Think maybe you got old Chet mixed up with Garfield, and McKinley?
It’s an Obama kind of gaffe, Obamaroid being a pseudo-intellectual and all.
“In 1860, Arthur was appointed to the military staff of Governor Edwin D. Morgan as engineer-in-chief. The office was a patronage appointment of minor importance until the outbreak of the Civil War in April 1861, when New York and the other northern states were faced with raising and equipping armies of a size never before seen in American history. Arthur was given the rank of brigadier general and assigned to the quartermaster department.”—Wikipedia