Rutherford B. Hayes

Rutherford Birchard Hayes was born on October 4, 1822, in DelawareDelawareDelaware is a U.S. state in the Mid-Atlantic region on the East Coast, with its capital at Dover and Wilmington as its largest city. On December 7, 1787, it became the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution, entering the Union as the 1st state, and it had a population of 989,948 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry, Ohio. His parents, Rutherford Hayes and Sophia Birchard Hayes, had moved to Ohio from Dummerston, VermontVermontVermont is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States; its capital is Montpelier and its largest city is Burlington. It joined the Union on March 4, 1791, as the 14th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 643,077.Open the full entry, in 1817, and the family ran a farm and a whiskey distillery; his father died in July 1822, about ten weeks before he was born.⁠[1][2]

His mother supported the family by taking in lodgers and leasing the farm for a share of the crops. His uncle Sardis Birchard, a merchant in Lower Sandusky (later renamed Fremont), acted as a surrogate father and helped pay for the private schooling of Hayes and his sister Fanny.⁠[2][1]

Hayes attended schools in Delaware and Norwalk, Ohio, and Middletown, ConnecticutConnecticutConnecticut is a U.S. state in the New England region. Its capital is Hartford and its largest city is Bridgeport (2010 census). It entered the Union on January 9, 1788, as the 5th state, and had a population of 3,605,944 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry, and then Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, graduating as valedictorian of the class of 1842.⁠[1][2]

After studying law in a Columbus law office, Hayes entered Harvard Law School in 1843 and received a bachelor of laws in 1845. That year he was admitted to the Ohio bar and opened a practice in Lower Sandusky.⁠[2][3]

Hayes moved to Cincinnati on December 24, 1849, and became known for criminal defense. From 1853 he defended people who had escaped slavery, and in 1855 he helped defend Rosetta Armstead, who was freed in Ohio. His opposition to slavery drew him into the Republican Party.⁠[2][1]

In 1858 the Cincinnati City Council elected Hayes to complete an unexpired term as city solicitor; he won the post outright in 1859 and served until 1861.⁠[2]

On December 30, 1852, Hayes married Lucy Ware Webb in a simple ceremony in Cincinnati. The Miller Center’s essay judges that Lucy, an advocate of temperance and abolition, strongly shaped his views; he grew more antislavery and became a teetotaler.⁠[4][5]

When the Civil War began, Hayes was nearly 40, with three children and a fourth on the way, and he was among the first three-year volunteers. On June 7, 1861, Ohio Governor William Dennison commissioned him a major in the 23rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry. William McKinleyWilliam McKinleyWilliam McKinley (1843–1901) was an American Republican politician who served in the U.S. House of Representatives and as Governor of Ohio before becoming the 25th President of the United States (1897–1901), leading the country through the Spanish-American War; he was assassinated in 1901.Open the full entry also served in the regiment.⁠[5][2][1]

At the Battle of South Mountain (Fox’s Gap) in 1862, a musket ball fractured Hayes’s left arm above the elbow. He was later promoted to colonel and from 1863 to 1865 regularly commanded a brigade, at times a division.⁠[2][3]

In 1864 Hayes joined the Army of West VirginiaVirginiaVirginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state whose capital is Richmond. It entered the Union on June 25, 1788, as the 10th state, and had a population of 8,631,393 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry and fought in the Shenandoah Valley campaign. At Opequon Creek he led a charge that turned the battle, and at Cedar Creek on October 19, 1864, his horse was shot from under him, he injured his ankle and he was struck in the head by a spent ball. He was wounded five times during the war.⁠[3][5][2]

In July 1864, while still in the army, Hayes was nominated for the U.S. House; he refused to leave his post to campaign, was nevertheless elected from Ohio’s 2nd congressional district, and did not take his seat until the Union had won the war.⁠[2][1][3]

Hayes’s term in the 39th Congress began on March 4, 1865. He was promoted to brigadier general, mustered out on June 8, 1865, and brevetted major general for “gallant and distinguished services.” The first session of the 39th Congress met on December 4, 1865; he was reelected in 1866 and resigned in 1867 to run for governor.⁠[2]

