Sketch of the life and character of Rutherford B. Hayes

io CHARACTER

F(UTHERFORB B. HAYES

•>-- -^:~-=v-aE4=3=~^^*— <*

WILLIAM D, HOWELLS

UC-NRLF

FRED M. DJ3J

SKETCH

OF THE

LIFE AND CHARACTER

OF

RUTHEKFOKD B. HAYES,

BY WM. D. HOWELLS.

ALSO A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF

WILLIAM A. WHEELER.

WITH PORTRAITS OF BOTH CANDIDATES

NEW YORK:

PUBLISHED BY HURD AND HOUGHTON.
BOSTON: H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY.
Camfcrftrge: Clj

1876.

COPYEIGHT, 1876,

BY W. D. HOWELLS

EIVEESIDE, CAMBRIDGE:

STEEEOTTPED AND FEINTED BY

H. 0. HOUGHTOX AND COMPANY.

PEEFACE.

THIS book is my own enterprise, and has been in
nowise adopted or patronized by the man whose life
and character I have tried to portray.

It differs chiefly from the biographies already before
the public, in the large use made of original letters,
diaries, note-books and scrap-books placed at my dis
posal without restriction and without instruction. In
this use I have been guided solely by my own sense of
fitness and my respect for the just limits of personality,
on which I hope not to have trenched, though I might
have printed every word of his, and only the more com
mended Rutherford B. Hayes to the honor and affec
tion of the people.

Written within four weeks after the material came
to my hand, the book has, I know, very many faults of
haste ; but it was not in the power of any writer, how
ever hurried or feeble, wholly to obscure the interest of
that material ; and whatever is the result of the political

414502

IV PREFACE.

contest, I cannot think that people will quickly forget
the story of a life so true and high.

I wish distinctly to say that General Hayes is re
sponsible for no comment or construction of mine upon
any word or act of. his ; and whatever is ambitious, or
artificial, or unwise in my book is doubly my misfor
tune, for it is altogether false to him.

W. D. HOWELLS.
CAMBBIDGE, September 7, 1876.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER L

PAGi

ANCESTRY AND CHILDHOOD 1

CHAPTER II.
COLLEGE DAYS , .... 14

CHAPTER III
THE STUDENT IN THE HARVARD LAW SCHOOL .... 21

CHAPTER IV.

TRAVELS IN NEW ENGLAND AND TEXAS, AND FIRST
YEARS IN CINCINNATI 30

CHAPTER V.
FIRST PUBLIC SERVICES 47

CHAPTER VI.
THE EDUCATION OF A SOLDIER 53

CHAPTER VIL
THE CAMP ON THE KANAWHA AND THE MORGAN RAID . 71

CHAPTER VIII.
CLOYD MOUNTAIN AND WINCHESTER 76

VI CONTENTS.

CHAPTER IX.

PAQS

OPEQUAN, FISHER'S HILL, AND CEDAR CREEK . . . . 87

CHAPTER X.

TWICE CONGRESSMAN, THRICE GOVERNOR, AND NOMINEE
FOR PRESIDENT 98

CHAPTER XL
HAYES'S POLITICAL POSITIONS AND OPINIONS .... 121

CHAPTER XII.

CHARACTER : POLITICIAN, ORATOR, PUBLIC SERVANT,
SOLDIER, CITIZEN, MAN 162

LIFE AND CHARACTER

OF

EUTHEEFOED B. HAYES.

CHAPTER I.

ANCESTRY AND CHILDHOOD.

"THE name of Hayes began by valor," wrote Mr.
Ezekiel Hayes, of New Haven, scythe-maker, some
time in the last century ; and he goes on to tell how
once, in a fight with the Danes, the retreating Scots
came upon a husbandman and his two sons at work in
the fields. 'k Pull your plow and harrow to pieces and
fight ! " said the father, and with this timely succor
— more remarkable for quality than quantity — the
Danes were beaten ; and lands were bestowed upon the
father for his bravery. " This man (my father's
grandfather, George Hayes)," continues the too zeal
ous genealogist, " went from Scotland to Derbyshire,
in England, and lived with his uncle. He was anxious
to see London, whither he went. Having received
some account of America, he took passage and came to
this country."

It was in 1682 that George Hayes settled in Wind-

2 THE CONNECTICUT ^HAYESES.

sor, Connecticut, at which time, according to the ir
reverent computations of a modern descendant of Mr.
Ezekiel Hayes, the veteran must have been some seven
hundred years old, since the battle in question took place
about 980. But the brave tradition is well found at
least ; it was heartily accepted as part of the family
annals by the early Puritan Hayeses of Connecticut, and
its veracity ought not to be impeached because of their
confusion of mind respecting dates. It is, however, of
small importance to us who hope to elect General
Hayes President of the United States, how his name
began in Scotland so long ago. It continues in valor,
no matter how it began, and a man of his good New
England ancestry has nothing to crave of the Herald's
College. We hold rather by the Connecticut Hayeses
than by those of Scotland, and we need but briefly con
cern ourselves with any of the forefathers of a man
who is himself ancestor in the Napoleonic sense.

Little is known of George Hayes, who emigrated in
1682, beyond the fact that he settled first at Wind
sor and afterwards removed to that part of Simsbury
which is now Granby. His son Daniel was taken by
the Indians about the year 1712, and carried captive to
Canada, whence he was ransomed by act of the Colo
nial Assembly appropriating " seven pounds to be paid
out of the public treasury " for that purpose. What
claim, if any, he had upon the colony's consideration,
by reason of civic prominence or military service, is not
asserted even by so ardent a genealogist as his son
Ezekiel, whom we have already quoted ; probably he

RUTHERFORD BIRCHARD HAYES. o

was a plain, brave farmer, fighting in defense of his
home, and was ransomed according to a general custom
of the time, upon his " praying for some relief." It is
known that he came home to Simsbury, and died there
in 1756 ; but his son Ezekie.l removed to New Haven,
where the first Rutherford l Hayes, grandfather of our
candidate, was born. This Rutherford was in due
time apprenticed to a blacksmith, and, removing from
New Haven first to New Hampshire and then to
West Brattleborough, Vermont, he wrought at his trade
there many years in a forge which the people built
to welcome him, and became a man of substance, a
farmer and innkeeper, dying in 1836, the father of"
eleven children. The fifth of these, Rutherford, was
an active and enterprising spirit, and he was already
a thrifty farmer and merchant when, in 1817, the
West, which was even then beginning to be the Great
West, tempted his energies. He emigrated to Dela
ware, Ohio, bought land, established himself in pros
perous business, and five years later died of a typhoid
fever, leaving a wife and two children. Some three
months after, on the 4th of October, 1822, a son was
born to him. and the widow called the child's name
RUTHERFORD BIRCHARD HAYES, in memory of the
father whose loss was yet so terribly new, and in grate
ful affection for that most loving brother2 who was

1 The surname of an ancestor on the female side, who came to Xe\v
Haven in 1643, and from whose daughter's marriage proceed the New
flaven Trowbridges.

2 Sardis Birchard, who died a few years since, at Fremont, Ohio.
He had lived unmarried, and in the course of a long life had amassed

4 FAMILY NAMES.

thereafter a tender and devoted guardian of her father
less children.

It is of this Rutherford Birchard Hayes that the
present sketch treats, with an inadequacy which the
reader may feel, though he cannot know the keen re
gret of the writer, whom the rich material in the
family records, the letters, and the diaries placed at his
service tempts to a work far beyond the scope and
limits of this.

The Hayeses of the colonial times, from whom we
have here traced Rutherford B. Hayes's descent in the
direct line, were a strong, brave, simple race, following
the plow, wielding the hammer, and hewing out their
way as plain men must in a new land. After the first
emigrant, George Hayes, of Scotland, who may have
been of a less rigid faith, they seem to have taken
the prevailing tint of Connecticut Puritanism — always
less blue than it has been painted ; and thereafter,
till Rutherford's time, the evangelists, and the judges,
the prophets, arid the kings of Israel supply the serious
names of their Daniels, Ezekiels, Aarons, Joels, Mar
thas, Zilpahs, and Rebeccas ; there was, indeed, one
Silence Hayes of the third generation, but the conces
sion to imagination in her name is not in the liveliest
spirit, and, considering that she was a woman, might

a large property, which General Hayes inherits. He was a man not
only of good heart and of great practical force of character, but of the
best public spirit and of cultivated tastes. He gave a library and a
park to the town of Fremont, and left to his nephew a gallery of pict
ures including works by some of the best American and modern
French and German painters.

A NOTED ANCESTOR. 5

appear a stroke of that grim irony which the auster-
est faith permits itself. So far as we can learn, the
Hayeses were never in public station and never en
joyed uncommon social distinction. ^But they had
qualities of a sort apt, in an honest and thrifty stock,
when the moment comes, to flower into greatness ^ and
they had the gift, not yet extinct in their line, of win
ning superior women for their wives, through whom
they united themselves with families of worth, learn
ing, and piety. Ezekiel married a Russell, of those
Russells who, first sojourning in Cambridge after their
emigration from England, followed the Reverend Mr.
Hooker into the Connecticut wilderness, when its first
church troubles distracted our good town. They re
mained men of character and of a consideration which
their Connecticut descendants still enjoy ; but none has
so distinct a claim upon our honor as that son of the
original emigrant who concealed the fugitive Regicides
at Hadley many years, and of whom it is written by
the town historiographer, " He feared not to do what
he thought to be right."

In his turn, Rutherford, the son of Daniel, wedded
Chloe Smith, the daughter of Israel Smith, originally of
Hadley, Massachusetts, but at the time of his daughter's
marriage a principal citizen of Southwestern Vermont.
The first of the family out of England was Lefteuant
Samuel Smith, who left his native town of Ipswich
in 1663 and settled in Connecticut, where he was for
twelve years a member of the Colonial Assembly.
After his removal to Hadley. where he died in great

6 ISRAEL SMITH.

esteem, he held many public trusts and was often chosen
to the General Court. The family was always one of
local distinction and unusual culture, and in a later
generation one of Chloe's uncles went from college to
preach to the Indians in Pennsylvania. He and one
of his brothers, from becoming Sandemanians (" I don't
know as there is any such in the country now," con
fesses Chloe Hayes in her diary, " nor do I know what
their belief is ") became loyalists, and fled to Nova
Scotia at the outbreak of the Revolution ; but Chloe's
father, Israel, was a staunch Whig and served under
Washington, by whom he was entrusted with the arrest
of certain Tories of that day, suspected of intriguing
with the British in Vermont. He had lands specially
granted him for his services, and he was one of three
commissioners appointed to take charge of the property
of refugee Tories ; he was also a prominent partisan of
the State of New York in her disputes with the new
State of Vermont ; he was employed on much public
business connected with that now forgotten controversy,
and he and his son-in-law both received lands from the
grateful elder commonwealth.

Chloe Smith was the eldest of nine children, and,
becoming the mother of eleven, lived to so great an
age as to have left upon the memory of many surviv
ing grandchildren and great-grandchildren the personal
impression of her strong and resolute character, and her
rugged Puritan virtues, tempered and softened by aes
thetic gifts amounting almost to genius. It is to her that
her posterity are fond of ascribing in vast measure what-

CHLOE SMITH HAYES. 7

ever is best in their hereditary traits, and she certainly
merits more than passing notice in the most cursory
characterization of her grandson. Above all and first
of all she was deeply religious, after the fashion of the
days that we now think so grim, and she set her duty
to God, as she knew it, before "every earthly concern
and affection. With a devotion almost as deep, she
dedicated her days to incessant work, and her toil often
saved the spirit that faltered in its religious gloom.
She rose early and wrought late, as the wife of a
farmer and innkeeper, and the mother of eleven chil
dren, must, and as a woman of her temperament
would ; and she was as intolerant of idleness in others
as in herself. Even the great-grandchildren had their
tasks set them in their visits to this inveterate worker,
who could not rest from her labors after eighty years.
She was a famous cook, and the triumphs of her skill
at Thanksgivings and other sufferable holidays were no
less her own pride than the solace of her guests. But
she shone even more in needle-work and the now ob
solete arts of the wheel and loom. *• She knit more
stockings, mittens, and gloves, wove more rag carpets,
spun and wove more cloth, elaborated more wonderful
rugs, lamp-mats, and bags, than any other woman of
her generation," writes one of her grandsons ; and the
reminiscence of a granddaughter, at once touching and
amusing, gives the color of the Puritanism which
steeped in fear and misgiving the indulgence of such
love of beauty as she permitted herself. " I spoke of
her passion for worsted work. I have heard her say

8 A QUAINT DIARY.

that Saturday afternoon she put it all into her work-
basket, and pushed it under the bed as far as she could ;
then, taking out her prosy knitting-work, she tried to
get it all out of her mind for Sunday ! " Yet she was
a true artist in this passion ; her devices in worsted were
her greatest delight, and she studied them from nature,
going into her garden and copying the leaf or flower
she meant to embroider.1 She had an almost equal
passion for flowers, for which, doubtless, she suffered
the same qualms. In her old age she kept a diary,
which remains to her descendants and completely re
flects her stern, resolute, duteous, God-fearing, yet most
tender and loving soul. In a sketch of family history,
with which she prefaces her journals, she laments, with
a simple pathos which no words can reproduce with
out the context, her possible error in setting work and
duty before some other things. " My husband ....
would sometimes say, ' The horse is standing in the barn,
doing nothing. We will go and ride ; it 's no matter
whether we stop anywhere.' But I would say, ' I can't
leave my work.' So he would not go, or go alone.
Oh, now I would say to every woman that has a good
husband, Enjoy them while they are spared to you, or
it will grieve you to the heart when it is too late —
when all is over ! " But this cry of regret, in a sor
row as keen as if the husband she had lost had been

1 Most of her grandchildren inherited her artistic skill ; among her
great-grandchildren are Larkin G. Mead, the sculptor, and his brother,
John Mead, who died in his Junior year at Harvard, and had already-
given promise in art. A series of lithographs illustrating student
life were published after his death.

GENERAL HAYES'S MOTHER. 9

cut off in his prime, and not in the fullness of his
eighty years, is almost the sole expression of misgiving
in a diary to which she confesses everything, commits
every hope, fear, doubt, and imparts every mood of her
soul. The faded pages, recording so vividly a type of
high character which has passed away with the chang
ing order of things, are of almost unique interest, but
this is not the time or place to explore them. Work,
faith, duty, self-sacrifice, continual self-abasement in
the presence of the Divine perfection, are the ideal of
life which they embody — the old New England ideal.
It was a stern and unlovely thing often in its real
ization ; it must have made gloomy weeks and terrible
Sabbaths ; but out of the true stuff it shaped charac
ter of insurpassable uprightness and strength. It is to
the indomitable will, the tireless industry, the rectitude,
the whole, ever-vigilant conscience, which it fostered
in his austere ancestress, that this man of our choice
doubtless owes the virtues on which our hopes rest.
From other progenitors come the genial traits, the fine
and joyous humor, the quick cordiality, the amiable
presence, which a superficial observation has mistaken
for the whole man ; but from her the keen sarcasm, the
active intellect, the ever-present sense of duty, the im
movable purpose, the practical religiousness, now no
longer bound to creeds but fully surviving in the
blameless and useful life.

The mother of General Hayes was Sophia Birchard,
whose family had removed from Connecticut to Ver
mont near the close of the last century. She too has

10 EARLY CHILDHOOD.

left a diary, in which we recognize many of the same
religious traits so strongly marked in her mother-
in-law. The circumstances of her widowhood, in the
strange new country (Mrs. Chloe Hayes, on her daugh
ter's departure for the West, speaks of her " leaving her
native land," as if " the Ohio," so called in that day,
were some unattainable foreign strand) whither she had
followed her husband, no doubt tended to deepen the
sad aspects of her faith at the expense of those happier
hereditary instincts which in her brother became a
strong love of art. She and her husband united with
the Presbyterian Church, — the Western Puritanism, —
and their children were reared in that faith, but the
sole survivor of her family is not now a member of the
sect in question, nor of any other, though a regular at
tendant, with his wife, at the Methodist services. Not
many years after her husband's death, their oldest son
was drowned, and there remained to the widowed
mother only two of her children: a brother and sister,
who grew up in a friendship most tender and affection
ate on her part, and of passionate reverence and admi
ration on his. In a manuscript memoir of this adored
sister, which must be sacred from more than a passing
allusion, General Hayes recorded, shortly after her
death, the simple facts of their early childhood in Del
aware. It is now a pretty town of some eight thousand
souls, seat of a Methodist college, and deriving its pros
perity chiefly from one of the richest farming regions
of Central Ohio. Its situation on the borders, of the
Olentangy is charmingly picturesque, and the painter

DESIRE FOR BOOKS. 11

Gi'iswold drew his first inspirations from the surpass
ingly lovely country in which it lies. At the early
period of which the memoir treats, the land was yet
new, though the pioneer period had quite passed.
Mrs. Hayes dwelt in a substantial brick house in the
village, and drew a large part of her income from a
farm left her by her husband in the neighborhood.
Besides the guardianship of her brother, she had in
the care of her children and house the help of one
of those faithful friends whom it is cruel to call serv
ants, and whom in this case the children both re
garded with filial affection. But life in that time
and country was necessarily very simple ; this early
home Was in no sense an establishment ; when the
faithful Asenath married and set up for herself in
life, the mother and the sister did all the work of the
household themselves. The greatest joys of a happy
childhood were the visits the brother and sister made
to the farm in the sugar season, in cherry time, at cider-
making, and when the walnuts and hickory-nuts were
ripe ; and its greatest cross was the want of children's
books, with which the village lawyer's family was sup
plied. When their uncle Birchard began in business
he satisfied their hearts' desire for this kind of litera
ture, and books of a graver and maturer sort seem al
ways to have abounded with them. They read Hume's
and Smollett's English history together ; the sister of
twelve years interpreted Shakespeare to the brother of
ten ; they read the poetry of Mr. Thomas Moore (then
so much finer and grander than now), and they paid

12 HIS SISTER'S INFLUENCE.

Sir Walter Scott the tribute of dramatizing together
his " Lady of the Lake," and were duly astonished and
dismayed to learn afterwards that they were not the
sole inventors of the dramatization of poems, — that
even their admired " Lady of the Lake " had long been
upon the stage. The influence of an elder sister upon
a generous and manly boy is always very great ; and it
is largely to this sister's unfailing instincts and ardent
enthusiasm for books that her brother owes his life-long
pleasure in the best literature. She not only read with
him; she studied at home the same lessons in Latin
and Greek which he recited privately to a gentleman of
the place ; she longed to be a boy, that she might go to
college with him ; in the futile way she must, so -remote
from all instruction, she strove to improve herself in
drawing and painting. One of their first school-mas
ters was Daniel Granger, " a little, thin, wiry Yankee,"
of terrible presence but of good enough heart, whom
" the love he bore to learning " obliged to flog boys
of twice his own bulk, with furious threats of throw
ing them through the school-house walls, and of mak
ing them "dance like parched peas," — which dreadful
behavior and menaces rendered " all the younger chil
dren horribly afraid of him," and perhaps did not so
much advance the brother's and sister's education as
their private studies and reading had done: that is
frequently the result of a too athletic zeal for letters
on the part of instructors. The children were not
separated for any length of time until the brother's
fourteenth year, when he went away to the Academy

AN IRREPARABLE LOSS. 13

at Norwalk, Ohio, and after that they were little to
gether during his preparation for college in Middle-
town, Connecticut, and his college years at Kenyon
College, Ohio. But throughout this time they wrote
regularly to each other; she took the deepest interest
in all his studies, their devoted affection continued in
their maturer life, and when her death parted them it
left him with the sorrow of an irreparable loss.

CHAPTER II.

COLLEGE DAYS.

IT was the wish of his preceptor at Middletown that
Hayes should enter Yale College. " I was educated
there myself," writes the worthy Mr. Isaac Webb, in
a letter to the boy's mother, most commendatory of
her son, " and feel a strong attachment to the institu
tion ; and I know its advantages. .... He says he
has perhaps given you an exaggerated idea of the
expenses of Yale College. The necessary expenses, in
cluding everything except clothing and pocket-money,
range from $150 to $200 only," — which the frugalest
mother would not think very exorbitant even now.
Then the writer adds testimony on a certain point in
which our candidate has been painfully contrasted
with the agricultural simplicity of Mr. Tilden : " I tell
Rutherford that plain, decent dress is as much re
spected at New Haven as anywhere else ; and a dandy
is as much despised, and as great an object of ridicule
and contempt, as he is in Ohio. I think Rutherford
is judicious in his taste, and has as little ambition to
be a fop as any of the rest of us." That such a man
should in after life abandon himself to the excesses
of fashion would, if true, be a fact really regrettable,

AT KENYON COLLEGE. lf>

except as the sole refuge of opponents who have found
nothing else to allege against him.

It was settled, however, that Hayes should enter col
lege in his native State, and he was therefore exam
ined for the Freshman class at Kenyon College, Gam-
bier, Ohio, in November, 1838. Possibly because of
his fitness for entering an institution of severer re
quirements, he records his passing the examination,
and considers his Freshman studies at Kenyon with
a coolness approaching nonchalance; and his fellow-
students of that day remember his overflowing jollity
and drollery more distinctly than his ardor in study,
though his standing was always good. Even in the
serious shades of Middletown his mirthful spirit and
his love of humor bubbled over into his exercise books,
where his translations from Homer are interspersed with
mock-heroic law-pleas in Western courts, evidently tran
scribed from newspapers, and every sort of grotesque
extravagance in prose or rhyme. The increased dig
nity of a collegian seems to have rebuked this school-
boyish fondness for crude humor : a commonplace-
book of the most unexceptionable excerpts from classic
authors of various languages records the taste of this
time, and the reflections on abstract questions in
young Hayes's journals are commonly of that final
wisdom which the experience of mankind has taught
us to expect in the speculations of Freshmen and
Sophomores. They are good fellows, hearty, happy,
running over with pranks and jests, and joyous and
original in everything but their philosophy, which must

16 FIRST STUDIES OF CHARACTER.

be forgiven them for the sake of the many people who
remain Sophomores all their lives. Hayes was a boy
who loved all honest, manly sports. He was a capital
shot with the rifle, and he allotted a due share of his
time to hunting, as well as fishing, — to which he was
even more devoted, — swimming, and skating. Shortly
after he went to Kenyon he records that he broke
through the ice where the water was eight feet deep,
and " was not scared much." His companions helped
him out " without much trouble," and he adds, with
something like indignant scorn, " I could have got up
without any help." At Christmas time he walked forty
miles home to Delaware in twelve hours, and after
Christmas walked back to Gambier in four inches of
snow.

