Rutherford B. Hayes is not among the most well-known Presidents of the United States. He played an important role in determining the shape of the union after the war.

Rutherford B. Hayes (1822-1893), achieving the office of the Presidency in 1877 after eight years of corruption in the Executive Branch under Ulysses S. Grant, immediately faced a great number of his own complications, including charges that his was an illegitimate Presidency.

After the controversial election of 1876 in which Hayes lost the popular vote to Samuel Tilden and only won the electoral vote after the decision of a Congressional commission turned in his favor, his single term in office was immediately marred by this scandal.

In his inaugural address, Hayes promised to serve only a single term in office, and even went so far as to propose a constitutional amendment limiting Presidents to just a single term, while extending this term to six years. Clearly, such an amendment didn't actually go anywhere.

Reconstruction

As a Republican and former anti-slavery Whig, many of Hayes' policies toward the greatest issue of the day - what to do about southern reconstruction - were guided by his personal ideology, which favored giving more rights to southern blacks.

At the point in time in which Hayes took over the Presidency from Ulysses S. Grant, reconstruction in the south was already coming to a close. The troops which had been stationed in the southern states, enforcing fair elections and upholding the governments established by republicans there (despite strong Democratic majority throughout the south) had already been pulled out of most of the states, and Democratic governments had begun to rise up again.

Hayes, knowing that the government did not have the sufficient resources to return to a more radical form of reconstruction by bringing the troops back to the south, offered a deal to the states which still had a military presence: Promise to enforce voting rights as specified by the fifteenth amendment (which Hayes had helped pass as Governor of Ohio), and he would end reconstruction.

The states made the pledge and Hayes kept his promise, but the new Democratic governments did not keep theirs. Before long, oppression had returned, helped by such organizations as the Ku Klux Klan and a general feeling of racism throughout the south.

It is for this reason, then, that reconstruction is often seen as having been a rather dismal failure, providing only temporarily respite for the discrimination against blacks in the south.

Economic Issues

While reconstruction is certainly the most prominent issue to have faced President Hayes, it was not the only problem that was facing the nation, which was still reeling from the effects of the Depression which followed the Panic of 1873.

The depression effected all sectors of the nation's workforce, hitting organized labor especially hard. Wage cuts amongst railroad workers led to a general strike across the Eastern half of the United States (the Great Railroad Strike of 1877).

Militias were called out to quell the strike, which had drawn other unemployed workers to join, resulting in the killing of several dozen strikers at the hands of militiamen, which caused riots in Baltimore and Philadelphia. Though Hayes was asked to offer military assistance to quell the riots, he refused.

The riots eventually ended on their own, and the railroads did not cut the wages any further, but damage had been done to Hayes' Presidency.

Where the reputation of this President was improved, however, was in his pushing for a restoration of the financial gold standard, which asserted that every bit of paper money produced by the federal government must be backed by gold in the federal reserve (meaning that he favored "hard money" over "soft money").

Returning to a gold standard would effectively halt inflation and stabilize the nation's economy. However, there was also a faction in Washington which sought more inflation, and thus proposed the unlimited coinage of silver, which would remove gold from circulation and negate the gold standard.

Though congress passed a law over Hayes' veto which attempted to bring silver into circulation, Hayes' was able to negate this effect and bring back the gold standard anyway, which, sure enough, began quickly to bring the nation back into financial prosperity.

Legacy

Though Hayes is certainly not the best known President today, he actually accomplished quite a bit while in office. He was perhaps the first President in several decades whose entire term had not been almost entirely devoted to dealing with the south.

After ending reconstruction within his first year in office, Hayes was able to focus on bringing back economic stability to the U.S., to initiate Civil Service reform, and to at least attempt to initiate civil rights in the south.

Though not entirely successful in all of his endeavors, there is much to appreciate about Rutherford B. Hayes. Voluntarily leaving office in 1881, Hayes was pleased with his efforts toward uniting the country and bring prosperity back. He retired to his home in Ohio, where he lived for a dozen more years before dying of heart failure.

Though the view of Hayes among historians has not increased too much in recent years, there was much to admire about his four years in office. At the very least, he deserves not to be so readily dismissed.

For More Information:

The Rise of Rutherford B. Hayes

The Controversial Election of 1876

References:

"Rutherford B. Hayes." American President: An Online Reference Resource.

"Biography of Rutherford B. Hayes." The White House.