In 1867 Hayes was elected governor of Ohio by fewer than 3,000 votes; he was reelected and served from 1868 to 1872. During his tenure Ohio ratified the Fifteenth Amendment, and he helped establish what became Ohio State University, created an Ohio Geological Survey and set up nonpartisan boards for state institutions.⁠[2][1]

Hayes left the governorship at the end of his second term in 1872 and, having supported Ulysses S. GrantUlysses S. GrantUlysses S. Grant (1822–1885) was an American soldier and politician who commanded the Union armies in the final years of the Civil War (1864–1865) and served as the 18th president of the United States from 1869 to 1877.Open the full entry’s reelection, lost a congressional race that year. In May 1873 he moved to Fremont to help his uncle Sardis Birchard manage his investments; Birchard died in 1874 and left Hayes most of his estate.⁠[1][2]

In 1875 Hayes won a third term as governor of Ohio, serving from 1876 to 1877.⁠[1][5]

The 1876 Republican National Convention met in Cincinnati, with rivals including James G. Blaine, Oliver P. Morton, Benjamin H. Bristow and Roscoe Conkling. No candidate won a majority on the early ballots; Hayes gained votes by the fifth ballot and clinched the nomination on the seventh, with William Wheeler as his running mate. The Miller Center’s essay judges that his acceptability to most party factions was a key reason for his success. In 1876 Hayes pledged to serve only one term.⁠[6][7][8]

The Democratic nominee was New York Governor Samuel J. Tilden. Tilden won 4,288,191 popular votes (51.0 percent) to Hayes’s 4,033,497 (48.0 percent); in the Electoral College Hayes was declared the winner by 185 votes to 184, leaving Tilden one vote short of the 185 needed. ColoradoColoradoColorado is a U.S. state classified as one of the Mountain states, with Denver as its capital. It was admitted to the Union on August 1, 1876, as the 38th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 5,773,714.Open the full entry, admitted to the Union on August 1, 1876, had its 3 electors chosen by the state legislature, and all went to Hayes.⁠[7][6]

In FloridaFloridaFlorida is a U.S. state occupying mainly the Florida peninsula, with its capital at Tallahassee; its most populous city is Jacksonville. It entered the Union on March 3, 1845, as the 27th state, and had a population of 21,538,187 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry, LouisianaLouisianaLouisiana is a state in the southern United States on the Gulf of Mexico, bordered by Arkansas, Mississippi and Texas; its capital is Baton Rouge and its largest city is New Orleans. It entered the Union on April 30, 1812, as the 18th state, and had a population of 4,657,757 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry and South CarolinaSouth CarolinaSouth Carolina (officially the State of South Carolina) is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Ocean bordering Georgia and North Carolina; its capital is Columbia and its most populous city is Charleston. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on May 23, 1788, the eighth state to do so. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 5,118,425.Open the full entry both parties claimed victory and Republican-controlled returning boards determined the official results; in OregonOregonOregon (officially the State of Oregon) is a state on the Pacific coast of the western United States; its capital is Salem and its largest city is Portland. It was admitted to the Union on February 14, 1859, as the 33rd state. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 4,237,256.Open the full entry one Hayes elector was a federal officeholder, and the Democratic governor certified a Democratic replacement. On December 6, 1876, electors in these four states cast conflicting votes. In Louisiana Tilden unofficially led by 6,300 votes, but the returning board threw out about 15,000 votes, roughly 13,000 of them Democratic.⁠[6]

In January 1877 Congress passed the Electoral Commission Act, creating a commission of five senators (three Republicans and two Democrats), five representatives (three Democrats and two Republicans) and five Supreme Court justices (two Republicans, two Democrats and the independent David Davis). Davis withdrew after being elected to the Senate from IllinoisIllinoisIllinois is a state of the United States that borders Lake Michigan and the states of Wisconsin, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri and Iowa; its capital is Springfield and its largest city is Chicago. It was admitted to the Union on December 3, 1818, as the 21st state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 12,812,508.Open the full entry and was replaced by the Republican Joseph P. Bradley, giving Republicans an 8–7 majority. Voting along party lines, the commission awarded the disputed states to Hayes.⁠[6]

