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Chester A. Arthur: Rest In Peace

by Dr. Conspiracy on 27. Apr, 2009 in Citizenship, Precedent

Chester Arthur

Chester Arthur

President Chester A. Arthur was born, like President Barack H. Obama in one of the United States of American to an American mother and a father who was a British citizen. One might wonder, if there is this historical precedent, why anyone today would raise a claim that Barack Obama was less a natural born citizen than his predecessor Chester A. Arthur.

Out of necessity, a fiction was created, one which says Chester A. Arthur hid the naturalization status of his father, because he knew he was ineligible. It is true that Arthur lied about his age (making himself a year younger than what was in the Family Bible) and he got some other dates wrong from the history of his family before he was born (Arthur was estranged from his father). But he never gave any lie that hid his father’s naturalization status.

A 19th century political operative, bent on bringing down Arthur went about trying to prove Arthur was really born in Canada. Indeed, the operative, a lawyer named A. P. Hinman began before the election and continued his investigation until he published a book, four years later, titled How a British Subject became President of the United States. Today the claims of a Canadian birth for Arthur are dismissed by Arthur biographers. However, in a remarkable irony, A. P. Hinman’s little book leaves us proof that Arthur’s birth to an Irish citizen was well known at the time! (more…)

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Hinman

by Dr. Conspiracy on 16. Jan, 2009 in Chester A. Arthur, Precedent, Research Notes

Under the “better late than never” category, a previously-unavailable reference work is on the Internet, courtesy of the Obama Conspiracy Theories blog.

I was unable to find a copy of A. P. Hinman’s smear book on President Chester A. Arthur on the Internet, so I undertook to obtain a copy through interlibrary loan. I’ve scanned the 1884 work titled How a British Subject became President of the United States and put a searchable PDF online here at ObamaConspiracies.org. The file is around 3.5 Mb in size. I have a higher-quality version (25 mb) available upon request. (more…)

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The Assassination of Chester A. Arthur

by Dr. Conspiracy on 31. Dec, 2008 in Chester A. Arthur, Precedent

Chester Arthur

Chester Arthur

Obama fringe beliefs center around the meaning of “natural born citizen” (a qualification for the presidency in Article 2 of the U. S. Constitution). One such theory says Barack Obama can’t be president because his father was a British citizen, not an American citizen. Could some other US President have been in the same boat? It turns out that there was one, Chester A. Arthur.

Does this historical precedent settle the argument against citizen-only parentage? No. In a perverse consistency, the the theory claims that Chester A. Arthur wasn’t a legitimate president either, a “usurper” no less. This appears on Leo C. Donofrio’s Natural Born Citizen site. (more…)

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Little-known natural born citizens

by Dr. Conspiracy on 26. Dec, 2008 in Precedent

Following the character assassination of Chester A. Arthur, I wonder now if the Secret Service should not be alerted of potential attacks on dead Vice Presidents. Given the fly-speck analysis of the term “natural born citizen”, who is next?

Recall that the latest fad on natural born citizenship (not to be confused with the Constitution) requires the President be born in one of the United States and that both parents be United States citizens (“meat and two” in diner lingo). We have the embarrassment to this position of Chester A. Arthur whose father was a British citizen when Arthur was born.

But wait! Since 1804 and the adoption of the twelfth amendment, the Vice President must meet the same qualifications as the President. What about our Vice Presidents since 1804?

Vice Presidents are often little-known individuals with scant online biographical information.  One Vice President offers us an interesting preview of what may be to come and that is Charles Curtis.

Vice President Curtis

Vice President Curtis

Curtis once described himself as “one-eighth Indian and 100% Republican”. He was born January 25, 1860 in North Topeka Kansas on the Kaw reservation. Does that strike you as odd? Kansas didn’t become a state until 1861. Curtis was not born in the United States! Oh dear. How about those two United States citizen parents? The Supreme Court in 1884 in the case of Elk v. Wilkins said that not only were Indians not citizens, but could not become citizens even if they renounced their tribal allegiance.  American Indians were not made citizens generally until 1924 unless made citizens by treaty earlier. Indeed, it was Curtis himself when in the Senate who helped pass the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 that made Indians citizens.

I think this is just the tip of the iceberg starting perhaps with the first Vice President after 1804, John C. Calhoun. Was Calhoun’s immigrant father a citizen? That is a very difficult question since the South Carolina Constitution had no definition of who its citizens were at the time. I think Calhoun will come out OK in the end, but there’s a long list of “unknowns” to look at who might not.

For all of your conspiracy theorists, why did FreeRepublic.com pull the thread on their web site about the natural born citizenship of vice presidents? Hmmm?

