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Was looking at Chester A. Arthur's page on Wikipedia the other night, and came across something I'd never heard before about Arthur:

Like his Republican predecessors, Arthur struggled with the question of how his party was to challenge the Democrats in the South and how, if at all, to protect the civil rights of black southerners. Since the end of Reconstruction, conservative white Democrats (or "Bourbon Democrats") had regained power in the South, and the Republican party dwindled rapidly as their primary supporters in the region, blacks, were disenfranchised. One crack in the solidly Democratic South emerged with the growth of a new party, the Readjusters, in Virginia. Having won an election in that state on a platform of more education funding (for black and white schools alike) and abolition of the poll tax and the whipping post, many northern Republicans saw the Readjusters as a more viable ally in the South than the moribund southern Republican party. Arthur agreed, and directed the federal patronage in Virginia through the Readjusters rather than the Republicans. He followed the same pattern in other Southern states, forging coalitions with independents and Greenback Party members. Some black Republicans felt betrayed by the pragmatic gambit, but others (including Frederick Douglass and ex-Senator Blanche K. Bruce) endorsed the administration's actions, as the Southern independents had more liberal racial policies than the Democrats. Arthur's coalition policy was only successful in Virginia, however, and by 1885 the Readjuster movement began to collapse with the election of a Democratic president.

Considering how fragile civil rights reform was even under Republican governance, the last part of that last sentence is quite telling, to me. The Readjuster Party was led by one William Mahone, a former Confederate who became a liberal reformer following the war and was elected to the U.S. Senate on the Readjuster platform in 1880. This band of reformers seemed very important to Arthur, as did most of the reforms he accomplished while President, but they did not survive once he left office.

Arthur knew he was dying of Bright's Disease since shortly after he took office as President; he also knew the sudden nobility the office could impose upon a Vice President upon ascending -- it'd happened to him, after all. Most importantly, he knew, as did many others, that Grover Cleveland was the very clear front-runner for the Democratic nomination -- but it's telling that even Cleveland the reformer barely won against a scandal- and gaffe-prone James G. Blaine.

After leaving office, Arthur lived over a year longer, albeit in a limited condition due to his declining health; had he done so in office, with a reformist Vice President under him, the policies he'd have wanted would have no choice but to continue under the new man, but with even more vigour -- even Arthur was cautious, after all.

It'd almost be a plotted gambit version, actually, of how liberal reformer Theodore Roosevelt got into the White House.

Therefore, I propose:

Rather than Arthur putting only a token effort into running, he puts all of his declining energies into getting votes, easily besting the corrupt Blaine at the convention. Upon nomination, he surprises the assembled delegates by naming William Mahone for Vice President. Although surprised, the men are eager enough that they quickly give in and support Mahone for the post -- but only Arthur knows that, should he win, he will die in office, giving the Presidency to Mahone.

So... Chester A. Arthur runs in 1884. What happens next?
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