Ohio History Journal

338        Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.   [VOL. 4

RUTHERFORD BIRCHARD HAYES.*

BY REV. WASHINGTON GLADDEN, D.D., LL. D.

We have studied here, more than once, the lesson of some

great life. In no other form does Truth present herself with so

much quickening for the intellect, with so much invigoration of

the will. For this reason chiefly was the Word made flesh. All

highest revelation to men must come through the form of a man.

The story of a life worthily lived is more convincing than logic,

more instructive than philosophy; it carries an element which

transcends all the formularies of science; it contains within it-

self all that gives the moving thrill to music, and immortality to

verse.

Thrice, already, since the summer rest, have we been in-

vited to such a sympathetic study of great lives that had sud-

denly ceased from among us: The editor and essayist, Curtis;

our Quaker poet, Whittier; the laureate of England, Tennyson.

To-night we are called together to reflect for an hour upon the

meaning of a life whose sudden termination has brought to this

commonwealth and this nation a great bereavement. To the

people of Ohio, and especially to the people of Columbus, the

death of President Hayes comes a great deal closer than that of

either of the notable men whom I have named. To them our

debt was large, but it was mainly intellectual. For the enrich-

ing of our minds, for the quickening of our better purposes we

owed them much. But President Hayes has been our neighbor

and our friend; he has walked with us by the way; he has

* Rutherford B. Hayes became an interested and active member of

the Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society soon after its organization

in 1885. In 1890 he was made a life member and at the meeting of the

Society held in Chicago, Ill., October 19, 1892, he was elected a trustee and

president. He served in that office till his death, January 17, 1893. Mr.

Hayes regarded the Society as the agent of a most deserving and valuable

work. He had many plans for the greater development and accomplish-

ment of the purposes of the Society. His untimely death was a loss to

the Society as it was to the many public organizations to which he was

so unselfishly devoting his wise and noble energies.- E. O. R.

Rutherford Birchard Hayes.            339

talked with us at our firesides; in our public assemblies he was a

not unwonted, and always welcome presence; in a great many

of the concerns in which our hearts were most engaged, he was

our wise counsellor and stanch helper; the abrupt and unex-

pected cessation of a force like this is a real shock to our

community; and the absence of such a comrade from our toil,

of such a friend from our familiar circles, brings a sense of

personal loss and loneliness.

I have named him the Great Commoner. This title was

given first to William Pitt, in the days before he was Earl of

Chatham; it was the popular tribute to a lofty spirit who was

"the first to discern," as one of his biographers phrases it, "that

public opinion, though generally slow to form and slow to act, is

in the end the paramount power in the state; and the first to use

it, not in an emergency merely, but throughout a long political

career." William Pitt was the Great Commoner so long as he

kept in touch with the people; no man ever had greater power in

England; he was put at the head of the greatest ministry that

ever ruled England, not because king or parliament wished it,

but because the people would have it. Years afterward, when

he suffered himself to be elevated to the peerage, he came down

from his throne. The title has descended to the man who is now

prime minister of England, and who has won it very much as

Pitt first won it, by identifying himself with the people.

Warned by the fate of Pitt, it is not at all probable that

Gladstone will ever be tempted to exchange for the bauble of

a peerage that place which he holds in the hearts of his

countrymen.

Our own Great Commoner has won the title by the same

qualities. He, too, was essentially and pre-eminently a man of

the people. From the common people he rose, and he never

rose above them. That persistent determination of his to walk

in the ranks of Grand Army parades has been censured by some

as affectation. But to President Hayes it was the simple ex-

pression of a fact which he would neither deny nor ignore. He

was a plain citizen, nothing more; he would not masquerade

as anything else. While he held the chief magistracy of the na-

tion he magnified the office; when he laid it down he returned to

340       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.  [VOL. 4

his place. He knew the dignity of office; he knew, also, the

dignity of private citizenship.

The relations of President Hayes to the Commonwealth

of Ohio are, as I have said, peculiarly intimate. He was born

upon her soil; most of his education was gained in her schools;

all his professional life was spent in this State; the troops that he

led in the war of the rebellion were nearly all Ohio soldiers;

Ohio sent him to represent her in the National Congress, and

thrice made him her Governor; it was from the capital of Ohio

that he was translated to the White-house at Washington; and

since he laid aside the arduous burdens of government, this

State has been his constant home. To multitudes in other

States his great services have endeared him; but Ohio has the

largest share in his renown. I think it must be allowed that

he was her greatest citizen-the finest product, on the whole,

of her century of history. This is a large claim, but I advance

it with some confidence. When the future historian comes

to test by the standards of impartial criticism, the characters

and the services of the men of Ohio who have been at the front

in the nineteenth century, I think that the name of Rutherford

Birchard Hayes will lead all the rest. Grant and Sherman and

Sheridan were greater generals; Garfield was a greater genius,

and there have been greater orators and greater jurists and

greater educators; but take him all in all, for an all-round man-

citizen, soldier, statesman, scholar, man of books, man of brains,

man of affairs, husband, father, philanthropist, neighbor, friend,

there is not another who will measure quite as large as the good

man who has just gone.

I have named Garfield; there is a somewhat striking parallel

between the origin of these two Ohio Presidents. Abram Gar-

field came, with a little family, from Central New York to Cuya-

hoga County in 1830; made a fairly prosperous beginning of a

home there and suddenly died, leaving a widow with four young

children, the youngest of whom, then but two years old, was to

be the future President.

