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inverarityPOTUS #19: The progressive Republican who ended Reconstruction.
Self-published, 2022, 169 pages
I have continued my Presidential trek and have reached POTUS #19. Following the mighty Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford Birchard Hayes begins a string of Republican C-listers who served as president after the Civil War and who people mostly don't remember today.
The book I picked up for my bio of the nineteenth president was, it turns out, a self-published volume written by David Fisher, who is not a professional historian but seems to be a lifelong, avid presidential nerd. He claims a personal library of over 1100 presidential biographies and he's published multivolume sets with short biographies of every president. Honestly I might have picked a different book if I'd checked out the author first (not that someone needs to be a historian or traditionally published to write a good book), but pickings for Rutherford Hayes were not great and this one was free with my Kindle Unlimited subscription. Hey, it's not the best selection process, but it turns out the book was pretty good and it fit my desire for something fairly concise about a lesser-known president. So far as I can tell, Fisher's research was fine and his writing was up to the level of many other biographies I've read.
So the tldr on Rutherford B. Hayes is that he was a good man who made very few enemies, and a decent president with good intentions, but his record will forever be tarnished by the fact that he's largely responsible for ending Reconstruction and thus consigning African-Americans to almost a century of Jim Crow laws. This is the view expressed by Fisher. Being a short book, it skips over the details on many other things that happened during his presidency (such as his foreign policy). For the most part, his presidency was unremarkable, during a period of relative peace. He was a reformer during a time when Republicans were the progressive party, and yet his greatest compromise undid most of his progressive intentions.
Born in Ohio, Hayes came from a modest but not poor family. Like so many presidents, he got his start as a lawyer. He attended Harvard Law School, then returned to Ohio to start a law practice in Cincinnati. He married Lucy Webb, who would become the first First Lady to have graduated from college. He started to become involved in local politics, but probably would have had an unremarkable career if not for the Civil War.
Lucy Hayes, the first First Lady with a college degree.
As a staunch abolitionist, Hayes was a supporter of Lincoln and the Union, and quickly volunteered for the army when the South seceded. Hayes had no military experience, but as was common at the time, he was immediately commissioned as a major by virtue of being a "pillar of his community." He led the 23rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry (which would also include future president Private William McKinley), which initially did not see a lot of action. He was a well-regarded officer and formed such a bond with his men that he actually turned down a promotion to full colonel in order to stay with them. He apparently loved the military life- the drills, the marching, the camping, even the danger- and would later reminisce fondly of his time in the field. As he wrote back to his wife Lucy:
Even the Battle of South Mountain, where Hayes was severely wounded and almost died, he remembered fondly as "by no means an unpleasant experience." His gregarious nature was evident even in how he regarded the Confederates. When his wife wrote him a letter condemning the "brutal rebels," he wrote back rebuking her and pointing out that there was no shortage of brutality among Union soldiers.
Hayes would participate in several more battles during the Shenandoah Campaign, and eventually was promoted to the rank of Brigadier General.
While he was still in the army, his friends back home nominated him for Congress. He agreed to be nominated, but he refused to return home to campaign, saying, "An officer fit for duty who at this crisis would abandon his post to electioneer for a seat in Congress ought to be scalped."
He was elected to Congress, and after the war ended he joined the Republicans who voted to impeach Andrew Johnson, and voted in favor of the Civil Rights Act of 1868. He was reelected once, but then returned to Ohio to run for Governor. He served two terms, supporting many progressive causes, including civil service reform, black suffrage, and opening schools for orphans and retirement homes for veterans, and like most of his experiences, he considered it pleasant and ended his second term without any major incidents or scandals. He planned to retire from politics, and refused an offer to run for Senate, but eventually he was persuaded to run for Governor again and served a third term.
Hayes was put forward by his fellow Ohio Republicans as a candidate for the Republican ticket in 1876, but he wasn't initially a front-runner. As often happened back when party conventions were actually contentious affairs and not coronations, it took seven ballots for Hayes to emerge as the winner. His running mate was New York Republican Congressman William Wheeler.
