Source

• Born: 4 October 1822
• Birthplace: Delaware, Ohio
• Died: 17 January 1893 (Heart failure)
• Best Known As: President of the United States, 1877-1881

Rutherford B. Hayes was an Ohio lawyer who was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives while still on active duty in the Civil War. He served three terms as Governor of Ohio, then received the Republican nomination in the presidential race of 1876. Although his opponent, Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, received a plurality of the popular vote, the electoral votes from four states were in dispute. A special congressional commission gave the election to Hayes just three days before his inauguration. In turn, President Hayes removed Federal troops from the South. After his term expired, he did not seek re-election. He was succeeded by James Garfield.

Mrs. Hayes was known as "Lemonade Lucy" for her strict policy against alcohol in the White House... He was the 19th president.

Hayes, Rutherford Birchard (1822-93) 19th president of the United States (1877-81); born in Delaware, Ohio. An early defender of runaway slaves (1853) and opponent of the spread of slavery, Hayes fought with an Ohio volunteer unit during the Civil War and was seen as an inspirational leader. He was wounded five times and was brevetted major general. Following the war he became active in politics, serving as a U.S. congressman (1865-67) and then as governor of Ohio (1868-72). In 1876 Hayes was elected president over Democrat Samuel J. Tilden in a bitterly disputed contest that was not resolved for four months. Despite assuming office under suspicions of fraud, Hayes proved a surprisingly effective president, ending military occupation of southern states; reforming the civil service, putting the country back on the gold standard, and suppressing railroad strikes. Hayes refused to run for a second term, but after leaving office continued to actively work for the causes he believed in—education of blacks and of the poor, federal regulation of industry, and a humane penal system.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822-1893), nineteenth president of the United States, supervised the Republican party's unsuccessful attempt to build a Southern wing based on old white "Whig" elements.

Rutherford B. Hayes was born Oct. 4, 1822, in Delaware, Ohio. His family, recently moved from New England, was well-to-do. Born 2 months after his father's death, Hayes was dominated by his neurotic mother and sister and patronized by his wealthy uncle Sardis Birchard.

Birchard was a critical influence in Hayes's life and helped pay for his education. Graduating from Kenyon College with highest honors in 1842, Hayes went to Harvard Law School in 1843. In 1845 he moved to Lower Sandusky (now Fremont), Ohio, to practice law under his uncle's sponsorship. Easygoing and pliable, Hayes was inclined to accept the conservative ideals surrounding him, and he adopted his uncle's Whig politics and distaste for abolitionists. The tall, handsome Hayes was a congenial and ready conversationalist, and he enjoyed considerable popularity in the town. Nevertheless, in 1849 he moved to Cincinnati, then the most important city in the West.

The young lawyer's personability and good showing in a celebrated homicide case soon won Hayes some reputation and political notice. Like most Northern Whigs during the late 1850s, Hayes had turned to the Republican party. However, he was not excessively interested in political questions; during the momentous election of 1860 he wrote, "I cannot get up much interest in the contest." He preferred the casual society of the "best people," travel, and occasional lectures on temperance.

War Years

Hayes's life of genteel idleness ended with the Civil War. He accepted a commission as major of the 23d Ohio Infantry. Now, for the first time in his life, he truly reveled in an all-masculine world, and he later looked back on the war as "the best years of our lives." He was brave to the point of recklessness and was wounded four times, once seriously. He rose to the rank of major general. What was more significant, his war record catapulted him into prominence in Ohio politics. While he was still in the military, he was nominated by the Republicans to serve in Congress and was elected without campaigning. He went to Washington for two terms, beginning in 1864.

In 1867 Hayes was elected governor of Ohio. He compiled a "moderate" record on all issues and retired to what he regarded as a permanent private life in 1871. However, in 1875, Republican leaders prevailed on him to stand again for governor, with the possibility of the presidential nomination the next year clearly understood. Successful, he entered his third term.