Democratic filibusters delayed the count until Speaker Samuel J. Randall ruled them out of order, and the count was completed in the early hours of March 2, 1877. On whether a secret bargain traded the end of Reconstruction for the presidency, the Miller Center’s essays find little evidence of an explicit deal and doubt that any arrangement went beyond the pledges in Hayes’s letter of acceptance, while the National Park Service biography states that an informal political deal led to the withdrawal of federal troops from the South.⁠[6][5][3]

Hayes took the oath of office privately in the Red Room of the White House on Saturday, March 3, 1877; he was inaugurated on March 4, and because that day was a Sunday his inaugural address was delivered on March 5. The conciliatory address backed a return to the gold standard by 1879, called for a nonpartisan civil service and said the Southern states should govern themselves while obeying the entire Constitution, including the Reconstruction amendments.⁠[1][6][9][5]

His cabinet included Secretary of State William M. Evarts, Treasury Secretary John Sherman, Interior Secretary Carl Schurz and Postmaster General David M. Key, a former Confederate and Democrat.⁠[9]

When Hayes took office, Reconstruction had ended everywhere in the South except Louisiana and South Carolina. After Democratic leaders there pledged to uphold the civil and voting rights of Black and white Republicans, Hayes, within two months of taking office, withdrew the federal troops in New Orleans and Columbia that were protecting the two states’ Republican governments.⁠[9][5]

Those promises were later broken. Over the next two decades Black Southerners were largely disfranchised through poll taxes, literacy tests, intimidation and violence, and segregation was enforced until the 1960s. Hayes protested in his diary and used his veto several times to preserve some federal oversight of Black voting, without much effect.⁠[9][5]

The Nez Perce were forced from the Wallowa Valley, leading to a war from June to October 1877; they retreated 1,700 miles before surrendering in MontanaMontanaMontana is a state in the northwestern United States, with the Rocky Mountains in the west and the Great Plains in the east; its capital is Helena and its largest city is Billings. Montana became the 41st U.S. state on November 8, 1889, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 1,084,225 residents.Open the full entry, and the survivors were sent to Indian Territory. The Ponca were removed from their Dakota reserve to Indian Territory; Chief Standing Bear’s attempt to bury his son in Dakota led to his arrest in NebraskaNebraskaNebraska is a state of the United States bordered by South Dakota to the north, Iowa and Missouri to the east, Kansas to the south, and Colorado to the southwest, with its panhandle bordering Wyoming to the west; its capital is Lincoln and its largest city is Omaha. It was admitted to the Union on March 1, 1867, as the 37th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 1,961,504.Open the full entry and sparked an Indian-rights movement, and the government later allowed the Ponca to return, though without their communal property. Interior Secretary Schurz cleaned out a fraud ring in the Indian Bureau that had accepted gifts from contractors.⁠[9]

The Miller Center’s essay characterizes Hayes’s Indian policy as assimilationist paternalism that aimed to remove Native Americans from their lands, end communal property and promote mainstream education and farming. In 1880 Hayes said, “We have displaced them and are now completing that work.”⁠[9]

On June 22, 1877, Hayes issued an executive order prohibiting political assessments of civil servants and forbidding them to manage political parties, conventions and campaigns.⁠[9]

In mid-July 1877 a strike broke out spontaneously on the Baltimore & Ohio and spread to other trunk lines between the Northeast seaboard and the Midwest. In Baltimore the MarylandMarylandMaryland is a Middle Atlantic state of the United States, deeply indented by Chesapeake Bay and bordered by Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, the District of Columbia and West Virginia; its capital is Annapolis and its largest city is Baltimore. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on April 28, 1788, as the seventh state to do so, and had a population of 6,177,224 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry militia fired on strikers and killed ten, and a crowd of 15,000 burned passenger cars and part of the depot; in Pittsburgh Philadelphia militia killed ten to twenty people, after which strikers besieged the guardsmen, burned them out and killed five as they fled, and the crowd destroyed 104 locomotives and 2,152 railroad cars. The strike ended by the end of July, and by early 1880 the railroads had restored the wage cuts.⁠[9]