Hayes-Wheeler campaign poster
Running against the Democratic Governor of New York, Samuel Tilden, the Election of 1876 became one of the most disputed elections in U.S. history, and resulted in the Compromise of 1877.
Tilden won the popular vote, but fell short of an Electoral College majority by one vote. Republicans challenged the results in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, accusing the Democrats of fraud and black voter suppression. These charges were almost certainly true, as the black voting population, which overwhelmingly voted Republican, would have clearly turned the results there. The issue went to an Electoral Commission, which ultimately ruled in favor of the Republicans and certified Hayes as President, 185-184.
To this day, historians disagree over whether Hayes "really" won the election. Like certain elections in the 21st century, it remains unproven whether shenanigans on both sides actually altered what should have been the outcome.
Democrats, of course, were furious, and were threatening to contest the results and delay Hayes's inauguration. Democratic and Republican leaders met in Wormley's Hotel in Washington to negotiate a compromise.
Hayes wasn't actually at Wormley's Hotel, but he made it clear that the Republican delegates spoke for him. Thus, he has to own responsibility for the Compromise of 1877.
In essence, the deal that Democrats and Republicans struck was that the Democrats would not contest the election or oppose Hayes's inauguration, but Hayes would agree to end Reconstruction. This meant withdrawing federal troops from the South and restoring full sovereignty to former Confederate states. Many Republicans, particularly the "radical Republican" faction, were against this, saying it was too early, but Hayes (through his delegates) agreed to it.
Hayes did insist that the governors of the Southern states must assure him that they would enforce the law and especially protect black voting rights.
The Southern governors said, "Oh yes, we'll totally do that."
As history tells us, they totally did not do that.
Hayes repeatedly showed himself to be far too trusting of Southern intentions. He really meant to protect black civil rights, but like most Republicans of his time, he was sympathetic to blacks but didn't believe in further punishing or disenfranchising whites for the benefit of the former.
Besides ending Reconstruction, Hayes initiated civil service reforms to try to end the spoils and patronage system, eventually prevailing over his greatest arch-nemesis, New York Senator Roscoe Conkling. He had some success in reforming the enormously corrupt postal service and Bureau of Indian Affairs. He took a tour of the South, where everyone was very nice to him and blew smoke up his ass about how they were fostering good race relations, no need for the federal government to concern itself.
There was a massive railroad strike in 1877. Three million workers in 14 states walked off their jobs and some strikes turned to riots. Congress and railroad executives asked for federal troops to put down the strikes. Hayes, once again with good intentions but naively being jerked around, insisted he didn't have the authority to assist railroad companies in putting down strikes, but he did deploy troops to "protect life and property." The result was the same; the strikes were broken. He wanted to improve education for the railroad workers (he was a great believer in education as a solution to everything), but ultimately did nothing to slow down wealth inequality that would lead to the Gilded Age.
The Hayes White House was known to be a convivial, social place. The Hayes were well-liked and frequently hosted gatherings of friends and family, doing wholesome things like singing hymns. Mrs. Hayes became known as "Lemonade Lucy" for banning alcohol at White House events.
Fisher's assessment overall is that Hayes's presidency had mixed results; he achieved some things (like civil service reform) and the economy did okay, but Hayes failed to address the big racial and class issues. He wanted to help the Indians more, but didn't get much done by the time he left office. He was in favor of hard, gold-backed currency and won that battle, but this would also be reversed when he left office. He vetoed a Chinese Exclusion Act, but Congress would pass a new one after he left office.
Hayes had promised he would not run for reelection, and so he left office after his first term. He supported the nomination of his successor, James A. Garfield, and remained interested in politics.
Hayes continued to be involved in progressive causes after he left office. He was a big believer in prison reform, and continued to advocate for black civil rights. He started schools and was involved in veterans' associations.
His wife Lucy died four years before him. Hayes took it hard, but continued to involve himself in progressive causes until he died of a heart attack in 1893, at the age of 70.
