Rutherford B. Hayes
Rutherford Birchard Hayes was the 19th president of the United States, serving from 1877 to 1881. He served as Cincinnati's city solicitor from 1858 to 1861 and was known as a staunch abolitionist who defended refugee slaves in court proceedings. At the start of the Civil War, Hayes left a fledgling political career to join the Union army. He was wounded five times, most seriously at the Battle of South Mountain in 1862. Hayes earned a reputation for bravery in combat, rising in the ranks to serve as brevet major general. After the war, he was a prominent member of the "Half-Breed" faction of the Republican Party. Hayes 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 in the 1876 United States presidential election. In the disputed general election, he defeated Democratic nominee Samuel J. Tilden while losing the popular vote. Neither candidate initially secured enough electoral votes to win, but Hayes prevailed after a Congressional Commission awarded him 20 contested electoral votes in the Compromise of 1877. The electoral dispute was resolved in an agreement between Southern Democrats and Whiggish Republican businessmen whereby Hayes would be president but end both federal support for Reconstruction and the military occupation of the former Confederacy.
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 Hayes resolved by calling in the U.S. Army against the railroad workers. It remains the deadliest conflict between workers and strikebreakers in American history. He appointed John Marshall Harlan to the U.S. Supreme Court.
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. Hayes also arbitrated a territorial dispute between Argentina and Paraguay after the Paraguayan War. His policy toward western Native Americans 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.
Early life and family
Childhood and family history
Rutherford Birchard Hayes was born in Delaware, Ohio, on October 4, 1822, to Rutherford Ezekiel Hayes, Jr. and Sophia Birchard. His father, a Vermont storekeeper, had taken the family to Ohio in 1817. He died 10 weeks before Rutherford's birth. Sophia raised Hayes and his sister, Fanny, the only two of four children to survive to adulthood. She never remarried, and Sophia's younger brother, Sardis Birchard, lived with the family for a time. He was always close to Hayes and became a father figure to him, contributing to his early education.Through each of his parents, Hayes was descended from New England colonists. His earliest immigrant ancestor came to Connecticut from Scotland. Hayes's great-grandfather Ezekiel Hayes was a militia captain in Connecticut in the American Revolutionary War, but Ezekiel's son left his Branford home during the war for the relative peace of Vermont. 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.John Noyes, an uncle by marriage, had been his father's business partner in Vermont and was later elected to Congress. His first cousin, Mary Jane Mead, was the mother of sculptor Larkin Goldsmith Mead and architect William Rutherford Mead. John Humphrey Noyes, the founder of the Oneida Community, was also a first cousin.
Education and early law career
Hayes attended the common schools in Delaware, Ohio, and enrolled in 1836 at the Norwalk Seminary in Norwalk, Ohio. 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. Returning to Ohio, Hayes attended Kenyon College in Gambier in 1838. He enjoyed his time at Kenyon and was successful scholastically; while there, Hayes joined several student societies and became interested in Whig politics. His classmates included Stanley Matthews and John Celivergos Zachos. Hayes graduated Phi Beta Kappa with the highest honors in 1842 and addressed the class as its valedictorian.After briefly reading law in Columbus, Ohio, Hayes moved east to attend Harvard Law School in 1843. Graduating with an LL.B, he was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1845 and opened his own law office in Lower Sandusky. Business was slow at first, but Hayes gradually attracted clients and also represented his uncle Sardis in real estate litigation. 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, Hayes visited family in New England instead. 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. Business remained meager on his return to Lower Sandusky, and Hayes decided to move to Cincinnati.
Cincinnati law practice and marriage
In 1850, Hayes moved to Cincinnati and opened a law office with John W. Herron, a lawyer from Chillicothe. Herron later joined a more established firm and Hayes formed a new partnership with William K. Rogers and Richard M. Corwine. He found business better in Cincinnati and enjoyed its social attractions, joining the Cincinnati Literary Society and the Odd Fellows Club. Hayes also attended the Episcopal Church in Cincinnati but did not become a member.Hayes courted his future wife, Lucy Webb, during his time there. His mother had encouraged him to get to know Lucy years earlier, but Hayes had believed that she was too young and focused his attention on other women. 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. Over the next five years, Lucy gave birth to three sons: Birchard Austin, Webb Cook, and Rutherford Platt. A Methodist, Lucy was a teetotaler and abolitionist. She influenced her husband's views on those issues, though Hayes never formally joined her church.
Hayes had begun his law practice dealing primarily with commercial issues but won greater prominence in Cincinnati as a criminal defense attorney, defending several people accused of murder. 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. Hayes also defended slaves who had escaped and been accused under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Because 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.
Hayes's political reputation rose with his professional plaudits. He declined a Republican nomination for a judgeship in 1856. 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. 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.
Civil War
West Virginia and South Mountain
As the Southern states quickly began to secede after Lincoln's election to the presidency in 1860, Hayes was lukewarm about civil war to restore the Union. Considering that the two sides might be irreconcilable, he suggested that the Union "et them go." Ohio had voted for Lincoln in 1860, but Cincinnati voters turned against the Republican Party after secession. Its residents included many from the Southern United States, and they voted for the Democrats and Know-Nothings, who combined to sweep the city elections in April 1861, ejecting Hayes from the city solicitor's office.Returning to private practice, Hayes formed a very brief law partnership with Leopold Markbreit, lasting three days before the war began. After the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, Hayes resolved his doubts and joined a volunteer company composed of his Literary Society friends. That June, Governor William Dennison appointed several of the officers of the volunteer company to positions in the 23rd Regiment of Ohio Volunteer Infantry. Hayes was promoted to major, and his friend and college classmate Stanley Matthews was appointed lieutenant colonel. Also joining the regiment as a private was another future president, William McKinley.
After a month of training, Hayes and the 23rd Ohio set out for western Virginia in July 1861 as a part of the Kanawha Division. They did not meet the enemy until September, when the regiment encountered Confederates at Carnifex Ferry in present-day West Virginia and drove them back. In November, Hayes was promoted to lieutenant colonel and led his troops deeper into western Virginia, where they entered winter quarters. The division resumed its advance the following spring, and Hayes led several raids against the rebel forces, on one of which he sustained a minor injury to his knee. That September, Hayes's regiment was called east to reinforce General John Pope's Army of Virginia at the Second Battle of Bull Run. Hayes and his troops did not arrive in time for the battle, but joined the Army of the Potomac as it hurried north to cut off Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, which was advancing into Maryland. Marching north, the 23rd was the lead regiment encountering the Confederates at the Battle of South Mountain on September 14. Hayes led a charge against an entrenched position and was shot through his left arm, fracturing the bone. Hayes had one of his men tie a handkerchief above the wound in an effort to stop the bleeding, and continued to lead his men in the battle. While resting, Hayes ordered his men to meet a flanking attack, but instead his entire command moved backward, leaving Hayes lying in between the lines.
Eventually, his men brought Hayes back behind their lines, and he was taken to hospital. The regiment continued on to Antietam, but Hayes was out of action for the rest of the campaign. In October, he was promoted to colonel and assigned to command of the first brigade of the Kanawha Division as a brevet brigadier general.