Disputed Election

Hayes entered the Republican nominating convention of 1876 as a minor candidate. The favorite, James G. Blaine, faced a number of opponents. In addition, the Republicans were sensitive to charges of political corruption, as the administration of Ulysses S. Grant had been blackened by scandal and Blaine had been implicated in a stock manipulation deal. Blaine's rivals withdrew one by one in favor of the deliberately "passive" Hayes.

The election, which pitted Republican Hayes against Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, proved more difficult. Owing to questions of the legitimacy of vote casting and counting in several states, the whole election was questioned and the country plunged into debate. Finally, a congressional commission was established to decide the election. By a curious twist the commission was composed of eight Republicans and only seven Democrats. However, the dispute was settled, and Hayes took office in March 1877 without further serious incident because the Republicans had made informal agreements with Southern Democrats to work toward establishment of a new political alliance between men of means in both the North and the South. Hayes's party thus hoped to drive a wedge between the two wings of its opposition.

Hayes was more than happy with the plan. He was naturally a "Whig" and had been uncomfortable with Grant's "bloody shirt" politics. He did not personally regard deals with the Southern Democrats as abandoning the Republican commitment to Southern blacks; rather, he hoped to win paternalistic protection for them by encouraging the growth of the Republican party among whites.

As president, Hayes withdrew the last Federal troops from the South and, as a symbol of the end of this phase of the Reconstruction, decorated Confederate graves on Memorial Day, 1877. "My task was to wipe out the color line, to abolish sectionalism; to end the war and bring peace," Hayes remembered, but by 1878 he had to state, "I am reluctantly forced to admit that the experiment was a failure."

Though Hayes was as meticulous with detail as ever and dispensed his presidential duties ably, he abhorred active leadership. He pledged to serve only one term, and the Republicans were happy to retire him. Hayes spent his final years in prosperous retirement in Lower Sandusky, distracting himself with active participation in the Grand Army of the Republic and other veterans' organizations. He died on Jan. 17, 1893.

Further Reading

Hamilton J. Eckenrode, Rutherford B. Hayes: Statesman of Reunion (1930), is highly favorable to Hayes but suffers from a blatantly racist approach to the questions of Reconstruction that loomed so large in Hayes's career. Harry Barnard, Rutherford B. Hayes and His America (1954), is a model of thorough historical research and possesses shrewd insights. T. Harry Williams, Hayes of the Twenty-third (1965), is a fascinating account of Hayes's war years. C. Vann Woodward, Reunion and Reaction (1951; rev. ed. 1956), is the indispensable insight into the ending of Reconstruction, and H. Wayne Morgan, From Hayes to McKinley (1969), is the best recent overall account of the period. For the election of 1876 see Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., ed., History of American Presidential Elections, vol. 2 (1971).

For more information on Rutherford Birchard Hayes, visit Britannica.com.

• Born: Oct. 4, 1822, Delaware, Ohio
• Political party: Whig, then Republican
• Education: Kenyon College, B.A., 1842; Harvard Law School, LL.B., 1845
• Military service: Ohio Volunteers, 1861–65
• Previous government service: solicitor of Cincinnati, 1858; U.S. House of Representatives, 1865–68; governor of Ohio, 1868–72, 1876–77
• Elected President, 1876; served, 1877–81
• Died: Jan. 17, 1893, Fremont, Ohio

Rutherford B. Hayes was the President who ended Reconstruction in the South. His honest administration restored the nation's faith in the Republican party after the corruption that occurred during the administration of Ulysses S. Grant.

Hayes never knew his father, who died before his birth. After graduating at the head of his class from Kenyon College and completing his legal studies at Harvard, Hayes practiced law in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he was active in the Whig party. He became a Republican in 1856. During the Civil War he commanded an Ohio regiment, fought in six major campaigns, and received a medal “for gallant and distinguished services.” At the Battle of Winchester he captured an artillery position in hand-to-hand fighting. In the Battle of South Mountain he suffered a severe arm wound that ended his military career.