The railroad president Tom Scott urged Hayes to use federal troops on management’s side. Hayes rejected direct intervention, sending troops to “preserve order” only when state or local authorities requested help, and he refused to force the mail through when railroads could not carry it. The Miller Center’s domestic affairs essay judges that he set a precedent for federal troops intervening on the side of business in mass strikes, while its “Impact and Legacy” essay argues that Hayes sent troops against riots only on legal requests from state and local authorities and did not break the strike itself.⁠[9][10]

In 1878 Congress passed the Bland-Allison Act over Hayes’s veto, requiring the Treasury to buy $2 million to $4 million of silver each month. Treasury Secretary John Sherman bought only the $2 million minimum and redeemed silver dollars in gold on request, so the act had no inflationary effect. Hayes supported the Specie Resumption Act of 1875, and with Sherman he built up gold reserves; greenbacks circulated at face value in gold by mid-December 1878, and redemption in gold began on January 1, 1879. Business revived in the last two years of his presidency.⁠[9]

The New York Custom House collected about 70 percent of the nation’s revenue, and its collector, Chester A. ArthurChester A. ArthurChester A. Arthur (1829–1886) was an American lawyer and politician who served as collector of the Port of New York, became vice president in 1881 and, after the assassination of James A. Garfield that year, succeeded him as the 21st president of the United States, serving until 1885.Open the full entry, kept it in politics with the approval of Senator Roscoe Conkling. Hayes tried to replace Arthur with Theodore RooseveltTheodore RooseveltTheodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) was an American Republican politician, writer, naturalist, and soldier who served as the 26th President of the United States from 1901 to 1909 and received the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize for mediating an end to the Russo-Japanese War.Open the full entry, Sr., but Conkling blocked the confirmation by invoking “the courtesy of the Senate.” On July 11, 1878, while Congress was not in session, Hayes suspended Arthur and replaced him with Edwin A. Merritt, with Silas W. Burt as second in command. When the Senate reconvened in January 1879, Hayes prevailed with the help of Democrats and some Republicans, and the customhouse was thereafter run on merit through competitive examinations; the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act followed in 1883.⁠[9]

After the 1878 elections Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and attached riders to appropriations bills to repeal the Enforcement Acts, which protected voting rights and prevented fraud. In April, May and June of the following year Hayes vetoed these bills, calling the riders “unconstitutional and revolutionary” and arguing that every citizen has the right “to cast one unintimidated ballot and to have his ballot honestly counted.” Lacking the two-thirds majority needed to override, the Democrats eventually passed the money bills without the riders.⁠[9]

During his presidency Hayes also signed a bill that for the first time allowed women attorneys to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court.⁠[1]

Hayes left office on March 4, 1881, when James A. GarfieldJames A. GarfieldJames A. Garfield (1831–1881) was an American educator, soldier and politician who rose to major general in the Civil War, served for many years in the U.S. House of Representatives and was the 20th president of the United States in 1881, dying in office after being shot.Open the full entry was inaugurated, and returned with Lucy to their Spiegel Grove estate in Fremont, Ohio. Alexander Stephens, the former Confederate vice president, said he had never seen a president leave power “so well spoken of.”⁠[11][1][8]

In retirement Hayes was a trustee of Ohio State University, Western Reserve University, Ohio Wesleyan University and Mount Union College, a trustee and chairman of the executive committee of the Peabody Education Fund, and the first president of the John F. Slater Fund, working to improve education for Black and white students in the South. In 1890 and 1891 he presided over two conferences on African American concerns. The National Prison Association chose him as its second president. He also helped veterans obtain pensions.⁠[11][8][1]