This is the Hayes Presidential Memorial at his birthplace in Delaware, Ohio. Yes, it's now a BP gas station.
The Life of Rutherford Hayes was, I would say, a perfectly adequate book. If you're extremely interested in the life and politics of the nineteenth president, it barely covers more than his Wikipedia article, but it presents the highlights in a readable manner that give me a pretty good understanding of him. To be honest, I tend to read longer books about more interesting presidents and shorter books about C-listers, so this one was fine and it's probably your best choice if you're progressing through presidents in order like I am. If you really want something meatier, though, there is Harry Barnard's 606-page Rutherford B. Hayes and His America
I did this for Martin Van Buren; I ain't reading all that.
My complete list of book reviews.
Self-published, 2022, 169 pages
The Life of Rutherford Hayes chronicles the life of the nation’s 19th President. Here’s a sample, with some perspective from David Fisher:
“Rutherford Hayes was a good man, a decent man. He was a loving husband and father, a loyal and respected battlefield commander, and a rare politician who engendered few personal enemies. Hayes’s well-intentioned approach to life and politics, however, did have one unmistakable black mark that casts an everlasting shadow over his legacy. The 19th President of the United States cannot be solely blamed for the controversial manner in which he captured the election of 1876. The Republican political class fought that battle on his behalf. That said, while he wasn’t present in the room at the Wormley Hotel where the Compromise of 1877 was ironed out, he made it clear that the Ohioans who were there accurately represented his views and interests. Hayes was content to end Federal Reconstruction by removing the U.S. military and return home rule to the remaining Southern states in return for the Democrats calling a halt to trying to delay the contested election past Inauguration Day. As President, Hayes followed through, and within a couple of months of him taking office, Reconstruction was over.
Hayes would never agree that he abandoned Southern Blacks with this decision. The kind-hearted man in the White House did not believe he was creating any setbacks for the Black community because he insisted on several occasions that the White Democratic governments of the South honor the post-war Constitutional Amendments that were designed to protect civil and voting rights regardless of race. But the assurances he received were completely hollow, and Hayes should have expected as such. In this instance, his well-meaning spirit cost the Black citizens of the South nearly a century of depredations, consigned to a class status that was disadvantaged in almost every aspect of life. The fact that the end of Federal Reconstruction was favored by a majority of the American people at the time cannot dismiss the fact that Hayes was the man in the seat, the catalyst who pulled the trigger to remove Federal oversight of Black rights in the South. Rutherford Hayes was a good man. He led a lifetime of good works on behalf of his community and his country. But his exceptionally naive decision to place the defense of liberty for Southern Black citizens directly into the hands of their former masters proved to be a disaster of immense proportions – one with ramifications that persisted for generations.”
I have continued my Presidential trek and have reached POTUS #19. Following the mighty Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford Birchard Hayes begins a string of Republican C-listers who served as president after the Civil War and who people mostly don't remember today.
The book I picked up for my bio of the nineteenth president was, it turns out, a self-published volume written by David Fisher, who is not a professional historian but seems to be a lifelong, avid presidential nerd. He claims a personal library of over 1100 presidential biographies and he's published multivolume sets with short biographies of every president. Honestly I might have picked a different book if I'd checked out the author first (not that someone needs to be a historian or traditionally published to write a good book), but pickings for Rutherford Hayes were not great and this one was free with my Kindle Unlimited subscription. Hey, it's not the best selection process, but it turns out the book was pretty good and it fit my desire for something fairly concise about a lesser-known president. So far as I can tell, Fisher's research was fine and his writing was up to the level of many other biographies I've read.
So the tldr on Rutherford B. Hayes is that he was a good man who made very few enemies, and a decent president with good intentions, but his record will forever be tarnished by the fact that he's largely responsible for ending Reconstruction and thus consigning African-Americans to almost a century of Jim Crow laws. This is the view expressed by Fisher. Being a short book, it skips over the details on many other things that happened during his presidency (such as his foreign policy). For the most part, his presidency was unremarkable, during a period of relative peace. He was a reformer during a time when Republicans were the progressive party, and yet his greatest compromise undid most of his progressive intentions.
