Rutherford B. Hayes: The American Presidents Series: The 19th President, 1877-1881

Rutherford B. Hayes: The American Presidents Series: The 19th President, 1877-1881

Rutherford B. Hayes: The American Presidents Series: The 19th President, 1877-1881

Rutherford B. Hayes: The American Presidents Series: The 19th President, 1877-1881

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Overview

A leader of the Reconstruction era, whose contested election eerily parallels the election debacle of 2000

The disputed election of 1876 between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden, in which Congress set up a special electoral commission, handing the disputed electoral votes to Hayes, brings recent events into sharp focus.

Historian Hans L. Trefousse explores Hayes's new relevance and reconsiders what many have seen as the pitfalls of his presidency. While Hayes did officially terminate the Reconstruction, Trefousse points out that this process was already well under way by the start of his term and there was little he could do to stop it. A great intellectual and one of our best-educated presidents, Hayes did much more in the way of healing the nation and elevating the presidency.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781466871786
Publisher: Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date: 05/20/2014
Series: American Presidents Series
Sold by: Macmillan
Format: eBook
Pages: 192
Sales rank: 404,331
File size: 423 KB

About the Author

Hans L. Trefousse, Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, is a specialist in the history of the Civil War and Reconstruction. He is the recipient of various grants, including a Guggenheim Fellowship. The author of biographies of leading figures of the period as well as works on the Pearl Harbor attack, he is now working on a book on the reputation of Abraham Lincoln during his administration.


Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., (1917-2007) was the preeminent political historian of our time. For more than half a century, he was a cornerstone figure in the intellectual life of the nation and a fixture on the political scene. He won two Pulitzer prizes for The Age of Jackson (1946) and A Thousand Days (1966), and in 1988 received the National Humanities Medal. He published the first volume of his autobiography, A Life in the Twentieth Century, in 2000.

Read an Excerpt

Rutherford B. Hayes

The American Presidents


By Hans L. Trefousse

Henry Holt and Company

Copyright © 2002 Hans L. Trefousse
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-7178-6



CHAPTER 1

Background and Youth


Hayes had little in common with George W. Bush, his twenty-first-century successor. Not only was his father not a public figure, let alone a president, but his father, Rutherford Hayes, Jr., died before the birth of his son. A New Englander born in West Brattleboro, Vermont, he descended from a long line of Presbyterians who had come from Scotland in 1625 to settle in Connecticut. He had a common school education, had clerked in a store in Wilmington, Vermont, and then went into partnership with his brother-in-law Joseph Noyes in a store in Dummerston. Leaving for Ohio in 1817 with eight thousand dollars, he settled in the town of Delaware in that state to farm, trade, and invest in a distillery, Lamb & Hayes, a strange investment for the father of a future president who kept liquor out of the White House. An active Presbyterian, he was a strong supporter of education, both religious and secular. He died in July 1822 of a fever.

Hayes's mother, Sophia Birchard, was also a descendant of an old New England family, whose paternal ancestor had arrived in America from England in 1634. Her father, Roger Birchard, was born in Connecticut and was a retail merchant in Wilmington, Vermont, who died at forty-five years of age. At her husband's death in the summer of 1822, she inherited some land near Delaware, as well as an unfinished brick house in town. Rutherford Birchard, named after both parents, had been born on October 4, 1822, and moved into the new house the following year. It was a two-story brick dwelling on the northeast corner of William and Winter Streets, with the kitchen in an adjoining old one-story frame building fronting on Winter Street, and was not finished until 1828. At first, short on resources, the family had little furniture for its new home: a new bureau and stand, plain wood-bottomed chairs, a gilt-frame looking glass, a good carpet, and cheap curtains for the parlor. The family consisted of the mother; the boy; Fanny, an older sister; and a brother, who drowned in 1825 while skating. Hayes's mother's cousin, Arcena Smith, lived with the family, as did her brother, Sardis Birchard, a lifelong bachelor. This uncle, a businessman and banker, became his guardian and virtual father figure. It was he who took charge of his nephew's education, provided funds, and in frequent letters gave him valuable advice after he moved to Lower Sandusky in 1827.

Mrs. Hayes's income was derived from the rent of a farm some ten miles north of town, and Rud, as he was called, and his sister Fanny, whom he adored, and with whom he played and later steadily corresponded, loved to visit it. The tenants gave them colored eggs filled with sugar at Easter, pet birds, rabbits, and turtles' eggs, while the children busied themselves with sugar-making, cider-making, and the gathering of hickory and walnuts.

