page_title: 1880 United States presidential election
section_title: Aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: 1880 United States presidential election / Aftermath
caption_attribution_description: English: A portrait of Chester A. Arthur located inside the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.
context_page_description: The 1880 United States presidential election was the 24th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 2, 1880. The voter turnout rate was one of the highest in the nation's history.
  Incumbent President Rutherford B. Hayes did not seek re-election, keeping a promise made during the 1876 campaign. After the longest convention in the party's history, the divided Republicans chose another Ohioan, Representative James A. Garfield, as their standard-bearer. The Democratic Party chose General Winfield Scott Hancock of Pennsylvania as their nominee. The dominance of the two major parties began to fray as an upstart left-wing party, the Greenback Party, nominated another Civil War general for president, Iowa Congressman James B. Weaver. In a campaign fought mainly over issues of Civil War loyalties, tariffs, and Chinese immigration, Garfield and Hancock each took just over 48 percent of the popular vote. Weaver and two other minor candidates, Neal Dow and John W. Phelps, together made up the remaining percentage.
context_section_description: As Garfield entered office in March 1881, the Republican party schism that had been patched up for the election tore apart once more. Garfield appointed Blaine to the cabinet, and Conkling's Stalwart faction became irked at their lack of control over patronage, even in Conkling's home state of New York. Garfield appointed William H. Robertson, a civil service reform supporter, to the most lucrative government post in New York, and refused to withdraw the nomination despite Conkling's protests; in response, Conkling and his allies brought all legislative action in the closely divided Senate to a halt. In May, Conkling and fellow New York Senator Thomas C. Platt resigned from the Senate in protest. The two Stalwarts expected the New York legislature to reelect them in triumph; instead, the legislature deadlocked for months, eventually declining to return either man to the Senate. Before that result was known, however, tragedy struck as Charles Guiteau, a mentally unstable man disappointed at being unable to secure a patronage appointment, shot Garfield on July 2, 1881.
  Garfield lingered for two-and-a-half months before dying on September 19, 1881. Vice President Chester A. Arthur, the New York Stalwart, was sworn in as president that night. Garfield's murder by a spoilsman inspired the nation to reform the civil service—and Arthur, erstwhile member of the Conkling machine, joined the cause. In 1883, a bipartisan majority in Congress passed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act to reform the worst of the office-seeking system, and Arthur signed the measure into law.
  Congress also settled the issue of Chinese immigration, passing the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. Arthur initially vetoed a similar measure, which he believed contradicted the United States' treaty with China, but eventually signed a compromise bill, which banned immigration from China for ten years. Tariffs, a major issue in the campaign, remained largely unchanged in the four years that followed, although Congress did pass a minor revision that reduced them by an average of less than 2 percent. After a half-hearted attempt at the nomination in 1884, Arthur retired and died two years later.
  Hancock did not long survive his electoral opponent. After the election, he remained on duty as commander of the Division of the Atlantic. He attended Garfield's inauguration and served loyally under him and Arthur. In 1885, he visited the Gettysburg battlefield, the site of his most famous triumph two decades earlier. Hancock died the following year, after an abscess in his leg became infected. Weaver survived both of his more popular opponents, returning to Congress for four years in the 1880s, and running for president again as the nominee of the Populist Party in 1892.
caption: Chester Arthur served as President after Garfield's 1881 assassination.
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