The USA in the Tine of Rutherford B. Hayes
1877-1881
Hayes as young lawyer Hayes as old President
‘Ruthefraud’ – Like James Garfield, was once elected to Congress while a soldier at the front -VP William Wheeler (NY) - #19 - The President who looks like one of the guys on the box of Smith Brothers cough drops - One of our most obscure Presidents – Cincinnati and Harvard man – 5’ 8” 175 - Wounded in Civil War four times - Only Civil War vet President who was wounded in battle - Married Lemonade Lucy – Won in 76 by one electoral vote – Or did he? – “Old 8 to 7”
“He serves his party best who serves his country best.”
Hayes, age 56
“Before a year rolls around, I’ll get me a wifey.”
Hayes, age 24
The Democrats still cry to this day about the “stolen election” of 1876. It is ironic that Hayes is the thief of 76 since the Republicans chose Rutherford Hayes to lead the ticket in 76 because he was famous for, of all things, honesty. The party’s reputation needed a lift after the muddy Grant Administration, so they picked the squeaky clean Hayes. Instead the Republicans got saddled with the charge that Hayes stole the job. The controversial 2,000 election evoked many callbacks to the 1876 election. Hayes took no role in the settlement of the election results dispute, but 'Ruther' certainly accepted the job when the issue was decided in the Republican’s favor.
Just like 2,000, the election of 1876 was won by the Republicans but disputed by the Democrats. As with Gore-Bush, the Tilden-Hayes clash was not decided until several weeks after election night. Just like 2,000 the controversy centered on disputed results from the state of Florida. Just like 2,000 the winner after all the smoke had cleared had still only won the Electoral College while losing the popular vote. In both instances the Supreme Court ultimately decided the issue. Many, if not most historians assert flatly that the election of 76 was stolen by Hayes from Dem Samuel Tilden, former governor of New York State. That's disputable. The final score was 185-184.
Popular vote 1876 -------------------Harrison R) 4,034,000 - 48%
Tilden D) 4,288,000 - 51%
For all the criticisms of him as a weak mediocrity, Hayes did restore some of the power of the presidency, even if the election itself was suspect. Compared to the impeached Johnson and the passive Grant, Hayes reasserted the presidential prerogative.
Hayes Cabinet
Secretary of State -----------William A. Wheeler – 1877-1881
Secretary of War ------------George W. McCrary –1877-1879
Alex Ramsey ----------1879-1881
Secretary of Treasury ------ John Sherman--------1877-1881
Att. General---Charles ‘Fort” Devens --------------1877-1881
BIO
Rutherford B Hayes was born on October 4, 1822 in Delaware Ohio. His life was not easy. Rutherford’s father died of a sudden fever three months before he was born. Rutherford’s older brother died in a drowning accident, falling through pond ice while skating. His sister died in childbirth in 1856, and they had been very close.
RB was a sickly boy who didn’t care for roughhousing with the other boys. But grown-ups soon noticed that he was smart; Very smart
His mother worked hard to save the family. The family survived only thanks to mother Sophia Hayes. She worked a farm in exchange for rent, paid in the form of one third of the crop to the landlord. It was the US version of feudal agriculture.
Hayes went off to Kenyon College in Ohio, and then made the big time, Harvard Law School.
RB plunged to married man on December 30, 1852, tying the knot with Lucy Ware Webb at the Cincy home of the bride’s mother.
From 1858 to 1861 he was the City Solicitor of Cincinnati, a tongue twister of a job.
When the Rebs bombed Fort Sumter in 1861, Hayes did the right thing and enlisted as an officer in the Union Army. RB made up for his childhood passivity with an intrepid performance in the Civil War. He slugged it out all over the South and was wounded four times, once so severely that he had to be carried off the battlefield and hospitalized for several weeks. After recovering from this wound he went right back into action and continued to fight for more than two years until the end of the war.
During the end game in 1865 Hayes made brevet major general. Rutherford was part of a mission to take Lynchburg Virginia when Lee surrendered at Appomattox.
Amazingly, during the war, while still at the front lines of battle, Hayes the voters of Ohio elected him to the US House of Representatives. But Hayes, this man that the pipe-puffing historians now call “colorless” and “mediocre,” declined to take his seat until the fighting was over. Rutherford refused go to Washington in 1865. There was still work to do in the spring.
Hayes returned to Ohio where he became governor of Ohio. The voters tossed him out in the next election (1872), and then came back to the State House. It was near the end of his second term (1872-1876) as governor of Ohio that he ran for the chance to steal the presidency from the Dems.
EVENTS
DISPUTED ELECTION OF 1876
WITHDRAWAL OF FEDERAL TROOPS IN SOUTH
BLAND-ALLISON ACT
RAILROAD STRIKE OF 1877
DESERT LAND ACT 1877
TIMBER AND STONE ACT 1878
NEZ PERCE INDIAN WAR 1877
BANNOCK INDIAN WAR
ANTI-CHINESE TERROR IN SF
PROGRESS AND POVERTY
ELECTION OF 1876
1876 was a good year for Cin city. Cincinnati hosted the Republican Convention of 1876. Cincinnati hosted the RNC, its favorite son Hayes became the nominee, and the stellar Cincinnati Reds baseball team began their first season as a member of the brand new National League.
The Democrats at their convention nominated Samuel Tilden, of New Lebanon, New York. “Tildo” started in politics as a young man by defending President Van Buren. He might have had some geographical prejudice, as Van Buren was from two towns away. New Lebanon is about a mile from the Massachusetts border.