Hayes was then elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he supported the moderate wing of his party, which wished for conciliation with the South, rather than the radical Republicans, who intended to impose a harsh military occupation on the defeated region. He served three terms as governor of Ohio, providing honest and competent government. But Hayes failed in his efforts in 1868 to amend the state constitution to allow African Americans to vote. In 1876, as a dark horse candidate, Hayes defeated James G. Blaine for the Republican nomination for President. In his letter accepting the nomination, he pledged that he would not be a candidate for a second term.

Throughout his career Hayes managed to win one close election after another: it took 13 ballots for the Cincinnati city council to elect him solicitor; he won three Ohio gubernatorial contests by less than 1 percent margins; and his Presidential election followed a similar pattern. At first it appeared that Democrat Samuel J. Tilden was the winner. But Republicans challenged the results in Florida, Louisiana, Oregon, and South Carolina. These states had 20 electoral votes—enough for Hayes to win the White House.

Hayes believed that many African Americans had been intimidated from voting and that fraud had been committed. In South Carolina, for example, the number of votes counted was larger than the state's population. The Republican Senate and Democratic House created a 15-member electoral commission to examine the returns from these states and to certify which electoral votes—Democratic or Republican—it would accept as valid. The commission awarded all 20 of the contested electoral votes from these states to Hayes by a party-line vote of 8 to 7. On March 2, 1877, the commission declared Hayes elected by 185 to 184 electoral college votes.

In what historians have termed the “great betrayal” of African Americans, the Southern Democrats agreed to accept the election of Hayes in return for the withdrawal of all federal troops from Louisiana and South Carolina, thus ending Reconstruction. The troops were withdrawn within two months of Hayes's inauguration. Republicans abandoned black voters, and without federal protection, white supremacy in politics and the segregation of public accommodations soon occurred. Republicans also promised the South financing for a transcontinental railroad line to link Southern and Western markets.

Early in his Presidency Hayes lost any chance of popular support through his actions during the railroad strikes of 1877. Workers faced wage cuts on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and they went on strike. At the request of the governor of West Virginia, Hayes sent federal troops to guard the mails and ensure the safety of trains. Rail strikes spread to Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and other cities. Eventually, the workers gave in to management, but the resentment against Hayes's use of troops led to the first congressional investigation of labor-management relations.

Hayes had campaigned for President as a reformer, distancing himself from the corrupt Grant administration. “He serves his party best who serves his country best,” he said in his inaugural address. Once in office, he alienated members of his party by making merit appointments and reforming government departments. His secretary of the interior, Carl Schurz, rooted out corrupt practices in the Indian Bureau. In June 1877 Hayes issued an order that civil servants could not be assessed, or forced by the parties to make political contributions, but this order was disregarded. Because of the opposition of New York party leader Senator Roscoe Conkling, it took Hayes two years to secure the dismissal for mismanagement of Chester A. Arthur as collector of the Port of New York. But Conkling (whom he had defeated for the nomination in 1876) was able to thwart Hayes's efforts to obtain civil service legislation.

After the 1878 midterm election Dem ocrats controlled both houses of Congress, and Hayes had little influence in the legislature. He often vetoed legislation passed by Congress. His most notable vetoes included the Bland-Allison Act, which required the resumption of silver coinage (Congress passed the bill over his veto); “riders” to appropriations bills sponsored by Southern Democrats that would have nullified federal election laws protecting black voting rights in Southern states; and a bill to exclude Chinese immigrants, on the grounds that it violated the Burlingame Treaty of 1868, an agreement between the United States and China that precluded the United States from a total exclusion of Chinese immigrants. Hayes bowed to anti-Chinese sentiment and negotiated a new treaty with China that limited immigration.

