Presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes
served as the 19th president of the United States from March 4, 1877, to March 4, 1881. Hayes, a Republican, took office after his narrow electoral college victory in the 1876 presidential election. This contentious election resulted in the Compromise of 1877, where Hayes agreed to pull federal troops out of the Southern United States, thus ending the Reconstruction era. Hayes declined to seek re-election and was succeeded by James A. Garfield.
In general, Hayes was a moderate and a pragmatist. He kept the promise to withdraw the last federal troops from the South, as Democrats took control of the last three Republican states. He sponsored civil service reform, where he challenged the patronage hungry Republican politicians. Though he failed to enact long-term reform, he helped generate public support for the eventual passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act in 1883. The Republican Party in the South grew steadily weaker as his efforts to support the civil rights of blacks in the South were largely stymied by Democrats in Congress.
Insisting that maintenance of the gold standard was essential to economic recovery, he opposed Greenbacks and vetoed the Bland–Allison Act that called for more silver in the money supply. Congress overrode his veto, but monetary policy during his administration can be broadly be described as a balance between inflationists and advocates of hard money. He used federal troops cautiously to avoid violence in the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, one of the largest labor strikes in U.S. history. It marked the end of the economic depression called the "Panic of 1873". Prosperity marked the rest of his term. His policy toward Native Americans emphasized minimizing fraud. He continued Grant's "peace plan" and anticipated the assimilationist program of the Dawes Act of 1887. In foreign policy, he was a moderate who took few initiatives. He unsuccessfully opposed the De Lesseps plan for building a Panama Canal, which he thought should be an American only program, Hayes asserted U.S. influence in Latin America and the continuing primacy of the Monroe Doctrine. Polls of historians and political scientists generally rank Hayes as an average president.
Election of 1876
Nomination and general election
With the retirement of President Ulysses S. Grant after two terms, the Republicans had to settle on a new candidate for the 1876 election. Hayes's success as governor of the key swing state of Ohio elevated him to the top ranks of Republican politicians under consideration for the presidency, alongside James G. Blaine of Maine, Senator Oliver P. Morton of Indiana, and Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York. The Ohio delegation to the 1876 Republican National Convention was united behind Hayes, and Senator John Sherman did all in his power to aid the nomination of his fellow Ohioan. In June 1876, the Republican National Convention assembled in Hayes's hometown of Cincinnati, with Blaine as the favorite. Hayes placed fifth on the first ballot of the convention, behind Blaine, Morton, Secretary of the Treasury Benjamin Bristow, and Conkling. After six ballots, Blaine remained in the lead, but on the seventh ballot, Blaine's adversaries rallied around Hayes, granting him the presidential nomination. For the vice presidency, the convention selected Representative William A. Wheeler, a man about whom Hayes had recently asked, "I am ashamed to say: who is Wheeler?"Hayes's views were largely in accord with the party platform, which called for equal rights regardless of race or gender, a continuation of Reconstruction, the prohibition of public funding for sectarian schools, and the resumption of specie payments. Hayes's nomination was well received by the press, with even Democratic papers describing Hayes as honest and likable. In a public letter accepting the nomination, Hayes vowed to support civil service reform and pledged to serve for only one term. The Democratic nominee was Samuel J. Tilden, the governor of New York state. Tilden was a formidable adversary and, like Hayes, he had a reputation for honesty. Also, like Hayes, Tilden was a hard-money man and supported civil service reform. In accordance with the custom of the time, the campaign was conducted by surrogates, with Hayes and Tilden remaining in their respective home towns.
The poor economic conditions following the Panic of 1873, combined with various Republican scandals, made the party in power unpopular, and Hayes personally believed that he might lose the election. Both candidates focused their attention on the swing states of New York and Indiana, as well as the three Southern states—Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida—where Reconstruction governments still barely ruled amid recurring political violence. The Republicans emphasized the danger of letting Democrats run the nation so soon after the Civil War, which they claimed had been provoked by southern Democrats. To a lesser extent, they also campaigned on the danger a Democratic administration would pose to the recently won civil rights of Southern blacks. Democrats, for their part, trumpeted Tilden's record of reform and contrasted it with the corruption of the incumbent Grant administration. The election was marred by violence in the South, as Redeemers sought to suppress the black vote.
Post-election dispute
As the returns were tallied on election day, it was clear that the race was close: while Hayes had won much of the North, Tilden had carried most of the South, as well as New York, Indiana, Connecticut, and New Jersey. On November 11, three days after election day, the 19 electoral votes of Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina were still in doubt. Tilden had won states with a collective total of 184 electoral votes, one short of a majority, while Hayes had won states with 166 electoral votes. Republicans and Democrats each claimed victory in the three disputed states, but the results in those states were rendered uncertain because of fraud by both parties. To further complicate matters, one of the three electors from Oregon was disqualified, reducing Hayes's total to 165, and raising the disputed votes to 20. If Tilden was awarded just one of the disputed electoral votes, he would become president, while a Hayes victory would require him to win all twenty of the disputed votes. With no clear victor in the election, the possibility of mass disorder hung over a country that remained deeply divided in the aftermath of the Civil War.There was considerable debate about which person or house of Congress was authorized to decide between the competing slates of electors, with the Republican Senate and the Democratic House each claiming priority. By January 1877, with the question still unresolved, Congress and President Grant agreed to submit the matter to a bipartisan Electoral Commission, which would be authorized to determine the fate of the disputed electoral votes. The Commission was to be made up of five representatives, five senators, and five Supreme Court justices. To ensure partisan balance, there would be seven Democrats and seven Republicans, with Justice David Davis, an independent respected by both parties, as the fifteenth member. The balance was upset when Democrats in the Illinois legislature elected Davis to the Senate, hoping to sway his vote; Davis disappointed Democrats by subsequently refusing to serve on the Electoral Commission As all of the remaining Justices were Republicans, Justice Joseph P. Bradley, believed to be the most independent-minded of them, was selected to take Davis's place on the Commission. The Commission met in February and the eight Republicans voted to award all 20 electoral votes to Hayes.
Despite the Commission's holding, Democrats could still block certification of the election by refusing to convene the House. As the March 4 inauguration day neared, Republican and Democratic Congressional leaders met at Wormley's Hotel in Washington and negotiated a compromise settlement. Republicans promised concessions in exchange for Democratic acquiescence in the Committee's decision. The primary concessions Hayes promised were the withdrawal of federal troops from the South and an acceptance of the election of Democratic governments in the remaining "unredeemed" states of the South. Democrats accepted the compromise, and Hayes was certified as the winner of the election on March 2.