Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822-1893)/biography

Rutherford Birchard Hayes (, –, ) was an , ,  and the nineteenth  (1877–1881). Hayes was elected President by one electoral vote after the, when he lost the popular vote to his opponent,.

Early life
Hayes was born in, on ,. His parents were Rutherford Hayes (, –,  ) and Sophia Birchard (,  –,  ). His father died three months before his birth and an uncle, Sardis Birchard, lived with the family and served as Hayes's guardian. Birchard was close to him throughout his life and became a father figure to him.

Hayes attended the common schools and the Methodist Academy in. He graduated from in  in August  at the top of his class and after briefly reading the law in  graduated in 2 years from  in January. He was admitted to the on, , and commenced practice in Lower Sandusky (now ). After dissolving the partnership in Fremont in, he moved to and resumed the practice of law.



On, , Hayes married. In, he was nominated for but declined a municipal judgeship, but in accepted appointment as  city solicitor by the city council and won election outright to that position in , losing a reelection bid in.

Military service
Upon moving to Hayes had become a member of a prominent social organization, the Cincinnati Literary Club, whose members included  and  among others, and upon outbreak of the  the Literary Club formed a military company. Appointed a in the Twenty-third Ohio Regiment by Ohio Governor, he originally served as regimental judge-advocate but then was promoted to  and proved competent enough at field command that by August  he had been promoted to  and soon after received command of his original regiment after being wounded in action.

to in December, he commanded the First Brigade of the Kanawha Division of the  and turned back several raids. In, Hayes showed particular gallantry in spearheading a frontal assault and temporarily taking command from at the savage  and continued with Crook on to. Hayes continued commanding his Brigade during the, participating in such major battles as the , the , and the. At the end of the, Hayes was promoted to in October  and. Hayes had been wounded three more times and had four horses shot from under him during his campaigning.

Political service
Hayes began political life as a but in  joined the  party as a delegate nominating  for Governor of Ohio.

While still in the Shenandoah in 1864, Hayes received the nomination to Congress from Cincinnati. Hayes refused to campaign, stating "I have other business just now. Any man who would leave the army at this time to electioneer for Congress ought to be scalped." Despite this, Hayes was elected and served in the and again to the  Congresses and served from, , to , , when he resigned, having been nominated for. Through the powerful voice of his friend and Civil War subordinate 's (one of the state's most influential newspapers), Hayes won the election and served as governor from  to. He was an unsuccessful candidate in for election to the, and had planned to retire from public life but was drafted by the  convention in 1875 to run for governor again and served from January  to ,. Hayes received national notice for leading a sweep of a previously  Ohio government.

Election of 1876


A nominee ( had led the previous six ballots) by his convention, Hayes became president after the tumultuous, scandal-ridden years of the Grant administration. He had a reputation for honesty dating back to his Civil War years. Hayes was quite famous for his ability not to offend anyone. , a prominent political journalist and Washington insider, asserted that Hayes was "a third rate nonentity, whose only recommendation is that he is obnoxious to no one." Nevertheless, his opponent in the presidential election,, was the favorite to win the presidential election and, in fact, won the popular vote by about 250,000 votes (with about 8.5 million voters in total).

Four states' votes were contested. In order to win, the candidates had to muster 185 votes: Tilden was short just one, with 184 votes, Hayes had 165, with 20 votes representing the four states which were contested. To make matters worse, three of these states (,, and ) were in the South, which was still under military occupation (the fourth was ). Additionally, historians note, the election was not fair because of the improper fraud and intimidation perpetrated from both sides. A popular phrase of the day called it an election without "a free ballot and a fair count." For the next four years, Democrats would refer to Hayes as "Rutherfraud B. Hayes" for his allegedly illegitimate election, as he had lost the popular vote by roughly 250,000 votes.

To peacefully decide the results of the election, the two houses of Congress set up the to investigate and decide upon the actual winner. The commission constituted 15 members: five from the House, five from the Senate and five from the Supreme Court. Additionally, the Commission was bi-partisan consisting of 7 Democrats, 7 Republicans and a "swing" vote in Joseph P. Bradley, a Supreme Court Justice. Bradley, however, was a Republican at heart and thus the ruling followed party lines: 8 to 7 voted for Hayes winning in all of the contested 20 electoral votes.

Key Ohio Republicans like and the Democrats, however, agreed at a Washington hotel on the. Southern Democrats were given assurances, in the, that if Hayes became president, he would pull federal troops out of the South and end. An agreement was made between them and the Republicans: if Hayes's cabinet consisted of at least one Southerner and he withdrew all Union troops from the South, then he would become President.

Presidency 1877–1881
Because, was a Sunday, Hayes took the oath of office in the Red Room of the  on. This ceremony was held in secret, because the previous year's election had been so bitterly divisive that outgoing President Grant feared an insurrection by Tilden's supporters and wanted to ensure that any Democratic attempt to hijack the public inauguration ceremony would be for naught (since Hayes had already been sworn in privately). Hayes took the oath again publicly on on the East Portico of the, and served until ,.