Rutherford Hayes, a thrifty farmer and trader of Vermont,

came to Ohio in 1817 and settled in Delaware where, after five

years of successful industry, he died leaving a wife and two chil-

Rutherford Birchard Hayes.            341

dren. Three months after his father's untimely death, Ruther-

ford Birchard Hayes was born.

Neither of these boys ever knew a father's care, but each

had a courageous and devoted mother, and owed the best part

of his character to her influence.

The home of the Garfields, after the death of the father,

was for years the abode of pinching penury; there were months

when the only food was the meal of Indian corn, and when the

mother went supperless to bed that the children might not be

hungry. From such want as this the children left fatherless in

the Delaware home did not suffer; enough was left to keep them

in comfort, and although frugality was necessary, there was

always plenty. The unmarried brother of Mrs. Hayes, Sardis

Birchard, a man of refined taste, of great public spirit, and of

ample means, was her good counselor and the guardian of her

children. It was the fortune of this uncle which, in later life,

President Hayes received by bequest; it was in the home built

by his uncle in Fremont that the President has lived since 1874.

Not long after her husband's death the eldest son of Mrs.

Hayes was drowned, and there were left to the widow only two

of her children. With the sister, who was only a year or two

his senior, Rutherford Hayes grew up in a most dear and tender

affection. The family lived in a plain brick house in the village

of Delaware, but there was a farm in the vicinity from which

they drew many of their supplies, and to which the children

were always fond of resorting. Mr. Howells's sketch of these

early years will bear reciting:

"The greatest joys of a happy childhood were the visits the

brother and sister made to the farm in the sugar season, in cherry

time, and when the walnuts and hickory nuts were ripe; and its

greatest cross was the want of children's books, with which the

village lawyer's family was supplied. When the uncle Birchard

began in business he satisfied their heart's desire for this kind of

literature, and books of a grave and mature sort seem to have

always abounded with them. They read Hume's and Smollett's

English history together; the sister of twelve years interpreted

Shakespeare to the brother of ten; they read the poetry of Mr.

Thomas Moore (then so much finer and grander than now), and

342       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.  [VOL. 4

they paid Sir Walter Scott the tribute of dramatizing together

his 'Lady of the Lake,' and were duly astonished and dismayed

to learn afterwards that they were not the sole inventors of the

dramatization of poems-that even their admired 'Lady of the

Lake' had long been upon the stage. The influence of an older

sister upon a generous and manly boy is always very great; and

it is largely to this sister's unfailing instincts and ardent enthu-

siasm for books that her brother [owed] his life-long pleasure in

the best literature. She not only read with him, she studied at

home the same lessons in Latin and Greek which he recited

privately to a gentleman of the place [it was Judge Sherman

Finch, of Delaware, with whom the lad began these studies];

she longed to be a boy, that she might go to college with him.

In the futile way she must, so remote from all instruction, she

strove to improve herself in drawing and painting. One of the

first schoolmasters was Daniel Granger, 'a little, thin, wiry

Yankee, of terrible presence, but of good enough heart, whom

the love he bore to learning obliged to flog boys of twice his

own bulk, with furious threats of throwing them through the

school-house walls, and of making them 'dance like parched

peas'-which dreadful behavior and menaces 'rendered all the

younger children horribly afraid of him,' and perhaps did not

so much advance the brother's and sister's education as their

private studies and reading had done; that is frequently the

result of a too athletic zeal for letters on the part of instructors.

The children were not separated for any length of time until the

brother's fourteenth year, when he went away to the Academy

at Norwalk, Ohio, and after that they were little together during

his preparation for college in Middletown, Connecticut, and his

college years at Kenyon College, Ohio. But throughout this

time they wrote regularly to each other; she took the deepest

interest in all his studies; their devoted affection continued in

their maturer life, and when her death parted them it left him

with the sorrow of an irreparable loss."

The Middletown principal strongly urged that Rutherford

should go to Yale; but in the family councils it was judged in-

expedient.  The necessary expense at New Haven, said the

Connecticut dominie, including everything except clothing and

Rutherford Birchard Hayes.            343

pocket money, would range from $150 to $200. That was in

1838. The frugality of the family life is indicated by the fact

that so much as this could not well be spared, though it is prob-

able that the wish to see the boy a little oftener than would be

possible in that banishment, helped to fix his location as a

student at Kenyon College. His preparation for college had

been thorough, and he took up the work of the Freshman year

with no sense of a burden. I must find room here for another

bright paragraph from Mr. Howells:

"His fellow students of that day remember his overflowing

jolity and drollery more distinctly than his ardor in study,

though his standing was always good. Even in the serious

shades of Middletown his mirthful spirit and his love of humor

bubbled over into his exercise books, where his translations from

Homer are interspersed with mock-heroic law-pleas from West-

ern courts-evidently transcribed from newspapers-and every

sort of grotesque extravagance in prose or rhyme. The in-

creased dignity of a collegian seems to have rebuked this school-

boy fondness for crude humor; a commonplace book of the most

unexceptionable excerpts from classic authors of various lan-

guages records the taste of this time, and the reflections on ab-

stract questions in young Hayes's journals are commonly of that

final wisdom which the experience of mankind has taught us to

expect in the speculations of Freshmen and Sophomores. They

are good fellows, hearty, happy, running over with pranks and

jests, and joyous and original in everything but their philosophy,

which must be forgiven them for the sake of the many people

who remain Sophomores all their lives. Hayes was a boy who

loved all honest manly sports. He was a capital shot with the

rifle, and he allowed a due share of his time to hunting, as well

as fishing-to which he was even more devoted-swimming

and skating."