There are few incidents, and none of importance,
set down in these early journals. What distinguishes
them from other collegian diaries, and gives them their
peculiar value in any study of the man, is the evi
dence they afford of his life-long habit of rigid self-
' accountability and of close, shrewd study of character
in others. At the end of his third year he puts in
writing his estimate of the traits, talents, and pros
pects of his fellow-students ; and in a diary opened at
the same time he begins those searching examinations
of his own motives, purposes, ideas, and aspirations
without which no man can know other men. These in
quiries are not made by the young fellow of nineteen
in any spirit of dreamy or fond introspection ; him
self interests him, of course, but he is not going to give

EARLY ASPIRATIONS AND INTROSPECTIONS. 17

himself any quarter on that account : he has got to
stand up before his own conscience, and be judged for
his suspected conceit, for his procrastinations, for his
neglect of several respectable but disagreeable branches
of learning, for his tendency to make game of a certain
young college poet who supposes himself to look like
Byron ; for his fondness, in fine, for trying the edge of
his wit upon all the people about him. Upon consid
eration he reaches the conclusion that he is not a per
son of genius, and that if he is to succeed he must work
hard, and make the very most of the fair abilities with
which he accredits himself. He has already chosen his
future profession, and he is concerned about his slip
shod style, and his unreadiness of speech, which will
never do for an orator. He is going to look carefully
to his literature, and he takes an active interest in the
literary societies of the college ; about this time also he
is one of " a few select friends " who found a club
having for its stately object " the promotion of firm and
enduring friendship among its members," and though
he doubts whether the friendships thus systematically
promoted will endure much beyond the graduation of
the allies, he will do what he can for the club. He
has to accuse himself at the mature age of nineteen of
being still a boy in many things ; even after he is
legally a man, he shrewdly suspects, the law will have
somewhat deceived itself in regard to him. He also
finds that he is painfully bashful in society, but that
great relief may be found by making fun of his own
embarrassments. It is a frank, simple, generous reo

18 POLITICAL IDEAS AT NINETEEN.

ord, unconscious even in its consciousness, and full
of the most charming qualities of heart and mind. No
where is the trace of any low ideal or sordid motive ;
nowhere the self-betrayal of an egoistic or narrow spirit.
There is uncommonly little of the rhetoric of youth-
fulness ; a good sense, as kindly-hearted as it is hard-
headed, characterizes the boy's speculations and aspira
tions and criticisms. The ancestral tendency to exam
ine, consider, accuse, approve, or blame the springs of
thought and action is here in accumulated force, but
the trial goes on through all the diaries, not so much
with regard to duty to God, as in the case of the Puri
tan diarist, but duty to one's self and to other men ; the
stand-point is moral, not spiritual ; the aim is to be a
good man of this world. Not that the young fellow
has any doubts of the theology in which he has been
reared ; he writes with large satisfaction of how he has
labored to show a fellow-student the folly of skepticism.
As for political affairs, he does not, he affirms, take
any interest in them. He intends to be a lawyer and
to let politics alone. Yet he cannot help saying in
1841 that the Whigs " should be careful how they
hazard all by casting loose from John Tyler for a con
scientious discharge of duty " in vetoing the Bank Bill.
" I was never more rejoiced than when it was ascer
tained that Harrison's election was certain. I hoped
that we should then have a stable currency of uniform
value," — a hope to which thirty-five years later he is
still loyal, — " but since Tyler has vetoed one way of
accomplishing this, I would not hesitate to try others.'*

TAKING A STAND FOR LIFE. 19

A little later we find that he has " aspirations which he
would not conceal from himself," and of which one
may readily infer the political nature from what fol
lows. But what follows is more important for the re
lation it bears to his whole career, than for the light
it throws upon any part of it. '* The reputation which
I desire is not that momentary eminence which is gained
without merit and lost without regret," he says with a
collegian's swelling antithesis ; and then solidly places
himself in the attitude from which he has never since
faltered : " Give me the popularity that runs after, not
that which is sought for " So early was the principle of :
his political life fixed and formulated ! Every office
that he has held has sought him ; at every step of
his advancement popularity, the only sort he cared to
have, has followed him ; he is and has always been a
leader of the people's unprompted choice.

He has much to say, from time to time, of the pro
fession which he has determined to adopt, and he tries
to measure, as a college lad may, the difficulties before
him. Success will be hard, very hard, and will come
only of long and patient endeavor ; he knows that, but
he is not dismayed ; nor when he casually listens to the
arguments " of some of the first lawyers of the State,"
in the United States Circuit Court, is he out of heart.
" They did not equal my expectations ; some were in
deed most excellent, yet none were so superior as to
discourage one from striving to equal them." He
never disparages any antagonist or difficulty, but he
quietly takes account of his own powers, and decides

20 LAW STUDIES AT COLUMBUS.

that he can probably stand up against the worst. That
is Rutherford Hayes at nineteen, and that is Ruther
ford Hayes at fifty-four.

In spite of the misgivings he has had concerning his
scholarship, and in spite of the ridicule which his diary
heaps upon college exhibitions, he is the valedictorian
of his graduating class ; and then, after a few weeks' in
terval, he begins his legal studies in the office of Messrs.
Sparrow and Matthews, prominent lawyers in Colum
bus, in the year 1842. Thereafter his diary is largely
concerned with the progress he makes, or fails to make,
in Blackstone, Chitty, and the rest ; and with what he
is doing in German, which he has taken up with his
customary vigor. He has to lament that, besides read
ing such good literature as Milton and Shakespeare, he
spends his leisure in reading a great deal of trash ; he
deplores the unprofitable fascination of the newspapers;
and he presently sets down his " rules for the month,"
which, as he never was a prig in his life, we may
safely suppose he regularly violated : —

" First, Read no newspapers.

" Second, Rise at seven and retire at ten.

" Third, Study law six hours, German two, and Ch.
two.

" Fourth, In reading * Black.'s C'y/ to record my
difficulties."

There is not the slightest record of these difficulties.
In fact, the scene abruptly changes from Columbus, and
the next entry is made at Cambridge, in August, 1843.

CHAPTER III.

THE STUDENT IN THE HARVARD LAW SCHOOL.

HAYES had been ten months in the office of Messrs.
Sparrow and Matthews when it was decided that he
should enter the Harvard Law School, where the spe
cial advantages to which he looked forward were " the
instructions of those eminent jurists and teachers, Story
and Greenleaf." Within the first week he has found
that he likes the institution, professors, and students ; he
likes his room-mate, Hedges of Tiffin ; he likes his as
sociates, mostly " Buckeyes," like himself. He is in
state of hopeful and joyous content with everybody
and everything but himself. His irresolution, his neg
lect of opportunities, ought to grieve him, but he is
perfectly cheerful in spite of his regrets, and he be
gins at once to sketch the lectures and lecturers, and
first of all Judge Story and his introductory remarks.
" He spoke at some length of the advantage and ne
cessity of possessing complete control of the temper,
illustrating his view with anecdotes of his own experi
ence and observation. His manner is very pleasant,!,
betraying great good-humor and fondness for jesting.
His most important directions were : Keep a constant
guard upon temper and tongue. Always have in read-

22 GREENLEAF AND STORY.

iness some of those unmeaning but respectful formula
ries as, per ex., ' The learned gentleman on the opposite
side,' ' My learned friend opposite,' etc. When in the
library, employ yourself in reading the title-pages and
table of contents of the books of reports which it con
tains, and endeavor to get some notion of their relative
value. Read Blackstone again and again — incompa
rable for the beauty and chasteness of its style, the
amount and profundity of its learning."

" We have no formal lectures," he writes after the end
of the first week. " Professors Story and Greenleaf
illustrate and explain as they proceed. Mr. G. is very
searching and logical in examination. It is impossible
for one who has not studied the text to escape expos
ing his ignorance ; he keeps the subject constantly in
view, never stepping out of his way for the purpose of
introducing his own experience. Judge Story, on the
other hand, is very general in his questions, so that per
sons well skilled in nods affirmative, and negative shak
ings of the head, need never more than glance at the
text to be able to answer his interrogatories. He is
very fond of digressions to introduce amusing anec
dotes, high-wrought eulogies of the sages of the law,
and fragments of his own experience. He is generally
very interesting, and often quite eloquent. His mari
ner of speaking is almost precisely like that of Corwin.
In short, as a lecturer he is a very different man from
what you would expect of an old and eminent judge ;
not but that he is great, but he is so interesting and
fond of good stories. His amount of knowledge is

STORY'S VERSATILITY AND HIGH-MIXDEDNESS. 23

prodigious. Talk of ' many irons in the fire ' ! Why,
he keeps up with the news of the day of all sorts,
from political to Wellerisms, and new works of all sorts
he reads at least enough to form an opinion of, and all
the while enjoys himself with a flow of spirits equal to
a school-boy in the holidays. So ho ! the measures of
literature are not so small after all ! "

He quotes from Judge Story, whose enthusiasm for
Chief Justice Marshall all the old graduates of the
Harvard Law School remember, the belief that Mar
shall was " the growth of a century. Providence
grants such men to the human family only on great

occasions Such men are found only when our

need is the greatest; " and the diarist gives, from one of
Judge Story's discursive addresses, a personal reminis
cence which affords a glimpse, too valuable to be lost,
of the noble and lofty mind whose ideals and impulses
found a quick response in that of his unknown young
listener: —

" When a young lawyer, I was told by a member of
the bar at which I practiced, who was fifteen years my
senior in the profession, that he wished to consult me
in a case of conscience. Said he, ' You are a young
man, and I can trust you. I want an opinion ; the case
is this : I am engaged in an important cause, my adver
sary is an obstinate, self-willed, self-sufficient man, and
I have him completely in my power. I can crush his
whole case ; it is in my hand, and he does not know it,
does not suspect it. I can gain the case by taking ad
vantage of this man's ignorance and overweening confi-

24 EFFECT UPON HAYES.

dence. Now the point is, shall I do.it?' I answered,
* I think not.' ' I think not, too,' he replied. 1 1 have
determined to go into court to-morrow, show him his
error, and set him right.' He did it. This was forty-
five years ago, but I have never forgotten that act nor
that man. He is still living, and I have looked upon
him and his integrity as beyond all estimate. I would
trust him with untold millions, nay, with life, with
reputation, with all that is dear."

Judge Stor)'-, indeed, seems to have had a far greater
influence than any other professor, at this time, on
the young Ohio student, who sets down so diligently
the characteristic points of the great jurist's discourses.
The two men, with all the vast disparity of their years,
traditions, opportunities, and experiences, had so many
principles in common that the younger could not but
follow the elder mind in quick and admiring sympathy.
They had the same high purposes, balanced and ordered
by the same cool good sense ; they both regarded noble
ideals of their profession in the same practical way, and
found them practicable. Whatever law was lost upon
Hayes in Story's lectures (and it is certain that he was
never the negligent student he too rigorously thinks
himself from time to time), no lesson concerning the
humanity, the grandeur, the rights and duties of the
conscientious lawyer's life, was wasted in his hearing.
He is even glad to find that his law library, which cost
$300, is sufficient for all legal necessities according to
Judge Story, who has been saying that $10,000 would
furnish such a library abundantly, and $3000 con-

STORY'S ADVICE TO STUDENTS. 25

veniently ; and he is proud to record all the facts in
the professor's knowledge which elevate his vocation.
" Lawyers, so far as his observation extended, were
more eminent for morality and a nice sense of honor
than any other class of men. They have the most im
portant and delicate secrets intrusted to them ; they
have more power of doing mischief, and are more in
strumental in healing family dissensions, neighborhood
feuds, and general ill-blood, than any other profession."
He gives a synopsis of Story's closing lecture for the
term, in which the students were urged to lay a broad
and deep foundation of legal reading ; to remember
that the law was a jealous mistress, and to have nothing
to do with the charmer Politics before forty ; to use
their young hopes, desires, confidence, ambition, and en
ergy only for useful and noble ends ; and were assured
that their master had a pride and interest beyond their
conception in their future success. " Pshaw!" the dia
rist feels constrained to add at the close of his entry,
" how my haste (indecent !) spoils the Old Man Elo
quent ! "

Life had opened at Cambridge in a richness and
variety which was vastly interesting to the eager,
quick-witted, whole-hearted young Westerner, and he
strove to take in as much of it as he could. The
child who had read Shakespeare at eleven with his
young sister, out in the new Ohio country, remote from
literature, the youth who had nourished his love of
letters all through his college-days upon the best En-

'26 LONGFELLOW: BANCROFT; SPARKS. DANA.

glish poets and essayists, the law student who takes up
German with his Blackstone and keeps his Shake
speare and Milton fresh along with his law -reports
and Chitty, and finds even his love of lighter literature
allowed and encouraged by the example of Justice
Story, now comes, at Cambridge, face to face with au
thorship for the first time, and sees and hears the men
whose books have been his friends. He has the great
pleasure, long denied us Cantabrigians of later times,
of hearing Mr. Longfellow Iecture7 now on Anglo-
Saxon literature, now on Goethe, now on other sub
jects in the range of his professorship, and is vastly
content with •' his style, manner, and matter." He
hears Mr. Bancroft address a Democratic meeting in
Boston ; he hears President Sparks lecture on colonial
history, and the younger Dana on American loyalty ;
he goes often to hear Dr. Walker, of whose sermons
he never fails to give the drift, or to testify to his
great enjoyment in them ; going to the theatre for the
first time in his life, he sees Macready in Hamlet.

But in spite of many virtuous resolutions and protesta
tions to the contrary, Hayes takes a predominant inter
est in politics, in public men, and public affairs. He
fulfills all the duties of the law student ; he is instant
at all lectures, and a conscientious reader of law ; he
belongs to a law club and a debating club ; he is busy
in the Moot Court ; but he cannot keep away from the
political meetings at which Webster, and Choate, and
John Quincy Adams, and Winthrop, and Bancroft are

REGRETS UPON CLAY'S DEFEAT. 27

-speaking. He listens, sketches, and judges them all.1
But all this interest in politics came to the end which
was so tragical with the young Whigs of 1844. Their
support of Henry Clay was a generous passion ; his
defeat was almost a heart-break. " I would start in
the world without a penny," writes Hayes on the 9th
of November, " if by my sacrifice Clay could be elected
President. Not that the difference to the country is
likely to be great, in my opinion ; but then, to think
that so good and great a man should be defeated !
Slandered as he has been, it would have been such a
triumph to have elected him. But it cannot be," he
continues with as hot a regret as if it were a personal
sorrow. "Now I must withdraw my thoughts from
party politics, and apply my whole energies to the
law."

At Cambridge Hayes had been not only pursuing his
law studies ; he had been keeping up his German, and
reviewing his French and Greek, as well as widening
his acquaintance with literature in all directions. The
continual strain began to tell upon his health, although
from many self-accusing entries in his journal the
reader might infer that he was anything but a diligent
student. He proposes, in the six weeks' vacation fol
lowing the spring of 1844, to throw his books aside en
tirely for a season. " Since I commenced the study of
the law I have taken no sufficient recreation." He

1 " I heard some speakers in Marlboro' Chapel address the Whigs
of Boston," he writes on one occasion. "They were good speakers,
but no better than the good speakers of Ohio."

28 LAW PARTNERSHIP ; FAILING HEALTH.

spent this vacation at Columbus, with his family, and
returned again to Cambridge in the fall. Shortly after,
he graduated from the law school and went to begin
the practice of his profession in Lower Sandusky, now
Fremont. Ohio. There he formed a partnership with
Mr. Ralph P. Buckland, since a well-known public
man in Ohio, and the colleague of Hayes in Congress.
The co-partnership was of brief duration. Hayes had
not yet taken the recreation he had so long denied
himself, and he began to pay the penalty of overwork.
His health gave way entirely ; he had even the pre
monitions of consumption, and there was nothing for it
but to make an absolute change.

CHAPTER IV.

TRAVELS IN NEW ENGLAND AND TEXAS, AND FIRST
YEARS IN CINCINNATI.

IN June, 1847, Hayes had resolved to go to Mexico
and take any part in the conduct of the war that could
be assigned to the sort of detached volunteer he pro
posed to be. His failing health obliged him to give up
his profession, and it seems to have been his reluctance
to appear idle, rather than his desire to fight in that
unjust cause, on which he acted. " I have no views
about war other than those of the best Christians," he
writes, " and my opinion of this war with Mexico is
that which is common to the Whigs of the North, —
Tom Corwin and his admirers, of whom I am one."
He even went so far as to join, or take the first
steps towards joining, a company of volunteers going
from Fremont. He consented, however, at the urgence
of his friends, to take medical advice before finally de
ciding ; his physician in Cincinnati resolutely forbade
his enterprise, and ordered him to go not South but
North. He very unwillingly gave up the design on
which he had set his mind, but he obeyed, and spent the
next summer in New England and Canada, camping
out in the mountains, and visiting all the scenes of that

30 SOJOURN IN TEXAS.

family history which attached him so warmly to tho
East. The journey failed to restore his broken health,
and he recurred to his former purpose of going South,
but he had now relinquished his design of taking part
in a war offensive to the political and moral ideas of a
Corwin Whig.

Among the college acquaintance whose characters he
had sketched in his first diary was the young Texan,
Guy M. Bryan, of whom Hayes recorded, with boyish
admiration and tenderness, " He is a real gentleman,
holds his honor dear, respects the wishes and feelings of
others, is a warm and constant friend. Has good tal
ents He will, I trust, figure largely in Texan

history ; he is a true patriot." The two friends had
never lost sight of each other ; and in the Rebellion
they met in arms on opposing sides. But in 1847 their
friendship was still far from this, and Hayes resolved to
visit his old fellow-student in Texas, where his thou
sands upon thousands of acres gave a manorial vastness
and state to his home. The record of this visit is a
continuous story of delights of every kind : balls and
parties at Bryan's house, where the troops of guests
come at two o'clock in the afternoon and stay till the
next day at noon ; rides to and fro over the prairies to
call upon Texan ladies, who all have the brilliancy and
beauty that all ladies have when one is twenty-five ;
visits and parties in every direction ; shooting in a land
richly stocked with every kind of game, and excursions
to the wild Texan towns, picturesque with the admired
disorder x>f life on the borders of a great war, their

A TEXAN SPORTSMAN. 31

streets full of backwoodsmen, soldiers, gamblers, advent
urers, and dramatic with the occasional exploits of a
Texan statesman, who electioneers for the United
States Senate by riding through the capital and exhibit
ing all the feats of Comanche horsemanship. These
amusements, and a long gallop through Northwestern
Texas to visit a distant estate of the Bryans', form
the perfect change and the entire rest from study
needed to accomplish the end desired, and Hayes
goes home restored to health which has never since
broken.

He had gone to Texas by way of the Mississippi and
the Gulf, and his diary abounds with sketches, slight
but graphic, of the life and character on a Western
steamboat, which he sees with Dickens-like quickness,
but paints as if merely to secure his own sense of it,
and not for any literary effect. In Texas he had less
time or disposition to write, but here, as elsewhere, he
was a keen and constant observer. One's surprise
is therefore all the greater not to find in his journal
a single expression directly referring to slavery. He
may have felt it a sort of disloyalty to his hospitable
friend to criticise the institution with which his pros
perity was bound up ; he is the man to have obeyed
such a chivalrous instinct ; at any rate, the only passage
touching slavery, or its influence on either race, occurs
in an account of a visit to a remote planter, whom he
found " very fond of telling his . own experience and

talking of his own affairs The haughty and

imperious port of a man develops rapidly on one of

32 NOT AN ORIGINAL ABOLITIONIST.

these lonely sugar plantations, where the owner rarely
meets with any except his slaves and minions."

In those reminiscences of Chloe Hayes by her grand
children, from which we have already quoted, one of
the granddaughters says, " When grandfather would
boast that he was not shifted about with every new
tide of opinion, she would remind him that he was con
verted in one hour from faith in colonization to rank
abolitionism. This, I think, was from reading some
thing on the subject." Probably Hayes had received
the right principles by inheritance ; he showed often
enough afterwards what his sympathies had always
been ; nevertheless it was long before he became an act
ive political opponent of slavery, though he had been
a Whig of the Clay and Corwin antislavery school from
the first. His mind is essentially legal and conserva
tive, and the respect for law and fidelity to the consti
tution and its guarantees inherent in him had been
strengthened by his admiration for Story and his opin
ions. He might think at least one of the constitutional
guarantees atrocious, but he did not question its exist
ence, and it was not till slavery became openly aggress
ive that he began to fight it. He remained, with
whatever misgivings, a Whig till the formation of the
anti-Nebraska party upon the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise.

The first indication of what may long have been in
his thought upon the subject is in an entry in his jour
nal in 1850. Even this is indirect, and is one of many
passages he quotes from Mrs. Adams's Letters, which
he was then reading : " Speaking of a conspiracy among

COMMENT ON WEBSTER'S FALL. 33

the negroes to aid the British against their masters, she
says, * I wish most sincerely there was not a slave in
the Province. It always appeared a most iniquitous
scheme to me to fight, ourselves, for what we are daily
robbing and plundering from those who have as good a
right to freedom as we have.' "

A few months later he copies into his journal, as if
it had made a deep impression on him, the whole of
Whittier's poem of " Ichabod," which he introduces with
a significant passage : " There is much discussion in the
political circles as to Mr. "Webster's recent movements
on the slavery question. I am one of those who ad
mire his genius but have little confidence in his integ
rity. I regret that he has taken a course so contrary
to that which he has hitherto pursued on this subject.
I saw the following lines by "Whittier in ' The New Era/
which can only refer to the godlike Daniel."

In spite of all this, however, he remained a Whig,
and doubtless still hoped good things from a party that
had meant so much good. The next year he meets
General Scott, and in his fashion describes the person
and bearing of the soldier, of whom he pronounces, at
the close of his entry, " He 'II do for President" Un
happily, he did not do ; but —

" God fulfills himself in mam7 ways,"

and doubtless the Democratic success was in his prov
idence.

On his way back to his former residence in North
ern Ohio, after the Texan sojourn already mentioned,

34 LITERARY CLUB ; EMERSON.

Hayes had stopped in Cincinnati, and decided to
make that city his home. He formed a law partner
ship, and in the leisure of waiting for business reviewed
his legal studies, and read widely of the current liter
ature, comments and criticisms on which occupy a large
space in his journal. He early became a member of
the Literary Club of Cincinnati, established nearly half
a century ago, and including jurists and statesmen like
Chase, Corwin, Ewing, Charles P. James, Hoadley, and
Matthews, artists like Baird, clergymen like Con way,
with journalists, and whoever else loved letters in a
city always first in culture in the West. With many
registered vows " to speak regularly at the club,"
Hayes rarely shared in its discussions, but its meetings
were always times of the greatest pleasure to him, and
for twelve years the club was " an important part of
his life," as he wrote one " club-night " in his camp on
the Kanawha, fondly recalling the club-nights of the
past, and dwelling on their associations and enjoyments.
He was, indeed, one of those non-literary men who
take a purer and finer delight in literature than is, per
haps possible to the professional litterateur ; and such
an event as Mr. Emerson's delivery, in Cincinnati, of a
course of lectures, in 1850, finds an ampler record in
his diary than any other event of the time. He heard
every one of the lectures, and he reports the leading
points of all in his journal. He had from his college
days had a great love of metaphysics, and his reading
had embraced the German as well as the English philos-

OBJECT IN READING. 36

ophy. But his favorite author (liked, however, with
his own critical reservations) was Emerson, whom he
read with an enjoyment equaled only by the delight
he took in another supreme genius, — Hawthorne.

