Really Cool Stuff about Rutherford B Hayes
1. During the war, a young second lieutenant and future president, William McKinley, served under Hayes and they became good friends. Hayes eventually appointed McKinley to quartermaster.
2. Hayes had a hand in established what is now known as Ohio State University. “As Ari Hoogenboom [a biographer] has emphasized, the legislature followed his suggestion to establish the Agricultural and Mechanical College, the predecessor of Ohio State University, of which he considered himself a founder” (p. 51).
3. Hayes was the first person to serve three terms as governor of Ohio.
4. With Lucy’s help, Hayes did a good job of modernizing the White House, including the installation of more modern plumbing and a telephone!
5. Lucy was quite famous as a first lady with her own nickname, Lemonade Lucy. The reason for this? No alcohol allowed at the White House. “Immediately after a dinner for a son of the Russian tsar where wine punch was served, Lucy’s ban on alcohol, later winning her the name ‘Lemonade Lucy,’ went into effect as part of the White House cuisine, much to the gratification of temperance advocates” (p. 99).
6. For the first time in history at the White House, on December 30, 1877, Rutherford and Lucy held a giant celebration in honor of their silver anniversary.
7. Amazingly, President Hayes is venerated in Paraguay where he has a holiday, a province, a town, a museum and a soccer team all named in his honor. “In November 1878, arbitrating a dispute between Argentina and Paraguay, the administration awarded the territory between Pilcomayo and the Verde River to Paraguay, so that a whole department of that country was called Presidente Hayes and its capital named after him” (p. 108). The reason the Paraguayans love Hayes so much? The arbitration effectivly gave them 60% of their land.
8. Rutherford Hayes was the first president to go on a tour of the Pacific states.
Well there’s no doubt—Rutherford was pretty vanilla on the presidential scale. He seemed like a good man who was just ambitious enough to want the presidency and then not ambitious enough to keep it for longer than he needed to. In fact, since I’ve read through nearly 20 presidents by now, I find it very odd, and also very impressive, that Hayes was adamantly against having a second term. Other presidents obviously served only one term but Hayes was downright excited to be done with the whole thing. I think that makes Hayes very smart, in my book.
Trefousse did a good job of giving the readers a sense of who Hayes was and what made him tick. Hayes was a socially conscious man who was concerned with civil rights, civil service reform, universal education, and temperance and, at least it seemed to me, he was in politics for the good it could do for others rather than himself. Like all people, Hayes had his own foibles but after the Grant administration, I think that the United States needed a man like Hayes. Upright, serene, and sure—he was a welcome hand at the tiller when we needed him most (I’m speaking primarily about the end of the Reconstruction.) During the Hayes administration, the White House was a polite and
What is ironic is that Hayes was a very uncontroversial figure himself and yet he had one of the most controversial starts to a presidency—thanks to the Bargain of 1877. I wonder what would have happened had Tilden taken the title but I really think that despite all the accusations at the time, the right man did win out.
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