Chester Alan Arthur was an American attorney and politician who served as the 21st president of the United States from 1881 to 1885.

in 1854, Arthur was the lead attorney representing Elizabeth Jennings Graham after she was denied a seat on a streetcar because she was black. He won the case, and the verdict led to the desegregation of the New York City streetcar lines.

Barack Obama wasn't the first president to face accusations that he wasn't a natural-born citizen. When Arthur was nominated for vice president in 1880, a New York attorney and political opponent, Arthur P. Hinman, suggested that Arthur was born in Ireland and did not come to the United States until he was fourteen years old. When Hinman's original story didn't take root, he spread another rumor that Arthur had been born in Canada. This claim, too, failed to gain credence.

A talented soprano, Ellen "Nell" Arthur sang with the Mendelssohn Glee Club and performed at benefits around New York. The Arthurs' marriage was strained by Chester's political activities, which took much of his time, and the divided loyalties of the Civil War. While Arthur was serving in the New York militia during the conflict, his wife privately sympathized with the Confederacy, for which many of her Virginia kinfolk were fighting. She died of pneumonia in January 1880, ten months before her husband was elected vice-president of the United States.

Previously the 20th vice president of the United States, Arthur succeeded to the presidency upon the death of President James A. Garfield in September 1881, two months after Garfield was shot by an assassin.

Arthur quickly came into conflict with Garfield's cabinet, most of whom represented his opposition within the Republican party. Of the Cabinet members Arthur had inherited from Garfield, only Secretary of War Robert Todd Lincoln, the eldest son of President Abraham Lincoln, remained for the entirety of Arthur's term.

Arthur vetoed the first version of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, arguing that its twenty-year ban on Chinese immigrants to the United States violated the Burlingame Treaty, but he signed a second version, which included a ten-year ban. He also signed the Immigration Act of 1882, which levied a 50-cent tax on immigrants and excluded from entry the mentally ill, the intellectually disabled, criminals, or any other person potentially dependent upon public assistance.

In the month of his inauguration, James A. Garfield had ordered a hydraulic elevator for the White House, but the project was postponed during his illness for fear that the noise of the construction would outweigh the resulting convenience. The elevator was finally installed in the fall of 1881, after Arthur succeeded to the presidency.

President Arthur vetoed twelve bills, of which four were regular vetoes and eight were pocket vetoes. One of his vetoes was overridden by Congress.

Since the Constitution did not yet include a provision for replacing dead or departed vice presidents, the office remained vacant for the entirety of Arthur's term.