Rud was a sickly child whose survival was at first doubtful. It was Fanny who was his protector and nurse, leading him about the garden and on short visits to neighbors. He was able to reciprocate when she in turn fell ill, giving her little rides upon a sled during her recovery. Together they boarded with Arcena and her new husband, Thomas Wasson, when their mother went to nurse their sick uncle, and it was Wasson who sent them to the local district school in Delaware, run by a fierce Yankee schoolmaster who was notorious for his floggings. In spite of their pleadings to be taken out, Wasson refused. When his mother returned, Rud, in 1834, took his first trip, a journey to his relatives in Vermont and Massachusetts, which he thoroughly enjoyed. The next year he visited his uncle in Lower Sandusky, thus starting a lifelong habit of enthusiastic traveling.

In 1836 Rud was sent to a new school, the Norwalk Seminary in Ohio. The seminary, a Methodist school run by the Reverend Jonathan E. Chaplin, was more to Hayes's liking than the previous institution, although he missed his sister very much. He was not fazed by his studies; on composition day, he wrote an essay about Liberty, and on speaking day, delivered a eulogy on Lord Chatham, both well done. In the next year, he was transferred to Isaac Webb's school in Middletown, Connecticut, where, with his friend William Lane, he studied Latin and Greek. Although at first it was hard to keep up with the class, he quickly succeeded. He was very pleased with this school, as well as its director. Getting up at 6:30, he breakfasted, said prayers, and started his classes at nine. Dinner was at twelve. On Saturday afternoons he took long hikes, and he also began a study of French. That he was successful was clearly recognized by Webb, who wrote to Sardis Birchard, "Rutherford has applied himself industriously to his studies and has maintained a constant and correct deportment. I think he will avail himself of the advantage of an education and fully meet the just anticipations of his friends. He is well informed, has good sense, and is respected and esteemed by his companions. He is strictly economical and regular in his habits and has established a very favorable character among us."

Despite Webb's belief that he was too young for college, Hayes was anxious to go, and in 1838 entered Kenyon College at Gambier, Ohio. There, too, he established an excellent record. Enjoying his college career, he made several lasting friendships, among them future Supreme Court Justice Stanley Matthews, future Michigan Congressman Rowland E. Trowbridge, future Ohio Attorney General Christopher Wolcott, and future Texas politician Guy M. Bryan. The Texan, later a lawyer and state legislator, became a particularly close companion with whom he remained on the most friendly terms almost to the day of his death, in spite of their differences during and prior to the Civil War. It was also at Kenyon that he started his diary, an invaluable source for his career, which he continued to keep to the end of his life. Joining the Philomathesian Society, a literary and theatrical organization, he was able to engage in his favorite pastimes of reading and partaking in discussions. With a number of friends he founded a friendship club, Phi Zeta, which adopted as its motto, Phila Zoe, "Friendship for Life." At the same time, he perfected his speaking ability, delivering speeches to the society and to the college. For vacations, he generally went to Columbus, where his sister, now married to William A. Platt, a jeweler and businessman, had established her home. One of several speakers on graduation day in 1842, he chose as his topic "College Life" and discussed its many advantages. As valedictorian, he addressed the school president, whom he praised for his closeness to the students, the faculty, and his fellow students.

In view of the fact that he intended to become an attorney after leaving Kenyon, he began reading law at the office of Sparrow & Matthews in Columbus. Studying Blackston and Chillingworth while also learning German, he absorbed a great deal of legal lore. His uncle, however, thought he ought to have a regular legal education and insisted that he go to Harvard. Thus, in 1843, traveling by way of Buffalo and Niagara Falls — which, after an initial disappointment, he admired — he entered the Cambridge law school.

He liked Harvard as much as he had enjoyed Kenyon. "The advantages of the law school are as great as I expected to find them, and the means of passing time pleasantly even greater," he wrote to his uncle. Because of his previous studies, he was able to attend all the recitations without overexertion, and he was particularly influenced by lectures of Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story and the famous lawyer, Professor Simon Greenleaf. These two excellent teachers' style and learning became a model for the young student.

