Birthday Book of the Day: America's 19th President, remembered in a fine Library of Presidents edition

Today is the 195th birthday of the US president Rutherford B. Hayes (1822-1893).

Now one of the largely forgotten presidents of the Age of Beards, Hayes’ life was forged by the American Civil War. The colorless city attorney for Cincinnati, Ohio, Hayes resigned to join the Union Army, fought for four years, was wounded five times, and came home a brevet major general.

He went to Congress in 1865, serving one term, then was elected Governor twice (1869-73). He declined a third term but accepted another congressional nomination, only to lose in 1872.

Hayes re-won the governorship in 1876, a victory that made him the GOP’s nominee for president. After the most contested post-election fight until Bush v. Gore, Hayes took office in 1877.

The presidency was an office of modest power, and Hayes used his power modestly. He is mostly remembered for his efforts at civil service reform (“No person connected with me by blood or marriage will be appointed to office”), and his teetotaler wife, Lucy, who not only instituted the White House Easter Egg Roll but banned alcohol from all administration functions (of White House dinners, Secretary of State William Evarts remembered, “The water flowed like wine”).

Hayes retired after one term. In his long post-presidency he was active in efforts to provide universal federal education funding, vocational education, prison reform, higher education for African-Americans (W.E.B. DuBois received a college scholarship from a Hayes charity), and income inequality. In 1887 he wrote,

In church it occurred to me that it is time for the public to hear that the giant evil and danger in this country, the danger which transcends all others, is the vast wealth owned or controlled by a few persons. Money is power. In Congress, in state legislatures, in city councils, in the courts, in the political conventions, in the press, in the pulpit, in the circles of the educated and the talented, its influence is growing greater and greater. Excessive wealth in the hands of the few means extreme poverty, ignorance, vice, and wretchedness as the lot of the many. It is not yet time to debate about the remedy. The previous question is as to the danger—the evil. Let the people be fully informed and convinced as to the evil. Let them earnestly seek the remedy and it will be found. Fully to know the evil is the first step towards reaching its eradication. Henry George is strong when he portrays the rottenness of the present system. We are, to say the least, not yet ready for his remedy. We may reach and remove the difficulty by changes in the laws regulating corporations, descents of property, wills, trusts, taxation, and a host of other important interests, not omitting lands and other property.

Today his party would denounce him as a communist.

Hoogenboom, Ari, Rutherford B. Hayes: Warrior & President (Easton Press, 1st ed. 1996). Library of the Presidents Collector’s Edition, leather bound, octavo, 626 pp. Gilt edging to all sides of the text block, red bindings with gilt embossing. Hubbed spine; silk ribbon page marker. With collector’s notes sheet laid in. Very good condition; a well-written consideration of an important man of his time. HBB price: $49.95.

To see more books relating to the American presidency, click here.

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