The general reading of this young lawyer, even
after business began to accumulate on his hands, was
as great as that of most men of literary life ; but the
difference was that he never read for a literary pur
pose, as men of letters do. He is as far as possible
removed from the merely literary temperament. It
was to find out what an author had to say, not to see
how he said it, that Hayes read books, and his criticisms
on what he read, though they show his sensibility to the
charms of style, are always more concerned with mat
ter than with manner. Men, character, life, are his
study, not art ; and it is observable that the books
which most interest him are those whose substance is
of vastly greater importance than their form. He
delights in the novelists, and each new fiction of
Hawthorne, Thackeray, Dickens, Bulwer, is a sensa
tion marked in his diary ; but when he comes casually
and tardily upon the life and writings of Channing,
page after page of comment and quotation manifests
his intenser interest. He views the whole matter of
reading from an unliterary point, yet there is a shrewd
suggestiveness in many of his references to it which
could not have been more aptly appreciative if he had
— shall we say ? — been writing a book-notice. " I
am going to sip a little from Sterne's * Tristram
Shandy,' " he writes ; " enough to test its qualities.

36 ALWAYS A THOROUGH STUDENT OF POLITICS.

One ought to read these ' of-course ' books, which
every one reads, or claims to have read, as * Don
Quixote,' which is good, ' Gil Bias/ which is n't good,
etc.," — a judgment which evinces a clear, if too se
vere, sense of the difference between the solid Spanish
silver and the French plate.

He seems, like Justice Story, to have always es
teemed his love of Literature a comparatively guiltless
treason to that jealous mistress, the Law ; it is the
other siren, Politics, that he is always protesting his
immovable purpose of having nothing to do with. Yet
it requires no great penetration in the reader of his
diary to perceive that from first to last his heart was
largely given to what must in every republic occupy
the natural leader of men. This shows itself in many
ways, in none more distinctly than in his very resolu
tions against the tendency ; and the note-books, diaries,
and scrap-books placed at the present writer's disposal
testify that no public man now living has made a fuller,
carefuller study of politics — which is but another name
for contemporary history — than this man who has al
ways refused to be a professional politician. They tes
tify to two qualities more important to us in a Presi
dent than any other except that clean conscience and
high purpose which all concede to be his : a thorough
knowledge of the situation and of the events tending
to it during the last thirty years; and the gift, long cul
tivated and exercised, of judging men.

In 1852 Hayes supported Scott with the self-devo
tion characteristic of the Whigs in that canvas, but

CONSOLATIONS IN DEFEAT. 37

with no hopefulness, and with no effort to conceal
from himself the fact that it was only a question be
tween men. During the summer he made some polit
ical speeches, " neither very good nor very bad," accord
ing to his thinking, but " enough to satisfy me that
with a motive in my heart and work, I could do it
creditably. I would like to see General Scott elected
President, but there is so little interest felt by the great
body of thinking men that I shall not be surprised
at his defeat. Indeed, my mind is prepared for such
a result. The real grounds of difference upon impor
tant political questions no longer correspond with party
lines. The progressive Whig is nearer in sentiment
to the radical Democrat than the radical Democrat
is to fogies of his own party, and vice versa." After
the election he writes, " My candidate, General Scott,
is defeated by the most overwhelming vote ever re
corded in this country. A good man, a kind man, a
brave man, a true patriot, General Scott no doubt
deserves defeat, if undue anxiety to be elected can be
said to deserve such treatment ; " which is not at all
the fervent regret with which he had chronicled the de
feat of Clay, but sufficiently well reflects the mood of
most Whigs of the time.

Neither then, nor at any time, as we have already
expressed, did Hayes cease to care for politics of the
higher sort. But at this time his best energies were
given to different work. They were devoted to saving
from juridical injustice a wretched girl on trial for her
life.

38 HIS FIRST GREAT LAW CASE.

The Nancy Farrer case was one that in its time
caused intense sensation throughout Ohio, and its event
established in law the principle which medicine had
long recognized, that an insane person is not morally
responsible for a criminal act, although entirely sen
sible of the difference between right and wrong. This
hapless creature, wholly in the power of the man who
instigated her crimes, poisoned two families ; the really
responsible author of her act escaped, never to be
found, and she remained, with her helpless admission of
all the facts, the subject of the greatest popular ex
citement, and the object of a horror that prejudged
her from the first, and seemed to make her fate certain.

By a chance which gave her life, and her advocate
reputation and standing among the first of his profes
sion, Hayes was appointed by the judge of the criminal
court to conduct her defense. He instantly recognized
his opportunity. " It is the criminal case of the term,"
he writes ; " will attract more notice than any other, and
if I am well prepared will give me a better opportunity
to exert and exhibit whatever pith there is in me than
any case I ever appeared in ; " and he goes on at once
to sketch the line of his defense, to make memoranda
of what he shall read, and how he shall bring to bear
on the case his "favorite notions as to the effect of
original constitution and early training in forming char
acter" and diminishing responsibility.

In Nancy Farrer, origin, training, and associations
were all of the worst sort ; her father had died a sot in
the hospital, her mother was insane ; with such parent-

NANCY FARRER AND HER CRIME. 39

age what must her life, her miiid be ? Once under the
sway of the real murderer, who had won the wretched
creature's love in order the better to enslave her will,
she had no volition of her own, and she had poisoned
half a score of persons without compunction or any ap
parent sense of the crime.

In court the popular feeling against her was height
ened by the repulsive plainness and brutality of her
face. Yet her advocate was firmly convinced that she
was not morally a free agent, and he rested her defense
entirely upon that fact ; every other fact of the case he
fully and freely conceded. Till that time it had been
the custom of the courts to demand of the medical ex
perts whether they believed the prisoner under trial
knew right from wrong, and on the admission of such
a belief jurors were charged to find according to the
facts. Hayes took his stand with the humaner science
upon the higher ground. He studied the whole subject
of insanity in its relation to crime, and among the des
ultory memoranda of his diary is a passage that seems
to have formed the nucleus of his argument : " Dr.
Bell, of the McLean Asylum, testifies, ' I consider that
insane persons generally know the difference between
right and wrong.' " His argument made a vivid impres
sion upon the jury and the public, and gave him name
and fame at once. He seems (we infer again from
the data mentioned) to have told the jury the pathetic
story of Mary Lamb, impelled against her own will to
slay her father and mother, and adjured them to see
the parity between her case and that of the wretch

40 PLEA BEFORE THE JURY.

before them. " Awful as are the tragedies which she
has been the instrument — as I believe, the uncon
scious instrument — - of committing, their horror sinks
into insignificance when compared with the solemn and
deliberate execution, by reasoning, thinking men, of
such a being as she. On the subject of insanity I have
asked more than is sustained by the weight of judicial
opinion even in this country. But I suppose that
when the facts and principles of any science come to
be so well established that they are universally recog
nized and adopted by the most intelligent as well as the
most conservative members of the profession which
deals with that science, it is in strict harmony with the
expansive and liberal rules of the common law that
courts should also recognize and adopt those facts and
principles. The calamity of insanity is one which may
touch very nearly the happiness of the best of our citi
zens. We all know that in some of its thousand forms
it has carried grief and agony unspeakable into many a
happy home ; and we must all wish to see such rules
in regard to it established as would satisfy an intelligent
man if, instead of this friendless girl, his own sister or
his own daughter were on trial. And surely to establish
such rules will be a most noble achievement of that in
telligence and reason which God has given to you, but
denied to her whose fate is in your hands."

In spite of the sober eloquence and the logic of his
plea, the girl was found guilty on the old ground that
if she knew right from wrong she was answerable for
her crime. He applied for a writ of error, and the

SUCCESS IN THE SUPREME COURT. 41

question was reserved for decision in the Ohio supreme
court, before which Hayes appeared in her behalf, in
December, 1853, more than a year after the convic
tion.

He had already argued his first case in the supreme
court, on a similar appeal, when an incident occurred
which bears witness at once to his power and his mod
esty. In that day it was the custom for lawyers argu
ing before that court to take their places at a certain
table in the centre of the court-room. It is related by
one of the eye-witnesses that Hayes laid down his pa
pers on a desk in one corner and began to speak. As
he went on, the closeness and clearness of his argument
fixed the attention of all. Presently one of the judges
interrupted him. " Mr. Hayes," he said, " the court is
desirous not to lose a word of what you are saying.
Will you be kind enough to come forward to the table
in the centre of the room ? " The young advocate ad
vanced and finished a plea which, though unsuccessful,
was pronounced by Thomas Ewing " the best first
speech " he had ever heard in the supreme court. His
plea in behalf of Nancy Farrer was triumphant, and'
convinced the judges while it moved every listener by
its profound pathos. The decision of the court estab
lished a point to which all similar defenses for insanity
have since referred and must refer ; the motion for a
new trial was granted. But a new trial did not take
place. An inquest of lunacy found Nancy Farrer of un
sound mind, and she was sent to an asylum, where she
died a few years after. On the day when the result of

42 PRINCIPLE ESTABLISHED BY THE RESULT.

the inquest was reached, Hayes recorded the fact with
modest satisfaction, and his usual temperance of state
ment ; and we cannot better indicate the effect upon him
self and his interests than by giving his own straightfor
ward phrase : " She will now go to a lunatic asylum,
and so my first case involving life is ended successfully.
It has been a pet case with me ; has caused me much
anxiety, given me some prominence in my profession,
and indeed was the first case which brought me practice
in the city. It has turned out fortunately for me —
very, and I am greatly gratified that it is so. I argued
the case in December, '53, before the supreme court, at
Columbus; made a successful argument. The judgment
of the court below was reversed in an opinion fully sus
taining my leading positions. The case is reported in
2d Ohio State Reps., Farrer versus State."

Among the notes in Hayes's diary apparently sketch
ing the line of his argument before the supreme court,
a point is made which we could not leave untouched
without doing injustice to his attitude in the case ;
an attitude which distinguishes his defense from mul
tiplied instances in which the plea of insanity has
been made before and since. " There is no fact,"
he says, "more essential to crime than the posses
sion of reason. The existence of this fact the law
properly presumes. But if that presumption is denied,
if there is evidence tending to overthrow it, why not
apply to that evidence the same humane maxim which
is extended to every other presumption of the law?
The only answer I find to this inquiry is that the safety

ARGUMENT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. 43

aiid protection of society require this departure from
principle, that otherwise the defense of insanity would
be successfully interposed in cases where, in truth, de
pravity, not insanity, was at the bottom of the crime.
It is needless to remark, in reply, that every presump
tion for the protection of innocence is liable to be used
as a shield for guilt. The question is still to be an
swered, Why is the defense of insanity to be treated
as odious by the law ? Is it so peculiarly liable to
abuse that fundamental rules are to be changed to guard
society against it ? On the contrary, I believe it has
been shown by those who have investigated the subject,
the danger is in the opposite direction ; that until a re
cent period there were ten insane, and therefore inno
cent, persons who suffered punishment to one criminal
who escaped on the pretext of insanity ; and that now,
in view of the state of the law and the prejudices of
the community, injustice is more frequently done to the
insane accused than to the public. I admit that cases
are occurring frequently in which this defense is set
up and the accused acquitted, when there is in truth
very little that looks like permanent and real insanity.
But what are these cases ? Are they cases of feigned
insanity, cases in which the jury are deceived, and
acquit the accused because they are deceived ? Far
from it. They are cases in which verdicts of acquit
tal are rendered against the rigorous requirements of
the law, because the juries are satisfied that the acts
charged .... do not evince ' a heart regardless of
social duty, and fatally bent on mischief.' They are

44 DEFENSE OF INSANITY NOT ODIOUS.

in which the accused has suffered some great
wrong for which the law provides no adequate remedy."
Then, citing several cases in which women have killed
their seducers, he continues : "In all these cases the
defense was insanity, the verdict acquittal; but the
verdict would have been the same on any other plea.
Nobody is deceived by the defense. Insanity is set up
because under that defense more conveniently than
under any other the story of the wrong suffered by the
accused can be spread before the jury. The general
sense of the community approves these verdicts of ac
quittal, because it is felt that the best person in the
community might, under the same circumstances, com
mit the same act; because there is no other redress for
such a wrong ; because, finally, the slain deserves his
fate. We submit thai the defense of insanity is not
to be regarded as odious in the law because of these
cases. The same verdict would be rendered in the
same cases if the plea of self-defense were set up."

His success in Nancy Farrer's case not only brought
her advocate reputation and much general business,
but naturally attracted to him other cases involving
life. During the times of the fugitive slave cases Hayes
appeared in a good many, and notably in the famous
Rosetta case, when he was associated with Chief-Jus
tice Chase and Judge Timothy Walker. The former
referred to him, in a letter written a friend, as " Mr. R.

B. Hayes, a young lawyer of great promise I

was most ably supported by Judge Walker, while Hayes
acquitted himself with great distinction in the defense
of Rosetta before Pendery."

LAW PARTNERSHIPS ; MARRIAGE. 45

At the close of the Nancy Farrer case, Mr. Hayes
had been five years in the practice of the law at
Cincinnati, at first alone and afterwards with various
partners. In 1854 he went into partnership with
Messrs. R. M. Corwine and W. K. Rogers, both law
yers of note ; and with the latter he formed one of
those lasting friendships characteristic of a man who
has had few intimacies ; his friends have been those
who valued him for himself, not for what he could do
for them ; and such alone know the depth and cor
diality of his regard.

On the 30th of December, 1852, he was united in a
marriage which has formed the crowning happiness of
a singularly prosperous and happy life, with Miss Lucy
Ware Webb, of Cincinnati. Her family was Ken-
tuckian, of that sort which seems to assemble in itself
whatever is fine and good in the Southern civilization,
but she was herself born in Chillicothe, Ohio, where
her father, Dr. James Webb, formerly of Lexington,
Kentucky, had been long in practice. Her great-grand
father had, like her husband's, been an officer of the
Revolution ; and other ancestors had been people of
note and substance in their native State. Her father
was for many years a colonizationist, but he died with
out carrying out his plans regarding the slaves on the
family estate in Kentucky, and his children, after his
death, freed them without conditions. The grateful
blacks at once came to Ohio and settled as near their
late owners as possible, where they long remained in
the performance of all kinds of imaginary services,

46 SURVIVING CHILDREN.

and the receipt of a substantial support, — as no doubt
justly happened in many other cases of manumission.

Of the eight children of Governor Hayes, five are
living ; the eldest is now a student of the Cambridge
Law School, as his father was before him, though the
younger Hayes is a graduate of Cornell.

CHAPTER V.

FIRST PUBLIC SERVICES.

IT is the recollection of those who best remember
Hayes as a lawyer that, though he could rise equal to
occasion and make a great argument in a great case
like that of Nancy Farrer, he preferably shunned fo
rensic displays in the conduct of his cases. / He was
one of those lawyers, not at all so rare as the general
fame of the profession would imply, who discourage
litigation in their clients.! When clients would go to
law, he sought if possible to transact their business in
court by the plainest statements to the jury, by quiet
conferences with the judge and sober argument with
the opposing counsel.

He was a successful lawyer, but the time was coming
when, according to the testimony of some in his confi
dence, he found mere legal success unsatisfying. From
1856 to 1860 were the years when any man conscious
of the power to direct and influence the popular feeling
for good could hardly remain quiescent without self-
reproach. Yet the temperament, the self-education,
the inherited and sturdily trained character of Hayes,
all forbade him to seek office. He could follow and
he could lead without that, and during the days of the

48 THE FREMONT CAMPAIGN.

Republican party's formation we find him taking part
in the general movement, privately and publicly, with
out view to any personal result.

In his journals there is little record of his share in
the Fremont campaign of 1856. Nevertheless he very
actively engaged in the canvass, and addressed public
meetings at Cincinnati and elsewhere, with constantly
mounting enthusiasm for the work. Under a wood en
graving of Fremont in his diary he briefly writes, " Not
a good picture, but will do to indicate my politics this
year : free States against new slave States ; " and a little
later he says, " I feel seriously the probable defeat of
the cause of freedom in the approaching presidential
election. Before the October elections in Pennsylvania
and Indiana, I was confident Colonel Fremont would be

elected But after all, the good cause has made

great progress. Antislavery sentiment has been cre
ated, and the people have been educated, to a large
extent. I did hope that this election would put an
end to angry discussion upon this exciting topic, by
placing the general government in the right position in
regard to it, and thereby securing to antislavery effort a
foothold among those who have the evil in their midst.
But further work is to be done, and my sense of duty
determines me .... to aid in forming a public opinion
on this subject which will ' mitigate and finally eradicate
the evil.' I must study the subject, and am now begin
ning with Clarkson's ' History of the Abolition of the
Slave Trade/ " Then follow entries showing how thor
oughly he does study the subject in the whole history of

A THOROUGH ANTISLAVERY MAN. 49

the antislavery movement from its commencement in
England. " How similar the struggle to that now going
on here ! The same arguments pro and con, the same
prejudices appealed to, the same epithets of reproach,
the same topics ! On one side justice, humanity, free
dom ; on the other, prejudice, interest, selfishness, timid
ity, conservatism ; the advocates of right called en
thusiasts, fanatics, and incendiaries Thousands

whose hearts and judgment were on the side of aboli
tion were silent because loss of trade, of practice, of
social or political position, was likely to follow an open
avowal of their opinions. In short, the parallel be
tween that struggle and this is complete thus far. I
shall be content if it so continue to the end. The elec
tion of day after to-morrow is the first pitched battle.
However fares the cause, I am enlisted for the war."

Two years after the defeat that gave us Mr. Bu
chanan for President and the enemies of the nation for
our masters, Hayes was chosen to his first public office.
One of the Democratic members of the City Council
believed too firmly in Hayes's integrity and ability to
vote against him ; he voted for Hayes, and by one ma
jority the Council thus elected him City Solicitor, to
fill a vacancy occasioned in that office by death. His
election was received with expressions of friendly re
gard and with acknowledgments of his fitness for the
place even by the press of the party desiring his defeat,
and one newspaper recorded to his honor a fact which
throws a vivid light on his character as a politician :
" Though ten years in the city, Mr. Hayes was never
4

50 CITY SOLICITOR OF CINCINNATI.

in the chamber of the City Fathers till the day after
his election." " I like the looks of Hayes," said one
of the councilmen on the advent of this stranger among
them. " He has the appearance of a gentleman, and
it is some comfort to talk to him ; " a Democrat as
sented that he was " very pleasant — for a Black Re
publican." In the following April his personal pop
ularity was more substantially attested by his reelection
to the same office with a majority larger than that
given for any other candidate on his ticket.

He discharged the duties of his office with signal
ability, and with a humane sense of his obligations
towards the accused, as well as society, novel in a pub
lic prosecutor, though the ends of justice were never
better served. He treated the office as if it were a
finality in his political career, and not merely " a step
ping-stone to higher things ; " and when his term ex
pired, in 1861, the only place he sought, the only place
he would not have scorned to take, was a soldier's place
in the field, wherever self-sacrifice might be most useful
to his country.

He had fought the good fight for Lincoln, and he
had watched with keen anxiety the effect upon the
States threatening to secede. He thought, on the 9th
of November, that South Carolina might go out, but
that the others would draw back. " But at all events
I feel as if the time had come to test this question. If
the threats are meant, then it is time the Union was
dissolved or the traitors crushed out. I hope Lincoln
goes in." On the 4th of January, 1861, " Disunion and

BETTER WAR THAN COMPROMISE. 51

civil war are at hand, and yet I fear disunion and
war less than compromise. "We can recover from

them Crittenden's compromise ! Windham,

speaking of the rumor that Bonaparte was about to
invade England, said, ' The danger of invasion is by
no means equal to that of peace. A man may escape
a pistol, however near his head, but not a dose of poi
son.' " " Six States have seceded," he adds on the
27th. " Let them go ! If the Union is now dissolved,
it does not prove that the experiment of popular gov
ernment is a failure," he makes haste to say, with his
abiding faith in the democratic idea. " In all the free
States, and in a majority, if not in all the slaveholding
States, popular government has been successful. But
the experiment of uniting free States and slaveholding
States in one nation is perhaps a failure. Freedom
and slavery can perhaps not exist side by side under
the same popular government. There probably is an
* irrepressible conflict ' between freedom and slavery.
It may as well be admitted, and our new relations
formed with that as an admitted fact."

In April Sumter fell, and Lincoln's call for troops
came, and with it came an end of all theories, all spec
ulations beyond the question of the hour. At Cincin
nati, as throughout the whole North, a wild outburst of
the instantly embattled public sentiment answered the
call. " I shall never forget," Hayes writes, " that Sun
day evening," when the summons came. He was him
self a leader of the popular enthusiasm, and wrote the
resolutions of the largest of the public meetings held

52 MEMORABLE WORDS.

to welcome the summons. " Let what evils may follow,
I shall not soon cease to rejoice over this event."

Then on the 15th of May, in words that seem still to
burn with the sublime impulses of that hour, he records
the purpose from which he never faltered throughout the
four years of war that followed : " Judge Matthews * and
I have agreed to go into the service for the war — if
possible, into the same regiment. I spoke my feelings
to him, which he said were his own, that this was a just
and necessary war, and that it demanded the whole power
of the country ; THAT i WOULD PREFER TO GO INTO

IT IP I KNEW I WAS TO BE KILLED IN THE COURSE

OF IT, rather than to live through and after it without
taking any part in it."

1 Afterwards a distinguished officer of the Union army, and now-
one of the leaders of the Ohio bar. He has been renommated for
Congress by the Republicans of Hayes's former district.

CHAPTER VI.

THE EDUCATION OF A SOLDIER.

HAYES was in his thirty-ninth year when the war
began. His character, rounded by time and experi
ence, embodied the same traits and qualities which had
marked it from the years when he first began to think
and act for himself. Intellectually of solid rather than
rapid growth, he was morally in his ripened manhood
what he had always been, neither more nor less than
just, honest, and sincere, a man at once circumspect and
decided, self-respectfully modest, cautious, and brave,
careful as he was hopeful, and sustained in whatever
emergency by the indomitable good spirits with which
he was born. His wide acquaintance with men had
given him keener and deeper insight into himself, with
out changing at all the methods or the motives of his
action. His conscience was, as it had always been,
more alert against what he conceived his own short
comings than those of other men, though he never
failed to judge others accurately and fairly. He had
worked deliberately, with brain as well as heart, into
sympathy with the antislavery movement, and had
taken his final stand upon the ground that slavery must
not become the national principle. When he saw the

54 OFFERED A COLONELCY BY LINCOLN.

defeated partisans of the system prepared to revenge
themselves by the destruction of the nation which they
could not rule, the logic of his whole life permitted
him but one conclusion. War he abhorred, but there
were worse things than war ; and when once he knew
that he would rather be killed in the course of the war
that was coming — that was come — than not go into
it, there remained but a single question — how best to
fight in it. He had made up his mind to fight. There
were many semi-civil offices, honorable and necessary to
the conduct of the war, which he could have performed
with credit to himself and advantage to the country,
but it was not his idea of duty to accept any of these.
With him war meant service in the field, danger, death,
if need be : the same chances that the simple country
lads, springing to arms all over the country by tens of
thousands, accepted, invited, in a rapture of patriotism
that now seems incredible.