At the first Christmas vacation he walked home-forty

miles--in twelve hours; and after Christmas returned on foot to

college through snow four inches deep. It was a vigorous lad

of sixteen who could venture on a feat like that. It reminds us

of Carlyle trudging from Annandale to Edinburgh, in his college

days; and gives us a glimpse of the hardships undergone by

344       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.  [VOL. 4

college boys of a day not very remote, in pursuit of education.

The path is easier in these days; I wonder if the prize at the

end of it is worth as much now as it was then? That discipline

of heroic effort and heroic sacrifice-I wonder if anything in

the great laboratories, and the great libraries, and the multi-

farious courses of instruction, quite makes up for the lack

of that.

Young Hayes was a jovial comrade and a vigorous lover of

out-door life, but he was a good student. His diary shows how

seriously he takes himself in hand; how frankly he recognizes

his own defects and foibles and sets himself to mend them; how

eagerly he looks forward to the life before him. He is going to

be a lawyer, and he sees that that means hard work; but he is

not afraid of it. Political contests interest him keenly; he does

not disguise from himself the fact that he may take part in them

by and by, nor does he blush to own to himself that he has

aspirations for service in this line. But there are a few sentences

from this college boy's journal which possess great significance,

for they contain the master light of all his seeing.  "The repu-

tation which I desire," he says, "is not that momentary eminence

which is gained without merit and lost without regret;" and

then he copies and adopts this golden maxim: " Give me the

popularity that runs after, not that which is sought for."  It

was the elder Pitt-the Great Commoner of England--who said

that first, but hardly lived up to it. The Great Commoner of

Ohio made the sentiment his own in his boyhood, and never

swerved from it to the end of his life. He never held an office

to which he asked any man to nominate him; he never wore an

honor that was not freely conferred upon him. He could no

more have been an office-seeker than he could have been a pick-

pocket. Every instinct of his nature would have revolted at

the suggestion that he enter the political field as a candidate and

try to capture a nomination.

This might serve to indicate the temper and quality of this

jovial-hearted, serious-minded, high-spirited boy. But there is

another little sketch written by one who was in college with him

that I must let you see.

"Hayes was the champion in college in debate, class-section,

Rutherford Birchard Hayes.           345

and in the foot-path; cheerful, sanguine, and confident of the

future, never seeing cause for desponding; was a young man of

substantial physique; in my whole acquaintance I never knew

of his being sick one day, and so free from any weaknesses as to

seem indefatigable. His greatest amusements were fishing and

chess. In company he was humorous to hilarity; told quick,

pungent stories, many of which I remember with laughter to

this day; took things as they came; used to laugh at the shape

of our boarding-house roast beef, but still ate.

"I do not think he had many intimate friends. Those with

whom he was intimate were, and still are, the best men of my

acquaintance. I don't remember a single man with whom he

was intimate but that has been successful in his vocation. * * *

In his political labors I am sure he never entangled himself by

promises, or by such intimacies as to bind him, but never shrank

from tackling any subject or measure of policy when brought to

him. He never walked around anything, but took it by the

horns and shook it, or was shaken. I think him a square speci-

men of an Anglo-Saxon honest man, stubbornly square in his

views; of simple ideas of life; that is, he had such ideas as

would make him prefer heaping round measure of good to pre-

tension and false appearances.

"The independence of his character was shown on com-

mencement day at Kenyon. He was valedictorian, and I remem-

ber how grand he looked in my boy eyes, because he was not

able to have splendid new clothes, and was independent enough

to do without. That was the first impression made on my mind

evidencing a pure, thorough self-sacrifice. I was but sixteen

years old, and I think I see him now, with what we knew then

as a box-coat with side-pockets, when all the rest were dressed

in new black cloth frock-coats."

Any one with an eye for a man will detect one here, I think,

in this twenty-year-old boy stepping out of college at the head

of his class, with a dignity and force of character that doesn't

need to borrow much from the tailor or the dancing-master. He

is at the head thus far, and I don't think that we shall look for

him in the rear at any point in the march.

From Kenyon he comes to Columbus, and here began, in

346       0hio Arch. and His. Society Publications.  [VOL. 4

1842, his law studies in the office of Sparrow & Matthews, keep-

ing his hold on the good literature all the while, and beginning,

also, the study of German.  After ten months of this private

study, good fortune sends him to the Harvard law school, where

the attraction, mentioned in his diary, was "the instruction of

those eminent jurists and teachers, Story and Greenleaf." Rare,

indeed, was the opportunity of personal contact with these giants

of jurisprudence, whom the law student of to-day can know only

through the desiccated medium of treatises and text books. The

sketches of these two great characters, and of their methods of

instruction, which we find in his diary, show how deep was the

impression which they made upon his mind. To Story, especially,

does he continually return, with notes of admiration for the ver-

satility, the humor, the unstudied eloquence, above all the lofty

ideality and conscientiousness of the jurist. It was much more

than a good knowledge of law that he gained in this school-he

gained, also, the confirmation and enlargement of all the best

purposes of his life.

In the stimulating literary atmosphere of Cambridge and

Boston his tastes are gratified; he hears lectures by Mr. Long-

fellow on literature; he listens to Mr. Bancroft, and President

Sparks, and Richard Henry Dana; at the political meetings, where

Webster, and Choate, and Winthrop, and John Quincy Adams

are speakers, he is an eager and observant auditor. In 1844 his

studies are completed; he is admitted to the bar, and begins the

practice of the law in company with Mr. Ralph P. Buckland, in

Fremont, then known as Lower Sandusky.

