Rutherford B. Hayes

Biography

Rutherford Birchard Hayes was born in Delaware, Ohio, in 1822. He graduated from Kenyon College in 1842 as valedictorian and earned a law degree at Harvard Law School before practising in Lower Sandusky and, from 1850, in Cincinnati. There he made his name as a criminal defence lawyer and defended people who had escaped slavery, and in 1858 the city council chose him as city solicitor.

When the Civil War began Hayes joined the Union army as an officer of the 23rd Ohio Infantry. He was wounded several times, most seriously at South Mountain in 1862, and ended the war as a brevet major general. Elected to Congress while still in uniform, he served in the House from 1865 to 1867 and then as governor of Ohio for two terms, and won a third term in 1875.

As the Republican candidate in 1876 he lost the popular vote to Samuel Tilden, and twenty electoral votes stayed in dispute until a bipartisan Electoral Commission awarded all of them to him. The settlement, often called the Compromise of 1877, was followed by the withdrawal of federal troops from the South and the end of Reconstruction. In 1877 he sent federal troops against the Great Railroad Strike, and he pursued civil service reform and sound money, vetoing the Bland-Allison silver bill only to see Congress override him.

Keeping his pledge to serve one term, Hayes retired to Spiegel Grove in Fremont, Ohio, in 1881. He spent his later years promoting education, including scholarships for Black students, and prison reform, and led the Military Order of the Loyal Legion. He died in 1893.