There came to him in this mood a colonel's commis
sion from President Lincoln, probably at the sugges
tion of Secretary Chase, who knew the mettle of the
man ; and the quick sense of responsibility in him to
which the honor appealed gave him sudden pause.

Doubtless no one knew better than he his inherent
qualities of leadership, but no one knew better his
ignorance of war. In a letter to a friend, who has
communicated these facts, hitherto unpublished, to the
writer, he states that he has considered the case, ques
tioned his present fitness, and decided to decline the
commission : he could not take in his hands, unused to

MAJOR OF THE TWENTY-THIRD OHIO. 55

the tremendous responsibility involved, the lives of a
thousand men, whom his inexperience might uselessly
sacrifice in the first battle, or waste through sickness
before they saw the enemy's face. He adds, " I intend,
however, to enter the service immediately, but in some
capacity less responsible. Meanwhile, I am studying
military tactics ; have bought a copy of Hardee, and
am drilling with the club company," — a company
formed almost entirely of members of the Literary Club,
who chose him their captain.

In fine, he declined the colonelcy, and he set about
the work of studying war as he had set about
studying abolition history when he became a Repub
lican, as he had all his life studied the thing, what
ever it was, he had to do. He mastered so much of
the science as his trained and penetrating mind, aided
by energies aroused to the last degree, enabled him
to achieve, in a period so brief, and in the beginning
of June, 1861, he accepted from Governor Dennison,
of Ohio, the majorship of the twenty-third Ohio volun
teer infantry. His superior officers were Colonel W.
S. Rosecrans, who was in civil life in Cincinnati at the
beginning of the war, and Lieutenant-Colonel Stanley
Matthews, that friend to whom Hayes had spoken his
feelings about going into the army, and who had " said
they were his own."

Two days after the acceptance of his commission,
Hayes was in camp with his regiment at Columbus,
and writing a letter of excellent content — content
with his regiment, content with the present, content

56 AT CAMP CHASE.

with the future of action and danger before him.
" I am much happier in this business than I could be
fretting away in the old office near the court house.
It is living"

Within ten days after going into camp with his reg
iment, Colonel Rosecrans was appointed a brigadier-
general, and took command of the Ohio forces in West
Virginia, while Colonel E. P. Scarnmon, an old West
Pointer, succeeded him in command of the twenty-
third. Hayes could not have desired a better school
than camp service under another educated soldier.

No part, indeed, of his brief experience in camp at
Columbus was lost upon Hayes, who would so willingly
have gone through a longer training for his new duties.
The anomaly of his position in some things struck
him as it must have struck many other sincere and
modest officers, suddenly called from civil life to the
strange responsibilities of military leadership in war.
" All matters of discretion, of common judgment," he
writes four days after first going into camp, " I get
along with easily ; but I was for an instant puzzled
when a captain of the twenty-fourth, of West Point
education, asked me formally, as I sat in my tent, for

his orders, he being officer of the day I merely

remarked that I thought of nothing requiring special
attention ; that if anything was wanted out of the
usual routine I would let him know ! "

The news of the calamitous defeat at Bull Run came
with crushing effect to the novices at Camp Chase, who
could hardly have been less amazed by the tranquillity

THE COOLNESS OF THE VETERANS. 57

with which the intelligence was received by those of
their superiors to whom war was business. " Last
evening Adjutant- General B. took tea with Colonel S,
My mind was full of the great disaster ; they talked
of school-boy times at West Point, gave the bill of fare
of different days, — beef on Sunday, fish on such a
day, etc., — with anecdotes of Billy Cozzens, the cook
and steward, never once alluding to the events just an
nounced, of which we were all full ; " and we may be
sure that Major Hayes was not the man to mention
them, with his humorous sense of the not altogether
amusing contrast. The universal, kind-hearted unfa-
miliarity with all things military in those first warlike
days found infinitely various expression, and one phase
of it was hardly more absurd than another : " The
mother of one of our officers, at Camp Chase, seeing a
boy walking upon his sentinel's beat, took pity on him,
sent him out a glass of wine and a piece of cake, with
a stool to sit on while he ate and drank. She told him
not to keep walking so, to sit down and rest ; she
also advised him to resign ! "

But the time for preparation was cut very short,
and on the 25th of July, some six weeks after going
into camp, the regiment, with all its imperfections on
its head, was ordered to West Virginia to help drive out
the rebel General Floyd. Raw as were the officers and
men of the twenty-third, they were probably marvels of
discipline and experience in the eyes of the loyal West
Virginians, to whose succor they had come. " Every
where, in the cornfields and havfields," runs one of the

58 THE TWENTY-THIRD IN WEST VIRGINIA.

major's letters home, " in the houses, in the roads, on
the hills, wherever a human being met us, we saw such
honest, spontaneous demonstrations of joy as we never
beheld elsewhere. Old men and women, boys and chil
dren, — some fervently prayed for us, some laughed,
•and some cried; all did something that told the story.
The secret of it is, the defeat at Washington and the
departure of some thousands of three months' men of
Ohio and Indiana had led them to fear that they were
to be left to the rebels of Eastern Virginia : we were
the first three years' men filling the places of those who

had left Our men enjoyed it beyond measure.

Many " — from the long Ohio levels bordering and
stretching back from the lake — " had never seen a
mountain ; none had ever seen such a reception. They
stood on top of the cars, and danced and shouted with
delight." War had begun like a holiday for the brave
poor fellows who were to leave their bones on many
a battle-field and in the graves of hospital grounds and
prison-pens ; but the cool-headed, steady-hearted leader
whose fame was to be forever identified with theirs
never lost sight, for a moment, of the wrinkled front
beneath the smiling mask. He shared, with a subtler
sense, their wild rapture in the beauty of the land ;
letters and journals glow with his joy in the magnifi
cent scenery, the delicious weather ; and he likes the
life in that first camp at Weston immensely. " The
effect is curious of this fine mountain air ; everybody
complains of heat, but everybody is in a laughing hu
mor ; " " the soldiers fare very well here, and stand in

LIFE AND CHARACTER IN WEST VIRGINIA. 59

little need of sympathy, but when I have an opportu
nity to smooth matters for them, I try to do it, always
remembering how you " — the reader will know to
whom this must have been addressed — " would wish
it done." There is little or no sickness in camp, the
men are gay and full of high hopes ; but the major
is not so gay for them as he feigns, and in a few days
he has to write home of the first blood they have shed,
— in a fight with guerrillas, who infest the beautiful
hills, and " rob and murder the Union men " in the
charming valleys. "Nevertheless, these marchings and
campings in the hills of Western Virginia will always
be among the pleasantest things I can remember. I
know we are in frequent perils, that we may never
return, and all that, but the feeling, that I am where I
ought to be is a full compensation for all that is sin
ister, leaving me free to enjoy as if on a pleasure
tour." In the mean time he is interested, as usual, by
the character about him, in the officers and men, and
in the local life : in a settlement of Yankees, who had
come to Weston forty years before, and had kept
intact the thrift, morality, and loyalty of their native
Massachusetts ; in the admirable stuff among the native
Union men ; in the simple-heartedness and good nat
ure among the better class of the Floyd soldiers taken
prisoners, u friendly, civil fellows, whom it seems so
absurd to be fighting ; " in the cowardice, cunning, and
laziness of the baser sort of rebels, whose " highest am
bition is to shoot a Yankee from some place of safety."
The little army of Western Virginia had on the

60 FLOYD ATTACKED AT CARNIFEX FERRY.

1st of September, after a succession of slight brushes
with the enemy, marched upon Carnifex Ferry, where
Floyd's force was strongly posted,1 and on the evening
of the 10th attacked him. The same night Floyd
abandoned his post and fled with all his army across
Gauley River, sharply pursued, in spite of heavy rains
rendering pursuit almost impossible, by the Union
troops, who took a large number of the rebels. Noth
ing but the approach of night saved Floyd's army
from capture, and his rout left all Western Virginia
in the possession of our troops.

In this first affair Major Hayes was ordered, half an
hour after the attack began, to follow an aid of Rose-
crans, and form with four companies of the twenty-third
the extreme left of the attacking force. Pushing on
over a hill and through a cornfield they arrived within
three quarters of a mile of the enemy's work, when the
aid took a friendly leave of them. He had no orders to
give Major Hayes ; Major Hayes was an officer, and
would know what to do in circumstances and localities
of which the aid frankly confessed himself entirely ig
norant. The situation might have been embarrassing;
Major Hayes simplified it in the only possible way by
leading his men forward against the enemy. They had
a tough scramble through the dense laurel thickets of the
hillside, and the major reached the bottom at the head

1 For a clear and succinct history of the twenty-third Ohio, see Mr.
Whitelaw Reid's admirable work on "Ohio in the War," — a really
monumental work which is yet to be fully appreciated. The writer
gladly acknowledges his obligations to Mr. Reid's volumes for the out
line of the present sketch of General Hayes's career.

HAYES UNDER FIRE THE FIRST TIME. 61

of four or five men. As soon -as others could join him,
he formed his little force and followed his skirmishing
line in the enemy's direction, arriving in time, near
the close of the fight, to be exposed to the rebels' fire.
Some of the men were wounded ; it had been growing
dark ; the firing now ceased, and the major's com
mand made its way back to the rest of the twenty-third
through confused and broken regiments and companies
straggling about over the field, and talking of the
slaughter, — thirteen killed and some seventy wounded,
as it afterwards appeared. At dawn loud shouts pro
claimed the flight of the enemy from his works, and the
pursuit began.

The victory was greater than the battle, and Major
Hayes's part, useful and difficult as it was, gave him
but a slight foretaste of war. What was better, it
enabled him to test himself in doing a duty which he
had to discover for himself ; and holding himself coolly
in hand, as he has always done in every crisis of life,
he perceived that he went into action with the same
sensations that he commonly experienced on entering
upon an exciting law case. With him, too, war had
become business. The affair also taught our troops self-
reliance, and showed them that such at least of the
enemy as were under Floyd were no match for them,
even with the odds in the rebels' favor.

The twenty-third went into camp on New River,
after its return from the pursuit, and there lost many
by sickness. At this time Major Hayes was detached
from the regiment, and ordered to join General Rose-

62 HAYES JUDGE ADVOCATE.

crans at his head-quarters as judge-advocate. The
appointment was by no means to the taste of a man
who had gone into the war to fight. He submitted
with reluctance, comforting himself with the hope of
release after a few weeks, but going diligently about
the duties of his office, reducing them to system, keep
ing a record of cases, and studying the whole business
as was his wont with whatever he took hold of. Six
weeks later he was, to his high satisfaction, relieved
from the office, in which he had in the mean time done
most acceptable service, and allowed to rejoin his regi
ment in Camp Ewing, on New River.

Important changes had recently taken place in it.
Lieutenant-Colonel Matthews had been appointed to
the command of another regiment, and Hayes succeeded
to the vacancy, his own place being filled by another
brave soldier, now General J. M. Comly, who had re
signed the lieutenant-colonelcy of a regiment in Camp
Chase and taken the majorship of the twenty-third,
that he might get at once into active service. His
fortunes were thereafter closely united with those of
Hayes, and when the latter became brigadier-general,
Major Comly succeeded him in command of the twen
ty-third, and was himself brevetted brigadier-general
at the close of the war, for his able and gallant sol
diership.

The rest of the winter was spent at Camp Ewing
and the subsequent camp of the regiment at Fayette-
ville, in duties whose faithful performance endeared
Colonel Hayes to his men as much as his bravery in

CARE FOR HIS REGIMENT. 63

battle. He was very diligent in drill and parade, but
he was as constant in his attention to the comfort of
the men as to their discipline. That humane and un
selfish heart, to which all suffering and helplessness
irresistibly appealed, was sensitively alive to the rights
of the brave fellows — who were in some sort his chil
dren — to everything that could be done for their wel
fare. At the same time he wrote home indignant de
nunciations of the exaggerated reports of suffering in
the army. " I am satisfied that our army is better fed,
better clad, and better sheltered than any other army

in the world I am now dressed as a private,

and I am well dressed ; I live habitually on soldier's

rations, and I live well It is the poor families

at home, not the soldiers, who can justly claim sympa
thy. I except, of course, the regiments which have

bad officers Government is sending enough, if

colonels would only do their part We have

sickness, which is bad enough, but it is due to causes
inseparable from our condition." He early taught
himself to relieve the needless ills of the soldiers' con
dition, and he was consequently successful in teaching
them to bear those which could not be helped. The
only complaint which escapes him on his own account

is amusingly characteristic : " If J comes, let him

get an assortment of late papers, ' Harpers,' ' Atlantics,'
etc., and keep them till he gets to our camp. We are
the outermost camp, and people are coaxed out of their
literature before they get to us."

Hayes was never one of the Union soldiers who con-

64 SLAVERY THE ONLY ENEMY OF THE UNION.

ceived it his business to enforce the fugitive slave law
in favor of the rebels ; his mind was clear in regard to
the slavery question from the start. No contrabands go
back to their masters from the army of West Virginia,
he is glad to know ; and again and again his letters
and journals bear witness to his conviction that " the
deadliest enemy the Union has is slavery, — in fact, its
only enemy, — and that to strike at slavery is to strike
at the life of the rebellion." He recurs from time to
time, with the anxiety of a man used to watch public
affairs, to the changing attitude of the government in
respect to the institution, and hails with deep satisfac
tion, as a step towards the final result, Lincoln's recom
mendation that the federal aid be pledged to States
taking measures for gradual emancipation. But for the
most part his mind is on the business in hand, requiring
from day to day a more vigilant devotion, and soon to
absorb every energy.

Early in November the twenty-third left Camp Ewing
to join another movement against Floyd, returning from
which they went into winter quarters at Fayetteville.
Under command of Lieutenant-Colonel Hayes they
quitted these quarters on the 17th of April, and led the
advance upon the enemy, who evacuated Princeton be
fore them, but attacked the twenty-third with four regi
ments on the 8th, and forced it to retire to East River.
It fell back in good order, and after great sufferings and
privations, its supplies having been cut off, abandoned
Princeton, and, returning to Flat Top Mountain, re
mained in camp there till the 13th of July. On the

BATTLE OF SOUTH MOUNTAIN. 65

15th of August it was ordered from its next station, at
Green Meadows, to Camp Piatt on the Great Kanawha,
and made the march of one hundred miles in three days.
Embarking in transports for Parkersburg, the regiment
there took the cars for Washington, joined McClellan's
force in driving the Confederates from Frederick City,
reached Middletown on the 1 3th of September, and took
part in the battles of South Mountain and Antietam.

The battle of South Mountain was fought on the day
after the arrival of the twenty-third in Middletown, and
three days before the battle of Antietam. It began early
on a lovely Sunday of September, with the advance
of Lieutenant-Colonel Hayes's command. McClellan's
army with Burnside in front was pressing up the mount
ain by the National Road. General Cox's division of
Ohio men led General Burnside's corps, and the twenty-
third formed the van of that division. At seven o'clock,
Hayes was ordered to take one of the mountain paths
and get round the right of the rebels, who were be
lieved to be posted there with two guns, and he started
up the hill on this by-road, throwing out one company as
skirmishers and two others as flankers. At nine o'clock
he drove in a rebel picket ; he pushed forward and in
a few minutes saw the rebels coining down upon him in
strong force from a hill in front. These men were,
as he afterwards learned, two regiments, the twelfth
South Carolina and twenty-third North Carolina, who
were thus opposed to the twelfth and twenty-third Ohio.
Hayes hurriedly formed his men in the woods and charged
over rocks and broken ground and through under-

bb HAYES SEVERELY WOUNDED.

brush, while the enemy poured in a heavy fire at short
range ; but he succeeded in driving them, after a fierce
engagement, out of the woods into an open field near the
top of the hill. His men stopped at a fence in the border
of the woods and opened a brisk fire on the enemy, who
took shelter behind the stone walls and fences along the
crest of the hill, and returned the fire of the Ohioans
across the field. At this juncture Lieutenant-Colonel
Hayes, urging his men to charge the Carolinians (who
were supported by a large rebel force with artillery,
probably the two pieces Hayes had been sent to take),
left the shelter of the woods. As he gave the com
mand, a minie ball struck him with stunning, shattering
force in the left arm, above the elbow, crushing the bone
to fragments and carrying part of it completely away.
He called to a soldier near him to tie his handkerchief
above the wound, fearing an artery might have been
severed. Then, turning suddenly faint, he fell. His
men pressed beyond him, and when he regained con
sciousness he found himself some twenty feet in their
rear, under a heavy fire, with the balls pelting the earth
all about him. He listened anxiously, as he lay there,
for the approach of reinforcements, and directed the
movements of his men. Once, seeing what appeared to
him a false movement on their part, he struggled to
his feet and began to countermand it, when he was
again overcome by weakness and sank down, where he
remained for twenty minutes exposed to the enemy's
fire, while the wounded men staggered past him or
were carried to the rear. His men were gradually

RESCUE OF THE WOUNDED COLONEL. 67

forced back to cover, and he was left lying between
them and the rebels. He thought that they were re
treating, and called out, " Hallo, twenty-third men ! are
you going to leave your colonel here for the enemy ? "
Half a dozen good fellows sprang from the woods, and
the enemy, who had suspended their fire for a moment,
opened on them, and the battle began to rage again as
hotly as ever. Hayes ordered the men back, and then
Lieutenant Jackson came to him and insisted on taking
him out of range of the fire. The command now fell
to Major Comly, who led the regiment with his accus
tomed bravery through the rest of the day. Reenforce-
ments coming up at last, the twenty-third again charged
the enemy and drove them from the hill into the woods
beyond,, killing large numbers with the bayonet. The
regiment then rejoined its division, making three suc
cessful bayonet charges during the fight, and losing
nearly two hundred men. "The colors of the regi
ment were riddled," says Mr. Reid, " and the blue field
almost completely carried away by shells and bullets."

Lieutenant Jackson led his colonel beyond the
enemy's fire, and Hayes then growing faint from his
wound, the lieutenant left him behind a log, with a can
teen of water, and in company with many wounded of
both sides. The man nearest him was a Confederate,
and the two fell into tails of that friendliness which
seems to have always been the natural condition of
the men of both armies when they were not actually
killing each other. " What regiment do you belong to,
and where are you from ? " asked the Northerner ; and

68 ' FRIENDLY ENEMIES.

the Southerner answered that he was major of a North
Carolina regiment. " Well, you came a long way to
fight us." " Where are you from ? " asked the major
in his turn. " I am from Ohio." " Well, you came a
good ways to fight us" rejoined the major ; and the
enemies " talked on in that pleasant, friendly way, nei
ther of us at that time suffering much." The South
erner told the Northerner that he had been a Union
man, and saw no reason for secession, but went out with
his section.

The firing again died away ; Lieutenant Jackson re
turned and led his colonel to the regimental surgeon,
who dressed his wound. Hayes then walked half a
mile to a point where he found an ambulance, and
was carried to Middletown. Here he remained,, restive
and helpless, while the army marched by under the
windows of the house where he lay. He heard them
going all night long and all day long, the men sing
ing as they marched ; and he gained what small ease
he could, as he impatiently listened afterwards to the
sounds of the battle of Antietam, by hiring two boys
to stand at the window and describe the men who rode
by from the field, striving to guess from this report of
their looks how the battle was going.

A curious circumstance in regard to Hayes at the
battle of South Mountain is the fact that at the time
he received his wound he was not in the pay or service
of the United States. He had been appointed colonel
of the seventy -ninth Ohio, and had been mustered out
as lieutenant-colonel of the twenty-third without his

HAYES PROMOTED TO BE COLONEL. 69

knowledge. His wound prevented his taking com
mand of his new regiment, and on the 30th of Novem
ber he rejoined, as colonel, the twenty-third, Colonel
Scammon having been appointed a brigadier-general,
and Major Comly having received the recognition his
conduct merited, in promotion to the lieutenant-colo
nelcy.

During his convalescence in Ohio, Colonel Hayes,
resisting the friends who thought he had " had his
share " and counseled him to remain out of the service,
gladly returned to the command of his old regiment.
Of his affectionate pride in it his letters and journals
give constant proof, and the men returned his regard
with equal devotion.

While yet in West Virginia, the regiment was or
dered against a rebel force near Princeton, and, the
1st of May, seventy -five of them were attacked by three
hundred cavalry and guerrillas, and lost a third of their
number in killed and wounded ; but they beat the
enemy, who fled, leaving his wounded with them. " As
I rode up they saluted with a present arms ; several
were bloody with wounds as they stood in their places ;
one boy limped to his post who had been hit three
times. As I looked at the glow of pride on their faces
my heart choked me ; I could n't speak ; but a boy said,
' All right, colonel ; we know what you mean ! ' :

Their colonel was always writing home praises of
their prowess or their discipline, and his letters abound
in their jokes. They were humorists in their way, as
all unspoiled Americans are, and in their march through

70 HIS LOVE FOR HIS MEN.

a friendly section of Maryland, where the admiring
women, children, and negroes called out from every
house to know what troops they were, their drollery
bubbled out in such answers as " The twenty-third
Utah," " The twenty-third Bushwhackers," " Drafted
Men," "Home Guards," "Peace Men," "The Lost
Tribes," and so forth. It was men of the Kanawha
division who, being at home on furlough, took from its
bearer and trampled under foot a transparency in a
Democratic procession — a brutal and shameless cari
cature of their leader dodging the bullets they had seen
him brave ; and Hayes had more than once been as quick
in the defense of their honor. One evening a corps
commander dashed furiously into their camp, where he
found them taking straw from a stack for bedding, and,
assailing them in the atrocious language which even a
brave and skillful general could suffer himself to use to
wards men as good as he, demanded to see their colo
nel. Lieutenant-Colonel Hayes presented himself and
respectfully but firmly defended them, saying that they
had always taken forage and other necessaries, and that
in a friendly country they were ready to pay for them.
Then after some further angry words from the general
he added, " I trust our generals will exhibit the same
energy in dealing with their foes that they do in the
treatment of their friends." As the general rode away
the men cheered their colonel, — a little rueful, per
haps, about his sarcasm, but glad to have defended the
brave fellows unjustly assailed and forbidden to speak
for themselves.

CHAPTER VII.

THE CAMP ON THE KANAWHA AND THE MORGAN RAID.