Tilden dropped out of Yale but made himself a multi-millionaire as a corporate lawyer. Tilden was the only bachelor among the all the losing nominees for president in US history. This was not because Sammy T liked to play the field. He simply never seemed interested in the ladies at any point in his life. Politics they say “makes strange bedfellows.” Sam made his name in politics largely by standing up to the corrupt boss Thurlow Tweed of Tammany Hall in NYC. This was the notorious “Boss Tweed” who would end up in jail during a later presidential administration.
Tilden’s biggest problem besides being a member of the racist Democratic Party was his personality. Tilden was colder than a Point Barrow midnight, and there was no one who denied it, not even him.
On Election Day night, Tilden the Democrat had initially seemed the clear winner in both Electoral and popular votes. But the Republicans challenged the results in three states. These were Florida, South Carolina and Louisiana. The Republicans also disputed one vote from Oregon. The Republican did some quick math to decide on which controversial returns to contest most vigorously. Power influence was used to control the decisions of these 3 state elections boards and they suddenly decided that Hayes had won. The Democrats were enraged and threatened that it would be, “Tilden or War.”
Joseph Bradley Decides the Election of 1876
It was finally decided that an “Electoral Commission” would settle the issue. It would be composed of five men from the US Senate, five from the House, and five from the Supreme Court.
The ten Congressmen evened out at five Republicans and five Democrats, so it was up to the Supreme Court Five, fortunately an odd number. Someone was going to win. Two of the justices were Democrat and two were Republican. Justice David Davis was an independent Republican and his judgment would be more or less the deciding vote. Both sides trusted Davey Davis.
But then the Democratic Illinois Legislature got too clever for its own good. It voted Davis to the United States Senate. The Ill. Dems thought that this would force DD to side with the Democrats when deciding the election controversy. But instead DD showed the independence he was already known for. He took the Senate seat, but resigned from the Electoral Commission! The Democrats had shot themselves in the foot. Dave’s Supreme Court replacement was a Republican sympathizer named Joseph Bradley. From then on the vote on everything went 8-7 Hayes over Tilden and so all the disputed state electoral votes were awarded to the Republicans.
The Democrats were still capable of continuing the quarrel but an wormy behind the scenes deal was made between the two parties at the Wormley Hotel. No, the Democrats did not accept the Hayes presidency in return for the removal of federal troops from the South. That is commonly believed, even by a lot of bad historians.
Hayes had made it known several times during the campaign that this would be his plan if elected anyway. The troops were leaving anyway.
In the deal that was agreed upon, the removal of federal troops was the the least important concession from the Republicans. Both sides knew that was a given. The Democrats accepted Hayes for four bigger favors than that.
One: Federal funding for the Texas & Pacific Railroad with large land grants in the South.
Two: Southern local control on federal job handouts.
Three: A Southerner or two in the Hayes cabinet.
Four: Major federal money and aid for internal improvements in the South, especially roads, bridges and harbors.
The South basically wanted economic integration with the North and federal money for business growth. The Wormley deal on the troops was a smokescreen to sell the larger deal, which was the new co-operation with Washington towards the Southern voters and the Southern economy. The troops were leaving anyway, but it was easier to sell the public a supposed corrupt bargain for the removal of federal troops, than it was to admit the true corrupt bargain of railroads, land, Cabinet posts and federal spoils in local areas. The settlement of the “boody shirt” was a matador distracting the bull, while the big money deals went down.
The election of 1876 was not settled officially until March 3, 1877, two days before Inauguration Day.
Hayes made one gesture of conciliation with respect to the disputed results of ’76. He pledged to serve only one term. In 1880 he kept his promise and his hat was not in the ring.
INAUGURAL
Because March 4 was a Sunday, Hayes was sworn in at the White House on March 3 1877. Today the inaugural is always held on the third Monday of January to negate the Sunday problem.
On Inauguration Day, March 4, 1877, Hayes waxed proud on how the United States had shown the world that it could solve its disputes without violence. He went on to add that, “Conflicting claims to the presidency must be amicable and peacefully adjusted.” It is no wonder he stresses this. If the USA hadn’t been able to control its temper, a Bastillian mob would have strung Hayes up from a tree branch in front of the White House. Hooray for America for not doing that.
But Hayes may still have to go down in history as a bad president for letting the Southern white tiger out of the zoo. Ruthie Hayes let Jim Crow out of its cage.
THE SOUTHERN PROBLEM
The Hayes Administration has blood on its hands for removing federal protection for blacks in the South, even if this removal was not the cornerstone of the ‘corrupt bargain.’ Deal or no deal, it was the open door to the wicked laws of racial repression, which began creeping in as soon as the troops left.
One of the reasons the country accepted a lowbrow racist settlement of the disputed 1876 election was a general national fatigue with the Southern problem. All but the hard left wanted to forget the whole thing. That silly ol Civil War business. Leading progressive idealistic crusader intellectuals, on the other hand, were appalled to see federal protection for blacks depart the South.
It was becoming tragically clear that he end of black slavery did not mean progressivism would triumph in the saddle. Instead there was a white conservative reaction. Those who were hoping that the Civil War marked merely the beginning of a great societal surge foreward and a new age of reason found that the opposite was true. The war had marched progress too forward and now it had to fall back. In the South the backlash was direct. In the North the whistling tolerance of Southern crimes against humanity was the deal with the devil. People on both sides were tired of the Civil War and its bitter aftermath. The bargain of 1876 was not a tough sell with the American people. Many educated Americans saw it as a return to the hallowed principles of 1850, with its omnibus settlement of that difficult situation.