But the overwork of the last few years had told upon him,

and there were grave signs of pulmonary trouble. He was com-

pelled, very speedily, to give up all work, and to betake himself

to the sunny South, where, with an old Texan class-mate, a few

months of out-of-door life brought him perfect restoration. Re-

turning, he paused for a few days at Cincinnati, and then deter-

mined to make it his home. Another law partnership was

formed, and the young man sat down, his law books supple-

mented always by the best literature of the day, and waited for

the coming clients. The young lawyer is apt to have plenty of

time to review his legal studies; but not every young lawyer

Rutherford Birchard Hayes.            347

finds so much recreation in other good books as young Hayes

seems to have done. He was soon a member of a famous literary

club of Cincinnati, including men like Chase, and Corwin, and

Ewing, and Hoadley, and Stanley Matthews; and the meetings

of the club were full of mental invigoration and refreshment.

Presently, the clients began to arrive -not in troops, of course,

but with encouraging frequency. A notable case that soon

occurred was that of a poor, under-witted creature, Nancy Farrer,

who had been made the dupe and tool of a fiend, and under his

instigation had poisoned several persons. To her defense he

was assigned by the Court. Mr. Hayes believed her to be men-

tally incapable of crime, and gave himself with all his energies

to the task of saving her life. At the first trial she was con-

victed, but a writ of error was granted, and in the Supreme Court

his plea was triumphant; the judgment of the court below was

reversed; the prisoner was granted a new trial; but before that

could take place an inquest of lunacy pronounced the poor crea-

ture insane, and she was sent to the asylum. This victory gave

Mr. Hayes much reputation, and his practice soon began to in-

crease.

It was about this time, in December, 1852, that he was mar-

ried to Miss Lucy Ware Webb, of Cincinnati. Of a life that was

full of felicities, this was the one most benignant fortune. Rarely,

I suppose, has any wedded pair been more happily mated; each

found in the other all that choice could compass or heart could

crave; and the home set up forty years ago in Cincinnati came

about as near to the ideal as we are apt to come in America.

Many of you knew Mrs. Hayes, as I did not; and I will not at-

tempt her portraiture. But the whole nation knows her as one

of the noblest of our matrons, illustrious for her grace, her win-

ning kindness, her lofty character; worthy to rank with Martha

Washington and Abigail Adams, among the highest types of

American womanhood. Rutherford Birchard Hayes was a pretty

well-built man already, but this marriage brought him a great

reinforcement. To such an influence as this his mind was open;

and it is perfectly safe to say that to whatever was lofty in his

aims or heroic in his endeavors the judgment of his wife gave

confirmation and support.

348       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.  [VOL. 4

In the Fremont campaign Mr. Hayes was an active partici-

pant, and a mourner, of course, at the Pathfinder's defeat. When

the next campaign came on he threw himself into it with new

ardor, and hailed the election of Lincoln as the beginning of the

end.  And when Sumter fell and the first call for troops was

heard, his answer was prompt and clear. "Judge Matthews and

I," so he wrote on May 15, 1861, "have agreed to go into the

service for the war-if possible, into the same regiment. I spoke

my feelings to him, which he said were his own, that this was a

great and necessary war, and that it demanded the whole power

of the country; that I would prefer to go into it, if I knew that I

was to be killed in the course of it rather than to live through and

after it without taking any part in it."

Soon a Colonel's commission came to him from President

Lincoln-probably at the suggestion of Secretary Chase; but he

sent it back; he knew he was not yet fit to lead a regiment; he

would begin lower. Meantime he was studying Hardee dili-

gently, and in a few weeks a Major's commission came to him

from Governor Dennison, assigning him to the Twenty-third

Ohio, whose Colonel was Rosecrans, and whose Lieutenant

Colonel was Stanley Matthews. Two days later he was here at

Camp Chase; and by July 25 the regiment, raw enough, doubt-

less, was on its way to West Virginia.

I cannot tell the story of that faithful and heroic service.

It is enough to say that Rutherford Hayes proved himself a

clear headed, capable officer, and a gallant leader of men. Cool

and unimpassioned as he ordinarily seemed, he was a dashing

leader of a charge, and his bravery on many a hotly contested

field was amply demonstrated. Four times he was wounded-

once or twice severely; but he never left the field while he had

strength to stand. He never sought promotion, but his service

demanded it, and the end of the war found him wearing the

epaulettes of a Major General by brevet.

In the last year of the war, he was nominated for Congress

while in the field, and somebody was so infelicitous as to propose

to him that he get a leave of absence and come home and stump

his district. "Your suggestion," he answered, "was certainly

made without reflection. An officer fit for duty, who at this

Rutherford Birchard Hayes.            349

crisis would abandon his post to electioneer for Congress, ought

to be scalped. You may feel perfectly sure I shall do no such

thing." He was elected, nevertheless; but he did not take his

seat until the war was over, and his soldiers were mustered out

of the service.

It was in December, 1865, that he first assumed the duties

of Representative at Washington, and at once began, in his

quiet, unostentatious way, to serve his country. As Chairman

of the Library Committee, his care was given to the perfection

of that great instrument of knowledge; "chiefly by his efforts

the space and material were increased threefold." He made few

speeches; to one who wrote urging that he add to the wordy

deluge, he answered curtly: "I am disgusted at the shameful

waste of time and patience the so-called orators of Washington

make." Before the end of his term he was renominated by

acclamation, and re-elected by a majority greater than that of

any other candidate upon his ticket. But Ohio had other work

for him, and much against his own will he was called out of

Congress in 1867 to lead his party as its candidate for Governor

in a contest with the strongest opponent in the State, our

distinguished townsman, the Honorable A. G. Thurman.

