Ohio History Journal

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REVIEWS, NOTES AND COMMENTS

REVIEWS, NOTES AND COMMENTS

 

 

BY THE EDITOR

 

A REVIEW OF THE LIFE AND THE DIARY AND LET-

TERS OF RUTHERFORD BIRCHARD HAYES

 

Robert Latham, the editor of the Asheville (N. C.)

Citizen in the issue of that paper for May 12, 1929,

publishes his review of the Life and the Diary and Let-

ters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes. Mr. Latham is a

well-known journalist of the Southland. He began on

the editorial staff of the Columbia (S. C.) State. He

was afterwards editor of the News and Courier, Char-

leston (S. C.). In 1924 he received the Pulitzer prize

for the best editorial in the United States.

Following is his estimate of the Hayes Series:

It is now fifteen years since Dr. Williams' Life of the 19th

President of the United States was published. Dr. Williams had

undertaken its preparation as a labor of love. William Henry

Smith, the intimate personal and political friend of Mr. Hayes,

had assembled much of the material for a history of the eventful

period in which Hayes was a pivotal figure but had not been able

to write the biography which he had in mind. He turned in his

last days to Dr. Williams, his close associate, and asked him to

complete the undertaking; and Dr. Williams could not refuse the

request, seconded as it was by the sons of Mr. Hayes.

The undertaking gave him considerable uneasiness in the be-

ginning for he mistrusted his own qualifications; especially as he

was by training and conviction a Democrat, editing for many

years, with distinguished ability, The Indianapolis News and mak-

ing that journal one of the great newspapers of the Middle West.

When, however, upon his retirement from his editorial work in

1911, he turned to writing the Hayes biography and to editing the

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