The departure of the federal troops in 1877 in a sense marked the end of the Civil War. But it marked the beginning of a new civil war for civil rights. About 40 minutes after Hayes said, “So help me God” there began in the South the restoration of the sinful ‘black codes.’ The southern “Restoration” retuned the region to all the evils of the South under Andrew Johnson; cruel segregation, denial of the vote, housing discrimination, and terrorism against blacks by bandit white groups, all with the tacit support of the silent white majority.
Racist voting regulations in the Southern states ensured that there would be a return to all white legislatures. All of the political advances for blacks gained after liberation in 1865 would now be wiped out. This was all part of the bargain made in the back rooms of politics in 1876, our national centennial. Both parties sold out the black people of America in the 19th century 'spirit of 76.'
The end of Union troops meant the beginning of Jim Crow and the bounced check of Appomattox. The Klansmen never saw a better election day than November of 1876. Now they were free to operate. Now any black man walking down the street in Crackertown Alabama could get arrested for vagrancy because of a new law the police made up after they arrested him. And he couldn't do a damn thing about it.
NEW APPOINTMENTS
In choosing the new team, Hayes had only a few rules. One rule was no family member in the cabinet. There would be no Bobby Kennedy Hayes in a Rutherford Administration. Another rule was no major changes in national policies out of party loyalty and out of respect towards the previous Grant Administration. Hayes also declared that from now on whenever Congress asked for money or favors, he would examine the facts and not just give a rubber stamp yes to everything.
Hayes wanted to show the South an extended hand of reconciliation so he planned to appoint former Reb General Joseph E. Johnston as his Secretary of War. But there was a problem. The commander of the Army was General Sherman. If Johnston were given the War portfolio, then Sherman would have found himself taking orders from the man he had defeated on the battlefield 12 years earlier. It was an awkward formula and so Hayes had to pull the Johnston name and substitute that of McCrary.
To appease the South he chose Clarence McGillicutty as collector of customs in Norfolk. McGillicutty had been born in Biloxi.
CHINATOWN RIOTS 1877
The redneck natives of San Francisco were angry about so-called ‘coolie labor.’ These were Chinese immigrants working for low wages and taking jobs away from whites. West Coast neo-nativists formed a political party to express themselves. The ‘Workingmen’s Party’ of San Francisco was a front for a bunch of yahoos bent on making trouble. The Working(white)men organized a mob that ran amuck in San Francisco in 1877. One night they burned down more than 25 Chinese Laundries. It was ‘starch-night’ on the west coast. Unlike today’s liberal West Coast, the California of the 19th century was almost as white right wing as post-Civil-War Mississippi or Alabama.
NY CUSTOMS CONTROVERSY 1877
There was corruption in the customs offices of both New York City and New York State. Since more than two thirds of all US imports came through New York City, the problem was important.
After investigating the activities of the State of New York Customs House, President Hayes asked three powerful politicians to resign. They were Roscoe Conkling and two of his Customs officials, Chester Alan Arthur and Charlie Cornell. Conkling, Arthur, and Cornell all refused to resign. Not only that, the influential Conkling persuaded the US Senate not to recognize the men appointed to take their place. Hayes responded by firing all three of the old guard when the Senate was not in session.
The Stalwarts got their payback time in the fall of 1880. The Republicans nominated Chester Arthur to be the next Vice President while the sitting President was Hayes, the man who had fired Arthur for corruption. This was an “in your face” message to Hayes from his own party.
SOCIALIST LABOR PARTY FOUNDED
A new political party was formed in 1877. The Socialist Labor Party was openly Marxist and it was small, which is no coincidence. The fearless socialist leader was Danny De Leon. The party increased its size a little bit over the years and in the election of 1892 the SLP received 21,000 votes.
In 1899 a faction left the SLP and formed the more inclusive American Socialist Party under Eugene Debs. Socialism without Marx was a relative treat for leftist American workers who didn’t like to be forced into a dogmatic box. Free from the burden of worshipping the boring airhead windbag Marx, the left inclusive Socialist Party was able to grow into a formidable political force in American politics in the early 20th century.
THE FIRST LEMONLADY
Lemonade Lucy Hayes was the first college educated First Lady in the White House. She earned the nickname because she was a temperance advocate who refused to serve alcohol in the White House. Rutherford went along with Prohibition on Pennsylvania Ave because he too was a strict abstainer and he knew he had to sleep with her.
RR - “STRIKE! STRIKE! STRIKE!”
The railroads specialized in squeezing people unfairly out of land money and opportunity that the term “railroading” today means ripping someone off with clever moves but barley under the wire legally.
The government at state and national level had done everything possible, had moved heaven and earth to help the railroads thrive. Within American ant-socialist limits of course. In Europe the countries openly and unabashedly subsidized and supported the development and maintenance of the railroads in the name of the national interest. But in America that smacked of state socialism, so it had to be done subtly. The US feds gave the railroads grants of 175,000,000 acres of public land, and the individual states kicked in another 49,000,000 acres. It wasn't supposed to be entirely a gift because the railroads would then issue bonds equal to the value of the gift and these funs would fins their way into the banks and stimulate the economy. The railroads would encourage the growth of cities and towns all over the west, and would inspire the creation of new states that would be self supporting and ease the burden of Congressional territorial jurisdiction and administration.