Victory in such a combat was surely a mark of distinction. In

1869 he was renominated, again by acclamation; and again was

successful against no less an antagonist than the Honorable

George H. Pendleton. At the close of this period he returned

for four years to private life; when he was again, after the most

positive refusal to permit the use of his name as a candidate,

dragged from his retirement in Fremont, and elected for the

third time Governor, this time over another very strong oppo-

nent, the Honorable William Allen. It was this victory that

made him President. His reputation had by this time become

national; the people of the nation had come to understand some-

thing of his straight-forward honesty and devotion to principle;

and although there were presented to the Convention of 1876, quite

a number of names of gentlemen who had claims upon the office,

and who had compassed sea and land, to secure the nomination,

the one man who had not lifted his finger to gain it was chosen

in their stead.

350       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.  [VOL. 4

Of the painful contest which finally put General Hayes in

possession of the Presidency, it is not fitting that I should speak

in this place, at any length. For many months the result of the

election was left in doubt, and party passion was so inflamed

that there was danger of revolution. Opinions formed under

such circumstances are not apt to be judicial; and it is not easy

for men on one side to get the point of view of their opponents.

President Hayes has been bitterly censured, by a few persons,

ever since that day, for accepting an office which was tainted

with fraud. For my own part, with the most sincere desire to

preserve in the whole controversy a judicial frame of mind, and

with grave doubts, all the while, as to whether his election was

beyond question, I thought at the time, and have always

thought, that General Hayes did exactly what he ought to have

done; that his good sense and his patriotism were never more

manifest than when he accepted, without hesitation, the office by

law conferred upon him, and proceeded without faltering to

discharge its duties.

It must be remembered that the question of the real rights

in this case was a very difficult one. On one side the suffrage

had been tainted by stupendous fraud; on the other it had been

perverted by shameful violence. Which was the greater wrong,

I do not believe that an archangel could have told. But, after

anxious days, the Congress had determined upon a method by

which the dispute should be settled. The tribunal thus created

was certainly a legal tribunal, the highest in the land. By that

tribunal the office was given to General Hayes. What could he

do but take it? To refuse it would have been to invite revolu-

tion and anarchy.

I beg to quote, in this connection, what I wrote and pub-

lished at the time respecting this unhappy business: "To prove

that one of these candidates is not entitled to the electoral vote

of either of these States is not to prove that the other candidate

is entitled to it. The election was vitiated in several States by

fraud and intimidation. And it would be difficult for a perfectly

unprejudiced judge to determine which of the two candidates

had the better moral right to the office.

"When, therefore, it is demanded that Mr. Hayes shall

Rutherford Birchard Hayes.           351

resign because his title to the Presidency is tainted with fraud,

the question arises whether anybody has a better title. Doubt-

less the irregularity of this process by which he was put in power

has greatly distressed him, as it has distressed all patriotic citi-

zens. But the last election was, in fact, no election. Who was

rightfully the President it was impossible to determine. Some-

body must be invested with the office. And the Congress at

length agreed upon a plan by which the matter should be settled.

By that plan Mr. Hayes was designated. His legal right to the

office is as good as the National Legislature and the Supreme

Court can make it. His moral right is as good as that of Mr.

Tilden, and better than that of anybody else."

This statement may not express the opinions of all honest

men; but it expresses the opinion of one who tried hard to see

the rights of the case; and I have no doubt that this was sub-

stantially the view which President Hayes took of the situation.

That his acceptance of the Presidency was regarded by him as a

patriotic duty, nobody who knew him could question.

The only utterance of his during that exciting controversy

was a private letter to Senator Sherman, afterwards published:

" You feel, I am sure, as I do about this whole business. A

fair election would have given us about forty electoral votes at

the South -at least that many. But we are not to allow our

friends to defeat one outrage and fraud by another. There must

be nothing crooked on our part. Let Mr. Tilden have the place

by violence, intimidation, and fraud, rather than undertake to

prevent it by means that will not bear the strictest scrutiny."

It was not possible for Rutherford Hayes to say anything

else but that, or to do anything which was essentially contrary

to that.

How manfully he took up the duties of his high office, and

with what patience, firmness, and courage he discharged them,

there is no time now to tell. That the administration of Mr.

Hayes was in all respects the ablest, the purest, and the most

suecessful administration that this country has had since the

death of Abraham Lincoln is an opinion for which I am prepared

to give good reasons. The reins of government were placed in

his hands at a time of the greatest difficulty; every influence was

352       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.  [VOL. 4

hostile; his party was in a minority in both houses of Congress;

his exasperated opponents were by no means loth to hamper and

cripple him; and against all these discouragements he steadily

carried forward his administration on firm lines of well-chosen

policy until he had won the confidence of the whole American

people.  "The President," says one biographer, "found the

country greatly agitated by antagonisms and alarms; its cur-

rency debased; its industry and trade depressed, and its credit

unsettled, and subject to the issue of an existing crisis unprece-

dented in its bearings. He left it at peace in all sections, with a

currency unequalled in stability and abundance; with industries

and trade in all branches at the maximum of healthful activity,

and with the public credit higher than ever before, at home and

abroad, and second to that of no other nation."