Hayes opposed a French scheme to build the Panama Canal, claiming it was a violation of the Monroe Doctrine. He sent a special message to Congress on March 8, 1880, stating that “the policy of this country is a canal under American control.” He further proclaimed that the United States would insist on exercising “supervision and authority” over any canal that was built. When the French diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps formed an “advisory committee” in the United States and paid the secretary of the navy, Richard W. Thompson, $25,000 to serve, Hayes put an end to this effort to buy influence in the capital by firing Thompson. De Lesseps tried to build his canal anyway but eventually abandoned the project.

In other foreign matters, Hayes ordered U.S. troops into Mexico to end raids by Indians, eventually obtaining cooperation from Mexican authorities so that troops could be withdrawn. He negotiated a treaty with Samoa that gave the U.S. Navy the use of the port of Pago Pago.

In 1880 Hayes honored his pledge not to seek reelection. He returned to his home in Fremont, Ohio, where he promoted educational reforms, especially for African-American industrial education in the South. From 1883 on, he served as president of the National Prison Association, an organization established to promote improvements in the correctional system.

See also Arthur, Chester Alan; Electoral college; Grant, Ulysses S.; Monroe Doctrine; Veto power

Sources

• Kenneth E. Davison, The Presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1972).
• Ari Hoogenboom, The Presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1988).
• Rayford Logan, The Betrayal of the Negro (New York: Collier, 1965)

(1822-1893), nineteenth president of the United States. Born in Ohio, Hayes graduated from Kenyon College at the top of his class in 1842 and three years later from Harvard Law School.

After beginning law practice in Lower Sandusky, Ohio, Hayes in 1850 moved to Cincinnati, where he married Lucy Ware Webb, an ardent abolitionist who helped make him a moderate reformer. Beginning in 1853 he defended captured runaway slaves. Later he joined the Republican party, entered politics, and from 1858 to 1861 was Cincinnati's city solicitor.

Outraged by the South's attack on Fort Sumter, Hayes volunteered for the Union army in 1861, served with conspicuous gallantry throughout the war, and emerged a major general and member-elect of Congress. In Congress from 1865 to 1867, he supported Radical Republican Reconstruction measures before resigning to run successfully for governor of Ohio. Reelected in 1869, Hayes counted as his greatest achievements Ohio's ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment and the establishment of Ohio State University. After retiring briefly, Hayes ran successfully for a third term as governor in 1875 and became Ohio's favorite-son candidate for the presidential nomination in 1876.

Hayes won the Republican nomination over his more prominent rivals because his record as a war hero, a Radical Republican congressman, and a reform governor would help him carry his crucial state. Hayes defeated the Democratic nominee, Samuel J. Tilden, after Congress, through an electoral commission, resolved a four-month dispute (pitting Democratic violence against Republican fraud) over who had carried South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida. Tilden always believed that in a fair election he would have carried those and other southern states, although there is no way of knowing if he was correct.

By applying his principles pragmatically, Hayes as president strengthened his party. With northern public opinion no longer supporting Radical Reconstruction, he ordered federal troops to cease protecting the last two Republican governors in the South but only after he extracted promises (which proved empty) from incoming Democrats to protect the civil rights of blacks. Hayes courageously vetoed popular legislation to prevent Chinese laborers from migrating to the United States and to expand the currency (although Congress passed the Bland-Allison Silver Act over his objections). He enhanced the power and prestige of the presidency by defeating congressional attempts to dictate his appointees and to force him to accept obnoxious legislation (designed to destroy the voting rights of blacks) added as riders to appropriation bills. During the great railroad strike of 1877, he resisted pressure to operate the railroads and avoided a confrontation between strikers and federal forces, thereby saving lives and property. Hayes insisted that the merit system be applied in the New York Customhouse and Post Office and demonstrated the practicality of civil service reform.

Despite his growing popularity, Hayes refused to run for a second term. In retirement he worked to improve the quality of education for poor black and white children and, in keeping with his liberal use of the pardoning power, served as president of the National Prison Reform Association.

