Passed Presidents - # 19 – Rutherford B. Hayes

Before this photo/travel/history Quest enabled me to know them better, my knowledge of presidential lineage was spotty at best.  I knew the Founding Fathers and the 20^th century guys but there are these two sizable time periods dominated by lesser lights.  Between Andrew Jackson and Lincoln [# 8-15] and between Grant and McKinley [# 19-24] are guys that have not inspired movies, imitators or action figures.

Here’s my chance to shed a little light on one rarely noted chief in that second group.  Rutherford B. Hayes died 121 years ago today.  He started the annual White House Easter Egg Roll and had the longest beard of any president.  That’s it.  I have nothing else.

Rutherford B. Hayes Grave, Fremont, OH [25 September 2005]

But seriously, of the five presidents who served in the Civil War, he was the only one wounded in battle...on five separate occasions.  His election ended Reconstruction and removed federal troops from the occupied South.  He was an honest man who had to overcome the stink of the Grant administration scandals.  He fired Chester Alan Arthur from his New York Customs House position and initiated efforts to reform the civil service system.  At the beginning of his term, he said he would not seek re-election.  When was the last time that happened?

After retirement allowed me to chase Dead Presidents in earnest, I joined a friend for a weekend drive through Ohio to visit four of their Native Sons.  Spiegel Grove in Fremont is the home of Rutherford and Lucy Hayes.  “Lemonade Lucy” was the first First Lady with a college degree and earned her nickname because no alcohol was served in the White House.  She died four years before ‘Rud’ and when their son donated the estate to Ohio, the nation’s first presidential library was established on the site and the couple was re-interred on the property.

The Hayes Home in Spiegel Grove, Fremont, OH [25 September 2006]

The presidential election of 1876 was the most disputed contest until Bush v. Gore in 2000.  This was only eleven years after the War Between the States.  Southern states were still run by Reconstruction governments and the Republicans feared that southern Democrats would work to undo the civil rights reforms brought on by the 14^th Amendment, ratified in 1868. 

Wrap your head around this one.  Democrats were the segregationists.  Hayes was another Republican who was an abolitionist before the war and civil rights advocate all his life.  He consistently fought for reforms and aid to schools, minorities, hospitals, prisons and the poor.  Contrast that to what the Grand Offal Party has become today, starting with their voter suppression laws and all the compassion they have shown to minorities and the disadvantaged.  That sound you hear is Lincoln spinning in his grave.

Rutherford and Lucy Hayes’ Grave, Fremont, OH [25 September 2005]

But I digress.  New York governor, Democrat Samuel Tilden actually out-polled Hayes by over 260,000 votes.  Charges of fraud and voter intimidation in the South left twenty electoral votes undecided.  Congress formed a commission that, by a one-vote margin, gave the votes to Hayes.  That won the presidency by the slimmest electoral margin possible...185-184.  A new nickname dogged him for his time in office – “His Fraudulency”. 

By all accounts, Hayes did a good job in office.  He was honest and provided stability at a time of scandal, partisanship and the simmering sectionalism that lingered after the Civil War.  And he was clearly ahead of his time in the area of race relations.

 Rutherford B. Hayes

19th President; Served 1877-1881

Born: October 4, 1822, Delaware, OH

Died: January 17, 1893, Fremont, OH

Grave Location: Hayes Presidential Center, Fremont, OH

Date Visited: 9/25/2006

Free government cannot long endure if property is largely in a few hands and large masses of people are unable to earn homes, education, and a support in old age.

Rutherford Birchard Hayes - 1886