HAYES, Rutherford B(irchard)
(1822–93), 19th president of the U.S. (1877–81),
whose administration marked a shift in national issues from those
growing out of the American Civil War to such concerns as civil
service reform, currency, and labor relations.
Hayes was born in Delaware, Ohio, on Oct. 4, 1822. His father
had died before he was born, and his uncle, Sardis Birchard (fl.
1834–74), financed his education at Kenyon College and
Harvard Law School. Hayes became a well-trained lawyer and developed
a wide range of intellectual tastes. After moving to Cincinnati
in 1850 he married his childhood sweetheart, Lucy Webb (1831–89),
in 1852. Having entered politics as a Whig in 1851, he became a
Republican in 1855 and was elected city solicitor of Cincinnati
in 1858. Always a moderate on slavery, he nonetheless firmly opposed
its extension. When the Civil War came, Hayes joined the 23d Ohio
Regiment. Beginning as a major, he emerged from the war as a major
general of volunteers with a good combat record. He was easily elected
to the House of Representatives in 1864 and assumed office after
the war. Two years later he ran successfully for governor of Ohio.
Serving from 1868 to 1872, he gained a national reputation as a
competent, reform-minded administrator.
Defeated when he ran for Congress again in 1872, Hayes dropped
briefly out of politics, but recaptured the governorship in 1875.
Thereafter his political success, party loyalty, war record, and
reputation for reform opened wider vistas. The Republican national
convention of 1876, wary of the leading contender, James G. Blaine,
whose name had been linked with scandal, turned to Ohio’s
favorite son after six ballots.
When the votes were counted, Hayes appeared to have lost the
election to Democrat Samuel J. Tilden of New York, but the Republicans
contested returns from four states. After a dramatic winter in which
threats of renewed civil war alternated with furious bargaining
over issues of southern home rule and economic development, a deal
was struck, and the Senate confirmed Hayes’s title in March
1877.
Hayes moved quickly to assuage the South. He appointed a former
Confederate to his cabinet, distributed patronage to moderate southern
Democrats, and soon removed the last federal troops from the region.
These concessions alienated many Republicans.
Civil service reform further divided the party. Hayes issued
an executive order forbidding federal officeholders from taking
part in party management and protecting them from being assessed
political contributions. Enforcing this order on the New York customhouse,
the federal government’s largest revenue-collection post,
Hayes came into conflict with Roscoe Conkling, leader of the New
York party. Hayes carried his point, but at the cost of more bitterness.
A conservative on currency issues, Hayes considered the gold
standard a moral imperative analogous to paying one’s debts.
Even a popular compromise measure to coin limited quantities of
silver, the Bland-Allison Act of 1878, had to be passed over his
veto, and he firmly supported Secretary of the Treasury John Sherman’s successful
efforts to give the Civil War greenback dollars backing in gold.
He was equally conservative in his response to the labor disturbances
of 1877, sending federal troops to restore order and, in effect,
to break strikes.
Hayes was a firm nationalist. Despite his conciliatory policy
toward the South, he consistently fought Democratic efforts to delimit
the powers of the national government and bipartisan attempts to
curtail the powers of the presidency. He was a cautious, judicious,
eminently respectable president, arousing little enthusiasm, but
winning the somewhat grudging admiration both of his contemporaries
and of historians.
Choosing not to run for a second term, Hayes retired in 1881
to his home in Fremont, Ohio, where he died on Jan. 17, 1893.