Hayes, Rutherford B(irchard)

Hayes, Rutherford B(irchard) (1822-1893), 19th president of the United States (1877-1881), 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 labour relations.

Hayes was born in Delaware, Ohio, on October 4, 1822. His father had died before he was born, and his uncle, Sardis Birchard, 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, 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 23rd 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 ended. Two years later he left the House to run 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 of Ohio 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 favourite son after six ballots.

When the votes were counted in the general election, 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 Electoral Commission of 1877 confirmed Hayes's title in March of that year.

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 liable for 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 labour disturbances of 1877, sending federal troops to restore order and, in effect, to break strikes.

Hayes was a firm nationalist. Despite his conciliatory policy towards 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 January 17, 1893.