Of course corruption and payola and bad people were as much a part of the railroad story as anything good that ever happened. The railroads became the personification of evil in the minds of many Americans especially on the left. Private enterprise was so worshipped in concept that the damage of its unregulated form slipped under the wire to hurt millions of Americans for many decades. And the railroads were the worst offenders. People hated the railroads even more than the bankers because the conditions of the banking system were so askew that it was easier to rip off the people as a railroad baron than as a banker baron. The slime dripped into the railroad world more than the banking world, at least in the 1870's.
And worst of all, no one hated the railroads more than the men and women who worked on them (9.6 million men and 38,000 women in 1880 according to Burton Hendrick.) When you sang 'I've been working on the railroad, all the live-long day, just to pass the time away” you meant exactly that. The wages they paid out were so poor that many workers felt that they were just passing the time away making next to nothing so they can get a gold watch at 65 and then get in the box three or four years later.
Ruthie Hayes inherited the depression left over from the Grant administration, and had to eat the dust of the Panic of 1873. With wages shrinking and demands for product decreasing, the inevitable result was not only unemployment, but the cutting of wages. Playing with paychecks was playing with matches. Unlike the unemployed, the employed have the ability to strike back with the strike weapon. The poor and the destitute make a lot of noise now and then, but have less power to express their rage effectively than the active workers.
The railroad strike of 1877 was one of the three or four worst strikes in U.S. History. History sometimes calls it ‘The Great Strike of 1877.’
The Great Strike began with wage cut-smack-downs for employees of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. The workers walked off the job. Troops of the state militia were called out to help local police control the proletarian mobs. But these soldiers were sympathetic to the workers and would not club and shoot them down when some demento ordered them to.
Hayes authorized the use of federal troops to do what the local militia troops would not; force the workers back on the job. There was violence between these militia and the workers (strikers not working at the moment) that resulted in the death of more than 100 people. The fighting was particularly severe in Pittsburgh where the damage caused by the disturbances resulted in $5 million worth of damage. Chicago got hot.
Illinois was the first to label these incoming federal troops the ‘National Guard.’ The name has stuck. The Great Strike marked the birth of that name. The NG was the national militia supplanting the state militia which had reused to do the job.
The worst part of the ‘77 violence is that it spread like a general class-warfare insurrection. It was Tsarist Russia, American style. The original quarrel about the wage cuts on the Baltimore and Ohio was soon forgotten. Months later the workers and the authorities were slugging it out in several cities and towns, like a saloon brawl in a bad Western. It was Howard Zinn's history dream come true.
The American people had mixed opinions on the strikers versus the barons. There were fears of an overall revolution from below, but the big boss was not beloved either. It was hard to root for either side.
The strike spread spontaneously. This was fair warning enough to the rich factory owners that they had better start treating their workers better. The great majority of the nation’s strikers were not members of any union.
It was at this point in our history that we began to build all those fortresses in the inner cities, the National Armories. They were built to protect the US government authority from the homegrown enemy in a general insurrection, not to make a last stand against a foreign invader. The one in Boston, the ‘Commonwealth Armory’ was finally torn down about two years ago to make room for a new hockey arena. I guess the government has decided that things are pretty safe now. The one in Springfield, Massachusetts is a combo armory/military museum.
DESERT LAND ACT, 1877 - TIMBER AND STONE ACT, 1878
The Homestead Act of 1862 had hoped to open up a flood of settlers pouring into the new west by offering generous terms to those who would agree to go tough it out there. But 160 acres at dirt cheap was not the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The land was too dirt rich to justify dirt cheap. 160 acres was good stuff in Virginia, but not in Montana. Speculators were abusing the Homestead Act from the get go, picking up millions of acres with dummy registrants that didn’t exist and then extorting resale of the best lands to real homesteaders who arrived. More than half the honest homesteaders under the Homestead Act became homeless.
In the Hayes era the Congress passed two acts that it hoped would correct these abuses and failures. The first was the Desert Land Act of 1877. This made 640 acres available to anyone at 25 cents an acre provided they promised to irrigate the land over the next three years. The title to the land was not finalized until they could show proof that this had been achieved, and then they had to pay another dollar an acre, still a pretty good deal in theory. There was one little problem. There wasn’t any water to irrigate with in the areas where the land was offered. The technology to irrigate these regions was decades away. The cattle barons bought millions of acres with the currency of fake people who only existed on applications. The already rich were the only ones who really benefited from this dorky Desert Land Act that was supposed to help the poor.
The next Congressional attempt to rectify the failed Homestead Act dream was the Timber and Stone Act of 1878. By the terms of the TSA any citizen or alien just arriving could buy up to 160 acres of land unfit for agriculture at $2.50 an acre. The title suggested that the buyer had better plan on growing lumber or finding some mining. Guess what happened as a result of the Timber and Stone Act. You guessed it! The big corporations set up phantom applicants by the thousands and then used the cheaply purchased land to set up large corporate mining and timber operations.
THE CATTLE KINGDOM
The older history books have very little on this subject, while not ignoring it entirely. But the newer history books always include long chapters on the boring cattle types, cattle trails, barbed wire fences, sod houses, cowpokes, and refrigerated railway cars. What American hasn’t already been overexposed to this subject in movies and TV shows all their lives? Do we really need to read 12 pages on the life of the cowboy and the disputes between free ranging cattle herders and ranchers setting up barbed wire? Just see the movie Shane and anything directed by John Ford or starring Glenn Ford save yourself 73 hours of reading torture.
