dual citizen at birth, if not his whole life.

He wasn’t a “natural born citizen” and he knew it.

We’ve also uncovered many lies told by Chester Arthur to the press which kept this fact from public view when he ran for Vice President in 1880. Garfield won the election, became President in 1881, and was assassinated by a fanatical Chester Arthur supporter that same year.

How ironic that the allegations started by Arthur Hinman in his pamphlet entitled, “How A British Subject Became President”, have turned out to be true…but not for the reason Hinman suggested.

Hinman alleged that Arthur was born in Ireland or Canada as a British subject. It was bunk. It’s been definitively established that Chester Arthur was born in Vermont. But Hinman turns out to be correct anyway since Chester Arthur was a British citizen/subject by virtue of his father not having naturalized as a United States citizen until Chester Arthur was almost 14 years old.

That means Chester Arthur was a British subject at the time of his birth.

We’ve uncovered news clips exposing a thorough trail of lies, all of which served to obscure Chester Arthur’s true history of having been born as a British citizen.

Chester Arthur’s lies came during his Vice Presidential campaign in 1880. His fraudulent attempt to obfuscate family history provides context and evidence that in 1880 it was recognized that having been born as a British citizen would make one ineligible to be President or VP. His falsification of family history indicates he was aware of POTUS ineligibility.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Chester Arthur was in politics at the time of the 14th Amendment’s ratification. He was a lawyer and a politician while the 14th Amendment was being debated. It was ratified in 1867. In that same year Chester Arthur rose to become chairperson of the Executive Committee of the State Republican Committee. He would have been fully cognizant of the natural born citizen issue and that should he ever run for POTUS or VP, problems could arise.

He would have known that if anybody found out his father naturalized after he was born, he could never be President or Vice President.

CHESTER’S LIES

The definitive biography on Chester Arthur is “Gentleman Boss” by Thomas Reeves. It’s an exhaustive reference. Many of the blanks in Chester Arthur’s legend were filled in by this book which utilized interviews with family members and authentic documents like the Arthur family Bible. It was a necessary work since old Chester Arthur was a very wily protector of his strange history. He burned all of his papers. (See page 2365.)

“Gentleman Boss” establishes, on page 4, that Chester Arthur’s father William was born in Ireland, 1796, and emigrated to Canada in 1818 or 1819. His mother Malvina was born in Vermont and his parents eloped in Canada in 1821. They had their first child, Regina, in Dunham, Canada on March 8, 1822.

By no later than 1824, the Arthur family had moved to Burlington, Vermont. Their second child Jane was born there on March 14, 1824. Chester Arthur was their fifth child, and he was born on October 5, 1829. Reeves established these facts (and the correct date of Chester Arthur’s birth) from the Arthur family Bible.

From “Gentleman Boss”, page 202 and 203:

“…Hinman was hired, apparently by democrats, to explore rumors that Arthur had been born in a foreign country, was not a natural-born citizen of the United States, and was thus, by the Constitution, ineligible for the vice-presidency. By mid-August, Hinman was claiming that Arthur was born in Ireland and had been brought to the United States by his father when he was fourteen. Arthur denied the charge and said 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.”

Arthur’s mother had lived in Canada with her husband and even had her first child there.

In the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper, an article interviewing Chester Arthur about Hinman’s accusations was published on August 13, 1880. In that article, Chester Arthur defended himself as follows:

“My father, the late Rev. William Arthur, D.D., was of Scotch blood, and was a native of the North of Ireland. He came to this country when he was eighteen years of age, and resided here several years before he was married.”

This was another blatant lie. His father emigrated from Ireland to Canada at the age of 22 or 23. William Arthur didn’t come to the United States until sometime between March 1822 – when his first child was born in Dunham, Canada – and March 1824 – when his second child was born in Burlington, Vermont. The youngest he could have been when he came to Vermont was 26.

On August 16, 1880 Chester Arthur told the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper that at the time of his birth, his father was forty years old. Another blatant lie. His father would have been only thirty-three years old when Chester was born.

In that same article he lied that his father settled in Vermont and reiterated the lie that William came here at the age of eighteen. This age discrepancy was exposed in the August 19, 1880 edition of the Brooklyn Eagle in an article written by Hinman .

It was very convenient for Arthur that Hinman kept the focus on the extraordinary and false claim – that Arthur was born abroad – while the more subtle and true eligibility issue stayed hidden in plain site.

FATEFUL FACTS

I contacted Greg Dehler a few days ago after finding a reference in his Chester Arthur biography which said William Arthur became a citizen in 1843. I wrote to Greg and asked him about the reference. As fate would have it, Mr. Dehler, after checking his notes, wrote back to me to say that he got it from Thomas Reeves’ book, “Gentleman Boss”.

I went to the library the next day and devoured the Reeves book. But the reference to William’s naturalization was not there. Greg also knew I was interested in the Hinman scandal and pointed me to the Brooklyn Eagle search engine from the Brooklyn public library.

I began poking around and discovered a few of the lies mentioned above.

Earlier today I was telling my sister that this matter of Chester Arthur having falsified his parents’ personal history might lead to a very important revision of history. I suggested we put together an outline of a book as we might be able to prove that Chester Arthur was a fraudulent President and that would be quite a story. My sister thought I was jumping the gun a bit in that we really needed to define when William Arthur was naturalized before we could get excited.

About an hour later I received an email from Greg Dehler. I’ll let you read it:

Leo,

Needless to say I was more than a little embarrassed that you could not locate the reference in Reeves. I thought that was odd because my note concerning William Arthur was with the Reeves notes. I conducted a more thorough search and found the source. It was in the Chester A. Arthur Papers (what is left of them at least) at the LOC. I own the microfilm reels and made a copy for you which is attached. The Washington County Clerk in NYS dates it August 31, 1843. How does this affect Chet?

Greg

I almost fell off my chair when I downloaded the William Arthur naturalization PDF and was staring at the shifting sands of history.

Chester Arthur had something to hide.

He had all of his papers burned which was very odd for a President.

Arthur lied about his mother’s time in Canada. He lied about his father’s time in Canada. He lied about his father’s age plus where and when he got off the boat from Ireland. By obscuring his parents’ personal history he curtailed the possibility that anybody might discover he was born many years before his father had naturalized.

When Chester runs for VP, Hinman comes along essentially demanding to see Chester’s birth certificate to prove he was born in the United States. This causes a minor scandal easily thwarted by Chester, because Chester was born in Vermont…but at the same time, the fake scandal provides cover for the real scandal.

Is this the twilight zone?

William Arthur was not a naturalized citizen at the time of Chester Arthur’s birth, and therefore Chester Arthur was a British subject at birth and not eligible to be Vice President or President.

Chester Arthur lied about his father’s emigration to Canada and the time his mother spent there married to William. Some sixty years later, Chester lied about all of this and kept his candidacy on track. Back then it would have been virtually impossible to see through this, especially since Arthur’s father had died in 1875 and had been a United States citizen for thirty-two years.

And without knowledge of his father’s time in Canada, or the proper timeline of events, potential researchers in 1880 would have been hard pressed to even know where to start.

Reeves proved that Arthur changed his birth year from 1829 to 1830. I don’t know if that would have protected recorded information. It’s another lie. I just don’t know what it means.

Because Chester Arthur covered up his British citizenship, any precedent he might have set that the country has had a President born of an alien father is nullified completely as Chester Arthur was a usurper to the Presidency. He wouldn’t have been on the ticket if it was public knowledge. Nobody knew Arthur was a British subject because nobody looked in the right place for the truth.

And it’s no precedent to follow.

Leo C. Donofrio COPYRIGHT 2008

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