In his later years Hayes opposed the death penalty and believed crime stemmed from poverty and desperation. In his last decade he saw the gap between wealthy industrialists and laborers as the nation’s greatest problem, supported federal regulation of industry, industrial education and confiscatory inheritance taxes, and worried about “a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations.”⁠[8]

Lucy Webb Hayes died on June 25, 1889, at age 57, a few days after suffering a stroke. Afterward his daughter Fanny, named after his sister, became his companion at home and on his travels.⁠[4][8]

In early January 1893, returning from Columbus, Hayes was stricken with severe chest pains in Cleveland; he insisted on going home to Fremont, where he died of heart disease at his Spiegel Grove home on January 17, 1893, at age 70.⁠[11][8][1]

President-elect Grover ClevelandGrover ClevelandGrover Cleveland (1837–1908) was an American politician and Democrat who served as President of the United States from 1885 to 1889 and from 1893 to 1897, as the 22nd and 24th president, the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms.Open the full entry and Ohio Governor William McKinley led the long funeral procession through the snowy Ohio countryside, and members of the Ohio legislature attended. Hayes was buried beside Lucy in Fremont’s Oakwood Cemetery.⁠[8][11]

In April 1915 the remains of Hayes and Lucy were moved to a knoll in the wooded grounds of Spiegel Grove. The site is a designated state memorial marked by a granite monument Hayes designed in 1889, cut from stone from the ancestral farm in Dummerston, Vermont.⁠[11]

Webb C. Hayes deeded the Spiegel Grove estate to the State of Ohio. The library and museum building opened on Memorial Day, May 30, 1916; the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library & Museums describes itself as America’s first presidential library and the forerunner of the federal presidential library system.⁠[12][13]

Lucy Webb Hayes was born on August 28, 1831, in Chillicothe, Ohio, to Dr. James Webb and Maria Cook. She graduated from Cincinnati Wesleyan Female College in 1850 and was the first wife of a president to be a college graduate and the first to be called “First Lady.” No alcohol was served at the White House during her time there, and she invited Washington children to use the White House lawn on the Monday after Easter.⁠[4][1]

They had eight children: Birchard Austin (1853–1926), Webb Cook (1856–1934), Rutherford Platt (1858–1927), Joseph Thompson (1861–1863), George Crook (1864–1866), Fanny (1867–1950), Scott Russell (1871–1923) and Manning Force (1873–1874); three of them died during the second summer of their lives.⁠[4][14]

The Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library & Museums occupies the 25-acre Spiegel Grove estate in Fremont and includes the 31-room Victorian-era Hayes home, a National Historic Landmark; a museum with exhibits on Hayes’s life and administration, the Civil War and all U.S. presidents; a research library; and the graves of Hayes and Lucy. It is operated by Hayes Presidential Center, Inc., funded mainly through the Rutherford B. Hayes–Lucy Webb Hayes Foundation, with an annual state appropriation administered through the Ohio History Connection.⁠[13][12]

Encyclopaedia BritannicaEncyclopædia BritannicaEncyclopædia Britannica is a general English-language encyclopedia first published in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1768; the name also refers to its publisher, Chicago-based Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. (which presents itself as The Britannica Group). The print edition ended in 2012, and the company’s main businesses since then have been the online encyclopedia Britannica.com, digital education products for schools and libraries, and Merriam-Webster dictionaries.Open the full entry notes that Hayes is the only president to have held office by decision of an extraordinary commission of congressmen and Supreme Court justices. The Miller Center’s “Impact and Legacy” essay records that Henry Adams called Hayes a “third-rate nonentity” in 1876 but by 1880 acknowledged a “most successful administration”; critical historians blame him for ending Reconstruction, breaking the Great Strike of 1877, championing the gold standard, an acculturation-focused Indian policy, negotiating the China treaty that led to Chinese exclusion and inconsistent civil service reform. The essay’s author argues that scholars judge him by later ideals and underrate his limited options, that he strengthened the presidency, and that his main mistake was declining to seek reelection.⁠[15][10]

Hayes described himself as “a radical in thought” but “a conservative in method.”⁠[10]

Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library & Museums: Official website: https://www.rbhayes.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[13][12]