Yet Another Lawyer
Born in Ohio, Hayes came from a modest but not poor family. Like so many presidents, he got his start as a lawyer. He attended Harvard Law School, then returned to Ohio to start a law practice in Cincinnati. He married Lucy Webb, who would become the first First Lady to have graduated from college. He started to become involved in local politics, but probably would have had an unremarkable career if not for the Civil War.
Lucy Hayes, the first First Lady with a college degree.
Military and Political Career
"I prefer to be one of the good colonels to being one of the poor generals."
As a staunch abolitionist, Hayes was a supporter of Lincoln and the Union, and quickly volunteered for the army when the South seceded. Hayes had no military experience, but as was common at the time, he was immediately commissioned as a major by virtue of being a "pillar of his community." He led the 23rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry (which would also include future president Private William McKinley), which initially did not see a lot of action. He was a well-regarded officer and formed such a bond with his men that he actually turned down a promotion to full colonel in order to stay with them. He apparently loved the military life- the drills, the marching, the camping, even the danger- and would later reminisce fondly of his time in the field. As he wrote back to his wife Lucy:
I never enjoyed any business or mode of life as much as I do this. I really feel badly when I think of several of my intimate friends who are compelled to stay at home. These marches and campaigns in the hills of western Virginia will always be among the pleasantest things I can remember. I know we are in frequent perils, that we may never return and all that, but the feeling that I am where I ought to be is a full compensation for all that is sinister, leaving me free to enjoy as if on a pleasure tour.
Even the Battle of South Mountain, where Hayes was severely wounded and almost died, he remembered fondly as "by no means an unpleasant experience." His gregarious nature was evident even in how he regarded the Confederates. When his wife wrote him a letter condemning the "brutal rebels," he wrote back rebuking her and pointing out that there was no shortage of brutality among Union soldiers.
Hayes would participate in several more battles during the Shenandoah Campaign, and eventually was promoted to the rank of Brigadier General.
While he was still in the army, his friends back home nominated him for Congress. He agreed to be nominated, but he refused to return home to campaign, saying, "An officer fit for duty who at this crisis would abandon his post to electioneer for a seat in Congress ought to be scalped."
He was elected to Congress, and after the war ended he joined the Republicans who voted to impeach Andrew Johnson, and voted in favor of the Civil Rights Act of 1868. He was reelected once, but then returned to Ohio to run for Governor. He served two terms, supporting many progressive causes, including civil service reform, black suffrage, and opening schools for orphans and retirement homes for veterans, and like most of his experiences, he considered it pleasant and ended his second term without any major incidents or scandals. He planned to retire from politics, and refused an offer to run for Senate, but eventually he was persuaded to run for Governor again and served a third term.
The Election of 1876
Hayes was put forward by his fellow Ohio Republicans as a candidate for the Republican ticket in 1876, but he wasn't initially a front-runner. As often happened back when party conventions were actually contentious affairs and not coronations, it took seven ballots for Hayes to emerge as the winner. His running mate was New York Republican Congressman William Wheeler.
Hayes-Wheeler campaign poster
Running against the Democratic Governor of New York, Samuel Tilden, the Election of 1876 became one of the most disputed elections in U.S. history, and resulted in the Compromise of 1877.
Tilden won the popular vote, but fell short of an Electoral College majority by one vote. Republicans challenged the results in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, accusing the Democrats of fraud and black voter suppression. These charges were almost certainly true, as the black voting population, which overwhelmingly voted Republican, would have clearly turned the results there. The issue went to an Electoral Commission, which ultimately ruled in favor of the Republicans and certified Hayes as President, 185-184.
To this day, historians disagree over whether Hayes "really" won the election. Like certain elections in the 21st century, it remains unproven whether shenanigans on both sides actually altered what should have been the outcome.