Here’s a few basics. Cattle was brought to North America by the Spanish. In the years between 1860 and 1880 the cattle was herded north by the million and lived off the land, getting fat as they moved north to be slaughtered. Those that could not be sold were used to feed the mining towns in the west. Towns at the end of the cattle trail and on the railroad lines became boom towns like Abilene. At first the trails cut through the wooded areas but this was too good of a hideout for criminal gangs, cattle rustlers, and the trails kept to the open ranges.
The sheep farmers had trouble with the cattle farmers. The railroads helped develop the cattle kingdom by bringing the eastern markets into contact with the western cattle, but then they helped destroy the very kingdom they created by bringing in too many farmers and cattle herders.
People had to take the law into their own hands out west. Vigilante justice was the norm. Five million head of cattle were driven north to markets between 1860 and 1880. Five million TV episodes have been produced that depict life and these issues fulsomely, one episode for every head of cattle.
I have never been taken by the world of the cowboy in fact, fiction or history. There isn’t a modern history book produced since 1960 that doesn’t dedicate one or two of the most unreadable boring chapters on planet earth to this dreadfully dry subject. After we’ve all seen 80,000 ‘westerns’ we’re now supposed to read about life in the old west as though this is enlightenment? “The cowboy had a lonely life and ‘his picturesque accouterments – sombrero, spurs, long-heeled boots, chaps, gloves, and saddle .. were strictly functional, not ornamental, and strictly adapted to life on horseback. There, indeed, much of his life was spent – eighteen hours or more a day during phases of the long drive.”
Fascinating! Who knew?
I think its just the ‘slow news day’ syndrome. During the years after the American Revolution there were just as many important things happening on the western frontier, then located in Ohio and Kentucky. But they get a passing mention in the history books. There aren’t long chapters about it, yet that was just as important as the west in 1880. We never get any real detail about life on that frontier. But there was so much happening politically and in international relations that the western life on the frontier from 1780 t0 1830 gets short treatment if any at all. But since the years between Johnson and McKinley were so short of exiting political stories, the historians fatten up the chapters like the cowboys fattened up the steer. We get hit up with boring descriptions and over analysis of life in the cattle kingdom and this has evolved into orthodox historical science. If the United States had been flirting with war with Mexico and Russia during the 1870’s and 1880’s you wouldn’t have to read the long boring cattle and cowboy chapters in your college history texts.
These history books also always mention how our culture has become “fascinated” with the old west and note as proof how many movies have been made about it. They miss the point here too. Hollywood made 80,000 westerns and maybe six movies about life in the factories of the same era only because westerns are cheap to make and the western desert is driving distance from Hollywood. There are no civilians about, and the isolated locations make for quick work finishing the films. Grab a cheap script, pay for one or two name actors and load up three trucks. Cities are more expensive and difficult to film in, and eastern cities are prohibitively distant from Hollywood. If Hollywood was in New Jersey then the history of movies wouldn’t be so western themed. It has nothing to do with our alleged fascination with the old cowboy culture.
Today the typical Hollywood movie budget is in the multi-millions and, gee, what a coincidence, the percentage of westerns has dropped in recent years to a negligible figure, after they’d been half of all the movies made in the years that movies were made on the cheap. As for the alleged romantic life of the cowboy, give me a break. When was the last time you had a conversation with anyone about the ol' cattle kingdom? When was the last time you turned on the heat in the winter or the ac in the summer and drifted off to sleep wishing you could go back in time to live life on the cattle trail?
Relations with the Indians are the exception to the boring life in the old west rule. Conflict creates plot, and now we’re talking.
PIERCED NOSE REBELLION 1877
The United States named 14 official Indian Wars from 1790 to 1890. One of them was the Nez Perce Campaign of 1877.
It really was more like when Pershing chased Pancho Villa all over Mexico and failed to catch him, but in this time the chase ended in victory. But it really was a chase more than a war, a chase marked by a series of large skirmishes or small battles depending on how you want to play it.
Lewis and Clark had encountered the Nez Perce back in 1805. By the time of Hayes they were confined to the Thomas Cotter Reservation in Idaho, at a place where the present three states of Montana Washington and Idaho meet.
The Nez Perz petitioned the “great father” (President Grant) in 1876 to stay on their land. They told him a lot of philosophical things about how no one can really own the land and that their souls are one with the soil. Grant sent out a representative who got tired of listening to all the heavy moralisms and snapped at them and had a couple of the leaders arrested. The white man told the Nez Perce that they had 30 days to pack up their tee-pees and move to the new Reservation in Idaho.
They protested that this was not enough time, but they got on the road just in time nevertheless. Early in the trip, near the Snake River (where Evil Keneivel did a famous stunt in 1976) a band of whites intimidated the Indians and stole their cattle.
Some young warriors slipped out the next night and killed 11 white settlers. That was the beginning of the Nez Perce War, or the Nez Perce Rebellion of 1877. The whites may have started the trouble, and the whites were the bullies who were mistreating the Indians and giving them the Trail of Tears treatment. But the Indians started the killing. So I'd say that whitey was to blame overall, but the Indians have to accept some responsibility also.
No doubt there were incidents both white and red going far back. Any side could justify any act of violence in their own biased brains. But specifically, the Indians started it by murdering 11 white settlers, and even the Indian histories do not deny this.
President Hayes inherited the ongoing trouble with the Nez Perce from Grant. “Hazie” ordered the US Army to discipline the Reds and put 'every last one of em' back on the Cotter Reservation.