One of the most distinguished supporters of Mr. Tilden was

Charles Francis Adams, Jr. After the close of the Hayes admin-

istration, Mr. Adams, speaking at a meeting of the Reform Club

in New York, volunteered this testimony:

" President Hayes was no choice of mine. I did not vote

for him. I never considered him honestly elected, though he was

legally inaugurated. Still, bygones are bygones, and as a fair-

minded man I gladly and publicly concede that President Hayes's

administration, taken as a whole, has been no less honorable

to himself than creditable to the country. It has been cleanly

and honest and of good repute. That, in some respects, it has

fallen short of its own great promises, is apparent to all the

world. But that is of course. It could not have been other-

wise, for it promised the impracticable. Taken as a whole, how-

ever, it has been an administration which will bear comparison

with the best and purest of those which have preceded it, and it

is an administration which the great mass of those who mind their

own business would be glad to have continued for the next four

years."

The friends of President Hayes can afford to let a sober

verdict like that stand as the sufficient answer to the vilification

of those creatures who pursued him with their malice while he

lived and now crawl forth to spit their venom on his new-made

grave. There is a class of miscreants in whom a character like

Rutherford Birchard Hayes.            353

that of Rutherford B. Hayes awakens an instinctive antagonism.

Their abuse is the unfailing meed of every honorable character.

They are as sure to fly into a passion at the sight of a good man

as the devils were to cry out when the Man of Nazareth ap-

peared. One of the highest credentials of Mr. Hayes to the

possession of an unsullied character is the fiendish malignity

with which in certain quarters he has been pursued and assailed.

Let me seek, now, in a few closing paragraphs, to set forth

what seem to me the elements of his greatness.

And first, I would name the simple dignity and manliness

of his habitual conduct. There was no surplusage of manners;

there was always just the simple, sincere, unpretentious gentle-

man. "Nor does he," said one who knew him well, "wear a

smirking face, as if he were a candidate for admiration; but a

fine sunny countenance, such as men and women respect and

children love. He doesn't run to meet you, and call you 'my

very dear sir!' He takes you by the hand, with a cordial kind-

ness which recognizes the universal brotherhood of man, and im-

presses you that he is a man who gets above nobody, and nobody

gets above him." An old citizen of Columbus, who has always

been radically opposed to President Hayes in politics, said yester-

day: "I have always loved Hayes, ever since he was here in the

Governor's office. I was a clerk in one of the departments in

the State House then; and whenever he wanted any information

in the office, instead of sending a messenger, and ordering some-

body to hunt it up for him, he was apt to come round himself,

and sit down by the clerk, and look matters over with him, in a

perfectly friendly, unpretending way. He put on no airs because

he was Governor; he was just a man like all the rest of us; and

I formed a very strong personal attachment for him."

His sturdy independence is next to be noted. No man ever

stood more squarely on his own two feet. He would take no

favors that cost him any sacrifice of manhood. He was ambi-

tious; no doubt about that; from his youth he cherished the

hope of winning honor from his fellow men, but he meant to

win it by deserving it, not by scheming for it. He never asked

for a nomination; never winked an eyelid to secure one. When,

after his third election to the governorship, the people of Ohio

Vol. IV-23

354       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.  [VoL. 4

began to couple his name with the Presidency, he gave himself

no concern about it.  "No man," says Mr. Howells, "could

hear himself much talked about for the chief place in a nation

like this without feeling some share of the popular excitement,

but no man was less capable of pushing himself for such a place

than Hayes. We have seen many letters of his, written during

the period when the movement in his favor was gathering

strength and form-and they all point to the fact that, while he

was not indifferent to it, he was firmly resolved to have nothing

to do with it. In one of these letters, shown us by his corre-

spondent, he wrote: 'I am not pushing, directly or indirectly.

It is not likely that I shall. If the sky falls we shall all catch

larks. On the topics you name, a busy seeker after truth would

find my views in speeches and messages, but I shall not help

him to find them. I appreciate your motives and your friend-

ship. But it is not the thing for you and me to enroll ourselves

in the great army of office-seekers. Let the currents alone.'"

"I can do nothing," he wrote to another intimate friend, "to

aid myself." And then, in allusion to reports that he had en-

tered into alliance with certain politicians, he says: "The truth

is, I am in no way complicated, entangled or committed with the

parties you name or anybody else." I suppose that no Presi-

dent, for the last fifty years-perhaps no President since Wash-

ington-has gone into office so absolutely free from obligations

as he was. When his cabinet was announced, that fact was evi-

dent. Nothing was ever plainer than that that cabinet was

made by one hand, for one purpose--not to pay debts, not to

please the politicians, but simply to give the country a good

administration.

Closely related to this trait of independence was his calm

self-reliance. He knew himself, and he knew that there was one

man in Ohio who could be depended on. He knew his powers,

and was assured that they would not fail him. He knew his

purposes, that they were unselfish, honorable, worthy of realiza-

tion, and he expected to realize them. In his diary, while the

discussion was going on about his candidacy, these words were

written: "With so general an impression in my favor in Ohio

and a fair degree of assent elsewhere * * * I have supposed

Rutherford Birchard Hayes.          355

that it was possible I might be nominated. But with no oppor-

tunity and no desire to make combinations or to lay wires, I

have not thought my chances worth much consideration. I feel

less diffidence in thinking of this subject than perhaps I ought.

It seems to me that good purposes and the judgment, experience

and firmness I possess would enable me to execute the duties of

the office Well. I do not feel the least fear that I should fail."