Domestic policy
When Congress sent him the bills complete with amendments overturning civil rights enforcement, Hayes vetoed them four times before finally signing one that satisfied his requirement for black rights. However, his subsequent attempts to reconcile with his Southern Democrat opposition by handing them prestigious civil service appointments both alienated fellow Republicans and undermined his own previous attempts at civil service reform.

Hayes' most controversial domestic act apart from ending Reconstruction came with his response to the of 1877, in which employees of the  walked off the job and were joined across the country by thousands of workers in their own and sympathetic industries. When the labor disputes exploded into in several cities, Hayes called in federal troops, who, for the first time in U.S. history, fired on the striking workers, killing over 70. Although the troops did ultimately restore the peace, both the working class and the industrialists were displeased with their intervention. Workers feared that the Federal government had turned permanently against them, while industrialists feared that such brutal action would spark revolution, along the lines of the an.



Foreign policy
In 1878, Hayes was asked by to act as arbitrator following the  between Argentina,  and  against. The Argentines hoped that Hayes would give the region to them; however, he decided in favor of the Paraguayans. His decision made him a hero in Paraguay, and a city and a   were named in his honor. He also intended to build the U.S. controlled Panama Canal, though he wasn't the one who actually did it.

But for the most part, Hayes was not very involved in foreign policy. The bulk of his problems during his presidency were small and domestically related.

Notable legislation
During his presidency, Hayes signed a number of bills including one signed on, which, for the first time, allowed female  to argue cases before the.

Other acts include:
 * (1877)
 * (1878)
 * (1878)
 * (1879)
 * (1879)

Significant events during his presidency

 * (1876)
 * (1877)

Supreme Court appointments
Hayes appointed two :



States admitted to the Union
None

Post-Presidency
Hayes did not seek re-election in, keeping his pledge that he would not run for a second term. He had, in his, proposed a one- for the presidency combined with an increase in the term length to six years.

Hayes served on the of the, the school he helped found during his time as governor of Ohio, from the end of his Presidency until his death.

Rutherford Birchard Hayes died of complications of a in, , at 12:00 p.m. on Tuesday ,. His last words were "I know that I'm going where is." Interment was in Riverwood Cemetery. Following the gift of his home to the state of Ohio for the, he was reinterred there in 1915.

Family
Hayes was the youngest of four children, however two of them - Lorenzo Hayes (1815–1825) and Sarah Sophia Hayes (1817–1821) - died young. Hayes was close to his one remaining sibling, Fanny Arabella Hayes (1820–1856), as can be seen in this diary entry:
 * July, 1856. —My dear only sister, my beloved Fanny, is dead! The dearest friend of childhood, the affectionate adviser, the confidante of all my life, the one I loved best, is gone; alas! never again to be seen on earth.

With Lucy Ware Webb, Hayes had the following children:


 * Birchard Austin Hayes (1853-1926)
 * James Webb Cook Hayes (1856-1934)
 * Rutherford Platt Hayes (1858-1927)
 * Joseph Thompson Hayes (1861-1863)
 * George Crook Hayes (1864-1866)
 * Fanny Hayes (1867-1950)
 * Scott Russell Hayes (1871-1923)
 * Manning Force Hayes (1873-1874)

Trivia
Facts about Rutherford B. Hayes from the archives of the Library
 * Hayes was the first president to take the in the White House.
 * Hayes was the only president whose election was decided by a congressional commission.
 * Hayes was the first president to travel to the during his term as president.
 * Hayes was the first president to have a in the White House.
 * Hayes was the first president to have a in the White House.
 * Though other presidents served in the, Hayes was the only one to have been wounded. He was wounded four times.
 * Hayes began the "" for children on the White House Lawn in 1878.
 * was the first wife of a president to graduate from college,
 * Lucy Webb Hayes was the first wife of a president to be called "."
 * Hayes' best known quotation, "He serves his party best who serves his country best," is from his 1877.
 * Hayes was the last U.S. President born before the came into effect.
 * Hayes is also reputed to be the first President to have had his voice recorded by in 1877 with his newly-invented phonograph. Unfortunately, the tin it was recorded on has been lost. As the recording cannot be located, some say that it never existed, and that therefore the first President to have his voice recorded was  in the 1890s.
 * Hayes had no say over the nomination of his running mate for Vice President. When party bosses at the 1876 Republican Convention decided to give the spot to the little-known New York representative, Hayes only heard about it next morning and reportedly said, "I am ashamed to say, Who is Wheeler?"
 * Hayes lends his name to the math and physics building at, where he graduated in 1842.
 * Hayes also lends his name to the College of the Arts building at the Ohio State University, which he helped found as Governor of Ohio. Hayes Hall, built in 1893, is the oldest building still standing on the Ohio State campus.
 * Hayes' horse was named Whitey. He is buried at  with a gravemarker reading "Old Whitey A Hero of Nineteen Battles -."
 * The , launched in, was named after his home . It was sunk intentionally off to form an  in.
 * While Hayes was President, dancing, card-playing and alcoholic beverages were banned from the . This rule was also enforced during 's presidency. In the 20th Century, published histories incorrectly attributed the ban on alcohol to  and dubbed her "Lemonade Lucy." This nickname was never used during Lucy's lifetime.