“Honest colored men are preferable to white traitors.”
Hayes in a speech campaigning for governor of Ohio in support of Reconstruction
Once upon a time, there was an election. The Electoral College count came down to the thinnest of margins. It hinged largely on Florida. The candidate who won the popular vote lost. Racial issues were raised at the polls, tax returns were demanded and there were accusations of fraud fraud fraud! No, I’m not talking about Bush vs Gore in 2000. I’m talking about Rutherford B Hayes vs Samuel Tilden in 1876!
I won’t dwell on the particulars here, suffice to say that election was completely bananas. Maybe it was the effusive prose of Hans Trefousse that won me over, but I left this biography wondering how Rutherford B Hayes is such a forgotten president. One of the most educated men to ever hold the office, a Civil War hero, House rep and 3-time governor of a major state, he was incredibly qualified and got some things done. My guess is the combination of a contested election (which history suggests, they got it right), serving only one term and some optimistic naivete on Hayes’ part when it came to peace in the South garners an indifferent shrug from historians.
Many will point to the “Compromise of 1877” as the deal that won Hayes the White House in a Faustian bargain to abandon the freedmen of the former Confederacy. I’m more persuaded that Reconstruction (tragically) was on the brink of demise regardless. Grant had already decided to withdraw troops before Hayes took office and the state’s rights crowd had been pressing hard for years to push out federal officials and allow the Southern states to govern themselves.
History, for better or worse, goes in cycles. After the Revolution, slavery wasn’t dealt with. After the Civil War, whites both South and North took pains to make sure in Reconstruction that it wasn’t either. Southern governments gave assurances to Hayes that they would not curtail black rights if federal troops were removed. This was wishful thinking. Hayes was optimistic (if painfully naïve) in his diary, “I now hope for peace and what is more important, security and prosperity for the colored people. The result of my plans is to get from these States by their governors, legislatures, press, and people pledges that the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments shall be faithfully observed; that the colored people shall have equal rights to labor, education, and the privileges of citizenship.” Reaction to his withdrawal ranged widely from those who praised him for keeping his promise of bringing peace to the South to others who saw it as nothing less than a surrender of all black civil rights.
As for what he got done as Chief Executive, there are a few very un-sexy but important things that came across Hayes’ desk. At great cost to his reputation within the party, he was bent on civil service reform and ending the patronage system. Presidents used to spend an absolutely absurd amount of time doling out political appointments, being petitioned in person for everything from Secretary of State to postmaster of Toledo, Ohio. He started the framework for a complete overhaul of the system, one where jobs were given via application and merit rather than rewards for party loyalty, switching with every new administration. In an amusing twist of history, Hayes removed future president Chester Arthur from the incredibly lucrative appointment of Collector of the Port of New York to help make his point. Years later it would be Arthur, ascending to the presidency after the assassination of James Garfield, who would sign the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act into law, completing what Hayes started.
In 1877, Hayes faced the nation’s largest labor strike and managed to disband it without bloodshed from the federal troops he deployed (though, tragically, the same restraint was not shown by the state militias). For veterans, he signed the Arrears of Pensions Bill, at significant cost to the Treasury, awarding back payments to veterans dating from their discharge. On the immigration front, Hayes had to tangle with a Congress hoping to appease nativists in the West. A bill restricting Chinese immigration into the country was passed in both houses but Hayes, arguing it broke the Burlingame Treaty with the Chinese empire and fearing reprisals against Americans in China, vetoed the bill.
There are other issues of consequence in the career of Rutherford Hayes, but since we are in The Library I’ll wrap it up with some literary fare. Not excited to go to Congress following the Civil War, Hayes was cheered to learn he could get back issues of the Congressional Globe and was allowed access to a library. Seeing his passion for reading, his House colleagues made the studious new Congressman chairman of the Joint Committee on the Library. Hayes added two wings to the Library of Congress, including transferred books from the library in the Smithsonian, and secured appropriations for the purchase of new books. Closer to home, Hayes established the Birchard Library in Fremont, OH in memorial to his uncle. Not surprisingly, when RBH donated his estate in 1915 it became a museum and library. This library lays claim as the first presidential library in the US, but the National Archives site has other ideas. At some point I need to settle this debate, as it has driven me crazy ever since reading this biography.
Rutherford B Hayes will never rise to the ranks of the Great Ones as presidents go, which is fair. He came into office by a whisker, served only one term and set more things in motion than he conclusively settled. Hayes was too Pollyannaish about the fate of freed blacks in the South and the hills he chose to die on alienated him within the factions of his party. He was a scholar and a patriot, a man of high integrity who left the office not much better or worse than he found it. Not bad, but not Rushmore stuff either.
Trivia
- An Argentina-Paraguay land dispute in Nov. 1878 was settled by the Hayes administration, arbitrating the disputed territory to Paraguay which was consequently named Departamento de Presidente Hayes and the capital, Villa Hayes. Check it out!
- They also named their soccer club after him, Club Presidente Hayes.
- Appointed Frederick Douglass Marshal of Washington, D.C.
- Called RutherFRAUD by Democrats after he barely won the 1876 election, which I think is hilarious.
- First Lady Lucy Hayes had a telephone and bathtubs with running water installed in the White House.
- First President to visit the Pacific states.
- Lucy Hayes was the first First Lady to be a college graduate. (Wesleyan Female College in Cincinnati)
- First lawyer president to actually graduate from a law school. (Harvard Law)
- Civil War Badass
- Rose to rank of Brig. General.
- Lead the Ohio 23rd Regiment including a skirmish where he lead a charge, was struck in the arm, wrapped it in a handkerchief and fought on until he almost passed out and his men carried him to safety.
- Fellow Buckeye and future president William McKinley joined the regiment and Hayes thought him “an exceedingly bright, intelligent, and gentlemanly young officer” and “one of our best.”
- Battle of Cloyd’s Mountain – Had to fight their way into their mission of burning down the New River Bridge. Hayes incurred heavy casualties but battled on and achieved the mission.
- In another battle in Shenandoah Valley, he had his horse shot from under him, hurt his ankle and foot, but fought on.
Follow-up Reading
- Rutherford B. Hayes: Warrior and President by Ari Hoogenboom
- The Great Labor Uprising of 1877 by Phillip S Foner
- I Am a Man: Chief Standing Bear’s Journey for Justice by Joe Starita