He followed a strict daily routine. Rising at six, he exercised before breakfast, then, on Mondays, studied law until eleven, German till two, moot court till seven, and in the evening wrote out his notes while turning to Whatley and Chillingworth. On Tuesdays, he perused the law till one, devoted the afternoon to Hoffman's Law Studies, and took up the law again in the evening. Wednesdays were much like Mondays until two, then he busied himself with Hoffman and moot court questions, and spent the evening in the same way as on Tuesdays. On Thursdays, he again studied law till one, German in the afternoon, and passed the evening as on Tuesdays. On Fridays, it was once more law and German till two, and the afternoon and evening were given over to bringing up arrears. On Saturdays, he again gave his attention for two hours to the law, and then finally enjoyed some sports. On Sundays, he went to church and saw friends.

But his stay in Cambridge did not consist entirely of study. He had an opportunity to hear many famous orators, among them John Quincy Adams, George Bancroft, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Daniel Webster. While Adams seemed to be too extreme on the slavery question, he thought him "truly a most formidable man." Bancroft appeared to be one of the most interesting speakers he had ever heard; Longfellow, who spoke on modern languages, pleased him with his style and manner; and Webster apparently deserved the epithet, the "godlike." He was introduced to the theater and saw Hamlet. Though he dreaded the loss of time, he also found vacations in Vermont and Columbus pleasant diversions.

Hayes left Harvard at the end of his third semester in February 1845. After admission to the bar in Marietta, Ohio, he decided to settle in Lower Sandusky, soon to be called Fremont, where he had contacts. His uncle Sardis and his cousin John R. Pease were living there, and Professor Greenleaf had advised young lawyers not to settle in large cities. Rooming with his cousin Pease and forming a partnership with Ralph P. Buckland, who after some difficulties became a friend, he entered upon his profession. As Ward D. Marchman, the author of an excellent essay on Hayes's legal career, has chronicled, he was soon retained by the state in a suit to recover certain debts from a sheriff. When Pease's wallet and other property, as well as his own watch, were stolen, he successfully prosecuted the perpetrator. Falling sick in 1847, Hayes considered joining the army in Mexico to benefit from the climate there, but his doctors advised against it, and he took a trip to New England instead. Then, in company with his uncle, he went to Texas to visit his friend Guy Bryan. Lengthy horseback rides and adventurous hunts, as well as the renewed companionship with Bryan, made this vacation gratifying. On his return, having heard from his friend George Hoadly that Cincinnati was a growing city of 120,000 people and offered many opportunities, he decided to move to the city, where he established his permanent home in 1849.

Opening his office in January 1850, at Third Street between Maine and Syracuse, like most young lawyers he at first had to wait in vain for business, but in February he received his first retainer of $5 from a coal trader to defend a suit in the commercial court. By March, he had ten new claims in commercial court, and later that month had established himself well enough to be able to travel to Fremont and Columbus, returning by rail by way of Tiffin and Springfield, then by stage to Dayton and by packet to St. Mary's and Cincinnati.

Cincinnati provided many opportunities that had been missing in Fremont. Hayes joined a literary club that provided him with opportunities to listen to speeches and to speak himself. He heard famous orators, who often came to town, and was most impressed with Ralph Waldo Emerson, who, among other topics, spoke on natural aristocracy and the institutions of England. At first he thought Emerson showed himself a close observer rather than a profound thinker, but he listened to him again and again, invited him to the literary club, bought all his works, and gradually became convinced of "the infinite worth of his writings." Theodore Parker, "the notorious Christian infidel," as he called him, spoke on Progress, The True and False Ideas of a Gentleman, and Woman. Hayes found him witty and a man of sounder judgment than he had supposed. Henry Ward Beecher, the illustrious Brooklyn abolitionist minister, who discoursed on The Beautiful in Nature and Art, seemed pithy and eloquent, and Hayes liked him better than he had ever thought before. Edward Everett, who held forth on George Washington, appeared to Hayes "the best specimen of a refined, scholarly, eloquent holiday orator." The young lawyer was fascinated by all of these speakers.

