Rutherford B. Hayes
NB See also: Rutherford Birchard Hayes Gradwohl for works on sciences.
Rutherford Birchard Hayes was the 19th President of the United States (1877–81). As president, he oversaw the end of Reconstruction, began the efforts that led to civil service reform, and attempted to reconcile the divisions left over from the Civil War and Reconstruction.
Hayes, an attorney in Ohio, became city solicitor of Cincinnati from 1858 to 1861. When the Civil War began, he left a fledgling political career to join the Union Army as an officer. Hayes was wounded five times, most seriously at the Battle of South Mountain; he earned a reputation for bravery in combat and was promoted to the rank of major general. After the war, he served in the U.S. Congress from 1865 to 1867 as a Republican. Hayes left Congress to run for Governor of Ohio and was elected to two consecutive terms, from 1868 to 1872, and then to a third term, from 1876 to 1877.
In 1876, Hayes was elected president in one of the most contentious elections in national history. He lost the popular vote to Democrat Samuel J. Tilden but he won an intensely disputed electoral college vote after a Congressional commission awarded him twenty contested electoral votes. The result was the Compromise of 1877, in which the Democrats acquiesced to Hayes's election and Hayes ended all U.S. military involvement in Southern politics.
Hayes believed in meritocratic government, equal treatment without regard to race, and improvement through education. He ordered federal troops to crush the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. He implemented modest civil service reforms that laid the groundwork for further reform in the 1880s and 1890s. He vetoed the Bland–Allison Act, which would have put silver money into circulation and raised prices, insisting that maintenance of the gold standard was essential to economic recovery. His policy toward Western Indians anticipated the assimilationist program of the Dawes Act of 1887.
Hayes kept his pledge not to run for re-election, retired to his home in Ohio, and became an advocate of social and educational reform. Biographer Ari Hoogenboom says his greatest achievement was to restore popular faith in the presidency and to reverse the deterioration of executive power that had set in after Abraham Lincoln's death. Although supporters have praised his commitment to civil service reform and defense of civil rights, Hayes is generally listed among the bottom half in historians' rankings of U.S. presidents.
“Nothing brings out the lower traits of human nature like office-seeking.”
“One of the tests of the civilization of people is the treatment of its criminals.”
“The real difficulty is with the vast wealth and power in the hands of the few and the unscrupulous who represent or control capital. Hundreds of laws of Congress and the state legislatures are in the interest of these men and against the interests of workingmen. These need to be exposed and repealed. All laws on corporations, on taxation, on trusts, wills, descent, and the like, need examination and extensive change. This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations.”
“The man who does that which avails in reforms or other good works always has clubs thrown at him. The nobodies are passed over in Silence, or with good natured unmeaning compliments after they leave high places.”
“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.”
“Personally I do not resort to force--not even the force of law--to advance moral reforms. I prefer education, argument, persuasion, and above all the influence of example.”