Democrats, of course, were furious, and were threatening to contest the results and delay Hayes's inauguration. Democratic and Republican leaders met in Wormley's Hotel in Washington to negotiate a compromise.
The Compromise of 1877
Hayes wasn't actually at Wormley's Hotel, but he made it clear that the Republican delegates spoke for him. Thus, he has to own responsibility for the Compromise of 1877.
In essence, the deal that Democrats and Republicans struck was that the Democrats would not contest the election or oppose Hayes's inauguration, but Hayes would agree to end Reconstruction. This meant withdrawing federal troops from the South and restoring full sovereignty to former Confederate states. Many Republicans, particularly the "radical Republican" faction, were against this, saying it was too early, but Hayes (through his delegates) agreed to it.
Hayes did insist that the governors of the Southern states must assure him that they would enforce the law and especially protect black voting rights.
The Southern governors said, "Oh yes, we'll totally do that."
As history tells us, they totally did not do that.
President Hayes
Hayes repeatedly showed himself to be far too trusting of Southern intentions. He really meant to protect black civil rights, but like most Republicans of his time, he was sympathetic to blacks but didn't believe in further punishing or disenfranchising whites for the benefit of the former.
Besides ending Reconstruction, Hayes initiated civil service reforms to try to end the spoils and patronage system, eventually prevailing over his greatest arch-nemesis, New York Senator Roscoe Conkling. He had some success in reforming the enormously corrupt postal service and Bureau of Indian Affairs. He took a tour of the South, where everyone was very nice to him and blew smoke up his ass about how they were fostering good race relations, no need for the federal government to concern itself.
There was a massive railroad strike in 1877. Three million workers in 14 states walked off their jobs and some strikes turned to riots. Congress and railroad executives asked for federal troops to put down the strikes. Hayes, once again with good intentions but naively being jerked around, insisted he didn't have the authority to assist railroad companies in putting down strikes, but he did deploy troops to "protect life and property." The result was the same; the strikes were broken. He wanted to improve education for the railroad workers (he was a great believer in education as a solution to everything), but ultimately did nothing to slow down wealth inequality that would lead to the Gilded Age.
The Hayes White House was known to be a convivial, social place. The Hayes were well-liked and frequently hosted gatherings of friends and family, doing wholesome things like singing hymns. Mrs. Hayes became known as "Lemonade Lucy" for banning alcohol at White House events.
Fisher's assessment overall is that Hayes's presidency had mixed results; he achieved some things (like civil service reform) and the economy did okay, but Hayes failed to address the big racial and class issues. He wanted to help the Indians more, but didn't get much done by the time he left office. He was in favor of hard, gold-backed currency and won that battle, but this would also be reversed when he left office. He vetoed a Chinese Exclusion Act, but Congress would pass a new one after he left office.
Hayes had promised he would not run for reelection, and so he left office after his first term. He supported the nomination of his successor, James A. Garfield, and remained interested in politics.
Ex-President Hayes
Hayes continued to be involved in progressive causes after he left office. He was a big believer in prison reform, and continued to advocate for black civil rights. He started schools and was involved in veterans' associations.
"I know that I'm going where Lucy is."
His wife Lucy died four years before him. Hayes took it hard, but continued to involve himself in progressive causes until he died of a heart attack in 1893, at the age of 70.
This is the Hayes Presidential Memorial at his birthplace in Delaware, Ohio. Yes, it's now a BP gas station.
The Life of Rutherford Hayes was, I would say, a perfectly adequate book. If you're extremely interested in the life and politics of the nineteenth president, it barely covers more than his Wikipedia article, but it presents the highlights in a readable manner that give me a pretty good understanding of him. To be honest, I tend to read longer books about more interesting presidents and shorter books about C-listers, so this one was fine and it's probably your best choice if you're progressing through presidents in order like I am. If you really want something meatier, though, there is Harry Barnard's 606-page Rutherford B. Hayes and His America
I did this for Martin Van Buren; I ain't reading all that.
My complete list of book reviews.