There isn't a grain of conceit about that, but it is a man that

you hear talking.

His faith in principle was also perfect. The right is for him

the expedient-the thing that ought to be done, can be done; it

is, after all, the easiest and safest thing to do. It was this that

made his choice so clear and his counsels so unfaltering in the

days when financial follies had become epidemic.

And, finally, the one comprehensive word which sums up

his highest and strongest qualities as a public man is patriotism.

This takes your thoughts, perhaps, to the tented field-to the

bivouac and the march and the battle; and it took him thither,

beyond a doubt, and made of him a soldier of whom Grant said:

"His conduct on the field was marked by conspicuous gallantry,

as well as the display of qualities of a higher order than mere

personal daring." But the patriotism of General Hayes was not

consummated when he tore off his shoulder-straps and unbuckled

his sword. The best of it, the bravest of it, was yet to come.

The patriotism of General Hayes was love of country, of the

whole country-not of any section-though he was proud of

his own commonwealth; not of any party-though he was a

loyal Republican-but of the whole land, the whole people.

There are plenty of men to whom patriotism is a mere senti-

ment; the only motive that really moves them in public affairs

is love of party. To that their real loyalty is given; their con-

duct abundantly shows that they would rather see their country

suffer loss at the hands of their own party than prosper at the

hands of their opponents. No matter how beneficent a measure

may be, it shall not prevail if they can help it, unless their party

can hold the offices. The other party they count as the enemy;

it is the word by which they uniformly speak of it; it is the con-

ception under which they always think of it. Their political

356       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.  [VoL. 4

plans stop short, therefore, with the promotion of the success of

their own party; the other half of their fellow citizens are prac-

tically aliens. Now this is not the spirit of patriotism. No

thorough-going partisan can claim to be a patriot. He is a kind

of semi-patriot, a lover of half his country; and even as a half-

truth is the worst sort of a lie, so this intense partisanship which

makes a man think of his political opponents as enemies, is the

root of the most pestilent political immoralities. Now President

Hayes was a man who, although a loyal supporter of his own

party, never lost sight of the fact that his primary obligation was

to the country, and not to the party. He would not sacrifice the

public interest to the interest of his party. To him party was

only an instrumentality, not an end; he would use it just so far

as he could make it serve justice and righteousness, no further.

When he saw that parties were coming to exist mainly for the

sake of holding the offices he struck at that vice with all his

strength. "This system," he said, "destroys the independence

of the separate departments of the government; it tends directly

to extravagance and official incapacity; it is a temptation to dis-

honesty; it hinders and impairs that careful supervision and

strict accountability by which alone faithful and efficient public

service can be secured; in every way it degrades the civil service

and the character of the government. It ought to be abolished.

The reform should be thorough, radical and complete." He did

what he could to secure this end. And he determined to take

the stumbling blocks out of his own path. "Believing," he said

in his letter of acceptance, "that the restoration of the civil

service to the system established by Washington and followed by

the early presidents, can be best accomplished by an executive

who is under no temptation to use the patronage of his office to

secure his own re-election, I desire to perform what I regard as

a duty, in stating now my inflexible purpose, if elected, not to

be a candidate for election to a second term." He said it and he

stood by it. Nobody who knew him had any doubt that he

would do so. Congress sneered at his proposition to reform the

civil service and refused to make any appropriation by which the

work could be carried on; but in spite of Congress he introduced

the reformed methods into some of the most important offices;

Rutherford Birchard Hayes.            357

and when he believed that certain high officials of his own party

were using their patronage to reward political workers, he incon-

tinently turned them out and told their successors that the offices

must be conducted on strictly business principles. He had done

what he could in the same direction when he was Governor of

Ohio. In one of his inaugural addresses he strongly urged that

our State institutions be put upon this basis; that officers and

employes should be appointed on business principles and not as

a reward for political activity. "When he was Governor," says

Mr. Howells, "he was importuned by old and dear friends to

turn out the Democratic State Librarian and give the office, one

of the few in the Governor's gift, to a most worthy and compe-

tent Republican. He refused. "The present incumbent," he

wrote, "of the librarianship is a faithful, pains-taking old gen-

tleman with a family of invalid girls dependent on him. His

courtesy and evident anxiety to accommodate all who visit the

library have secured him the endorsement of almost all who are

in the habit of using the books, and under the circumstances, I

can not remove him. Old associations, your fitness and claims

draw me the other way, but you see, etc., etc. Very sincerely,

R. B. Hayes."

It is in this determination to keep the claims of party

subordinate to the interests of the whole public that I discern

the keynote of President Hayes's patriotism. That famous

phrase of his inaugural in 1877, "He serves his party best who

serves his country best," illustrates his divergence from the com-

mon run of politicians. How impossible it is to get that con-

ception into the mind of the average political leader. And yet

how bright the maxim shines in the light of President Hayes's

example. No recent President was less of a partisan; none was

so successful a political leader. He found his party in the

slough of despond, and he left it on the heights of victory.

And this he did by simply ignoring all schemes of party ag-

grandizement, and giving himself, with a single eye and a reso-

lute purpose, to the service of the whole country.

