President #19, Rutherford Birchard Hayes

…………Rutherford B. Hayes was born on October 4, 1822 at Delaware, Ohio. His father was Rutherford Hayes Jr. and mother was Sophia Birchard Hayes. He had one brother and two sister. His brother was Lorenzo Hayes and his sisters were Fanny Arabella Hayes, and Sara Hayes.

…………Rutherford B. Hayes’s brother, Lorenzo Hayes was born in 1817 along with Sara Hayes. Sara Hayes had died at the age of 4 on 1820, two years before Rutherford B. Hayes was born. In 1820, Fanny Arabella Hayes was born. In 1822, 3 months before the birth of Rutherford B. Hayes, his father, Rutherford Hayes, died from a fever he received while working on the land one day. Of course, 3 months later Rutherford Birchard Hayes was born. He never met his father. When he was born, his mother thought that he wasn’t going to make it past infancy because he wasn’t a strong baby. He did make it. In 1825, When Rutherford B. Hayes was 2 years old, his 9 year old brother was ice skating on thin ice and he drowned because the ice broke. Hayes was left with his 5 year old sister, Fanny Arabella Hayes. Sophia Hayes had concentrated all of her attention on fanny and Rutherford. She didn’t let them go outside to play or to go to school with other children. She home-schooled them and because of that, Rutherford treated Fanny as his closest friend. He said that Fanny was “the confidante of all my life.” His uncle, Sardis Birchard had changed Rutherford’s life. He became something like a second father to Rutherford and when Rutherford was 7, he convinced Sophia to let Rutherford and Fanny go to school and play with other children. Rutherford was good at sports, an excellent student, and became a champion speller at spelling bees. Sardis helped pay for Rutherford’s and Fanny’s education.

………… When he was 14 years of age, Rutherford B. Hayes entered Norwalk Academy, in Norwalk, Ohio. The next year he attended at Isaac Webb’s Preparatory School in Middletown, Connecticut. When he returned to Ohio at the age of 16, he entered Kenyon College, in Gambier, Ohio. All of these schools were over 50 miles from his home so he had to stay at the schools all day for as long as he attended there. He would always write letters to his mother and sister while he attended these schools. Of course, he mentioned the bad things as well as the good things, but he never lost his good spirit and stayed cheerful. He graduated from college three years later, and ranked highest out of all the students in the class. When he graduated, he decided that he was going to study in law school to become a lawyer. In 1843, he entered Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He studied with Judge Joseph Story, a justice that was part of the U. S. Supreme Court.Two years afterward, Hayes finished his studies. He had gone back to Ohio to practice becoming a lawyer. He began to practice in Lower Sandusky, Northern Ohio. His uncle, Sardis Birchard, was living there and he said he’d help Hayes build a building where he could practice becoming a lawyer. For five years, they couldn’t do anything because they found no building spots. On December 24, 1849, he arrived at Cincinnati. He got a new partner, John W. Herron, and together they built a law practice. Hayes proved to be a very talented defense lawyer and in 1852, he took care of three murder cases. In Cincinnati, he was courting Lucy Ware Webb. She was attending Wesleyan Female College in Cincinnati, before in 1850. By 1851, they were engaged. Rutherford B. Hayes and Lucy Ware Webb were married on December 30, 1852. Rutherford was 30 years old and Lucy was 21. Birchard Austin Hayes, their first child was born a year after.

…………Rutherford B. Hayes has entered the new life of politics and had as well entered the political party of the Republicans. In 1856, he was enthusiastic for his friend who was a candidate for presidency, John C. Frémont. He lost, sadly, to the Democrat James Buchanan. During this year, his sister, Fanny Arabella Hayes died. She had married in 1839, and had 4 children. She had twins before she died, but sadly, they died shortly after she died. A few years later, Rutherford B. Hayes was enlisted to go off to the Civil War. He was 38 years old when he had joined the Civil War. His wife had given birth to another child, James Webb Cook Hayes in 1856. She was again pregnant with a third son. Rutherford said before entering the war, that he’d rather be in the war and die a soldier, then to live through it and have no part in it. He had joined on April 20, eighty days after the Civil War had started, and by June he had received the rank of major in the 23rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry. He had led his troops to attack some Confederates and because of that, he received the rank of lieutenant colonel. His son, Joseph was born on December 1861, but died when he was only 18 months old. Rutherford B. Hayes was harmed with a musket ball that broke his left arm and Lucy Hayes brother, Joseph Hayes, helped him recover. a few weeks afterward, Lucy came to help nurse Rutherford. She also helped other soldiers that were wounded. Soon afterward, he was promoted to full colonel. On October 19, 1864, he led his troops to attack the Confederate soldiers and his horse was shot and killed, and he fell off his horse and was knocked unconscious. He had been injured 4 times and had 4 horses killed from under him. He took his seat in Congress in December 1865.

