Monday, July 13, 2015



Rutherford B. Hayes – Fremont, Ohio
May 2, 2015

Hope mixed with apprehension. 

That was the general feeling of the enslaved as the Civil War ended. As remembered by former enslaved, Booker T. Washington in 1901, “For some minutes there was great rejoicing, and thanksgiving, and wild scenes of ecstasy.  … I noticed that by the time they returned to their cabins there was a change of feeling. … It was very much like suddenly turning a youth of ten or twelve years out into the world to provide for himself… Some of the slaves were seventy or eighty years old;  their best days were gone. They had not strength with which to earn a living.”

The post-Civil War Reconstruction period gave the formerly enslaved their long-sought freedom but few means to make a living. The Radical Republicans did the best they could to empower the freedmen and provide them the tools to succeed. The results were mixed, and federal troops were constantly dispatched to quell Southern attempts to intimidate and kill the freedmen. 

Fast forward to 1876 — the year when hope for the freedmen died until the middle of the next century. 

Here is how it happened.

1876 was a watershed year. One hundred years had passed since the founding of the nation. The Centennial was being celebrated at the first World’s Fair in Philadelphia, and 10 million visitors showed up — 20 percent of the U.S. population. (It was at this fair that a new fruit was introduced to the United States: the banana.) The West was still wild — in June, George Armstrong Custer and his men were massacred at the Battle of Little Bighorn.  Alexander Graham Bell patented his new invention, the telephone; and the Philadelphia A's and the Boston Red Caps played the first National League baseball game.

1776 Election Banner
By the time the election of 1876 loomed, the Republicans had fallen on tough times.  President Ulysses S. Grant’s administration was riddled with scandals, although amazingly Grant himself was barely tainted. In addition, the 1873 depression, the worst depression in U.S. history at that time, fell on the heads of the ruling Republicans. 

The candidate for the resurgent Democrats was former New York Gov. Samuel Tilden. The Republicans put forward Rutherford B. Hayes, a former Civil War general and three-time governor of Ohio. However, the Republicans didn’t have much enthusiasm for their candidate – initially he had few votes but ended up being the consensus choice.

The election on Nov. 7, 1876, was a cliffhanger. Although Tilden had won the popular vote (4.3 million vs. 4.0 million), neither Tilden nor Rutherford had reached the magic number of 185 electoral votes. Tilden stood one vote shy at 184 electoral votes, and Hayes was well behind at 165 votes.

But the election results in Louisiana, Florida, South Carolina   the only Southern states still in Republican control — and Oregon were still up for grabs. Both sides claimed the 20 unaccounted-for electoral votes. 

Many issues clouded the votes. One was the controversy regarding who could or couldn’t be an elector. If someone held any kind of a position with the federal government, he couldn’t be an elector. For example, in Florida, one of the Hayes’ electors, F.C. Humphreys, held an appointment as a U.S. shipping commissioner. The controversy over his vote was whether he had resigned in time to become a legitimate elector (Rehnquist, 2004). 

In some states, fraud was alleged on both sides. On the day prior to the election, U.S. Marshal J.H. Pierce in Mississippi wrote that “the election in the northern half of this State will be a farce.  Colored and white Republicans will not be allowed to vote in many counties … clubs are armed with Winchester rifles and shotguns, and declare that they will carry the election at all hazards.  In several counties … leading white and colored Republicans are now refugees asking for protection … A reign of terror such as I have never before witnessed exists. If it were not for rifles and shotguns this State would give Hayes and Wheeler (the vice presidential candidate) from 20,000 to 30,000 majority.” (Rehnquist, 2004)  Mississippi voted solidly Democratic.

To solve the impasse, Congress created the framework for an Electoral Commission consisting of five members of Congress, five members of the Senate and five Supreme Court justices.  (Extrajudicial roles for Supreme Court justices were rare. Notable exceptions were Chief Justice John Jay negotiating the Treaty of London with Great Britain in 1794 and Chief Justice Earl Warren leading the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy in 1963-1964.)

The makeup of the Electoral Commission was controversial and took a long time to establish. The final seated commission was skewed by exactly one Supreme Court justice on the Republican side. And ultimately each of the 20 votes reviewed by the commission was awarded to Hayes on a party line vote of 8-7 (Current, et al., 1975).

Congress still had to approve the commission’s findings. There was much in the way of backroom dealings, and a compromise between the Republicans and Democrats was forged.  The so-called “Compromise of 1877” called for the withdrawal of all federal troops from the South, federal funding for internal improvements, the appointment of at least one Southerner to the Cabinet, and aid for the Texas and Pacific Railroad.