Chief Joseph counseled restraint but the young strong competitive men could not be controlled in the tribe any more than they can be today when the bars close in Friday night.
Nez Perce warriors accused Chief Joseph of being a coward, so he of course, then agreed to go to war.
After winning one battle against a small Army unit they realized their goose was cooked. They knew they couldn't defeat a larger force and knew that a much larger force was closing in.
Their leader was Chief Joseph, and he decided they should head east and link up with the Indians who had just defeated Custer a year before. But that idea proved a fantasy and after several small battles, Joseph tried to lead his Nez Perce to Canada and safety. Canada had a brain about respecting the Indians. It was like Switzerland to the stars from the movie The Great Escape.
The US Army under General Nelson Miles (I always mix him up with Nelson Briles) chased the Nez Perce across 2,700 kilometers of the Montana region. It was the Long March of Mao in Montana.
Miles cut Jo off at the pass near Bear's Claw Hill and the last battle took place here. The Nez Perce surrendered and were soon shipped off to a reservation in Oklahoma. At Bear's Claw they were only 77 miles short of the Canadian border.
Miles was one of those who fought the bureaucracy in Washington D.C. to allow the Nez Perce to go back to their old lands near Walawa River and the Great Northwest.
Some books about the Indians debunk Chief Joseph as not being the true NPI leader the way the general history books tell it, but I'll tell it the old school way, anyway. Debunking can be exhausting.
BANNOCK WAR 1878
An Indian War took place in the Idaho area in 1878 between the US Army and the Bannock Indians. The Shoshone and the Paiutes joined the Bannocks and the three of them put up a struggle that ended badly for the Indians.
The trouble started when famine swept the Bannock reservation area. Since they were dying anyway, the braves of the Bannocks (located in southern Idaho) had nothing to lose by raiding the Caucasian settlements in the region. The US government retaliated and the Bannocks and their Paiute allies were soon on the run. When they were finally cornered a massacre took place in which 140 Indians died.
WHITE HOUSE DAYS:
“Lemonade Lucy” Hayes was the first college educated First Lady in the White House. She earned the lemonade nickname because she was a temperance advocate who refused to serve alcohol in the White House. Rutherford went along with Prohibition on Pennsylvania Ave because he too was a strict abstainer and he knew he had to sleep with her.
Hayes was the first president to use a telephone in the White House. None other than its inventor, Alexander Graham Bell installed it. The first call was made to the local drug store where Hayes asked the vendor if he had Prince Albert in a packet. His second call was to the dry cleaners so he could chew them out for ruining his favorite red shirt.
The Queen of England delivered a fine gift to President Hayes in 1878 at the White House. It was a grand desk made from the timbers of the British frigate Resolute. After Rutherford left office it was put into deep storage in the White House basement. In early 1961 First Lady Jackie Kennedy discovered it while exploring her new digs. She told her husband to come down and take a look at the dusty old historical antique. JFK at once decided it would be his number one desk. He had it restored and brought up into the oval office where it felt the tapping of Kennedy’s fingers as he made the resolute decisions on the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Berlin Wall and Vietnam.
SUPREME COURT
Hayes never forgot a favor. At the Republican National Convention on 76 the Hayes candidacy had been pushed strongly by a Franklin County judge and delegate named John Harlan. In 1877 Hayes named him to the Supreme Court as associate justice. John Marshall Harlan earned the nickname of the ‘Great Dissenter’ and served until 1911. JMH was a former slave-owner who took the progressive liberal position on most cases where the rights of blacks were threatened.
Willie Woods was named to the court by Hayes in 1880 and only served 7 years.
BOOKWORMS/ HENRY GEORGE BLOCKBUSTER 1879
In 1879 a political book by a certain Henry George lit the country’s reading lamps from coast to coast. Progress and Poverty was a polemic attacking the rich and the evil system they were developing in America as he saw it. To HG the nation was being separated into two buildings, the ‘House of Have and the House of Want.’
P&P had so many readers that it held place for many decades as one of the top ten non-fiction sellers in American History (I think it got bumped down to number #11 by the Ray Romano autobiography in 2002). People who seldom read books at all let alone a political book were eagerly reading every page of Progress and Poverty for it justified their own political anger.
George was marvelous at the recitation of the problem, but his solution was as exasperating and impractical as it was well written. His idea was a single tax on land. As property increased in value, George felt that those who profited were nothing more than usurers and robbers. The tax on land would be permanent no matter who owned the land and how much it jumped in value. It was a type of tax serfdom. People could leave the land or buy more, but the state would always have first dibs on the land’s profits, not the owner.
There were many reasons why this was impractical, and even if it was practical, it flew in the face of the spirit of capitalism, individualism, free enterprise and Americanism. The poor loved the idea and the rich hated it. Fortunately for the United States, the decisive middle class also hated it, as well as every farmer who owned land. Most farmer’s if not well off were within striking distance of success and did not want the dream taken away from them by a Utopian socialist hair-brained scheme sprung out of left field by an angry eccentric, even if his book was, and still is, a pleasure to read.
HG and his book were a national craze for many years. Hank made a nearly successful run for mayor of New York City in 1886. His single tax idea held on as a part of the Populist menagerie through the turn of the century, but died out over time until it came to rest as the nullity that it was in the first place.
THE LITTLE WAR
Cuba was in the middle of a 30 year revolution against Spanish rule during the Hayes tenure. The USA was on a collision course with Spain in Cuba what would lead to a major was in 1898.