…………He resigns from Congress a year after his second term. He runs for Governor for Ohio and won. He was governor in 1868. While he was in office as governor, a lot of towns people were working on railroads and factories and mines and such, and a lot of people were getting injuries. Hayes helped make it safer for the people who were working under these conditions safer.His second term of governor was ending and he was going to run again for a third term, but Congress persuaded him to go back to them. Ohio wanted Hayes as governor though, so he went decided to run for a third term as governor and he won. Hayes became a candidate for presidency and was going against Samuel Tilden in 1876. Hayes had 4,036,572 votes and Tilden had 4,284,020 votes and 184 electoral votes. Hayes was pretty sure that he lost. Although, there were still 20 electoral votes left; 1 in Oregon and the other 19 in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina. Hayes won all 20 electoral votes and won 185 to 184. On March 2, 1877, three days away from the inauguration, Rutherford B. Hayes was chosen as the next president of the U. S.

…………A lot of people didn’t like the fact of Rutherford B. Hayes becoming president and James A. Garfield thought that someone would try to assassinate Hayes. Hayes’s first major act was to take back all the federal troops that stayed in the South. Hayes believed that this was a good thing, and many others did not. Hayes was positive that he wouldn’t leave the South by themselves. He wanted to help the South out, so he decided to start building bridges, roads, and canals there. he ended the Reconstruction because he didn’t think that it was doing as good as it was before. Southern Democrats call Hayes “the Greatest Southerener of the Day.” They refused to give up their slaves though. When Hayes stepped into office as president, his country was still recovering from economic problems and Civil War issues. He vetoed two bills that called for free coinage of silver.He vetoed another bill that called for more conservative coinage of silver. Congress overrode his veto though. A major crisis during Hayes’s presidency, occurred on July 1877, when he was only in office for four months. The railroad hired workers to keep it up and running, but strikers interfered, and they threatened all the workers and they damaged railroad equipment. Fights that the police and strikers and the militia had caused over 60 deaths and over millions of dollars of property damage. This was called the Great Railroad Strike of 1877.

…………In September 1880, Rutherford B. Hayes became the first president to visit the Pacific Coast. He took his family with him to Yosemite Valley to see all of the great mountains and waterfalls. He also visited Los Angeles, San Fransisco, and Portland in California. Critics and writers nicknamed him “Rutherford the Rover.” While Hayes was in the White house, inventions were made. Abraham Graham Bell gave Rutherford B. Hayes the first telephone and instructions on how to use it. The following year, Thomas Edison discovered electricity and gave him a phonograph. Hayes also had the first typewriter in the White House and the first running water system.

………..Rutherford made it clear that he was only going to run one year to be president and that was it. in 1880, his presidency was coming to an end and James A. Garfield and Chester A. Arthur were the next candidates. Garfield had won the election and he chose Arthur as his Vice President. President Hayes was shocked at what Garfield did. The Hayes family had returned to Fremont, Ohio. From 1883 till his death, Hayes stayed president if the National Prison Association. Lucy Webb Hayes had a stroke and died at the age of 57 in June 1889. He went to Spiegal Grove in 1893to see William McKinely, since he was under Hayes’s control during the Civil War. When he and his son Webb were waiting for a train to go back to Fremont, Hayes had chest pains. Webb wanted him to call of the trip and ask for treatment. Hayes didn’t want to put of the trip and he said that he’d rather die in Speigal Grove then live anywhere else. He died on January 17, 1893. He was buried in Oakwood Cementery in Fremont, but then moved to Lucy’s grave at Spiegal Grove.