Finally, on March 2, just two days before inauguration, the commission’s findings were accepted.  This would be the closest and most controversial election until George W. Bush vs. Al Gore in 2000.

Following the election, Rutherford Hayes was called “Rutherfraud” by some but he never apologized for his election.  He maintained that “there were crimes against the ballot box.”  His opponent, Tilden, was magnanimous in defeat and said:  “If my voice could reach through our country and be heard in its remotest hamlet, I would say:  Be of good cheer.  The Republic will live…” (Rehnquist, 2004).

The Republic lived, but Reconstruction was over. The “Redeemers” came to power and the Southern Republican state governments had seen their last days of the century. Money for schools dried up, especially for black schools. The notorious black codes returned. Blacks were jailed for minor crimes and were then used as laborers — often for years. They were given to businesses to use — a de facto return to slavery. Other blacks were relegated to menial jobs at farms, factories and within homes. 

***
The Hayes House
Hayes’ father died of typhus 2 ½ months before Rutherford was born. His Uncle Sardis took over the family since a woman could not be the head of a family, and moved them to Delaware. And then he moved the family to Lower Sandusky, now called Fremont, where he built a 4,000-square-foot house on a spot he called “Spiegel Grove” — named for the pools of water that formed after heavy rains and reflected the majestic trees on the 25-acre property. “Spiegel” is the German word for mirror.

Spiegel Grove Estate is now home to the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center, which includes the house, which has grown to 21,000 square feet, a museum, a library and the graves of Hayes and his wife, Lucy.

***

Down Tyme Café 
Before we go into further detail about Hayes and his family, a few notes about Fremont. It is a small town roughly 40 miles east of Toledo.  When we drove into town on an early May Saturday afternoon, and crossed the East State Street bridge over the Sandusky River, we saw dozens of fishermen lining the riverbanks and wading into the wide, shallow water to take advantage of the spring spawning run of the walleye and white bass.

The downtown was relatively empty, but we found the cute Down Tyme Café on Front Street, and scarfed down some sandwiches and quiche and a very tasty thyme-infused lemonade (and a couple just-baked cookies) before moving on to Spiegel Grove. 

***

Young Rutherford & Lucy
Hayes and Lucy met as teenagers but didn’t marry until they were in their 30s, after Rutherford attended Kenyon College and then Harvard Law School. His schooling was paid for by Sardis, a successful businessman who made money in all types of businesses, including banking.

Lucy and Rutherford had a “strong, loving marriage,” according to our tour guide, Jean. They even renewed their vows at 25 years while in the White House. That bond was important since they had to deal with so much tragedy — they had seven boys and one girl, but three sons died very young.

Once in the White House, Lucy was the most esteemed first lady since Dolly Madison.  She was the first presidential spouse to be called “first lady” and it finally stuck.  She was also the first to have a college degree. 

Much of the color of the house and furnishings (rugs, fireplaces, chandelier, stained glass, etc.) is in Lucy’s favorite color, teal blue.  Jean called it “Lucy blue.” 

However, her popularity did not extend to the china she had designed for the White House. A local artist designed the china, which depicts flora and fauna native to the United States. Far from being subtle, the large designs cover the entire plate or bowl. And she was widely criticized because the art was too realistic. Guests didn’t like eating with a coyote staring at them or a frog peering up from a soup bowl.

Typically not fans of tours of the “stuff” in presidential houses, we enjoyed the dishes, although Cathy immediately saw the problem with the china pattern not being subtle enough.

Another favorite part of the tour was what Jean called Hayes’ “inner sanctum.” This room doubled as Hayes’ bathroom … and office.  It contains a desk, a tub and a toilet.  Hayes liked to retreat to the room to escape the frequent guests.  Jean showed us an old photo of the bathroom with Hayes’ maps hanging on the walls. 

The mansion was modified over time and grew from 4,000 square feet to its present massive size of 21,000 square feet.  The top of the four-story house features a “lantern,” which is so-called because it’s boxy and has windows on three sides to bring in light and air.  The open windows created an updraft that blew out the hot air and brought in the cool air downstairs. 

Inside the House
In a case of “George Washington slept here,” Jean told our tour group to be sure to look into the old mirror mounted on the wall in one of the bedrooms. She said Washington had once looked into that mirror.  (The mirror, of course, was at another location when Washington peered into it.)

The Rutherford B. Hayes Foundation, which was established by Hayes’ second son,  Colonel Webb Cook Hayes, is currently restoring seven rooms to appear exactly the way it did when Hayes lived there.  How would they know exactly what it looked like?  They found some old photos from his cousin.

The library once displayed more than 11,000 books and was the family’s favorite room, maybe because it had skylights. The room also had a standing desk as well as a small trap door to hide important items.

