The most noticeable weakness of Congressmen is their timidity. They fear the use to be made of their "record." They are afraid of ...making enemies. They do not vote according to their convictions from fear of consequences.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My desire is that your office [the New York Customhouse] shall be conducted on strictly business principles.... In making appointm...ents and removals of subordinates, you should be perfectly independent of mere influence. Neither my recommendation, nor that of the Secretary of the Treasury, nor the recommendation of any Member of Congress, or other influential person, should be specially regarded. Let appointments and removals be made ... by fixed rules.... Let no man be put out merely because he is a friend of the late collector [Chester A. Arthur], and no man be put in merely because he is our friend.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Disunion and civil war are at hand; and yet I fear disunion and war less than compromise. We can recover from them. The free State...s alone, if we must go on alone, will make a glorious nation. Twenty millions in the temperate zone, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, full of vigor, industry, inventive genius, educated, and moral; increasing by immigration rapidly, and, above all, free--all free--will form a confederacy of twenty States scarcely inferior in real power to the unfortunate Union of thirty-three States which we had on the first of November.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What I am anxious to do is to get the best bill possible with the least amount of friction.... I wish to avoid [splitting our part...y]. I shall do all in my power to retain the corporation tax as it is now and also force a reduction of the [tariff] schedules. It is only when all other efforts fail that I'll resort to headlines and force the people into this fight.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »