Rutherford B. Hayes
Rutherford Birchard Hayes (/ˈrʌðərfərd/; October 4, 1822 – January 17, 1893) was an American military officer and politician who served as the 19th president of the United States from 1877 to 1881.
"President Hayes" and "Rutherford Hayes" redirect here. For his son, see Rutherford P. Hayes. For the Department in Paraguay, see Presidente Hayes Department.
Rutherford B. Hayes
Thomas L. Young
January 17, 1893 (aged 70)
Fremont, Ohio, U.S.
- Whig (until 1854)
- Republican (from 1854)
8, including Webb C. Hayes and Rutherford P. Hayes
- Sophia Brichard (mother)
- Rutherford E. Hayes Jr.(father)
Carl Edwards (great-great-great grandson)
- Politician
- lawyer
1861–1865
As an attorney in Ohio, Hayes served as Cincinnati's city solicitor from 1858 to 1861. He was a staunch abolitionist who defended refugee slaves in court proceedings.[1] At the start of the American Civil War, he left a fledgling political career to join the Union Army as an officer. Hayes was wounded five times, most seriously at the Battle of South Mountain in 1862. He earned a reputation for bravery in combat, rising in the ranks to serve as brevet major general. After the war, he earned a reputation in the Republican Party as a prominent member of the "Half-Breed" faction.[2] He served in Congress from 1865 to 1867 and was elected governor of Ohio, serving two consecutive terms from 1868 to 1872 and half of a third two-year term from 1876 to 1877 before his swearing-in as president.
Hayes won the Republican nomination for president in the 1876 United States presidential election. In the disputed[3][4] general election, he faced Democratic nominee Samuel J. Tilden. Hayes lost the popular vote to Tilden; neither candidate secured enough electoral votes to win the election. Hayes secured a victory when a Congressional Commission awarded him 20 contested electoral votes in the Compromise of 1877. The electoral dispute was resolved with a backroom deal whereby both Southern Democrats and Whiggish Republican businessmen acquiesced to Hayes's election on the condition that he end both federal support for Reconstruction and the military occupation of the former Confederate States.[5][6]
Hayes's administration was influenced by his belief in meritocratic government and equal treatment without regard to wealth, social standing, or race. One of the defining events of his presidency was the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, which he resolved by calling in the US Army against the railroad workers. It remains the deadliest conflict between workers and strikebreakers in American history. As president, Hayes implemented modest civil-service reforms that laid the groundwork for further reform in the 1880s and 1890s. He vetoed the Bland–Allison Act of 1878, which put silver money into circulation and raised nominal prices, but Congress overrode his veto. His policy toward western Indians anticipated the assimilationist program of the Dawes Act of 1887. At the end of his term, Hayes kept his pledge not to run for reelection and retired to his home in Ohio. Historians and scholars generally rank Hayes as an average to below-average president.
Family and early life[edit]
Childhood and family history[edit]
Rutherford Birchard Hayes was born in Delaware, Ohio, on October 4, 1822, to Rutherford Ezekiel Hayes, Jr. and Sophia Birchard. Hayes's father, a Vermont storekeeper, had taken the family to Ohio in 1817. He died ten weeks before Rutherford's birth. Sophia took charge of the family, raising Hayes and his sister, Fanny, the only two of the four children to survive to adulthood.[7] She never remarried,[8] and Sophia's younger brother, Sardis Birchard, lived with the family for a time.[9] He was always close to Hayes and became a father figure to him, contributing to his early education.[10]
Through each of his parents, Hayes was descended from New England colonists.[11] His earliest immigrant ancestor came to Connecticut from Scotland.[12] Hayes's great-grandfather Ezekiel Hayes was a militia captain in Connecticut in the American Revolutionary War, but Ezekiel's son (Hayes's grandfather, also named Rutherford) left his Branford home during the war for the relative peace of Vermont.[13] His mother's ancestors migrated to Vermont at a similar time. Hayes wrote: "I have always thought of myself as Scotch, but of the fathers of my family who came to America about thirty were English and two only, Hayes and Rutherford, were of Scotch descent. This is on my father's side. On my mother's side, the whole thirty-two were probably all of other peoples besides the Scotch."[14] Most of his close relatives outside Ohio continued to live there. John Noyes, an uncle by marriage, had been his father's business partner in Vermont and was later elected to Congress.[15] His first cousin, Mary Jane Mead, was the mother of sculptor Larkin Goldsmith Mead and architect William Rutherford Mead.[15] John Humphrey Noyes, the founder of the Oneida Community, was also a first cousin.[16]