EARLY in October of 1862, the twenty-third was
ordered with the rest of the Kauawha division to re
turn to West Virginia, and went into winter quarters
near the falls of the Great Kanawha. Here, on the
30th of November, a party of officers welcomed back
their colonel, and they had a jovial meeting, " fighting
over again the battle of South Mountain, with many
anecdotes, much laughter and enjoyment."

The colonel had come home to them reestablished
in health from the general effect of his wound,1 but his
arm was still very weak, and easily hurt ; he could not
raise his hand above his head. With any severe exer
tion, the whole limb was very painful. Under the cir
cumstances, Lieutenant- Colonel Comly and Major Mcll-
rath relieved him of drill duty, and he interested himself
chiefly in the superintendence of the sanitary arrange
ments of the camp — matters which he always looked
to personally if possible. The men had built them-

1 He had had the best of nursing in the family of Mr. Jacob Rudy
at Middletown, before his wife could join him, and her coming only
intensified the care he received. Three weeks after he was shot he
walked over the battle-field with Mrs. Hayes on his fortieth birth
day.

72 MRS. HAYES IN CAMP.

selves cabins of planks and logs, and prepared to pass
the winter in as much comfort as can fall to the sol
dier's lot. They took peculiar pride in fitting up the
colonel's quarters, and when, late in January, his wife
came with her three boys to visit him, it was matter of
rejoicing for the whole regiment. Other ladies joined
their husbands in camp, and the winter passed gayly
in such amusements as the life afforded : rides, fishing,
boating, and pleasure excursions of every sort. The
little ones became the children of the regiment so far as
the soldier's love could adopt them ; with the colonel's
wife and boys in camp each good fellow was nearer the
wife and boys so far away at home.

But these gentle women could not suffer their so
journ in camp to be merely a pleasure to themselves,
and Mrs. Hayes, who remained longest, had the privilege
of doing the most kindness to the men so proud of her
presence. " His wife is a noble woman " (we are
letting one of the soldiers speak for himself); "there
was not a morning that she omitted going through
the hospital, and she did everything she could for the
sick and wounded." " Into our midst," writes another,
" sitting at our camp fires, putting new heart into
many a homesick boy, banishing the fever from many
a bronzed cheek with her gentle touch, came this fair
lady and her boys. We named our camp, in her honor,
Camp Lucy Hayes, and not a man in all those thou
sands, but would have risked his life for her."

Mrs. Hayes's visit ended in March. A second visit
which she paid her husband in June, when his regiment

MORGAN'S RAID. 73

was encamped at Charlestown, Virginia, was saddened by
the death of their youngest boy whom she had brought
with her. From this sorrow Colonel Hayes was shortly
summoned to take part in the pursuit and capture of
John Morgan, after his famous raid through Ohio.

On the 2d of July Morgan crossed the Cumberland at
Burkesville with twenty-four hundred and sixty men,
and struck through the State of Kentucky to the Ohio
River. In five days he reached the river, sixty miles
below Louisville, seized two steamers in which he set
his men across, and then resumed his rapid ride, push
ing through Southern Indiana towards Cincinnati. He
rode fifty and sixty miles a day, leaving bridges burnt,
telegraph wires cut, and general consternation behind
him. By the 12th it was known that he was aiming at
Cincinnati, where navigation and business were stopped
and martial law proclaimed. The governor called out
the militia of the southern part of the State, but Morgan
came so swiftly and so secretly that, when on the morn
ing of the 14th he passed through the suburbs of the
city, he met not so much as a hostile picket, and by
four o'clock in the afternoon he had reached a point
twenty-eight miles east of Cincinnati, having ridden
ninety-eight miles in thirty-five hours. Desertions had
reduced his numbers to two thousand, and any mili
tary object which the expedition might have had was
defeated by the insubordination of his followers, who
abandoned themselves to plundering. But the people
made all haste to hide their horses, cattle, and silver,
and Morgan's men seem to have been chiefly terrible to

74 HAYES MEETS MORGAN AT POMEROY.

shops abounding in calicoes. With the best disposi
tion in the world to steal everything, they had no time
for research. Fifty thousand militia had taken the
field against them, but having fully supplied themselves
with dress goods the raiders dashed on, and outrode or
outgeneraled the militia, and reached the Ohio River at
Pomeroy on the 19th, having met with very little fight
ing in their course, and only such molestation as inde
pendent sharp-shooters or small bodies of militia could
offer them in passing. But by this time a body of the
regular cavalry, under Judah, and a division of the mili
tia were close upon him, and at Pomeroy he first en
countered a disciplined force.

On the 16th of July, Colonel Hayes heard of Mor
gan's presence in Ohio and prepared to head him off.
He ordered the steamboats lying at Charleston to be
sent on to Luke Creek on the Kanawha, the highest
point to which boats go in that river, and prevailed on
his commanding officer to allow him to take men for
his enterprise. He chose two regiments and a section of
artillery, and embarking his force, reached Gallipolis,
Ohio, on the 18th. On the 19th, Sunday, he had pushed
on to Pomeroy, where he found the militia in position,
waiting for Morgan, who came about noon from Buffing-
ton Island. Hayes's force went out to meet him, and
after a slight skirmish Morgan fled, pursued by the
twenty-third. The next morning at daylight he was
attacked by Judah's cavalry and the gunboats, together
with the force under Hayes, and after a brief engage
ment entirely routed. More than half his command

HONOR TO WHOM HONOR. 75

was captured, and, pursued and attacked in all his
doublings and turnings, he shortly afterwards surren
dered with the remnant of his men, and was sent to the
Ohio penitentiary.

Colonel Hayes's letters describe his share in Mor
gan's discomfiture as " the liveliest and jolliest little
campaign we ever had," — "a jolly time." " The
cavalry, gunboats, militia, and our infantry, each claim
the victory as their peculiar property. The truth is,
all were essential parties to the success." This is the
verdict of a just man who could always afford to be
generous, and we can easily render full credit to the
other forces engaged in Morgan's defeat (he was finally
run down by a body of Michigan cavalry), while recog
nizing the military insight and the personal vigor and
decision with which Hayes planned his share of the
movement against Morgan, and was enabled first of all
to strike him.

CHAPTER VIII.

CLOYD MOUNTAIN AND WINCHESTER.

THE twenty-third returned, with the rest of Hayes's
command, to Charleston, where it lay in camp till
April 29, 1864. The interval was a season of prepara
tion and expectation for various services ; and in the
mean time Colonel Hayes was more than once called
upon to consider the subject of promotion for himself,
which could have been easily secured if he had been
more ambitious to advance his own interests than to do
his duty in the station where he found himself. His
feeling seems to have been that he would " rather be
one of the good colonels than one of the poor generals."
He knew very well that the colonel of a regiment had
one of the most agreeable positions in the service, and
one of the most useful, and he liked a good colonel's
ability to make a good regiment. Only two things
made him anxious : that he might have a stupid briga
dier put over him, or that through losses his regiment
might disappear or be consolidated with others and that
thus he might lose his colonelcy. But he was not very
anxious. He did not seek promotion, and as usual pro
motion was seeking him.

When the twenty-third finally moved in April, it

RAID UPON A RAILROAD. 77

was to join the forces under General Crook in a raid
on the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad. " This ex
pedition," says the writer in " Ohio in the War," " was
something worthy of their mettle. Their long inac
tion had not hardened their sinews or made them
impervious to fatigue. But, as was their custom, the
rank and file of the twenty-third entered into the expe
dition with cheerfulness and a determination if possible
to make it signally successful. Without detailing their
daily marches, it is sufficient to say that the regiment
toiled on over the rugged mountains, up ravines and
through the dense woods, meeting with snows and rain
in sufficient volume to appal the stoutest hearts ; but
they toiled patiently, occasionally brushing the enemy
out of their way until, on the 9th of May, 1864, the
Battle of Cloyd Mountain was fought."

In this affair Colonel Hayes commanded a brigade,
including of course his own regiment ; the other regi
ments and parts of regiments were mainly Ohio troops,
used to service under him, and eager as the twenty-
third for the fight. Apparently the great object of the
expedition was to destroy the Virginia and Tennessee
Railroad bridge on New River, which would cut the
great line of communications between Richmond and the
Southwest ; and General Crook, whom the Sioux now
call the Gray Fox, brought his peculiar shrewdness to
the undertaking. As he marched up the Kanawha he
sent his music with one regiment towards Leesburg in
the direction of Richmond, while he made his way in
an entirely different direction toward the New River

78 THE ENEMY'S POSITION AT CLOYD MOUNTAIN.

bridge, ordering the bands thus detached to play as if
the whole army were with them. The first feat of the
expedition was the bloodless capture of Fort Brecken-
ridge, out of which the enemy fled at the approach of
Crook's force. On the parapet of this fort the rebels
had handsomely carved the words Fort Breckenridge,
for which the Ohio men immediately substituted Fort
Crook. When too late, the enemy found out their mis
take in abandoning the fort and hurried back, and
gathered finally with a considerable force under General
Jenkins, formerly a Democratic member of Congress.
Jenkins placed his army across the track of Crook's
men fifty miles southward, where they had to traverse
a high mountain ridge. At this point there was a good
road, a creek, and a broad, beautiful meadow stretching
before it. The ridge was called Cloyd Mountain, and
here the enemy intrenched themselves. Crook's men
arrived at about eleven o'clock on the 9th, and as soon
as they came within cannon shot the enemy opened fire
upon them, and they formed in the woods on either side
of the road. It was plain that Jenkins was very
strongly fortified, and that his position could not be
carried without severe fighting. An attack was made
and repulsed, when General Crook came to Colonel
Hayes and ordered him with his brigade and the brig
ade on its right to cross the meadow and charge up the
hill upon the batteries, adding that he would himself
accompany him. The two brigades formed in the bor
ders of the woods and marched out in perfect line.
They were fresh from camp, where they had been

A GALLANT CHARGE. 79

thoroughly drilled and could march well. The enemy's
fire opened heavily, but not a great number of men
fell. The rest quickened their pace, keeping their line
good until they got to the edge of the woods. They
could not yet see the fortification, which was on a
woody hill, and at the foot of the hill was the creek, not
very wide or deep, which had remained equally unseen.
They dashed through the creek, the bed of which was
some four feet below the level of the meadow, and
started up the hill at a point so steep that the curva
ture of the ground protected them from the enemy's
fire. Here they stopped to take breath and shake the
water out of their boots, and then they charged up the
hill again. As they passed the protecting curve, they
faced a murderous fire. Men and officers fell in aw
ful slaughter on all sides. The whole line seemed to
go down, but the men who were not hit did not stop.
There was no straggling ; the men responded cheer
fully to the encouragement of their officers, and were
soon at the fort. It was an earthwork hastily thrown
up and strengthened with fence-rails thrust endwise
into it and through it, forming an embankment ex
tremely difficult to surmount, and held by the enemy
in perfect confidence. But Hayes's men scrambled
over at once, the first being brave Private Kosht, a boy
of eighteen, a new recruit, who sprang from the line
with a shout, and hung his hat on the muzzle of a can
non. The fight in the fort lasted only ten minutes,
but it was desperate while it lasted, a wild hand-to-hand
combat, which ended by the Ohioans beating the rebels

80 CHARACTERISTIC COMMENTS BY HAYES.

out and taking prisoners all who could not run away.
Then they pushed swiftly after the fugitives to keep
them from re-forming, which they attempted at a
second ridge of the mountain. The rebels yielded to
the second charge here made upon them, but formed
again, reenforced by a body of the men who had been
raiding under Morgan, and had lived to fight another
day by taking care of themselves in time. They were
promptly broken to pieces by the third terrific charge,
and the fight was over. Our men hurried on eight miles
further to Dublin Depot, on the railroad line, where
they burned the bridge aimed at, and destroyed the
road, rails, ties, and bed, for several miles, so that the
rebels were unable to use the line for six weeks.

In a letter written home ten days later, Colonel
Hayes says : <k This is the most completely successful
and by all odds the pleasantest campaign I have ever had.
Now it is over," he adds, — he was not only a bayo
net that thought, but a bayonet that pitied, and he never
loved war but as a means, — " I hardly know what I
would change in it, except to restore life and limb to the
killed and wounded" Then a sentence that follows is
peculiarly like Hayes in its manly modesty : " My com
mand in battles and on the march behaved to my entire
satisfaction ; none did, none could have done better.
We had a most conspicuous part in the battle of Cloyd's
Mountain, and were so lucky!" Lucky, indeed, as
true and valiant men are in whatever they set their
hands to, and lucky as Hayes has always been, through
being simply worthy and capable of everything he has
undertaken in his most prosperous career.

CONTINUAL FIGHTING. 81

Crook's army proceeded on its course after destroy
ing the New River bridge, and, with some slight en
counters with the enemy, who constantly harassed our
men on their march over roads rendered almost impass
able by the heavy rains, arrived at Staunton on the 8th
of June, where Hayes's brigade joined General Hunter's
command. On this march the army was encumbered
by multitudes of contrabands, men, women, and children,
and suffered from privation amounting almost to famine.

On the llth, the corps arrived before Lexington,
which was taken after an artillery and sharp-shooter
fight of three hours. Hayes's brigade had the advance,
and nearly all the casualties fell to him. His brigade
had now become as dear to him as his own regiment,
and he was proud of it as one of the best in the army.
On the 14th he led it within two miles of Lynch-
burg, and drove a body of the 'enemy as many miles
up the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad. The army
camped for the night near Lynchburg, and so near a
body of rebels, in the dark, that the men of both sides
took rails from the same fence for their fires.

On the 18th, Crook's command set out to cross the
James, and take Lynchburg in the rear, when news
came that the enemy, heavily reenforced, was about to
attack Hunter's centre. Crook's force met and repulsed
the attack, a very sharp one, and the same evening re-
enforcements for the enemy continuing to pour in from
Richmond, the retreat of our side began. " The men,"
says Mr. Reid, " had had no sleep for two days and
nights, and scarcely anything to eat. In this condition

82 A TERRIBLE MARCH.

they marched, frequently falling down asleep in the
road, it being with great difficulty that they could be
kept on their feet." The whole retreat, which continued
till Charleston was reached tm the 1st of July, was
attended with immense suffering, suffering borne, as the
journal of one of the officers testifies, with the most
heroic patience. " The men had nothing to eat, the
trains having been sent in advance. It is almost in
credible that men should have been able to endure so
much, but they never faltered, and not a murmur es
caped them. Often they would drop out silently, ex
hausted, but not a word of complaint was spoken."
During whole days they pushed on, skirmishing heavily
with the enemy, who hung upon their rear, and neither
eating nor sleeping. At last, "on the 27th, a supply
train was met on Big Sewell Mountain, — men all
crazy, — stopped and* ate, marched and ate, camped
about dark, and ate all night."

Of this expedition and retreat, Colonel Hayes him
self wrote in one of his letters home, " We have had
altogether the severest work I have yet known in the
war. We have marched almost continually for two
months, fighting often, with insufficient food and sleep ;
crossed the three ranges of the Alleghanies four times,
the ranges of the Blue Ridge twice ; marched several
times all day and all night without sleeping. We all
believe in our general [Crook]. He is a considerate,
humane man, a thorough soldier and disciplinarian."

Remaining at Charleston till the 10th, Crook's com
mand was ordered east to meet Early, then invading

DEFEAT AT WINCHESTER. 88

Maryland and Pennsylvania. On the 18th, Hayes's
brigade was sent, without cavalry and with but two
sections of a howitzer battery, to attack more than
twenty thousand of Early's men some ten miles beyond
Harper's Ferry. They were surrounded by two divis
ions of rebel cavalry, but cut their way through and
got safely back to camp, joining Crook at Winchester
on the 22d. Here, two days afterwards, Hayes shared
in the first defeat he had known. His ' brigade was
sent out to meet what was supposed to be a recon-
noissance in force on the part of the enemy, with
orders to join his right to that of another brigade, and
charge with it. This brigade was commanded by
Colonel Mulligan. Hayes rode out to the right of his
line in an open valley, and made himself known to
Mulligan, whose orders he found were to fight with
him and keep the two lines together ; also to attack
whatever was in front. These coincided with Hayes's
instructions, and the brigade prepared to attack. Two
lines of rebels, fighting as skirmishers, were alone vis
ible, but there were reports of the enemy on the hills
to the right and left, inclosing the valley in which the
brigades were drawn up. A little closer inspection
now developed the enemy on these hills in immense
force. The two colonels perceived that they were in a
trap, but they pushed forward according to orders, and
in five minutes Colonel Mulligan fell, pierced with five
balls. The enemy came to meet the attack, and closing
upon our vastly inferior force, easily drove it before
them, Hayes's brigade retreating till it struck a rough,

84 A RETREAT IN GOOD ORDER.

wooded bill. Here he formed his men, Colonel Comly
of the twenty-third being wounded at this point, and
held the hill while the enemy pressed him hard on all
sides. His resistance threw them into some confusion.
He cleared his line of them, and continued his retreat
in good order, although attacked continually for twelve
miles. When the enemy pressed his men too hard, they
turned and beat them back, and so made good their
escape. They presently joined Crook's force, and the
retreat continued till midnight, when the enemy ceased
to pursue. From the peculiar nature of the ground, and
the position of the opposing forces, Hayes was probably
then in greater danger than he had ever been before,
all the officers being exposed to the fire of the enemy's
sharp-shooters, who could easily pick them off at short
range ; but he lived to retrieve the disastrous fortunes
of that day on the same field a little later. His horse
was shot under him, and he was struck in the shoulder
by a spent ball. His brigade, after being in the hottest
of the fight, was in condition to cover the retreat as
rear guard, which it did successfully for twenty-four
hours. " We are queer beings," he writes from his
camp near Sharpsburg, two days after ; " the camp is
now alive with laughter and good feeling — more so
than usual — the recoil after so much toil and anx
iety."

For almost a month Hayes's brigade was engaged in
daily skirmishing, with varying fortune, up and down
the Shenandoah Valley, till at Halltown, on the 23d
of August, he repulsed an attack, dashing out and

A BRILLIANT ACHIEVEMENT. 85

picking up "a small South Carolina regiment entire."
" This charge was brilliantly executed," says Mr. Reid,
" and excited astonishment among the rebel prisoners,"
who expressed their surprise in the characteristic de
mand, " Who the are you 'uns ? "

On the evening of the 3d of September, at Berry-
ville, an engagement of uncommon fierceness took place
between the South Carolina and Mississippi division
under Kershaw and the Kanawha division, Hayes's
brigade sustaining the hardest of it. At ten o'clock the
fighting ceased without decided victory, though the
rebels were killed and taken in large numbers. They
were of Longstreet's crack division, and had charged
with wild yells, confident of victory, but Hayes's men
drove them back with tremendous slaughter. The
battle had begun an hour before sunset with the at
tempt of the Union forces to hold a piece of turnpike
road, by which a body of cavalry, sent to cut off the
supplies in the rear of Early's army, were to rejoin our
Kanawha division. Hayes posted his men behind a ter
race wall for quarter of a mile along the road, remain
ing himself on horseback in full sight, while the enemy
charged. The enemy came within a few yards. Hayes's
men rose with a yell, and struck them with a deadly
fire, every shot of which told, and then charged in their
turn. The rebels, thrown into wild disorder, turned
and ran, pursued to their reserve line, where they ral
lied and repulsed their pursuers, who took cover in a
piece of woods. Now ensued a strange conflict. The
commanders on either side were desirous to withdraw

86 A STRANGE CONFLICT.

their men. Crook sent Hayes word to let the fire die if
he could (and the rebels for their part were willing),
but not to stop till the enemy stopped. So the men
were ordered to let the fire drop, and they fired more
and more infrequently, till it came to only a shot at a
time ; then suddenly three or four would fire by chance
together, and on this the whole of both sides would en
gage again. At last, without the retirement of either
army, the surgeons and burying parties from both sides
began to mingle together with lanterns, looking for the
wounded and the dead between the hosts. Only at the
apparition of these spectral lights, flitting hither and
thither over the bloody field, and hovering where death
or anguish lay, did the battle cease.

Speaking of the engagement afterwards, and especially
of the moment when he sat his horse exposed to the
full fire of the enemy, while his men lay crouched be
hind the terrace wall by the roadside, Hayes recognized
the peril in which he had been. " But," he added,
" I enjoyed the excitement more than ever, — my men
behaved so well ! "

CHAPTER IX.

OPEQUAN, FISHER'S HILL, AND CEDAR CREEK.

THE battle of Opequan was fought on the 19th of
September, in the neighborhood of Winchester, where
two months before Hayes had so gallantly sustained
his first and only defeat. Mr. Reid's vivid and stir
ring account of the battle gives the highest honor to
Hayes, who had the extreme right of Crook's command
in making a flank attack. " The position was reached
under cover of an almost impenetrable growth of cedar,
crossing a swampy stream. Here the division was
halted and formed. First brigade (Hayes's) in front,
and second (Johnson's) in rear. Throwing out a
light line of skirmishers, the brigade advanced rapidly
to the front, driving the enemy's cavalry. The national
cavalry at the same time advanced out of the woods on
the right. After advancing in this way across two or
three open fields under a scattering fire, the crest of a
slight elevation was reached, when the enemy's infantry
line came into view off diagonally to the left front, and
he opened a brisk artillery fire. Moving forward
double-quick under this fire, the brigade reached a thick
fringe of underbrush, dashing through which it came
upon a deep slough forty or fifty yards wide, and nearly

88 HAYES AT OPEQUAN.

waist-deep, with soft mud at the bottom, overgrown
with a thick bed of moss nearly strong enough to bear
the weight of a man. It seemed impossible to get
through it, and the whole line was staggered for a mo
ment. Just then Colonel Hayes plunged in with his
horse, and under a shower of bullets and shells, with his
horse sometimes down, he rode, waded, and dragged his
way through, and after a pause long enough to partially
re-form the line, charged forward again, yelling and
driving the enemy. Sheridan's old cavalry kept close
up on the right, having passed around the slough, and
every time the enemy was driven from cover charged
and captured a large number of prisoners. This plan
was followed throughout the battle, by which the cavalry
was rendered very effective. In one of these charges,
Colonel Duvall, the division commander, was wounded
and carried from the field, leaving Colonel Hayes in
command. He was everywhere, exposing himself reck
lessly, as usual. He was the first over the slough, he
was in advance of the line half the time afterwards.
Men were dropping all around him, but he rode through
it all as if he had a charmed life. "

" No reinforcements, no demonstration as promised ;
something must be done to stop the murderous, concen
trated fire that is cutting the force so dreadfully. Se
lecting some Saxony rifles in the twenty-third, pieces
of seventy-one calibre, with a range of twelve hundred
yards, Lieutenant McBride was ordered forward with
them to kill the enemy's artillery horses in plain sight.
They moved forward under cover as much as possible.

