Rutherford Birchard Hayes, 19th President of the United States

Born: October 4, 1822, Delaware, Ohio, United States
Died: January 17, 1893 (age 70 years), Fremont, Ohio, United States
Party: Republican Party
Presidential term: March 4, 1877 – March 4, 1881
Vice president: William A. Wheeler (1877–1881)
Children: Manning Force Hayes, Fanny Hayes, Webb Hayes · See more
President number: 19
Website: https://www.whitehousehistory.org/bios/rutherford-b-hayes

Rutherford B. Hayes

Rutherford Birchard Hayes, 19th President of the United States

Rutherford Birchard Hayes (/ˈrʌðərfərd/; October 4, 1822 - January 17, 1893) was the 19th president of the United States, serving from 1877 to 1881. A staunch abolitionist from Ohio, he was also a brevet major general for the Union army during the American Civil War.

As an attorney in Ohio, Hayes served as Cincinnati's city solicitor from 1858 to 1861. He was a staunch abolitionist who defended refugee slaves in court proceedings. At the start of the Civil War, 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 in 1862. He earned a reputation for bravery in combat, rising in the ranks to serve as brevet major general. After the war, he earned a reputation in the Republican Party as a prominent member of the "Half-Breed" faction. He served in Congress from 1865 to 1867 and was elected governor of Ohio, serving two consecutive terms from 1868 to 1872 and half of a third two-year term from 1876 to 1877 before his swearing-in as president.

Hayes won the Republican nomination for president in the 1876 United States presidential election. In the disputed general election, he defeated Democratic nominee Samuel J. Tilden while losing the popular vote. Initially, neither candidate secured enough electoral votes to win the election, but Hayes prevailed after a Congressional Commission awarded him 20 contested electoral votes in the Compromise of 1877. The electoral dispute was resolved in a backroom deal whereby both Southern Democrats and Whiggish Republican businessmen acquiesced to Hayes's election on the condition that he end both federal support for Reconstruction and the military occupation of the former Confederate States.

Hayes's administration was influenced by his belief in meritocratic government and equal treatment without regard to wealth, social standing, or race. One of the defining events of his presidency was the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, which he resolved by calling in the U.S. Army against the railroad workers. It remains the deadliest conflict between workers and strikebreakers in American history. As president, Hayes implemented modest civil-service reforms that laid the groundwork for further reform in the 1880s and 1890s. He vetoed the Bland-Allison Act of 1878, which put silver money into circulation and raised nominal prices, but Congress overrode his veto. He also arbitrated a territorial dispute between Argentina and Paraguay after the Paraguayan War. His policy toward western Indians anticipated the assimilationist program of the Dawes Act of 1887. At the end of his term, Hayes kept his pledge not to run for reelection and retired to his home in Ohio. Historians and scholars generally rank Hayes as an average to below-average president.

 

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