Education and early law career[edit]
Hayes attended the common schools in Delaware, Ohio, and enrolled in 1836 at the Methodist Norwalk Seminary in Norwalk, Ohio.[17] He did well at Norwalk, and the next year transferred to the Webb School, a preparatory school in Middletown, Connecticut, where he studied Latin and Ancient Greek.[18] Returning to Ohio, he attended Kenyon College in Gambier in 1838.[19] He enjoyed his time at Kenyon, and was successful scholastically;[20] while there, he joined several student societies and became interested in Whig politics. His classmates included Stanley Matthews and John Celivergos Zachos.[21][22] He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with the highest honors in 1842 and addressed the class as its valedictorian.[23]
After briefly reading law in Columbus, Ohio, Hayes moved east to attend Harvard Law School in 1843.[24] Graduating with an LL.B, he was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1845 and opened his own law office in Lower Sandusky (now Fremont).[25] Business was slow at first, but he gradually attracted clients and also represented his uncle Sardis in real estate litigation.[26] In 1847 Hayes became ill with what his doctor thought was tuberculosis. Thinking a change in climate would help, he considered enlisting in the Mexican–American War, but on his doctor's advice instead visited family in New England.[27] Returning from there, Hayes and his uncle Sardis made a long journey to Texas, where Hayes visited with Guy M. Bryan, a Kenyon classmate and distant relative.[28] Business remained meager on his return to Lower Sandusky, and Hayes decided to move to Cincinnati.[29]
Cincinnati law practice and marriage[edit]
Hayes moved to Cincinnati in 1850, and opened a law office with John W. Herron, a lawyer from Chillicothe.[30][a] Herron later joined a more established firm and Hayes formed a new partnership with William K. Rogers and Richard M. Corwine.[32] He found business better in Cincinnati, and enjoyed its social attractions, joining the Cincinnati Literary Society and the Odd Fellows Club.[33] He also attended the Episcopal Church in Cincinnati but did not become a member.[33]
Hayes courted his future wife, Lucy Webb, during his time there.[34] His mother had encouraged him to get to know Lucy years earlier, but Hayes had believed she was too young and focused his attention on other women.[35] Four years later, Hayes began to spend more time with Lucy. They became engaged in 1851 and married on December 30, 1852, at Lucy's mother's house.[34] Over the next five years, Lucy gave birth to three sons: Birchard Austin (1853), Webb Cook (1856), and Rutherford Platt (1858).[32] A Methodist, Lucy was a teetotaler and abolitionist. She influenced her husband's views on those issues, though he never formally joined her church.[36]
Hayes had begun his law practice dealing primarily with commercial issues but won greater prominence in Cincinnati as a criminal defense attorney,[37] defending several people accused of murder.[38] In one case, he used a form of the insanity defense that saved the accused from the gallows; she was instead confined to a mental institution.[39] Hayes also defended slaves who had escaped and been accused under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.[40] As Cincinnati was just across the Ohio River from Kentucky, a slave state, it was a destination for escaping slaves and many such cases were tried in its courts. A staunch abolitionist, Hayes found his work on behalf of fugitive slaves personally gratifying as well as politically useful, as it raised his profile in the newly formed Republican Party.[41]
Hayes's political reputation rose with his professional plaudits. He declined a Republican nomination for a judgeship in 1856.[42] Two years later, some Republicans proposed that Hayes fill a vacancy on the bench, and he considered accepting the appointment until the office of city solicitor also became vacant.[43] The city council elected Hayes city solicitor to fill the vacancy, and he was elected to a full two-year term in April 1859 by a larger majority than other Republicans on the ticket.[44]
Post-war politics[edit]
U.S. Representative from Ohio[edit]
While serving in the Army of the Shenandoah in 1864, Hayes was nominated by Republicans for the House of Representatives from Ohio's 2nd congressional district.[70] Asked by friends in Cincinnati to leave the army to campaign, he refused, saying that an "officer fit for duty who at this crisis would abandon his post to electioneer for a seat in Congress ought to be scalped."[70] Instead, Hayes wrote several letters to the voters explaining his political positions and was elected by a 2,400-vote majority over the incumbent, Democrat Alexander Long.[70]