Bibliography:

Harry Barnard, Rutherford B. Hayes and His America (1954); Ari Hoogenboom, The Presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes (1988).

Author:

Ari Hoogenboom

See also Compromise of 1877; Elections: 1876. For events during Hayes's administration, see Civil Service Reform; Greenback Party; Railroad Strike of 1877; Reconstruction.

1822–93, 19th President of the United States (1877–81), b. Delaware, Ohio, grad. Kenyon College, 1843, and Harvard law school, 1845. He became a moderately successful lawyer in Cincinnati and was made (1858) city solicitor. In the Civil War he began as a major of volunteers, took part in some 50 engagements, was several times wounded, and rose in rank to be (1865) major general of volunteers. Elected to Congress while still in the field, he served (1865–67) as a regular Republican, quietly supporting the radical Reconstruction program. He was three times (1867, 1869, 1875) elected governor of Ohio and was chosen as the Republican candidate for President in 1876, opposing Samuel J. Tilden, the Democratic candidate. The election marked the resurgence of the Democrats and the political reentry of the South into the Union.

The chaotic political conditions brought on by Reconstruction resulted in disputed elections in South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana. This was complicated by the death of an elector from Oregon. Congress created an electoral commission to decide the elections. Although Tilden had won the popular vote by a small majority, the commission awarded all disputed returns to Hayes and thereby gave him a majority of one in the electoral college. Indignation over the obviously partisan decision affected Hayes's administration, which was generally conservative and efficient but no more than that. He withdrew federal troops from Louisiana and South Carolina, and the Reconstruction era was ended. His conciliatory policy toward the South and his genuine interest in civil service reform alienated important Republican groups, notably the “Old Guard” led by Roscoe Conkling. An advocate of hard money, he vetoed the Bland-Allison Act, which was passed over his veto and provided for resumption of specie payments in gold. After his presidential term Hayes was active in philanthropic foundations.

Bibliography

See his diary ed. by T. H. Williams (1964); biographies H. J. Eckenrode (1957, repr. 1963) and T. H. Williams (1965); A. Hoogenboom, The Presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes (1988); P. L. Haworth, The Hayes-Tilden Disputed Presidential Election of 1876 (1906, new ed. 1927, repr. 1966); K. Polakoff, Politics of Inertia: The Election of 1876 and the End of Reconstruction (1973); R. Morris, Fraud of the Century: Rutherford B. Hayes, Samuel Tilden, and the Stolen Election of 1876 (2003); W. H. Rehnquist, Centennial Crisis: The Disputed Election of 1876 (2004).

Rutherford Birchard Hayes was a respected and successful lawyer in his home state of Ohio. He achieved further success while serving in the Union Army during the U.S. Civil War, and he went on to gain prominence as a politician from Ohio. His service as governor of Ohio and as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives led to his election as the nineteenth president of the United States.

Hayes was born October 4, 1822, in Delaware, Ohio. His father, Rutherford Hayes, died before Hayes was born and Hayes was raised by his mother, Sophia Birchard Hayes, with the help of his uncle, Sardis Birchard, a bachelor. Hayes was enrolled at Norwalk Academy, a Methodist school in Ohio, in the spring of 1836. The next year he joined Isaac Webb's Preparatory School, in Middletown, Connecticut, where Sardis aided with his tuition. In 1838 Hayes enrolled at Kenyon College, in Gambier, Ohio. He graduated first in his class in August 1842 and delivered the valedictory address. After graduating he studied French and German on his own.

He went on to Harvard Law School in 1843 and was later admitted to the Ohio bar. He began practicing law in Lower Sandusky (now Fremont), Ohio, as a partner of Ralph P. Buckland, a leading legal figure in the town. He assumed an active role in politics in 1848 when he worked to elect Zachary Taylor, the Whig candidate for president. In 1849 he established a law office in Cincinnati, and eventually he became a prominent attorney in the city. In 1852 he was chosen to examine candidates for admission to the Ohio bar. Later that year he married Lucy Webb, whom he had known for nearly eight years.