What he did for the pacification of the South was done upon

the same principle. He had helped to conquer the South; but

he was man enough to see that the era of subjugation must come

358       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.  [VoL. 4

to an end; that the South must be free to govern itself. There-

fore he pledged himself, in his letter of acceptance, to put forth

his best efforts "in behalf of a civil policy which will wipe

out forever the distinction between North and South in our

common country." That promise, also, he kept. The South

was pacified. No ideal condition of things was realized in that

quarter; but a great political improvement took place. The

negroes certainly fared no worse than they had done under

the policy of repression; the temper of the Southern people was

marvellously improved, and the new era was well begun. So

perfect was this work of peace, that the Southern question,

which for a quarter of a century had been the burning question

of our politics, was not mentioned in the first message of Presi-

dent Hayes's successor. What a triumph of statesmanship that

was, let the future historian tell.

With the even mind of the man who has performed great

duties manfully, and borne great trials uncomplainingly, Presi-

dent Hayes laid down the burdens of office in March, 1881, and

turned his face homeward. Malignants among his opponents fol-

lowed him with their curses; the spoilsmen of both parties barked

at his heels, of course; the men whose interest in politics was

mainly selfish all hated him with a cordial and justifiable hatred,

and never lost a chance to revile him. The dispraise of such

men is a decoration. Woe to you when they speak well of you!

The President bore to his home the grateful assurance that

the men to whom office is simply plunder owed him no good

will. But he carried with him, also, the respect, the honor, the

affection of the great body of honest people of both parties.

To his old neighbors in Fremont, who greeted him on

his return, he said:

"The question is often heard, 'What is to become of the

man-what is he to do-who, having been chief magistrate of

the Republic, returns at the end of his official term to private

life?' It seems to me that the answer is near at hand, and

sufficient: Let him, like every other good American citizen, be

willing and prompt to bear his part in every useful work that will

promote the happiness and progress of his family, his town, his

state and his country. With this disposition he will have work

Rutherford Birchard Hayes.            359

enough to do, and that work of a sort which yields more in-

dividual contentment and gratification than belong to the more

conspicuous employments of the life he has left behind."

Manly words are these; but what luster his life since that day

has shed upon them! How modestly, how patiently, how in-

dustriously he has given himself, in the last dozen years, to all

kinds of work. To the wise dispensation of great charities, to the

study of the conditions of the dependent classes-more especially

to the great cause of education in all its phases, he has conse-

crated the ripeness of his wisdom, the maturity of his manhood.

Few men in this land have done so large an amount of un-

remunerated service. "I thought," he said to me a year ago, as

he paused on the threshold of my study, "that when I laid down

my official cares I should have a tolerably easy life; but I have

been kept about as busy for the last ten years working for other

people, as I ever was in my life. And I don't deny that I enjoy

it." To our own university the service that he has rendered has

been invaluable; the loss that it has suffered in his death it is

not easy to compute.

President Hayes was reticent, I judge, about his religious

experience. He was brought up in the Presbyterian church;

with his wife, while she lived, he was a constant attendant upon

the Methodist church; I do not know that he formulated for

himself any creed; he was content, probably, with a very short

statement of some of the fundamental truths of religion. He

was profoundly interested in the truth which constitutes the

heart of all faiths; and he was a sympathetic and appreciative

listener in the house of God. He asked me, not long ago, if I

knew a certain minister of our own communion. I replied that

I had known him from his seminary days. "Well," he said, "I

heard him preach last Sunday at Brattleboro, Vt. And it was a

very fine sermon. You know," he added, with a humorous

twinkle, " we always think that a man who agrees with us is an

able man. But the text of this sermon was a striking one:

'The Second is Like Unto It.' That was all there was of the

text; but it was enough, I assure you, to furnish the foundation

of a very strong discourse."

360       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.  [VOL. 4

I could easily believe it. "The second is like unto it,"-

equal to it. It is what our Master says about the second great

commandment of the law. The first great commandment is

"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart," the

second is like unto it-equally binding, equally fundamental,

equally religious. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

The fact that had made its impression upon the President's mind

was the equivalence of these commandments. That indicated

his hearty recognition of both of them. But I suppose that if

he had been challenged to confess his faith, it would have been

uttered in the words of the beloved apostle: " He that loveth

not his brother, whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom

he hath not seen?" And if the word of that apostle is true--

that "every one who loveth is begotten of God and knoweth

God," then the unselfish ministry of the last ten years would

prove that the first great commandment was also the law of his life.

It is not easy to convince our hearts that this good friend of

ours is not to be seen among us again. He was wont to come

frequently; it was good to hear of his arrival; it was pleasant to

meet him in the street; there was always a little more courage

for work after we had looked for a moment into his face. Here

was a man, we said to ourselves, who has lived. What an answer

is his life to the plea of the mercenary politician that success is

impossible to the unselfish patriot!  Who among all these

schemers and tricksters will ever reach the height on which this

man stood-

"Who never sold the truth to serve the hour

Nor paltered with the Eternal God for power!"

But he has passed. And what remains to us is the memory of a

clean-handed, clear-minded, simple-mannered, great-hearted man,

and the faith which his life has quickened in our hearts, that

"All good things await

Him who cares not to be great,

But as he saves or serves the State."

He has gone. "The good gray head that all men knew,"

will not again be seen in our assemblies.

Rutherford Birchard Hayes.                  361

"No more in soldier fashion will he greet

With lifted hand the gazer in the street.

0 friends, our chief state-oracle is dead:

Mourn for the man of long-enduring blood,

The statesman-warrior, moderate, resolute,

Whole in himself, a common good.

Mourn for the man of amplest influence,

Yet clearest of ambitious crime,

Our greatest, and with least pretense-

Great in council, and great in war-

Rich in saving common-sense,

And as the greatest only are

In his simplicity sublime."