Next to the library, in the library parlor, hangs a larger-than-life portrait of the 5-foot-8 Hayes. He would complain that the frame cost more than the house’s butternut staircase.

Fun fact: In 1881, the Hayes installed a telephone. Phones were expensive — costing $4 a week — so the 1884 phone directory lists only 15 houses that had them in Fremont.

The Stuffed Owl
Moving on from the house, the museum next door was filled with fairly random exhibits. There was a stuffed owl presented to Lucy, a large banner from the 1876 election, and a gigantic bear trap given to Hayes in 1880.

No visit to a museum would be complete without a short movie in a dark room — Cathy’s favorite place to catch some zzz’s. What Cathy missed, since she didn’t have time to sit through two screenings (one to learn, one to nap): The movie describes Hayes as an “impeccably honest” man who took as his role model John Adams. He participated in the Civil War, which he found to be a “just & necessary war” and said he wouldn’t miss it. He rose to brigadier general and enjoyed the battle campaigns — even though he was wounded four times.

***

Once he took office, Hayes said he would honor his commitment to remove federal troops but beseeched the impending Democratic state governments to respect black rights.  They agreed to do so but did not.  It was really a moot point — the Democratically controlled House wouldn’t allow the passage of any bills to provide funds for the troops anyway. Also, as promised, Hayes did include a Southerner in his Cabinet.  He appointed David M. Key, a former Confederate officer, as postmaster general.

During his presidency, Hayes attacked political patronage and started civil service reform. He forbid employees from federal politicking and fundraising. One of the most corrupt institutions was the New York Custom House, and Hayes fired many of the employees there, including future President Chester A. Arthur. 

Also, in 1879, Hayes vetoed a bill that exclude most Chinese immigration and send a team to China to negotiate the Treaty of 1880.

Epilogue
The Hayes in Later Years

Final Resting Place
In 1889, Lucy died of a stroke two months shy of 58. She had had a stroke a couple weeks earlier and told her husband that the next one would be “it.” In 1893, Hayes succumbed to heart disease in the downstairs bedroom.  Both are buried at Spiegel Grove.

***

In 1883, the Supreme Court ruled that states couldn’t discriminate based on race…but private parties could.  Thus railroads, hotels, theaters, could actively discriminate against blacks. That led to the 1896 Plessey v. Ferguson decision that states could now have separate facilities for races but that they must be “separate but equal.” This led to mass segregation. (When Tom lived in Vicksburg, Miss., in the 1980s, he could still see the outline of “White” on a bathroom door in a public building — possibly city hall. The actual letters had been removed but the outline still remained. Nobody bothered to repaint the door and the point was made.)

By end of the 1800s, blacks held less land than at the end of Reconstruction and all Southern states restricted voting in a manner that still complied with the 15th Amendment: poll taxes, literacy tests demonstrating understanding of state constitutions and residency requirements. In Louisiana, black voter registration fell from 130,000 to 1,000. Since whites also lost the vote but to a much smaller degree, the Supreme Court in1898 agreed that the requirements were non-discriminatory.

Between 1880 and 1968, 3,500 blacks were lynched.  Many of these lynchings were as brutal as any horror currently perpetrated by the Islamic State, including mutilations of living victims and burning of victims to death. These events attracted thousands of onlookers and were widely photographed and documented in postcards that one could collect. (Foner & Brown, 2005; Current, et al., 1975) 

In 1954, the Supreme Court, in Brown v. Board of Education, unanimously declared that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal" and overturned Plessey v. Ferguson.  In 1964, the Democratically-controlled executive and legislative branches passed the Civil Rights Act to prevent discrimination and guarantee the right to vote for all Americans.  And in 2015, the last Confederate flag to fly from the grounds of a state capitol was lowered in Columbia, South Carolina.

But these are stories for another day.


Directions

Spiegel Grove is in Fremont, Ohio, 85 miles west of Cleveland, just off Highway 90. The entrance fee is $13 to see both the home and the museum. 

References

Current, N., Williams, T.H., Freidel, F.  1975.  American History:  A Survey.  Fourth Edition.  Alfred A. Knopf.  New York, New York.

Foner, E. and Brown, J.  2005.  Forever Free:  The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction.  Alfred A. Knopf.  New York, NY.

Moore, K.  2007.  The American President.  Fall River Press.  New York, NY.

Rehnquist, W.H.  2004.  Centennial Crisis:  The Disputed Election of 1876.  Alfred A. Knopff.  New York, New York.

Washington, Booker T.  1901.  Up from Slavery.  Doubleday, Page & Company.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Exposition

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Board_of_Education


http://www.rbhayes.org/hayes/aboutcenter/




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