There is only one war in your encyclopedia called officially “The Little War,” even though there have been about a thousand little wars in world history. From August 1879 the native Cubans fought round two of their three round Revolutionary War with Spain. The rebel leader was General Calixto Garcia, a very cool name in my opinion.
One significant branch of the Cuban rebels wanted to annex New Cuba to the USA.
Back in the 1850's a lot of US Congressmen wanted to annex Cuba but that was quite a different situation. The South wanted to make Cuba into three new slave states to make money from and help dominate the Congress with. In the 1879 situation, the United States didn't have as much of a selfish interest. Cuban sugar was making money for American companies just fine without annexation and independence messing up the equation.
Spain won the Little War, and locked up Calixto in late 1880.
POLITICS
By defying Roscoe Conkling and the Stalwarts (a good name for a rock band) during the New York customs crisis, President Hayes became a man without a political country. He wasn't progressive enough to be considered a “Half-Breed,” nor conservative enough or Conkling-kissing enough to be a Stalwart in good standing.
In the meantime the Democrats in the last two years of his term had become a majority in the House of Representatives. Having no base of support in either party left Hayes in limbo and his last months in the White House were not very effective. By 1880 he had lost a chance for a second term, not to mention his personal pledge in the wake of the disputed election of 1876 not to run for re-election.
CONCLUSION
Hayes is the only president whose election was of more historical significance than his presidency
“Fighting battles is like courting girls: those who make the most pretensions and are boldest usually win” - From Rutherford’s diary.
But RB Hayes did not pretentiously and boldly steal the election of 1876 as the liberals still scream that he did (as though the racist Democrats of 1876 represent a direct lineage to their left wing causes of today.) The Democrats fought dirty to steal the election themselves and the scheme blew up in their face when Justice Davis resigned from the electoral commission.
The main point about the Hayes years is that they were great times. The USA was at peace, there was no great depression, and new inventions and improvements were making people feel that they were in a special happy era. The man and woman of 1878 felt sorry for the man and woman of 1848. They weren’t thinking about how primitive their lives were compared to those of the future.
The historians always miss the point with the boring presidents and their eras. It was the times they ruled over that make presidents boring or exiting. If FDR had ruled in the time of Hayes, and Hayes had ruled this nation during World War II, then Hayes would be the great president and FDR would be the mediocrity.
For the average citizen, the boring administrations are the best of times. The historian feels otherwise but who cares what they think? From the time Johnson took over to the day Ben Harrison left office, an American could have a career, raise a family and retire all without ever being hampered by a war or a major economic depression. There was no such zone in which to have an easy life in neither from 1776 to 1866 nor from 1898 to the present.
The boring presidents of the second half of the 19th century ruled over glorious years. There were no serious foreign enemies, no strategic missiles to worry about, no dangerous dictator looming up larger by the month. It was a time of fun, this forgotten zone of American history from Johnson to McKinley. Hayes was there in the middle of this great run of peace, progress and prosperity, race problems obviously notwithstanding.
There was the struggle with the Indians and the clashes between capitol and labor was to an extent profound, but the overall lack of drama in the definition of the era and its quality. A slow news decade is not a liability, historians, it is an asset! To look at it another way, if you had to go back in time to the 19th century for one day, you’d probably choose to witness the Civil War. But if you had to go back in time to live a life and raise a family, you’d set the clock to the time of a Rutherford Hayes or Chester Arthur.
AFTER OFFICE
RB honored his one-term pledge. After attending Garfield’s inaugural Hayes boarded a train from DC to Ohio to begin his retirement. The train crashed and two people died. Hayes was not injured beyond a couple of minor bruises.
Rutherford Hayes died in Freemont Ohio on January 17, 1893. His last words were, “I know I am going where the lemonade is.”
SOURCES
The American Pageant, A History of the Republic, by Thomas A. Bailey of Stanford University – c) 1961 D.C. Heath
This is a great book. And whenever Bailey uses a political cartoon from an era, its always an editor's bulls-eye. So many books re-print political cartoon that are, boring, useless, and a strain to read. Bailey picks the best 'toons and the best quotations too. TB da man.
Cambridge Modern History, Vol VII – c) 1901 - Henry Elson cited this as a source for some of his work.
The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, by Tony DeGregorio, c) 2004
His brother was Ernie Degregorio who played for the Buffalo Braves in the NBA.
A Diplomatic History of the United States, by Samuel Flagg Bemis, Farnam Professor of Diplomatic History in Yale University – c) 1935 Henry Holt
Bemis was born in Worcester and got his Ph D. at Harvard. He died in 1973. Sam edited the monumental 18 volume work, The American Secretaries of State and their Diplomacy. I would love to own it, but they are quite an expensive set, and I'd rather buy my first good suit. I have one volume, and it's not the one on the Hayes administration.
The Growth of the American Republic, Vol II 1865-1937, by Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Stele Commager – c) 1940
This is the fourth revised edition of the famous work by the man from Harvard and the guy from Columbia. I'm glad I read both volumes but I don't like these guys. I'm politically against them. I don't like their biases and I think the book is sometimes racist.
History of a Free People by Henry W. Bragdon (Phillips Exeter Academy) and Samuel P. McCutchen (Chairman of Social Studies, School of Education, New York University) – c) 1954 MacMillan
Thank God I didn't have to bring home a report card from Phillips Academy in Exeter. GHW Bush-1 and W- 2 both went to Phillips Academy in Andover. The learning standards are tough. If Bush and Bush were as stupid as the lefties claim they are, they never would have survived this school. The assignments at the end of each little chapter are breathtaking in scope and difficulty. I'm writing a history book and I don't want to try the questions even for fun.