Search Results

Search Results

Pulled

Pulled

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George Washington, first in war, first in peace, and first presidential usurper

by Dr. Conspiracy on 25. Dec, 2008 in Precedent, Wild & Wacky

Did you know that George Washington, the man we were taught to call our first president, was actually not eligible for the job, and in fact was not the legitimate president? According to an article quoted in the Texas Law Review, this is exactly the case:

Usurper

Usurper

The constitutional text explicitly restricts eligibility to those persons who were “natural born Citizen[s], or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution. ” Article VII in turn provides that “[t]he Ratification of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the Establishment of this Constitution.” The terms for adoption required by Article VII were satisfied when New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify on June 21, 1788. Although Virginia, New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island would later vote to join the new nation, the Constitution achieved full legal birth with New Hampshire’s ratification; hence, only citizens of the nine ratifying states could be denominated “citizens of the United States” as of the time of the Constitution’s adoption. Because George Washington was a citizen of Virginia, he “was not a citizen of the United States at the time the Constitution went into effect under Article VII, and hence was ineligible to be President under Article II. Q.E.D.”

Who knew?

The purpose of this article is not to seriously suggest that George Washington was not a legitimate president of the United States, but rather to show what silliness results from a layman’s uninformed literalist reading of the Constitution.

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Definitive Biography of Chester A. Arthur

by Dr. Conspiracy on 19. Dec, 2008 in Chester A. Arthur, Precedent, Research Notes

Leo C. Donofrio says on his Natural Born Citizen web site that he worked with the author of Chester Alan Arthur by Greg Dehler. I found a  review on Amazon.com by J. Hughes. It’s presented here as a bit of information. This writer and Donofrio agree that the Thomas C Reeves book is the definitive biography.

The author, on the staff of a small Colorado community college, presents a thinly-researched short biography, relying too heavily, as he states, on secondary sources “from Interlibrary Loan.”

Very little is presented about President Arthur’s life. Referencing the Hinman “pamphlet” (actually a book not included in the bibliography) is alluded to when briefly discussing the question on where Arthur was actually born. Too many secondary sources are referenced; not enough original work.

Careful editing is needed: some quotes are not referenced; some adverbs and adjectives don’t fit the sentence-thought; at the end of one paragraph, an unfinished sentence begins.

Julia Sand served as an encourager to President Arthur, and not as the constant critic that Professor Dehler makes her out to be. She, among others, are not listed in the book’s Index, which makes searching for information the more difficult.

Calling Arthur’s role in a major desegregation case as a “minor role,” he actually played a major role in defending the woman involved. Some of Dehler’s “facts” about this, et.al, are incorrect.

At best, this is a thin biography, not carefully edited, and not well researched. It is a mostly critical treatment of Chester Arthur’s major contributions to the nation, couched in criticism. With every section that tells some of Arthur’s accomplishments, there is always the “but,” inserted. Even Arthur taking a vacation to Yellowstone Park, is presented from a critical angle, and the real purpose is left unstated.

If you’re looking for the definitive Chester Arthur, see the book by Thomas C. Reeves.

I wonder if I need a separate catetory just for Chester A. Arthur.

I have requested both Reeves’ biography and Hinman’s little book through interlibrary loan. They will arrive when they arrive and I’ll get to them when I can.

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The Mysterious Mr. Hinman

by Dr. Conspiracy on 18. Dec, 2008 in Chester A. Arthur, Precedent

I was slumming over on Donofrio’s Native Born Citizen site trying to separate a little truth from fiction about our dearly departed President Chester A. Arthur and found that some of Donofrio’s information comes third hand from Mr. Arthur P. Hinman, who the New York times describes as a “Democratic operative”. The times reported that Hinman came sniffing around Franklin County, Vt. [Arthur's birthplace] looking for records.

ST. ALBANS, Vt., Dec. 21.—A stranger arrived here a few days ago, and registered at the American House as A. P. Hinman, of New-York. Since then he has been very busy in the adjoining town of Fairfield, ostensibly collecting materials for a biography of Vice-President-elect Arthur. He has privately stated to leading Democratic citizens, however, that he is employed by the Democratic National Committee to obtain evidence to show that Gen. Arthur is an unnaturalized foreigner. He claims to have discovered that Gen. Arthur was born in Canada, instead of Fairfield; that his name is Chester Allen instead of Chester Abell [sic]; that he was 50 years old in July instead of October, as has been stated, and generally that he is an alien and ineligible to the office of Vice-President.

The New York Times, 1880

So we have a professional smearbot from the 19th century feeding into a 21st century controversy. Hinman published a little 90-paged book entitled How A British Subject Became President of the United States. One must greet Mr. Hinman with a good bit of skepticism because the thesis of his book was that President Arthur was born in Canada, which isn’t true according to Arthur biographers (including Thomas C. Reeves’ definitive biography Gentleman Boss).

How a British Subject became President of the United States (1844) is now available exclusively here at ObamaConspiracy.org (3.5 Mb). A higher resolution version is available upon request.

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