Chester A. Arthur
Overview
 
Chester Alan Arthur was the 21st President of the United States
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....

 (1881–1885). Becoming President after the assassination of President James A. Garfield, Arthur struggled to overcome suspicions of his beginnings as a politician from the New York City Republican
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...

 machine, succeeding at that task by embracing the cause of civil service reform.
Quotations

The extravagant expenditure of public money is an evil not to be measured by the value of that money to the people who are taxed for it.

Veto message of Rivers and Harbor Bill (1882)

I trust the time is nigh when, with the universal assent of civilized people, all international differences shall be determined without resort to arms by the benignant processes of civilization.

Second annual message (1882)

Experience has shown that the trade of the East is the key to national wealth and influence.

Veto message of Chinese Exclusion Act (1882).

Men may die, but the fabric of our free institutions remains unshaken.

Said upon the death of President Garfield.

What a pleasant lot of fellows they are. What a pity they have so little sense about politics. If they lived North the last one of them would be Republicans.

Quoted in Recollections of Thirteen Presidents, John S. Wise (1906).

The office of the Vice-President is a greater honor than I ever dreamed of attaining.

Quoted in Random Recollections of an Old Political Reporter, William C. Hudson (1911).

Honors to me now are not what they once were.

Written on the death of his wife, Ellen.

Madam, I may be President of the United States, but my private life is nobody’s damn business.

To a temperance reformer.

 
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