Rutherford B. Hayes
Born: October 4, 1822
Died: January 17, 1893
Term in Office: 1877-1881
This guy, for being a president about whom the average person (myself included) knows relatively little, proves to be a fairly interesting fellow, beyond his having a really interesting first name. I've garnered much information from www.mentalfloss.com, a site that I think everyone should visit from time to time. There's a lot of good stuff there.
Anyway, back to our man Rutherford (I wonder what that shortens to...Ford? Ruthie?). He and his wife were a highly educated couple in their time, his wife Lucy being the first First Lady to have a college degree, and Rutherford being the first president to have graduated from Harvard Law School.
He practiced law for a few years before serving in the army during the Civil War. Of the seven U.S. presidents who fought in that conflict, this guy was the only one wounded in action (multiple times), having two horses shot out from under him. (I wonder how many horses were lost in the Civil War... seems they are the unheralded victims of that terrible time... I will look it up) It is said that his whole personality changed in battle, morphing from a "gentle gentleman" to "intense and ferocious" on the field, according to William McKinley, another president to have served in that war.
Hayes' 1876 election to the presidency was close and contentious, the elements of which bring to mind events of the 2020 election, even though the results of the latter election should not have been contested at all (seems the Big Lie keeps coming up in these blog posts about the Oval Office-holders). This passage from Mental Floss's site:
In 1876 he ran for president against New York Governor Samuel J.
Tilden, and the Democrat Tilden appeared to have locked up the White
House as the early returns rolled in. Hayes went to bed on election
night convinced he would soon be making a concession speech, though he
had predicted if he lost it would be “by crime—by bribery and repeating”
in the North and by “violence and intimidation” in the South. But Hayes
awoke the next day to learn that he had won the Pacific Slope and would
need to claim the southern states of South Carolina, Florida, and
Louisiana in order to ensure the 185 electoral votes needed at that time
to win.
The
election boards in those three states, citing intimidation of black
voters, voided Democratic votes and declared Hayes the winner, which
appeared to swing the election to Hayes. However, Hayes then lost Oregon
when it emerged that one of the state’s Republican electors held a government job and could not cast his vote for Hayes, and the Democratic governor certified a new Democratic elector.
The disputed states cast conflicting votes, and that’s when things
got messy. Senate leadership was inundated with requests from
Republicans to decide which votes to count, while Democrats wanted a
joint session of Congress to determine the winner. The two sides forged a
compromise when the Electoral Commission Act was passed in January
1877. The act established a commission of five senators, five
congressmen, and five Supreme Court justices who would decide what votes
to count, a decision that would, in turn, ultimately decide the
election.
The
commission was meant to consist of seven Republicans, seven Democrats,
and one Independent, Justice David Davis. But before the commission
could make their decision, the Illinois legislature attempted to buy
Davis’s support by appointing him Senator. Davis instead resigned from
the commission and a new justice, Republican Joseph Bradley, was
appointed instead. So this new commission consisted of eight Republicans
and seven Democrats, who voted along party lines in a series of votes
in February to award Hayes the disputed states. But the
Democrat-controlled House filibustered the results until March 2, when
Hayes was finally awarded the disputed states, just days before the
inauguration. These votes gave Hayes a 185-184 advantage in the
Electoral College and the presidency. Hayes was elected with about
250,000 fewer popular votes than Tilden and was sneeringly referred to
as “Rutherfraud” and “His Fraudulency” by angry Democrats.
This Electoral College issue seems to raise its ugly head many times throughout our history, only leading to smelly political messes. Time for it to go? Good luck on that front.
Supposedly, a back room deal by the Hayes team was made wherein Federal support of reconstruction in the South basically ended, allowing Jim Crow laws to expand. Messy times indeed.
(About those horses... according to the Shiloh National Military Park's Facebook site, between 1,000,000 and 3,000,000 horses were killed during the Civil War, 3,000 in the three days of the Battle of Gettysburg alone. More on that battle in a later blog post, when I reflect on a book by Stephen Sears I've just finished reading.)
Peace to all, and keep lobbying for a comprehensive voting act that puts reasonable Federal guidelines on all national elections.
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