Hayes developed into a leading and somewhat radical figure in Ohio politics. Like many Republicans he opposed slavery but saw no need to punish the South. He chose other avenues in the fight to end slavery, offering his services to the Underground Railroad, which helped Southern slaves escape to freedom in the North. In 1853 he defended a number of escaped slaves in court. He went on to form a well-known Cincinnati law firm, Corwine, Hayes, and Rogers.

In the 1860 presidential campaign, he worked for the election of Abraham Lincoln, but with no great enthusiasm. After Lincoln's election at the beginning of the Civil War, Hayes wrote in his diary, "Six states have ‘seceded.' Let them go." Nevertheless, when the war broke out, Hayes became active in the Union's military effort to unify the nation. In 1862 he was promoted to full colonel and given command of the Twenty-third Ohio Regiment. Hayes was wounded four times, once seriously, during the war. His composure in battle gained him the respect of those who served under him.

Hayes's popularity helped his political career. On October 19, 1864, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives for the Second Congressional District of Ohio. He was reelected in 1866. In 1867 the Ohio Republican party nominated Hayes as its candidate for governor. He gained considerable support from Radical Republicans who, like Hayes, opposed President Andrew Johnson's vetoes of legislation calling for military government in the South. On January 13, 1868, Hayes was inaugurated as governor of Ohio. He was reelected governor in 1870 and again in 1875.

Hayes favored a sound fiscal policy with regard to the use of public money, and he opposed public funds for Catholic schools. These issues struck a chord with Republicans throughout the United States, who sought to extend his fiscal policies to the federal level. He received the Republican nomination for president in 1876, to run against Samuel J. Tilden of New York.

Even before election results were in, Hayes wrote in his diary that he feared a contested election and perhaps even an armed conflict because of it. He apparently anticipated the most complicated election in the nation's history. On November 7, 1880, election results showed that Tilden had won 4.300 million popular votes to Hayes's 4.036 million, giving Tilden 184 electoral votes (one short of the needed majority) and Hayes 166.

A congressional election committee was designated to determine the winner of the election. After months of deliberation, Republicans managed to sway the committee by filling it with Republican loyalists. On March 2, 1877, Congress declared Hayes and his vice presidential candidate, William Almon Wheeler, of New York, the winners of the 1876 election.

In his inaugural address, Hayes stressed the importance of settling the problems left by Union occupation of Southern states. In April 1877 he ordered federal troops out of South Carolina and New Orleans. The era of the Reconstruction of the South initiated by former president Ulysses S. Grant was over.

During Hayes's administration he renewed the economic policy of satisfying the public debt with government currency, and he opposed measures passed by Congress to freely coin silver. Hayes reformed the process for appointing civil servants. He also signed legislation permitting women to practice law before the Supreme Court.

Hayes refused to run for reelection in 1880, and retired from politics. However, he continued to contribute to the landscape of American life. In 1882 he became the first president of the Slater Fund, founded to aid African American education programs in the South. He later gave a scholarship to a promising young man, W.E.B. Du Bois, who went on to attend Fisk and Harvard Universities and ultimately became a leading figure in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In 1883 Hayes became the first president of the National Prison Reform Association, a post he held for nearly ten years. Hayes was also a trustee of Ohio Wesleyan and Ohio State Universities.

On January 14, 1893, Hayes suffered severe chest pain while in Cleveland on business for Western Reserve and Ohio State Universities. His son Webb C. Hayes accompanied him to Speigel Grove, in Fremont, Ohio, where his wife had been buried three years earlier. On January 17 Hayes died, at the age of seventy.

IN BRIEF: n. - 19th President of the United States; Acclaimed actress of stage and screen (born in 1900).

Quotes:

"He serves his party best who serves his country best."