THE FIRST MAN OVER THE BOG. 89

At the first shot a horse drops ; almost immediately
another is killed ; a panic seems to seize the artillery,
and they commence limbering up. The infantry take
the alarm, and a few begin running from the intrench-
ments. The whole line rises, and with a tremendous
yell our men rush frantically from the breastwork, and
thus, without stopping to fire another shot, the enemy
ran in utter confusion — that terrible cavalry which
had been hovering like a cloud on the flanks, sweeping
down on the rebels and capturing them by regiments."
Another account of the battle states that the fight
began at daylight, and that at noon the tide was rather
against the Union forces. It was at this moment, while
the rebels in Winchester were rejoicing over the vic
tory, that Hayes's brigade led the charge through the
slough. It was in fact a deep creek, with high banks,
very boggy margins, and some twenty -five yards in
width. The rebel fire burst out in all its fury as the
line reached this formidable obstacle. The men wa
vered, but it was death to stop now. Hayes was the
first to take the plunge, and his horse was mired under
him midway of the slough. He dismounted, and throw
ing himself forward on his hands and knees managed,
while the shot and shell struck all round him in the
morass, by crawling, swimming, and floundering on, to
reach the other shore alone. When he reached the
shore, the bank was so steep that the enemy's fire could
not strike him, and when he had regained his feet, he
turned aboutjto see who was coming next. Captain Ben-
jumiu F. Stearns, of the thirty-sixth Ohio, a very brave

90 HAYES'S INFANTRY AND SHERIDAN'S HORSE.

and gallant officer, was coming next. He was just at
hand as Hayes turned, and his presence undoubtedly
brought great comfort to his commander, there within
twenty -five feet of the rebel line. Hayes raised his
cap, Stearns lifted his, and smiling, the comrades shook
hands. Then Hayes beckoned to his men with his
cap ; at once the morass was full of them, swarming
over as they could ; and when some two score had
landed, they charged up the bank upon the enemy,
who, never dreaming of an attack at this point, had
left his artillery unsupported. The batteries were
taken, and the whole of Crook's command having
crossed, his men charged a strongly posted rebel line
five hundred yards beyond the first. Their charge was
made in the teeth of a destructive fire ; at times they
wavered under the storm of grape and musketry, but
the flags were pushed on, and the straggling crowd
followed. The affair began to look dark, when, " at
the most critical moment," writes Hayes, in a letter
dated two days after the battle, " that splendid cavalry,
with sabres drawn, moved slowly around our right,
beyond the creek, then at a trot, and finally, with
shouts and a gallop, charged right into the rebel lines.
We pushed on, and away broke the rebels."

The battle of Fisher's Hill occurred the day after
that of Opequan. It was, in fact, rather a victory than
a fight, and consisted simply of a wholesale capture of
artillery by our forces, without the loss of a man. The
enemy had retreated some twenty-five miles up the
valley of the Shenandoah to a point where the valley,

FIRST AT THE REBEL LINES. 91

narrowing to a breadth of three miles, is traversed by
the mountain ridge called Fisher's Hill ; and here they
had fortified a naturally strong position, and were ap
parently impregnably intrenched. After consultation
between Crook and Sheridan, it was, upon Crook's in-
sistance, resolved not to attack them in front, though it
was believed that an army demoralized by so recent
defeat could be broken even in that position, but to
turn their left. Crook took Hayes's division (by the
wounding of Duvall, Hayes was in command of both
brigades), and the general and colonel rode together
at the head of the men. As the steeper ascent began,
all the officers dismounted except Hayes, but he had
replaced the charger mired in the slough at Opequan
with a teamster's horse, whose surefootedness enabled
him to carry his rider anywhere. The force clambered
up and down mountain sides and through ravines till
they struck the gorge in which the rebels were posted,
when Hayes led the charge by galloping right down
upon the rebel lines. The whole division followed
with a yell, and the rebels — men of Jackson's old
corps and Early's veterans — broke and ran in hope
less panic, losing every gun.

Early on the 19th of October the famous battle of
Cedar Creek began with the disastrous defeat of our
troops under General Wright, who commanded in Sher
idan's absence, and suffered himself to be surprised by
Early and Longstreet. Anxious for his right flank, he
found himself suddenly struck on the left, under cover
of a heavy fog, in which his assailants had all the ad-

92 WINNING BACK THE BATTLE.

vantages. In fifteen minutes the enemy was in his
camps, and his force thrown into utter confusion and
in flight towards Winchester. A few miles from that
place the first fugitives met a major-general on a black
horse gayly trotting down the road, who at sight of
them quickened his trot to a gallop. He swung his
cap, smiled cheerily, and said, " Face the other way,
boys. We are going back to our camps ; " and as he
met regiment after regiment, " Boys, this never would
have happened if I had been here. And now we are
going back to our camps." It was Sheridan, and the
rout became a march to victory. The beaten army
turned, drove the enemy from their camp, and broke
him to atoms along the whole line, capturing nearly all
his transportation, and retaking their lost artillery.
This is the story in brief, but it cannot be too fully
told, nor too often. Mr. Reid's accounts of it in his
sketch of Sheridan's life, and his narrative of the
twenty-third regiment, are, like all the battle-pieces of
his " Ohio in the War," graphic and dramatic, and at
the same time admirably clear. " The situation," he
says, " in a few minutes after the attack, was about
this : Crook's command, overpowered and driven from
their advanced position, were forming on the left of
the nineteenth corps, which corps was just getting into
action, the left being hotly engaged, but not so much
so as Crook's command yet. The right of the line had
not been engaged at all, and was not for some time
after. While the line was in this situation, the trains
were all slowly moving off. A desperate stand was

ENTER SHERIDAN. 93

made by the shattered lines of Crook's command to
save the head-quarters' train of the army, which came

last from the right, and it succeeded From

this time the whole line fell slowly back, fighting stub
bornly, to a new position which had been selected.
There they halted, and the enemy seemed content with
shelling us.

" General Crook lay a couple of rods away from tho
line, in a place which seemed more particularly exposed
than any other part of the line. Colonel Hayes lay close
by, badly bruised from his fall, and grumbling because
the troops did not charge the enemy's line instead of
waiting to be charged. Suddenly there is a dash in the
rear, on the Winchester pike ; and almost before they
are aware, a young man in full major-general's uniform,
and riding furiously a magnificent black horse, literally
* flecked with foam,' reins up and springs off by Gen
eral Crook's side. There is a perfect roar as everybody
recognizes — SHERIDAN ! He talks with Crook a little
while, cutting away at the tops of the weeds with his
riding-whip. General Crook speaks half a dozen sen
tences that sound a good deal like the crack of the
whip ; and by that time some of the staff are up. They
are sent flying in different directions. Sheridan and
Crook lie down and seem to be talking, and all is quiet
again, except the vicious shells of the different batteries,
and the roar of artillery along the line. After a while
Colonel Forsyth comes down in front, and shouts to the
general : " The nineteenth corps is closed up, sir ! "
Sheridan jumps up, gives one more cut with his- whip,

94 HAYES'S STAND AT THE HEAD-QUARTERS.

whirls himself round once, jumps on his horse, and
starts up the line. Just as he starts off he says to the
men, ' We are going to have a good thing on them
now, boys ! ' and so he rode off."

In this battle Hayes commanded the Kanawha divis
ion, and being in reserve a mile back from the main line,
did not share in its disaster when the rebels attacked.
In the stand made by his division to save the head-quar
ters, the fighting was very severe, though the men were
disheartened by the belief that the enemy were in the
rear, and were held to their work with difficulty. At a
certain moment of the fight Hayes saw his right break
ing, and rode rapidly down to rally his men, but they
melted away from around him, and left him exposed
alone to the fire of the enemy, who filled the air with a
hail of lead. He was galloping forward at full speed,
when his horse, struck with a score of balls, was killed
under him ; as the horse dropped, the rider was flung
over his head and terribly bruised from crown to heel,
while the ankle of his left foot, catching in the stirrup,
was dislocated. He lay conscious, but perfectly still,
well knowing that the slightest movement would bring
him a shower of bullets ; then at length, watching his
chance, he leaped to his feet and regained his own lines,
after a sharp chase, and mounted his orderly's horse.
He kept his men in some order and shook off the en
emy, till the fog lifted, when they began to fight with
more confidence, continually pressed by the enemy, but
retreating slowly and in good order. After retiring
three -or four miles, Hayes joined his force with another

HAYES A BRIGADIER-GENERAL. 95

body and succeeded in checking the enemy's advance ;
his men took rails from the fences and made fires for cof
fee, and he lay down on the creek bank with Crook and
other officers, and talked of the shame of defeat by forces
they had beaten so often. Crook wished to attack them,
but Wright being in command, nothing was done. At
this juncture Sheridan came up, and after a brief parley
with Crook, said, " Boys, we will have a good thing,
for we will be in our camp before night. Set your
watches," and he fixed the minute when they were to
move out. At three o'clock they attacked the enemy
and surprised him in turn, and the victory followed. In
spite of his dislocated ankle and the injuries received in
his fall, Hayes was able to keep the saddle throughout
the day ; before the close he received another wound,
but it was slight ; he was struck in the head by a spent
ball.

That night, Sheridan, denouncing the manner in
which his army had been used by having so many
divisions commanded by colonels, said to Hayes, " You
will be a brigadier-general from this time." When
the promotion actually came, he wrote home a letter
so like himself, in due sense of the honor and in de
cent self-respect, that we shall need no excuse, with the
reader at least, in giving it here in full.

" General Crook gave me a very agreeable present
this afternoon — a pair of his old brigadier-general
straps. The stars are somewhat dimmed with hard
service, but will correspond pretty well with my rusty
old blouse. Of course, I am very much gratified with

yb ODDS IN BRIGADIERS.

the promotion. I know perfectly well that the rank
has been conferred on all sorts of small people, and so
cheapened shamefully, but I can't help feeling that
getting it at the close of a most bloody campaign, on
the recommendation of fighting generals like Crook
and Sheridan, is a different thing from the same rank
conferred — well, as it has been in some instances."

Whilst he was doing all that hard fighting in the
valley of the Shenandoah, he had been elected to
Congress from the second Ohio district, and he got the
news after the battle of Cedar Creek. In one of his
admirable letters home he expresses his gratification, but
adds : " My particular gratification is much less than it
would be if I were not so much more gratified by my
good luck in winning ' golden opinions ' in the more
stirring scenes around me here. My share of notoriety
here is nothing at all, and my real share of merit is
also small enough, I know ; but the consciousness that I
am doing my part in these brilliant actions, is far more
gratifying than anything the election brings me."

Between the beginning of May and end of October,
1864, Hayes was under fire on sixty days, and he was
under fire on s&ven hundred days in the course of the
war. He was four times wounded, the severest wound
being that received at South Mountain. Yet the
wound from which he has suffered most is hardly to
be called a wound at all. A fragment of shell struck
so close to his knee as to cut his pantaloons clean
away at that point ; he rode through the day, and never
made anything of the affair, but now, after twelve

A WOUND THAT WILL NOT DISABLE. 97

years, this merely approximate hurt troubles him more
than all the rest, especially in going up stairs.

It is believed, however, that it will not prevent his
ascent of the Capitol steps, on the 4th of March next.

7

ERRATUM.

On page 96, eighth line from bottom, for. " seven hun
dred days," read " about one hundred days."

96 ODDS IN BRIGADIERS.

the promotion. I know perfectly well that the rank
has been conferred on all sorts of small people, and so
cheapened shamefully, but I can't help feeling that
getting it at the close of a most bloody campaign, on
the recommendation of fighting generals like Crook
and Sheridan, is a different thing from the same rank
conferred — well, as it has been in some instances."
Whilst he was doing all that hard fighting in the

here is nothing at an, aim my /ou,* OM^^ _ .

also small enough, I know ; but the consciousness that I
am doing my part in these brilliant actions, is far more
gratifying than anything the election brings me."

Between the beginning of May and end of October,
1864, Hayes was under fire on sixty days, and he was
under fire on siven hundred days in the course of the
war. He was four times wounded, the severest wound
being that received at South Mountain. Yet the
wound from which he has suffered most is hardly to
be called a wound at all. A fragment of shell struck
so close to his knee as to cut his pantaloons clean
away at that point; he rode through the day, and never
made anything of the affair, but now, after twelve

A WOUND THAT WILL NOT DISABLE. 97

years, this merely approximate hurt troubles him more
than all the rest, especially in going up stairs.

It is believed, however, that it will not prevent his
ascent of the Capitol steps, on the 4th of March next.

7

CHAPTER X.

TWICE CONGRESSMAN, THRICE GOVERNOR, AND NOMI
NEE FOR PRESIDENT.

/ HAYES was first nominated for Congress by the Re
publicans of the second Cincinnati district in August,
and elected in October, 1864, in the very hottest of
the Shenandoah Valley fighting, when nearly every day
brought its battle, and every day was full of suffering
and danger. The letter which he wrote when the
news of his nomination reached him, with a hint that
his presence in Cincinnati would secure his election, is
as magnanimous as Clay's "I would rather be right
than be President," and its words are such as deserve
to live long after this political campaign, whatever its
results may be, is forgotten. He confesses that though
he had cared very little about being a candidate, he pre
fers now to succeed after having consented to the use
of his name, but as to the matter of going home on fur
lough, he adds : " An officer Jit for duty, who at this
crisis would abandon his post to electioneer for Congress,
ought to be scalped. You may feel perfectly, sure I shall
do no such thing"

He had not, of course, sought the nominaticn, but at
the urgence of his friends he had let the matter take

ELECTED TO CONGRESS WHILE IN THE FIELD. 99

its course, and he was elected by a majority which
showed that no other Republican could have carried the
district. But he did not take his seat in Congress till
after the war was over, and the faithful troops he had
so long commanded no longer had a foe to face.

After the Shenandoah Valley campaign, his command
went into winter quarters and was not engaged after
wards. In the comparative quiet of this time he felt free
to ask leave of absence, and he went to Washington to
see Lincoln inaugurated, on the 4th of March, 1865 (hav
ing first paid a brief visit to his family in Ohio), and then
returned to camp. The news of the President's murder
came to him with shocking force after so recently wit
nessing his entry upon a second term of beneficent
power, and Hayes immediately wrote to his wife a let
ter too good in itself, and too significant in many ways,
to be omitted from this record. It is not merely a testi
mony to character and feeling on his part, but it is sug
gestive of her enlightened sympathy with him in mat
ters of public concern, and hints of qualities of mind
and heart in her more common to the White House in
the days of Mrs. Washington and of Mrs. Madison than
in our own.

"NEW CREEK, WEST VIRGINIA, ISth April (Sunday), 1865.

" When I heard first, yesterday morning, of the awful
tragedy at Washington, I was pained and shocked to a
degree I have never before experienced. I got on to
the cars, then just starting, and rode down to Cumber
land. The probable consequences, or rather the pos
sible results, in their worst imaginable form, were pre-

100 LETTER ON LINCOLN'S DEATH.

sented to my mind, one after the other, until I really
began to feel that here was a calamity so extensive
that in no direction could be found any, the slightest
glimmer, of consolation. The nation's great joy turned
suddenly to a still greater sorrow ! A ruler tested and
proved in every way, and in every way found equal to
the occasion, to be exchanged for a new man whose
ill-omened beginning made the nation hang its head !
Lincoln for Johnson ! The work of reconstruction,
requiring so much statesmanship, just begun ! The
calamity to Mr. Lincoln in a personal point of view
so uncalled for a fate ! — so undeserved, so unpro
voked ! The probable effect upon the future of pub
lic men in this country, the necessity for guards ; our
ways to be assimilated to those of the despotisms of
the old world — and so I would find my mind filled
only with images of evil and calamity, until I felt a
sinking of heart hardly equaled by that which op
pressed us all when the defeat of our army at Manassas,
almost crushed the nation. But slowly, as in all cases
of great affliction, one comes to feel that it is not all
darkness ; the catastrophe is so much less, happening
now, than it would have been at any time before, since
Mr. Lincoln's election. At the period after his first
inauguration ; at any of the periods of great public
confusion ; during the pendency of the last presiden
tial election ; at any time before the defeat of Lee,
such a calamity might have sealed the nation's doom.
Now, the march of events can't be stayed, probably
can't be much changed. It is possible that a greater

ESTIMATE OF LINCOLN'S CHARACTER. 101

degree of severity in dealing with the 'rebellion may
be ordered, and that may be for the best. As to Mr.
Lincoln's name and fame and memory, — all is safe.
His firmness, moderation, goodness of heart ; his quaint
humor, his perfect honesty and directness of purpose,
his logic, his modesty, his sound judgment and great
-wisdom ; the contrast between his obscure beginnings
and the greatness of his subsequent position and
achievements ; his tragic death, giving him almost the
crown of martyrdom, elevate him to a place in his
tory second to none other in ancient or modern times.
His success in his great office, his hold upon the confi
dence and affections of his countrymen, we shall all
say are only second to Washington's ; we shall prob
ably feel and think that they are not second even to
his."

In April, Hayes, to his own regret and the grief of
his old brigade, was transferred to a new command
under Hancock,1 and he was the leader of that expedi-

1 Hayes bade his old command farewell in terms expressive of the
strong affection existing between them : —

" It is with very great regret that I have been compelled to part
with the officers and men of the first brigade. With many of you
I have been associated in the service almost four years ; with three
of the regiments of the brigade more than two years, and with all the
regiments during the memorable campaign of 1864. The battle of
Cloyd Mountain ; the burning of New River bridge, and the night
march over Salt Pond Mountain under General Crook in May; the
days and nights of marching, fighting, and starving on the Lynch-
burg raid in June; the defeat at Winchester, and the retreat on the
24th and 25th of July; the skirmishing, marching, and countermarch
ing in the Shenandoah Valley in August; the bloody and brilliant
victories in September; the night battle at Berry ville ; the turn-

102 k PAr.TRTG FROM R'S ' OLD BRIGADE.

tion against Lynchburg which was given up after Lee's
surrender and the ruin of the Confederacy. Shortly
after, the work being done and other work calling him,
he sent in his resignation, which took effect on the
1st of June. But before he left the army he had the
glory of participating in the grand review at Wash
ington ; and no one in all those hundred thousands
had a better right to the triumph of that great day
than this honest man, this faithful soldier, this stain
less patriot.

ing of the enemy's left at Sheridan's battle of Winchester; the ava
lanche which swept down North Mountain upon the rebel stronghold
at Fisher's Hill; the final conflict in October; the surprise and defeat
of the morning, and the victory of the evening at Cedar Creek, —
these and a thousand other events and scenes in the campaign of 1864
form part of our common recollections which we are not likely ever
to forget. As long as they are remembered, we shall be reminded of
each other and of the friendly and agreeable relation which so long
existed between us.

"It is very gratifying to me that I was allowed to serve with you
until we received together the tidings of the great victory which ends
the rebellion. Whatever may be your fortune, I shall not cease to
feel a lively interest in everything which concerns your welfare and
reputation."

Hayes himself afterwards came to acquiesce in the change, but his
old brigade was not so easily consoled. One of his officers wrote : —

"WINCHESTER, VIRGINIA, April 20, 1865.

"When I learned that you were taken away from us, I was so in
dignant I could hardly refrain from language considered highly un-
military; not that I have aught against our present brigade com
mander — for he has my confidence and respect — but because I think
that by a just and equitable title, sealed with blood, dearly bought,
and fairly won, thi* /* your brit/mle. In this war men become attached
to each other by more than common ties. I have been clear ' through
the mill,' from Washington to Chattanooga; you are my choice of all
the brigade commanders I have been under, save and except Crook."

NOT A CONGRESSIONAL ORATOR. 103

In October, Hayes returned to Cincinnati and re
opened his old house, and in December he took his seat
in Congress, where he at once made himself quietly
felt as a thorough and diligent worker. Two or three
ingrained habits of his life forbade him to make him
self conspicuous on the floor. In the first place, as
we have already repeatedly shown, it was Hayes's cus
tom to study any new business and fit himself for suc
cess in it, and congressmanship was an entirely new
business to him. Then he is a man whose inherent
modesty and self-respect are at one in keeping him
aloof from any mere noisy exhibition of himself, or from
attempting anything which he believes the greater ex
perience of others will enable them to perform better.
Above all, his army life had given him an ever-increas
ing contempt of unnecessary and intrusive eloquence,
and he wrote to a friend, — one of many eager that he
should distinguish himself in the usual congressional
way, — "I am disgusted at the shameful waste of time
and patience the so-called orators of Washington make,"
and he refused to " distinguish himself " accordingly.
He went to work as chairman of the library com
mittee, and urged the extension and increase of the
library. Chiefly by his efforts, the space and material
were increased threefold; the Force Historical Library
was added to that of Congress, and the Smithsonian
Library transferred to it. He was instrumental in the
purchase of many valuable works, and on the com
mittee, his artistic taste as well as his literary knowl
edge were felt. No vote of his ever favored the pur-

104 WORK IN CONGRESS.

chase of trashy pictures or sculptures, and he constantly
advocated the selection of known and able artists for
government commissions.

On other committees he was a conscientious worker,
knowing that the real business of legislation is done
across the committee tables, and not by the speechifyers
on the floor of the House.

His first vote was given for a resolution requiring the
maintenance of the public faith " sacred and inviolable "
from " any attempt to scale or repudiate " the national
debt; and he early introduced and carried through a
resolution to provide for the special punishment of
agents or attorneys defrauding soldiers and sailors in
the matter of their pensions and bounties. Renomi-
nated by acclamation in 1866, and reflected by a ma
jority which showed a gain while the rest of the ticket
showed a loss, he continued especially to interest him
self in behalf of the soldiers, and as a commander
singularly beloved and trusted by his men he was, of
course, overwhelmed with their claims and applica
tions.

He refused here, as always, to make his office a means
of office ; he did his duty, and let his future take care
of itself. He was always in his seat ; he never shirked
responsibility or dodged a vote ; he voted with his
party on all the measures of reconstruction, and he was
incessantly active in a personal as well as public way in
securing the passage and ratification of the thirteenth
and fourteenth amendments.

Even before taking his seat in Congress, he was

ELECTED AND REFLECTED GOVERNOR. 105

meditating retirement from public life, either to his
uncle's farm in Fremont, or his own law practice in
Cincinnati, and nothing but the sense of public duty pre
vailed with him to accept the nomination for governor
of Ohio, offered him in 1869. He gave up his place
in Congress, however, to meet an emergency of national
significance, and in a campaign conducted with all the
fire of a nature kindled through and through by his
experiences in fighting the same ideas on the battle-field,
he beat his opponent, the present Senator Thurman, by a
majority that no one else could have commanded. The
questions at issue were the reconstruction measures,
which the Democrats assailed, taking their stand upon
a platform prepared by the late Mr. Vallandigliam,;.
(whose course, only more open than that of Mr. Tildeojjf
in the war it is merciful not to remember,) and prac
tically in favor of State supremacy. The canvass was
very excited, and Hayes and Thurman spoke daily
throughout the State, alternately attacking each other's
positions, and replying and rejoining almost for the
hundredth time. Hayes's personal popularity gave the
Eepublicans their governor, but the legislature and the
constitutional amendment was lost by fifty thousand ma
jority. That legislature, therefore, refused to ratify
the amendments, and it elected Mr. Thurman to the
United States Senate.

