Who was Rutherford B. Hayes?
Before politics, Rutherford B. Hayes was an Ohio lawyer and a Union officer who took several wounds in battle. He later served in Congress and won three terms as Ohio's governor. The 1876 race against Samuel Tilden ended in dispute, because returns from three Southern states were contested. A special commission handed those states to Hayes. It was widely understood that, in return, Washington would stop propping up the remaining Republican governments in the South. Once in office he withdrew the troops. A nationwide railroad strike hit in 1877, and he defended a gold-backed dollar. He challenged his party's patronage machine, kept his vow to serve one term and later worked for schools and prison reform.
Political views
- He pulled federal troops out of Louisiana and South Carolina, where they had propped up Republican governments, after Democratic leaders promised to respect the civil and voting rights of Black citizens.Source: millercenter.org
- He pressed hard for civil service reform, and Republican bosses who lived on patronage resented it.Source: millercenter.org
- He fought greenbacks and free silver coinage and stood for a currency backed by gold.Source: millercenter.org
- Federal troops went out on his orders to keep the peace during the Great Strike of 1877, the first time the Army was used inside states in a labour dispute.Source: millercenter.org
- He asked for federal help for schools, saying that the right to vote should rest on a universal education.Source: millercenter.org
- A bill capping Chinese passengers per ship got his veto, since it broke a treaty. He then agreed a new treaty under which the United States could control and halt Chinese labour immigration.Source: millercenter.org
- In 1880 he declared it American policy that a canal across the isthmus must be controlled by the United States.Source: millercenter.org
Legacy
Many historians say Hayes restored honesty to the White House after the Grant-era scandals and took early steps toward hiring by merit. His critics point to the troop withdrawal, part of the Compromise of 1877, which closed the Reconstruction era. They argue that it left Black Southerners facing lost votes and segregation, whatever promises he had won. Labour historians add that sending the Army against strikers in 1877 set a pattern of federal help for employers. At the time, opponents questioned whether he had won fairly and nicknamed him 'His Fraudulency'.
In their own words
“The policy of this country is a canal under American control.”