A History of the United States, by Boorstin & Brooks Mather Kelly c) 1986
A History of the United States of America, by William Elson
A History of the United States, Since 1865, by T. Harry Williams, Richard N. Current (a specialist in current events), and Harvard’s Frankie Freidel – c) 1964 (second edition – 1st edition 1959) Knopf
An awesome book by famous historians and a powerful publishing house. The pictures, the glossy paper, the engraved cover with part smooth, part cloth hardcover binding, the wide design so that is passes the lunch test (you can eat your lunch with two hands while still reading the book because it opens flat) and the writing, make this one of the great books of American historiography.
The March of Democracy: Vol II, From Civil War to World Power, by James Truslow Adams – c) 1933 Scribner
There are so many times in life when small unimportant people do rude things and we keep cool because they are not worth the fight. But this guy was a famous and influential historian in his era and he did a lot of damage to the American mind. He's worth the fight.
People read this racist scoundrel a lot. You can find James Truslow Adams history books floating around at flea markets and used book stores today. If you're at some mom and pop hotel that has a small library, and there is only two non fiction books out of 200 books, there's a very good chance one of those two books will be a sturdy old history hardcover by James Truslow Adams. I think he is a good writer and a smart man, but he is a very bad person. The test of an existence is whether the world ends up a slightly better place for you having been on it. The world is a slightly worse place because this guy was on it.
I always read his books from cover to cover.
The National Experience, [since 1865] by John Blum – Edmund S. Morgan – Willie Lee Rose – Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. – Kenneth M. Stampp – C. Vann Woodward – c) 1981 HBJ NY
A lot of famous history professors here, three of the six from Yale. John Blum is not the same John Blum who played for the Boston Bruins NHL team in the 1980’s.
Out of Many, A History of the American People, by John Mack Faragher (Yale); Mary Jo Buhle (Brown), Daniel Czitrom (Mount Holyoke); and Susan Armitage (Washington State), c)1994 – This is the Bible of PC outrageous liberal pseudo-history.
No harm done here. They don’t really turn up the lefty heat until the chapters covering the 20th century.
The Oxford History of the American People, by S.E. Morrison of Harvard and the U.S. Navy – c) 1965 Oxford University Press
“Even with the disputed states counted as Republican, Tilden had a plurality of 250,000 votes over Hayes. There is no longer any doubt that the election as stolen.”
The popular vote doesn't count, you idiot.
“Hayes was uneasy about the Presidency, and, alone of Presidents since Polk, absolutely refused to be considered for a second term.”
Hayes made the pledge to serve only one term in early 1877 in order to smooth over the bad feelings of the controversial election, you idiot.
Reconstruction: The Great Experiment, by Allen W. Trelease – c) 1971 Harper
Trelease also wrote White Terror, which is a history of the Ku Klux Klan in the Reconstruction era. He taught at the University of North Carolina.
This is a very enjoyable and very short book.
Rutherford B. Hayes, A Critical Appraisal, by Howard L. Stern,
with an introduction by Joy Behar – c) 1999 - I/Me Books NY
A Short History of the American Nation, by John A. Garraty c) 1966 Harper & Row
I've been pretty rough on this guy in the bibliography of some other chapter, so let me say that some of the passages that I objected to so strongly (on race) may well have been revised in a way that would please me and make me withdraw the charges. This book has been revised a dozen times and is even being revised and re-published after John died in 2007 with a new co-author and admirer adding new chapters.
Mine is the shortened large softcover 1977 version of an American history classic from 66 by one of the great modern historians. Nevertheless, I still stand by my opinion that JAG is a racist. See my Lincoln chapter for elaboration on why.
The Tragic Era, The Revolution After Lincoln, by Claude Bowers - c) 1929 The Literary Guild of America
This book is a disgrace to humanity. It is a vile attack on black people in the Reconstruction era and the whites who defended them the Southern whites can do no wrong and are always wronged by the evil northern carpetbaggers.
A lot of historians quote this book and cite it in their bibliographies. They are so wimpy about it. “The Tragic Era by Bowers is somewhat partisan,” they write.
He is a knave.
And by the way, he is a terrible writer. At least James Truslow Adams and W. E. Woodward know how to write. Claude is awful to read. He is pompous and confusing.
The United States of America, A History, by Bamford Parkes says that Hayes “was not a man of outstanding ability.” Well Bam, he made president didn’t he? I will always disagree with all the historians on this practice of saying this president was a nonentity, this other one lacked courage and that one had no ability. The Presidency of the United States is an awesome office and I do not believe that a person without ability and courage can go that far, period. My least favorite presidents were great men. Even safe, dark horse candidates with vague stances on all the issues had to have had some spark of something special to be chosen even as the front for a stronger power behind the scenes. Hayes? Harding? Ford? Buchanan? Arthur? Great men? Certainly.
The United States of America: A History, by Dexter Perkins, and Glyndon G. Van Doren – c)
The United States, A History of the Republic, Teacher’s Edition, by James West Davidson, and Mark H. Lytle, c) 1981
The United States: The History of a Republic, by Richard Hofstadter of Columbia U., William Miller of Bunker Hill Community College, and Daniel Aaron of Smith College in western Massachusetts – c) 1957 Prentice-Hall
They seem to enjoy writing about economics and social changes in the post Civil War era far more than I enjoy reading about it.
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