In 1869 Hayes was renominated in the Republican
convention by acclamation ; and the Democrats nomi
nated General Rosecrans. That gallant soldier refused
to stand on a platform declaring that the whole bonded

106 REFUSAL TO TAKE THE SENATORSHIP.

debt should be paid in greenbacks, and embodying what
ever existed of enmity to the cause for which he had
fought, and the nomination was passed on to Mr. Pen-
dleton, who hesitatingly accepted, and was duly beaten
at the October elections.

f j It has been well known in Ohio that Hayes could
'• jhave been easily elected United States Senator in the
place of Mr. Sherman in 1872, if he had been the man
•to profit by prosperous chances at the expense of a
friend whom he honored and admired. The Republican
majority in the legislature was small, and enough of
the Republicans were disaffected to form with the will
ing Democrats (always personally fond of Hayes) the
number requisite to choose him. But he promptly
and severely discouraged the movement, and the man
who ought to have been elected, and who was the choice
of the greater part of the Republicans, succeeded where
a sordid or selfish rival could have secured his defeat.
i At the end of his second term as governor, Hayes
wished to retire from political life. " I, too," he wrote
to a friend, " mean to be out of politics. The ratifica
tion of the fifteenth amendment" (this had in the mean
time taken place) " gives me the boon of equality be
fore the law, terminates my enlistment, and discharges
me cured." His letters and journal entries are to the
same effect. His interest in public affairs was still in
tense, but personally he did not care any longer to take
part in them. 1" In spite of his protests," as the dis
patch announcing the fact ran, he wa's nominated in his
old Cincinnati district in 1872 by the Republicans, who

RETIREMENT TO FREMONT. 107

had not ceased to ask for the use of his name, and who
had used it against his express desire. He went down
and made the canvass, delivering some of his best
speeches, but the reaction against Republicanism had
set in so strongly that he was beaten, though by a ma
jority not half so great as that which defeated his fellow
Republican in the other Cincinnati district. He de
clined the appointment of Assistant United States Treas
urer at Cincinnati, offered him by Grant, and retired to
Fremont. His uncle Birchard, his life-long benefactor
and friend, died in 1874, leaving him a handsome for
tune, and Hayes made the good old man's house his
home, planning to live there a life of leisure and of
books, not unmindful of good citizenship, but no longer
troubled by the cares and responsibilities of active pol
itics.

His journals of this period form a curious study of
such a man in the fulfillment of such a purpose. His
keen delight in nature is oddly mingled with his inex
tinguishable interest in public affairs. He sets down
in the same entry the aspects of the weather and the
probable effects of such and such measures upon the
party and the country. He records the -fact that he
has put away his sleigh for the season, but we find that
he has not put away his uneasiness about the currency.
A robin who steals a whole spool of thread for his nest,
and hopelessly entangling himself, hangs dangling by
the neck in one of the dooryard trees, does not affect
him more than the spectacle of the Democratic pol
iticians who promise themselves prosperity on an excess

108 THIRD NOMINATION FOR GOVERNOR.

of greenbacks. Nevertheless the domestic and agri
cultural interests do finally prevail, and there are long
spaces in the diaries where politics are never men
tioned — where the thermometer completely displaces
the President.

In 1875 Ohio had had for one term a Democratic
governor for the first time in nearly twenty years —
a very good governor, as far as economical administra
tion went, and a very bad governor, as far as ideas on
the currency went : William Allen, namely, of un
tainted personal character, but politically besotted with
seventy years of unmitigated Democracy. He was
strong with his party, he was strong with the people,
and how to get rid of a man so much worse than any
worse man was a vital question with the Republicans.

Hayes had been approached in his philosophical re
tirement at Fremont, but though flattered with the
prospect of being a third time governor, as an honor
never before conferred on any citizen of Ohio, he had
thought the matter over, and he decidedly refused to
let his name go before the convention. It became day
by day more apparent that the Republicans could suc
ceed with no other name, and that without it the cause
of honest money and of public self-respect must be lost.
Still Hayes refused, and upon the knowledge of his
determined refusal, his old friend, Judge Taft, of Cin
cinnati, afterwards Secretary of War, allowed himself
to be proposed in the convention. The convention
nominated Hayes, and then made his nomination unani
mous. A dispatch was sent to Hayes, who, considering

NO DIVISION OF THE SCHOOL FUND. 109

the circumstances under which his friend had suffered
himself to appear as a candidate for nomination, felt
doubly bound to decline. He stood reading over the
form of his refusal with a friend, when a second dis
patch arrived, saying that Judge Taft's name had been
withdrawn by Mr. Taft, his son, and that it was upon
Mr. Taft's motion that Hayes's nomination had been
made unanimous. Hayes tore up his refusal and ac
cepted ; and now ensued the famous campaign of 1875,
which made Ohio the national battle-ground, where
Hayes, Schurz, Sherman, TVoodford, Morton, Dawes,
Oglesby, Garfield, Taft, and Windom supported the
cause of good sense and good faith in currency against
the inflationists, who are now the friends of that emi
nent and disinterested hard-money man, Mr. Tilden.

Another very important element in the canvass, es
pecially urged by Hayes, was the question of secular
against ecclesiastical education. The Democratic party,
always prompt to make use of whatever is reactionary
in our civilization, had already in its brief term of power
in Ohio made haste to truckle to the priest-led foreign
ers, who demanded a division of the school-fund. Hayes
insisted upon the political recognition of the fact known
to us all, that our system of free secular schools, with
all its errors and short-comings, was the very basis of
our liberties, and that any division of the school-fund
meant chaos come again. He thoroughly aroused peo
ple and politicians to a sense of this ; the liberal Ger
mans and the freedom-loving voters of all the churches
made common cause against the priests, and the tri-

110 STATE DEBT REDUCED.

umph that ensued was owing, far more than has been
realized, to the abhorrence excited by the attempt
upon the public schools. If any reader here fancies
himself beguiled with a travesty of Italian story, let
him turn to the Catholic journals of Ohio, and see how
bold was the assault, and how real the danger. Of
Catholics as religionists, Hayes is no enemy, but he is
the relentless enemy of Catholics as Catholic politicians,
•just as he would be the enemy of Methodists as Metho
dist politicians.

Hayes has now been some five years governor of
Ohio, and though often thwarted by Democratic leg
islation, has succeeded in reducing the State debt
$2,773,406, and the State tax from 3.5 mills on the
dollar to 2.9, with an annual saving of $914,593. By
continued pressure upon the legislature he reduced
the local taxation throughout the State more than
$17,000,000, and through his influence local authorities
were forbidden by law to make any large expenditure
without the sanction of a popular vote — wherein the
people of Ohio are much freer than those of Massa
chusetts. He also secured the passage of a law pro
hibiting municipalities from incurring debts beyond the
amounts actually in their treasuries. These measures
he has urged in the prime of a life whose dearest ac
tion was spent in the tented field, and was never for a
moment sullied by association with ring-thieves. His
principle of retrenchment is not a mere twelvemonth
old, nor his patriotism the growth of the years since
the nation was made. He helped to make it, and his

A PRACTICAL CIVIL SERVICE REFORMER. Ill

public economies are the expression of a life-long pri
vate honesty.

So, also, his devotion to civil service reform is not
merely a profitable novelty. Eight years ago he sup
ported Jenckes's bill, and six years ago he recom
mended in one of his messages the amendment of the
Ohio constitution, so as to make civil service reform a
part of the organic law. He did more ; he showed his
faith by his works. When he became governor, he was
importuned by old and dear friends, to turn out the
Democratic State librarian, and give the office, one of
the few in the governor's gift, to a most worthy and
competent Republican. He refused.

" The present incumbent " (he wrote) " of the libra-
rianship is a faithful, painstaking old gentleman with a
family of invalid girls dependent on him. His courtesy
and evident anxiety to accommodate all who visit the
library have secured him the indorsement of almost all
who are in the habit of using the books, and under the
circumstances I cannot remove him. Old associations,
your fitness, and claims draw me the other way, but
you see, etc., etc. Very sincerely, R. B. HAYES."

Of course the pressure brought to bear upon a gov
ernor in such a case is as nothing compared to the
pressure brought to bear upon the President, but it is
the same in kind though so differenHn quantity, and it
would be very interesting indeed to know whether Mr.
Tilden can point to a single Republican whom he has
kept in office because he was " painstaking, faithful, and
courteous."

112 A DEMOCRATIC INVESTIGATION.

Among other reforms, Hayes has repeatedly urged
upon the legislature the adoption of some/form of mi
nority representation, and the passage of registration
laws to secure the purity of elections, and he has never
ceased to urge the punishment of malfeasance in office.
The highest testimony to the purity of his administra
tion is to be found on the lips of his enemies — his
political enemies ; he has only friends, personally. At
the end of his second term, the Democrats appointed a
committee to investigate the administration of affairs
under him. This was the chairman's report : —

" The special committee appointed under House reso
lution No. 113 report as follows: The examination has
taken a wide range. One hundred and nine witnesses,
residing in various parts of the State, have been sub
poenaed and examined touching public contracts and
expenditures, construction of public buildings, conduct
of public institutions, etc. All matters, without refer
ence to the date of their occurrence, coming to the knowl
edge of the committee, that seemed to promise any prob
ability of throwing any light upon the subjects of inquiry,
or any of them, have been diligently inquired into.

" Your committee take pleasure in reporting that, so
far as elective officers and their subordinates are con
cerned, very commendable honesty and fidelity have
been observed, and that in the official conduct of no
public officer, whether elective or appointive, has cor
ruption been disclosed."

As governor, Hayes has been tireless in the promo
tion of schemes of public beneficence and advantage, such

PHILANTHROPIC PROJECTS. 113

as the removal of the incurably insane from the jails
and poorhouses to fitting quarters in the State asylums,
the establishment of a reform school for girls and a
reform farm for boys, greater humanity as well as
greater economy in the management of the State prison,
and above all the founding of a soldiers' and sailors'
orphans' home. His heart, never insensible to the
claim of friendless sorrow, quick to the misery alike
of the incurable insane and of the curable depraved,
was most deeply touched by the condition of the chil
dren of those who died for freedom and nationality.
" During the war for the Union," he wrote in his sec
ond annual message, " the people of this State ac
knowledged their obligation to support the families of
their absent soldiers, and undertook to meet it, not as a
charity, but as a partial compensation justly due for
services rendered. The nation is saved, and the obli
gations to care for the orphans of the men who died to
save it still remain to be fulfilled. It is officially esti
mated that three hundred soldiers' orphans, during the
past year, have been inmates of the county infirmaries of
the State. It is the uniform testimony of the directors
of county infirmaries that those institutions are wholly
unfit for children ; that in a majority of cases they are
sadly neglected, and that even in the best infirmaries
the children are subject to the worst moral influences.
Left by the death of their patriotic fathers in this de
plorable condition, it is the duty of the State to assume
their guardianship, and to provide support, education,
and homes to all who need them."
8

114 GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF OHIO.

i

Again, in his second inaugural he said : " Under the
providence of God the people of this State have greatly
prospered. But in their prosperity they cannot forget
' him who hath borne the battle, nor his widow nor his
orphan,' or the thousands of other sufferers in our midst
who are entitled to sympathy and relief. They are to
be found in our hospitals, our infirmaries, our asylums,
our prisons, and in the abodes of the unfortunate and
the erring. The Founder of our religion, whose spirit
should pervade our laws, and animate those who enact
and those who enforce them, by his teaching and his
example has admonished us to deal with all the victims
of adversity as the children of our common Father."

It is not alone in the gentle and sober feeling of
passages like this that Hayes reminds us of Lincoln ;
much also in the essential modesty, the quiet firmness,
the unaggressive self-respect of our leader recalls the
man who had a genius for^being simply great.

A very important public work recommended and
urged to completion by Hayes is the geological sur
vey of Ohio, which has not only been of great use to
science, but of incalculable material advantage to Ohio,
in the development of her mineral resources. In fine,
every project for the enlightened advancement of the
public interest, morals, or taste, during the years since
Hayes has been governor, has had him for its author
or its powerful and effective friend.1

1 For a full account of Hayes's gubernatorial services and adminis
trations, we refer the reader to the conscientious and painstaking chap
ters in Mr. J. Q. Howard's Life of Hayes. (Robert Clarke & Co.,
Cincinnati.)

FIRST NAMED FOR PRESIDENT. 115

But we can no longer dwell upon this period of his
history, for we now approach the moment when from
being a man of national importance he became also a
man of national note. He had not been elected gov
ernor in 1875 before he began to be President in Ohio.
As soon as his election was known, a newspaper of
the old Giddings and Garfield district, representing the
perennial political right-mindedness of the " Western
Reserve," printed his name as candidate, and through
out the whole vast State the prophetic instinct of his
supreme fitness began to possess the people, though at
first the Republican and the conditionally Republican
press were by no means united upon him.

As for himself, he seems to have given himself no
concern about the presidency, but to have gone qui
etly about his business of governor. No man could
hear himself much talked of for the chief place in a
nation like this without feeling some share of the pop
ular excitement, but no man was less capable of pushing
himself for such a place than Hayes. We have seen
many letters of his, written during the period when
the movement in his favor was gathering strength and
form (a fact which every Ohioau felt in his bones,
however insensible the osseous structure of Eastern
Republicans remained), and they all point to the fact
that, while he was not indifferent to it, he was firmly
resolved to have nothing to do with it.

In one of these letters, shown us by his correspond
ent, he wrote : " I am not pushing, directly or indi
rectly. It is not likely that I shall. If the sky falls

116 A MANLY EXPRESSION.

we shall all catch larks. On the topics you name, a
busy seeker after truth would find my views in speeches
and messages, but I shall not help him to find them. I
appreciate your motives and your friendship. But it
is not the thing for you or me to enroll ourselves in
the great army of office-seekers. Let the currents
alone."

This was the tenor of all his expressions. From his
diary we permit ourselves a single paragraph, which
not only shows his mind in March last, but also shows
the man as he has been all his life: tranquilly self-
reliant, high-purposed, and resolute never to act from
personal ambition. " With so general an impression in
my favor in Ohio, and a fair degree of assent elsewhere,
especially in States largely settled by Ohio people, I
have supposed that it was possible I might be nomi
nated. But with no opportunity and no desire to make
combinations or to lay wires, I have not thought my
chances worth much consideration. I feel less diffidence
in thinking of this subject than perhaps I ought. It
seems to me that good purposes, and the judgment, ex
perience and firmness I possess would enable me to
execute the duties of the office well. I do not feel the
least fear that I should fail ! "

After the Ohio State convention met and instructed
its delegates to vote for Hayes in the national conven
tion, his attitude changed only so far as was involved in
a feeling of allegiance to his friends, and a sense of his
obligation not to embarrass their efforts in his behalf.
This is not the time, and this is not the place to say

THE CINCINNATI CONVENTION. 117

whom Hayes expected to be nominated at Cincinnati,
but we know upon the authority of those constantly
about him at the time that he did not at all expect the
nomination for himself until the sixth ballot, and then
when the result came on the seventh ballot he could
scarcely accept the fact a's true.

We need not weary the reader with the twice-told tale
of the convention's proceedings, but we cannot deny
ourselves the pleasure of reproducing entire in this
place the exquisitely fitting speech in which ex-Gov
ernor Noyes of Ohio presented Hayes's name.

GENTLEMEN : On behalf of the forty-four delegates
from Ohio, representing the entire Republican party of
Ohio, I have the honor to present to this convention
the name of a gentleman well known and favorably
known throughout the country ; one held in high re
spect, and much beloved by the people of Ohio ; a man
who, during the dark and stormy days of the rebellion,
when those who are invincible in peace and invisible in
battle were uttering brave words to cheer their neigh
bors on, himself, in the fore-front of battle, followed
his leaders and his flag until the authority of our gov
ernment was established from the Lakes to the Gulf,
and from the river round to the sea ; a man who has
the rare good fortune since the war was over to be
twice elected to Congress from the district where he
resided, and subsequently the rarer fortune of beating
successively for the highest office in the gift of the peo
ple of Ohio, Allen G. Thurman, George H. Pendleton,

118 EX-GOVERNOR NOYES'S SPEECH.

and William Allen. He is a gentleman who has some
how fallen into the habit of defeating Democratic aspi
rants for the presidency, and we in Ohio all have a
notion that from long experience he will be able to do
it again. In presenting the name of Governor Hayes,
permit me to say we wage no war upon the distin
guished gentlemen whose names have been mentioned
here to-day. They have rendered great service to
their country, which entitles them to our respect and
to our gratitude. I have no word to utter against
them. I only wish to say that General Hayes is the
peer of these gentlemen in integrity, in character, in
ability. They appear as equals in all the great quali
ties which fit men for the highest positions which the
American people can give them. Governor Hayes is
honest ; he is brave ; he is unpretending ; he is wise,
sagacious, a scholar, and a gentleman. Enjoying an
independent fortune, the simplicity of his private life,
his modesty of bearing, is a standing rebuke to the ex
travagance — the reckless extravagance — which leads
to corruption in public and in private places.

Remember now, delegates to the convention, that
a responsible duty rests upon you. You can be gov
erned by no wild impulse. You can run no fearful
risks in this campaign. You must, if you would suc
ceed, nominate a candidate here who will not only carry
the old, strong Republican States, but who will carry
Indiana, Ohio, and New York, as well as other doubt
ful States. We care not who the man shall be, other
than our own candidate. Whoever you nominate, men

ADVANTAGES AS A CANDIDATE. 119

of the convention, shall receive our heartiest and most
earnest efforts for their success. But we beg to sub
mit that in Governor Hayes you have those qualities
which are calculated best to compromise all difficulties,
and to soften all antagonisms. He has no personal ene
mies. His private life is so pure that no man has ever
dared assail it. His public acts throughout all these
years have been above suspicion, even. I ask you then
if, in the lack of these antagonisms and with all of these
good qualities, living in a State which holds its election
in October, the result of which will be decisive, it may
be, of the presidential campaign, it is not worth while
to see to it that a candidate is nominated against whom
nothing can be sard, and who is sure to succeed in the
campaign ?

In conclusion, permit me to say that, if the wisdom
of this convention shall decide at last that Governor
Hayes's nomination is safest and is best, that decision
will meet with such responsive enthusiasm here in Ohio
as will insure Republican success at home, and which
will be so far-reaching and wide-spreading as to make
success almost certain from the Atlantic to the Pa
cific.

With his name thus presented, and with the forty-
four Ohio delegates faithfully, ballot after ballot, throw
ing in his favor the weight of what was best in the
sentiment of a State so eminent in war, so wise in the
uses of peace, his final success was, in the opinion of those
skilled in judging such matters, only a question of time.

120 NOMINATED FOR THE PRESIDENCY.

This history is by no means too dignified to tell how
the news came to the lady who, we hope, is soon to
renew the best traditions of the White House. She
was absent from home on a visit of mercy at one of th.e
State asylums, and a carriage was sent to recall her.
The driver was charged with no message except that
she was to return home at once, and she drove back
in alarmed expectation of some domestic calamity,
merely to find that her husband had been nominated
for the presidency.

CHAPTER XI.
HAYES'S POLITICAL POSITIONS AND OPINIONS.

THE sum of all these positions and opinions is the
now famous letter of acceptance, which the whole party
joyfully ratified and made its political creed. It shall be
given in full, and then we shall show how it is merely
the final expression of principles and ideas long since
expressed by its author.

THE LETTER OF ACCEPTANCE.

COLUMBUS, OHIO, July 8, 1876.
Hon. Edward McPherson, Hon. Wm. A. Howard, Hon.

Joseph H. Rainey, and others, Committee of the

Republican National Convention.

GENTLEMEN, — In reply to your official communica
tion of June 17th, by which I am informed of my nomi
nation for the office of President of the United States
by the Republican National Convention at Cincinnati, I
accept the nomination with gratitude, hoping that under
Providence I shall be able, if elected, to execute the
duties of the high office as a trust for the benefit of all
the people.

I do not deem it necessary to enter upon any
extended examination of the declaration of principles

122 LETTER OF ACCEPTANCE.

made by the convention. The resolutions are in accord
with my views, and I heartily concur in the principles
they announce. In several of the resolutions, however,
questions are considered which are of such importance
that I deem it proper to briefly express my convictions
in regard to them.

The fifth resolution adopted by the convention is of
paramount interest. More than forty years ago, a sys
tem of making appointments to office grew up, based
upon the maxim, " To the victors belong the spoils."
The old rule — the true rule — that honesty, capacity,
and fidelity constitute the only real qualifications for
office, and that there is no other claim, "gave place to
the idea that party services were to be chiefly considered.
All parties, in practice, have adopted this system. It
has been essentially modified since its first introduction.
It has not, however, been improved.

At first, the President, either directly or through the
heads of departments, made all the appointments. But
gradually the appointing power, in many cases, passed
into the control of members of Congress. The offices,
in these cases, have become not merely rewards for
party services, but rewards for services to party leaders.
This system destroys the independence of the separate
departments of the government; it tends directly to ex
travagance and official incapacity ; it is a temptation to
dishonesty ; it hinders and impairs that careful super
vision and strict accountability by which alone faithful
and efficient public service can be secured ; it obstructs
the prompt removal and sure punishment of tin; un-

CIVIL SERVICE REFORM. 123

worthy. In every way it degrades the civil service and
the character of the government. It is felt, I am confi
dent, by a large majority of the members of Congress,
to be an intolerable burden, and an unwarrantable
hindrance to the proper discharge of their legitimate
duties. It ought to be abolished. The reform should
be thorough, radical, and complete. —

We should return to the principles and practice of
the founders of the government, supplying by legisla
tion, when needed, that which was formerly established
custom. They neither expected nor desired from the
public officer any partisan service. They meant that
public officers should owe their whole service to the
government and to the people. They meant that the
officer should be secure in his tenure as long as his per
sonal character remained untarnished and .the perform
ance of his duties satisfactory. If elected, I shall con
duct the administration of the government upon these
principles ; and all constitutional powers vested in the
executive will be employed to establish this reform.

The declaration of principles by the Cincinnati con
vention makes no announcement in favor of a single
presidential term. I do not assume to add to that
declaration ; but, believing that the restoration of the
civil service to the system established by Washington
and followed by the early presidents can be best accom
plished by an executive who is under no temptation to
use the patronage of his office to promote his own re
election, I desire to perform what I regard as a duty, in
stating now my inflexible purpose, if elected, not to be
a candidate for election to a second term.