His practice continued to pick up, and, as luck would have it, he became involved in two murder cases that provided him with extensive publicity. The first of these, "the criminal case of the term," as Hayes wrote, concerned Nancy Farrer, a deformed girl who had poisoned a number of her employers. He took part in the trial after serving as counsel for the defense in a larceny case concerning one Samuel Cunningham. The defendant was convicted, but the prosecuting attorney as well as Judge R. B. Warden paid the young defense counsel handsome compliments. He so impressed the judge that Warden appointed him to the Farrer case, which he thought would give him a better opportunity to exhibit "whatever pith" was in him than any other case in which he had been involved, and it did. Thoroughly researching the girl's background, he found details that were helpful to the defense. Her father had been a drunkard who committed suicide, while the mother believed herself to be the bride of Jesus Christ and a Mormon prophetess. An insanity defense was obviously called for, and though the case was originally lost, counsel's argument was again impressive. As quoted by Charles Richard Williams in his extensive biography, Hayes, stressing the defendant's mental state, said: "The calamity of insanity is one which may touch very nearly the happiness of the best of our citizens. We all know that in one of its thousand forms it has carried grief and agony unspeakable into many a happy home, and we must all wish to see such rules in regard to it established as would satisfy an intelligent man if, instead of this friendless girl, his own sister or daughter were on trial. And surely to establish such rules will be a most noble achievement of that intelligence and reason which God has given to you, but he has denied to her whose fate is in your hands." After the girl was convicted and sentenced to death, he obtained a writ of error and carried the case to the state supreme court. A probate court of inquiry finally sent her to an insane asylum, and his success in saving the prisoner from the gallows did not go unnoticed, particularly because she was a woman.

The second case also involved a poisoner, James Summons, who had killed several relatives while trying to do away with his parents. Hayes continued to represent the defendant after his previous attorney became inebriated, and after several trials complicated by the death of the prosecution's chief witness, succeeded in obtaining a divided opinion in the state supreme court. Eventually Governor Salmon P. Chase commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment. Thus the rising attorney contributed to saving this murderer from execution as well. In another case concerning the assassination of a lover by a jealous husband, he was less successful, and, much to his disgust, had to witness the culprit's execution. He also represented his uncle in several trials, one an ejectment effort by Thomas E. Boswell against Sardis Birchard and his partner Rodolphus Dickinson concerning a parcel of land by the lower rapids of the Sandusky River. Though the plaintiff's lawyer, Brice J. Bartlett, won the case, it was eventually settled when Bartlett decided to sell the property. The other matter involved Sardis's effort to obtain an injunction to stop the Junction Railroad Company from building a bridge across Sandusky Bay. Though the injunction was finally granted, in the long run it proved impossible to stop the development of rail connections across the bay.

In December 1853, Richard M. Corwine offered Hayes second place in his firm among four partners. He hesitated, but when the two other partners finally left, he accepted a partnership, which included his friend William K. Rogers, and on December 26 the new firm of Corwine, Hayes & Rogers was launched. It was a successful enterprise.

In the meantime Hayes had fallen in love. Overcoming his shyness with girls, in 1847 he had become interested in a Connecticut girl from Norwich named Fanny Perkins, whom he courted both in Ohio and in New England. She came from an old New England family, but her mother did not want her to move to Ohio, and the affair ended. Then his attention turned to two other girls, Frances Kelley of Columbus and Lucy Ware Webb of Chillicothe, who had moved to Cincinnati. The daughter of Dr. James and Maria Cook Webb, Lucy, like Rud, had lost her father at an early age, when he had gone to Kentucky to free some slaves, only to fall sick and die. The attractive, hazel-eyed young woman with dark, glossy hair went to Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, where Hayes first met her. Well educated, charming, and possessed of the Puritan determination of her maternal ancestry, Lucy was extremely popular. As Harry Barnard has shown, Hayes soon decided that in spite of her attractions Frances Kelley was not for him. Lucy, on the other hand, attracted him more and more.


(Continues...)

Excerpted from Rutherford B. Hayes by Hans L. Trefousse. Copyright © 2002 Hans L. Trefousse. Excerpted by permission of Henry Holt and Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

Contents

Title Page,
Copyright Notice,
Dedication,
Editor's Note,
Introduction,
1. Background and Youth,
2. Civil War,
3. Congressman and Governor,
4. The Disputed Election,
5. The Presidency: First Two Years,
6. The Presidency: Last Two Years,
7. Retirement,
8. Conclusion,
Milestones,
Selected Bibliography,
Index,
The American Presidents series,
Also by Hans L. Trefousse,
About the Author,
Copyright,

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