124 THE CURRENCY QUESTION.

On the currency question I have frequently ex
pressed my views in public, and I stand by my record
on this subject. I regard all the laws of the United
States relating to the payment of the public indebted
ness, the legal tender notes included, as constituting a
pledge and moral obligation of the government, which
must in good faith be kept. It is my conviction that
the feeling of unce~ ainty inseparable from an irre
deemable paper currency, with its fluctuations of values,
is one of the great obstacles to a revival of confidence
and business, and to a return of prosperity. That un
certainty can be ended in but one way — the resump
tion of specie payments ; but the longer the instability
connected with our present money system is permitted
to continue, the greater will be the injury inflicted
upon our economical interests and all classes of so
ciety.

If elected, I shall approve every appropriate measure
to accomplish the desired end, and shall oppose any
step backward.

The resolution with respect to the public school
system is one which should receive the hearty support
of the American people. Agitation upon this subject
is to be apprehended, until, by constitutional amend
ment, the schools are placed beyond all danger of sec
tarian control or interference. The Republican party
is pledged to secure such an amendment.

The resolution of the convention on the subject of
the permanent pacification of the country, and the com
plete protection of all its citizens in the free enjoyment

THE CONDITION OF THE SOUTH. 125

of all their constitutional rights, is timely and of great
importance. The condition of the Southern States
attracts the attention and commands the sympathy of
the people of the whole Union. In their progressive
recovery from the effects of the war, their first neces
sity is an intelligent and honest administration of gov
ernment, which will protect all classes of citizens in all
their political and private rights. What the South most
needs is peace, and peace depends upon the suprem
acy of law. There can be no enduring peace if the
constitutional rights of any portion of the people are
habitually disregarded. A division of political parties
resting merely upon distinctions of race, or upon sec
tional lines, is always unfortunate, and may be disas
trous. The welfare of the South, alike with that of
every other part of the country, depends upon the at
tractions it can offer to labor, to immigration, and to
capital. But laborers will not go, and capital will not
be ventured, where the constitution and the laws are
set at defiance, and distraction, apprehension, and alarm
take the place of peace-loving and law-abiding social
life. All parts of the constitution are sacred, and must
be sacredly observed, the parts that are new no less
than the parts that are old. The moral and material
prosperity of the Southern States can be most effect
ively advanced by a hearty and generous recognition of
the rights of all by all, a recognition without reserve
or exception.

With such a recognition fully accorded, it will be
practicable to promote, by the influence of all legiti-

126 THE ISSUES OF THE HOUR.

mate agencies of the general government, the efforts of
the people of those States to obtain for themselves the
blessings of honest and capable local government.

If elected, I shall consider it not only my duty, but
it will be my ardent desire, to labor for the attain
ment of this end.

Let me assure my countrymen of the Southern States
that if I shall be charged with the duty of organizing
an administration, it will be one which will regard and
cherish their truest interests — the interests of the
white and of the colored people both, and equally ; and
which will put forth its best efforts in behalf of a civil
policy which will wipe out forever the distinction be
tween North and South in our common country.

With a civil service organized upon a system which
will secure purity, experience, efficiency, and economy ;
with a strict regard for the public welfare, solely, in
appointments ; with the speedy, thorough, and unspar
ing prosecution and punishment of all public officers
who betray official trusts ; with a sound currency ; with
education unsectarian and free to all ; with simplicity
and frugality in public and private affairs, and with a
fraternal spirit of harmony pervading the people of all
sections and classes, we may reasonably hope that the
second century of our existence as a nation will, by the
blessing of God, be preeminent as an era of good feel
ing, and a period of progress, prosperity, and happiness.

Very respectfully, Your fellow-citizen,

E. B. HAYES.

OPPOSED TO THE SPOILS DOCTRINE. 127

CIVIL SERVICE REFORM.

In this letter the first and most important matter
touched is that of the civil service, in which, as we
have already seen, Hayes had long before been a prac
tical reformer. He had also constantly urged the re
form in private and in public, officially and personally.
Jenckes's and TrumbulPs bills had received his vote and
hearty approval, and to a friend he had written early
in March, 1870, " I agree with you perfectly in the
spoils doctrine. This you would know if you had read
my last inaugural. I am glad you do not bore your
self with such reading generally, but you are in for it
now, and I shall send you a copy." " For many
years," he said, addressing a legislature of that Demo
cratic party which invented the present infamous sys
tem, " political influence and political services have
been essential qualifications for employment in the civil
service, whether State or national. As a general rule,
such employments are regarded as terminating with the
defeat of the political party under which they began.
All political parties have adopted this rule. In many
offices the highest qualifications are only obtained by
experience. Such are the positions of the warden of
the penitentiary and his subordinates, and the superin
tendents of asylums and reformatories and their assist
ants. But the rule is applied to these as well as to
other offices and employments. A change in the polit
ical character of the executive and legislative branches
of the government is followed by a change of the offi-

128 CIVIL SERVICE REFORM PRACTICABLE.

cers and employees in all of the departments and institu
tions of the State. Efficiency and fidelity to duty do
not prolong the employment ; unfitness and neglect of
duty do not always shorten it. The evils of this sys
tem in State affairs are, perhaps, of small moment com
pared with those which prevail under the same system
in the transaction of the business of the national gov
ernment. But at no distant day they are likely to
become serious, even in the administration of State
affairs. The number of persons employed in the va
rious offices and institutions of the State must increase,
under the most economical management, in equal ratio
with the growth of our population and business.

" A radical reform in the civil service of the general
government has been proposed. The plan is to make
qualifications, and not political services and influence,
the chief test in determining appointments, and to give
subordinates in the civil service the same permanency
of place which is enjoyed by officers of the army and
navy. The introduction of this reform will be at
tended with some difficulties. But in revising our
State constitution, if this object is kept constantly in
view, there is little reason to doubt that it can be suc
cessfully accomplished." £j*)(

In his annual message of January, 187^, he recurred
to the subject of civil service, and urged its reforma
tion through the prompt punishment of frauds. " What
the public welfare demands," he said, " is a practical
measure which will provide for a thorough and impar
tial investigation in every case of suspected neglect,

A PLAN SUGGESTED. 129

abuse, or fraud. Such an investigation, to be effective,
must be made by an authority independent, if possible,
of all local influences. When abuses are discovered,
the prosecution and punishment of offenders ought to
follow. But even if prosecutions fail in cases of full
exposure, public opinion almost always accomplishes the
object desired. A thorough investigation of official cor
ruption and criminality leads with great certainty to
the needed reform. Publicity is a great corrector of
official abuses. Let it therefore be made the duty of
the governor, on satisfactory information that the pub
lic good requires an investigation of the affairs of any
public office or the conduct of any public officer,
whether State or local, to appoint one or more citizens
who shall have ample powers to make such investi
gation. If by the investigation violations of law are
discovered, the governor should be authorized, in his
discretion, to notify the attorney-general, whose duty it
should be, on such notice, to prosecute the offenders.
The constitution makes it the duty of the governor to
* see that the laws are faithfully executed.' Some such
measure as the one here recommended is necessary to
give force and effect to this constitutional provision."

Again, in a speech which he made in 1872, he advo
cated a complete reform in almost the exact terms of
the letter of acceptance.

" There are," he declared, " several questions relating
to the present and the future which merit the attention
of the people. Among the most interesting of these
is the question of civil service reform.

130 GROWTH OF THE SPOILS SYSTEM.

" About forty years ago a system of making appoint
ments to office grew up, based on the maxim, ' To the
victors belong the spoils.' The old rule — the true
rule — that honesty, capacity, and fidelity constitute the
highest claim to office, gave place to the idea that par
tisan services were to be chiefly considered. All par
ties in practice have adopted this system. Since its
first introduction it has been materially modified. At
first the President, either directly or through the heads
of departments, made all appointments. Gradually, by
usage, the appointing power in many cases was trans
ferred to members of Congress — to senators and rep
resentatives. The offices in these cases have become
not so much rewards for party services as rewards for
personal services in nominating and electing senators
and representatives. What patronage the President
and his cabinet retain, and what offices congressmen are
by usage entitled to fill is not definitely settled. A
congressman who maintains good relations with the ex
ecutive usually receives a larger share of patronage
than one who is independent. The system is a bad
one. It destroys the independence of the separate de
partments of the government, and it degrades the civil
service. It ought to be abolished. General Grant has
again and again explicitly recommended reform. A
majority of Congress has been unable to agree upon
any important measure. Doubtless the bills which
have been introduced contain objectionable features.
But the work should be begun. Let the best obtain
able bill be passed, and experience will show what

AN EARLY FRIEND OF REFORM. 131

amendments are required. I would support either
Senator Trumbull's bill or Mr. Jenckes's bill, if nothing
better were proposed. The admirable speeches on this
subject by the representative of the first district, the
Hon. Aaron F. Perry, contain the best exposition I
have seen of sound doctrine on this question, and I
trust the day is not distant when the principles which
he advocates will be embodied in practical measures of
legislation. We ought to have a reform of the system
of appointments to the civil service, thorough, radical,
and complete."

It is not necessary to expatiate on these positions, so
distinct and so explicit that there is no mistaking them.
Taken in connection with the expressions of the letter
of acceptance, and the facts of Hayes's gubernatorial
administrations, they show that civil service reform has
been his settled conviction and his practice for the last
eight years. He was one of the very first friends of
the reform, and it is simply absurd to compare with him
on this ground a man who was the political ally of
public plunderers when Hayes was urging administra-
tional purity and efficiency by precept and example.

CURRENCY.

In regard to honest money, — the duty of the gov
ernment to keep its promises to pay to the last mill, —
Hayes now stands where he has stood ever since his
political thinking began, ever since his boyhood. For
the last year, his success has been the expression of the
people's will in this direction ; he is, in fact, the most

132 THE CURRENCY QUESTION.

eminent exemplification of the public sense of honor
on this point. No other man represents as he does at
this moment the popular idea that just debts should be
fully paid, and in nowise shirked or evaded. His
speeches and letters and private diaries so abound with
opinions to this effect, that it is hard to choose from
them.

In a speech delivered at Glendale in 1872, from
which we have already given some passages on civil
service reform, he handled the no less vital question
with as frank a touch. "We want a financial policy so
honest that there can be no stain on the national honor
and no taint on the national credit ; so stable that
labor and capital and legitimate business of every sort
can confidently count upon what it will be the next
week, the next month, and the next year. "We want
the burdens of taxation so justly distributed that they
will bear equally upon all classes of citizens in propor
tion to their ability to sustain them. We want our
currency gradually to appreciate until, without financial
shock or any sudden shrinkage of values, but in the
natural course of trade, it shall reach the uniform and
permanent value of gold. With lasting peace assured,
and a sound financial condition established, the United
States and all of her citizens may reasonably expect to
enjoy a measure of prosperity without a parallel in the
world's history."

He was not only always right in this matter, but he
always felt sure of the people's good sense and honesty,
and he entered upon the famous campaign of 1875 in

SPEECH AT MARION. 133

the full confidence that " if the party in power were op
posed to a sound, safe, stable currency .... the peo
ple would make a change." He conducted the canvass
upon the principle that there was a sense of justice and
of self-respect in the popular heart which would finally
respond to his own, and while his opponents appealed
to the people's self-interest and all the sordid motives
that prompt human nature, he steadily addressed their
reason and their consciences.

A few passages from one of the many speeches he
made on the currency question will serve to show the
simple, direct, quiet fashion in which he dealt with
hearers whom he assumed to be equally willing with
himself to think and to do right. The speech in ques
tion was made at Marion, Ohio, on the 31st of last
July. " The most important part," he said, " in fact
the only important part of the Democratic platform in
Ohio this year, which receives or deserves much atten
tion, is that in which is proclaimed a radical departure
on the Subject of money from the teachings of all of
the Democratic fathers. This Ohio Democratic doc
trine inculcates the abandonment of gold and silver as
a standard of value. Hereafter gold and silver are to
be used, as money only ' where respect for the obliga
tion of contracts requires payment in coin.' The only
currency for the people is to be paper money, issued
directly by the general government, ' its volume to be
made and kept equal to the wants of trade,' and with
no provision whatever for its redemption in coin. The
Democratic candidate for lieutenant-governor, who

134 EVILS OF AN INFLATED CURRENCY.

opened the canvass for his party, states the money issue
substantially as I have. General Gary, in his Barnes-
ville speech, says : —

" ' Gold and silver, when used as money, are redeem
able in any property there is for sale in the nation,
will pay taxes for any debt, public or private. This
alone gives them their money value. If you had a
hundred gold eagles, and you could not exchange them
for the necessaries of life, they would be trash, and you
would be glad to exchange them for greenbacks or any
thing else that you could use to purchase what you
require. With an absolute paper money, stamped by
the government and made a legal tender for all pur
poses, its functions as money are as perfect as gold or
silver can be ! '

" This is the financial scheme which the Democratic
party asks the people of Ohio to approve at the elec
tion in October. The Republicans accept the issue.
Whether considered as a permanent policy or as an ex
pedient to mitigate present evils, we are opposed to it.
It is without warrant in the constitution, and it violates
all sound financial principles.

" The objections to an inflated and irredeemable
paper currency are so many that I do not attempt to
state them all. They are so obvious and so familiar
that I need not elaborately present or argue them. All
of the mischief which commonly follows inflated and
inconvertible paper money may be expected from this
plan, and in addition it has very dangerous tendencies,
which are peculiarly its own. An irredeemable and in-

NO LIMIT TO ITS VOLUME. 135

flated paper currency promotes speculation and extrava
gance, and at the same time discourages legitimate busi
ness, honest labor, and economy. It dries up the true
sources of individual and public prosperity. Over-trad
ing and fast living always go with it. It stimulates the
desire to incur debt ; it causes high rates of interest ;
it increases importations from abroad ; it has no fixed
value ; it is liable to frequent and great fluctuations,
thereby rendering every pecuniary engagement pre
carious, and disturbing all existing contracts and expec
tations. It is the parent of panics. Every period of
inflation is followed by a loss of confidence, a shrink
age of values, depression of business, panics, lack of
employment, and widespread disaster and distress. The
heaviest part of the calamity falls on those least able to
bear it. The wholesale dealer, the middle-man, and
the retailer always endeavor to cover the risks of the
fickle standard of value by raising their prices. But
the men of small means and the laborer are thrown out
of employment, and want and suffering are liable soon
to follow.

" When government enters upon the experiment of
issuing irredeemable paper money, there can be no
fixed limit to its volume. The amount will depend on
the interest of leading politicians, on their whims, and
on the excitement of the hour. It affords such facility
for contracting debt that extravagant and corrupt gov
ernment expenditure are the sure result. Under the
name of public improvements the wildest enterprises,
contrived for private gain, are undertaken. Indefinite

136 THE GOVERNMENT'S PLEDGE.

expansion becomes the rule, and in the end bankruptcy,
ruin, and repudiation.

" During the last few years a great deal has been
said about the centralizing tendency of recent events
in our history. The increasing power of the govern
ment at Washington has been a favorite theme for
Democratic declamation. But where, since the foun
dation of the government, has a proposition been seri
ously entertained which would confer such monstrous
and dangerous powers on the general government as
this inflation scheme of the Ohio Democracy ? During
the war for the Union, solely on the ground of neces
sity, the government issued the legal-tender or green
back currency. But they accompanied it with a solemn
pledge, in the following words of the act of June 30,
1864: —

" l Nor shall the total amount of United States notes
issued or to be issued ever exceed four hundred millions,
and such additional sum, not exceeding fifty millions,
as may be temporarily required for redemption of tem
porary loans.'

" But the Ohio inflationists, in a time of peace, on
grounds of mere expediency, propose an inconvertible
paper currency, with its volume limited only by the
discretion or caprice of its issuers, or their judgment
as to the wants of trade. The most distinguished gen
tleman whose name is associated with the subject once
said, ' The process must be conducted with skill and
caution, .... by men whose position will enable them
to guard against any evil/ and using a favorite illustra-

DANGERS OF INFLATION. 137

tion he said, ' The secretary of the treasury ought to
be able to judge. His hand is upon the pulse of the
country. He can feel all the throbbings of the blood
in the arteries. He can tell when the blood flows too
fast and strong, and when the expansion should cease.'
This brings us face to face with the fundamental error
of this dangerous policy. The trouble is, the pulse of
the patient will not so often decide the question as the
interest of the doctor. No man, no government, no
Congress is wise enough and pure enough to be trusted
with this tremendous power over the business and
property and labor of the country. That which con
cerns so intimately all business should be decided, if
possible, on business principles, and not be left to de
pend on the exigencies of politics, the interests of
party, or the ambition of public men. It will not do
for property, for business, or for labor to be at the
mercy of a few political leaders at Washington, either
in or out of Congress. The best way to prevent it is
to apply to paper money the old test sanctioned by the
experience of all nations — let it be convertible into
coin. If it can respond to this test, it will, as nearly
as possible, be sound, safe, and stable. ....

" The credit of the nation depends on its ability and
disposition to keep its promises. If it fails to keep
them, and suffers them to depreciate, its credit is
tainted, and it must pay high rates of interest on all of
its loans. For many years we must be a borrower in
the markets of the world. The interest-bearing debt
is over seventeen hundred millions of dollars. If we

138 COST OF IMPAIRED CREDIT.

could borrow money at the same rate with some of the
great nations of Europe, we could save perhaps two
per cent, per annum on this sum. Thirty or forty
millions a year we are paying on account of tainted
credit. The more promises to pay an individual issues,
without redeeming them, the worse becomes his credit.
It is the same with nations. The legal-tender note for
five dollars is the promise of the United States to pay
that sum in the money of the world, in coin. No time
is fixed for its payment. It is therefore payable on
presentation — on demand. It is not paid ; it is past
due ; and it is depreciated to the extent of twelve per
cent. The country recognizes the necessities of the
situation, and waits, and is willing to wait, until the
productive business of the country enables the govern
ment to redeem. But the Columbus financiers are not
satisfied. They demand the issue of more promises.
This is inflation. No man can doubt the result. The
credit of the nation will inevitably suffer. There will
be further depreciation. A depreciation of ten per
cent, diminishes the value of the present paper currency
from fifty to one hundred millions of dollars. Its ef
fect on business would be disastrous in the extreme.
The present legal tenders have a certain steadiness,
because there is a limit fixed to their amount. Public
opinion confides in that limit. But let that limit be
broken down, and all is uncertainty. The authors of
this scheme believe inflation is a good thing. When
this subject was under discussion, a few years ago, the
' Cincinnati Enquirer ' said, ' The issue of two millions

INFLATION MEANS REPUDIATION. 139

dollars of currency would only put it in the power of
each voter to secure $400 for himself and family to
spend in the course of a life-time. Is there any voter
thinks that is too much — more than he will want ? J
This shows what the platform means. It means infla
tion without limit ; and inflation is the downward path
to repudiation. It means ruin to the nation's credit, and
to all individual credit. All the rest of the world have
the same standard of value. Our promises are worth
less as currency the moment you pass our boundary line.
Even in this country, very extensive sections still use
the money of the world. Texas, the most promising
and flourishing State of the South, uses coin. Cali
fornia and the other Pacific States and Territories do
the same. Look at their condition. Texas and Cali
fornia are not the least prosperous part of the United
States. This scheme cannot be adopted. The opin
ion of the civilized world is against it. The vast ma
jority of the ablest newspapers of the country is against
it. The best minds of the Democratic party are against
it. The last three Democratic candidates for the pres
idency were against it. The German citizens of the
United States, so distinguished for industry, for thrift,
and for soundness of judgment in all practical money
affairs, are a unit against it. The Republican party is
against it. The people of Ohio will, I am confident,
decide in October to have nothing to do with it."

After all, however, in this matter of honest money,
as in all others, the nearer you can come to Hayes, the
more of a man you find him, and a letter of his, not

140 LETTER TO GENERAL GARFIELD.

written for the public eye, shows better than any med
itated utterance how sturdily steadfast he continues in
the principles of common sense and of common justice.

EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT, STATE OF OHIO, COLUMBUS, j
March 4, 1876. i

MY DEAR GENERAL GARFIELD, — I have your
note of 2d. I am kept busy with callers, correspond
ence, and the routine details of the office, and have
not therefore tried to keep abreast of the currents of
opinion on any of the issues. My notion is that the
true contest is to be between inflation and a sound cur
rency. The Democrats are again drifting all to the
wrong side. We need not divide on details, on meth
ods, or time when.

The previous question will again be irredeemable
paper as a permanent policy, or a policy which seeks a
return to coin. My opinion is decidedly against yield
ing a hair's breadth.

We can't be on the inflation side of the question.
We must keep our face, our front, firmly in the other
direction. " No steps backward" must be something more
than unmeaning platform words. " The drift of senti
ment among our friends in Ohio," which you inquire
about, will depend on the conduct of our leading men. It
is for them to see that the right sentiment is steadily
upheld. We are in a condition such that firmness and
adherence to principle are of peculiar value just now.
I would " consent " to no backward steps. To yield or
compromise is weakness, and will destroy us. If a
better resumption can be substituted for the present

THE RECONSTRUCTION MEASURES. 141

one, that may do. But keep cool. We can better af
ford to be beaten in Congress than to back out.

Sincerely, R. B. HAYES.

RECONSTRUCTION AND PACIFICATION.

On all the measures of reconstruction, Hayes, while
in Congress, constantly voted with the Republican
party, and his judgment and heart were alike in their
favor. Outside of Congress he was active in securing
the adoption of the constitutional amendments; as gov
ernor, " believing that the measure was right, and that
the people approved of it," he recommended the ratifi
cation of the fifteenth amendment ; and he duly had the
pleasure of certifying to the general government the
fact of its adoption. He held that " the United
States were not a confederacy bound together by a
mere treaty or compact, but a nation," in which equality
was "an equality of rights." It was his firm belief
that " the first and highest duty of the people of the
North to themselves, to the South, to their country,
and to God, was to crush the rebellion," and that " after
the suppression of the rebellion, the next plain duty of
the national government was to see that the lives, lib
erty, and property of all classes of citizens were secure,
and especially to see that the loyal white and colored
citizens who resided, or might sojourn in those States,
did not suffer injustice, oppression, or outrage because
of their loyalty."

In a speech made during his campaign against Thur-
man in 1867, he dealt with fallacies which are as impu
dently proposed to-dny as they were then : —

142 THE LOST CAUSE NOT ABANDONED.

" Our adversaries are accustomed to talk of the re
bellion as an affair which began when the rebels at
tacked Fort Sumter in 1861, and which ended when
Lee surrendered to Grant in 1865. It is true that the
attempt by force of arms to destroy the United States
began and ended during the administration of Mr. Lin
coln. But the causes, the principles, and the motives
which produced the rebellion are of an older date than
the generation which suffered from the fruit they bore,
and their influence and power are likely to last long after
that generation passes away. Ever since armed rebel
lion failed, a large party in the South have struggled
to make participation in the rebellion honorable, and
loyalty to the Union dishonorable. The lost cause
with them is the honored cause. In society, in busi
ness, and in politics, devotion to treason is the test of
merit, the passport to preferment. They wish to return
to the old state of things, an oligarchy of race and the
sovereignty of States.

" To defeat this purpose, to secure the rights of man,
and to perpetuate the national Union, are the objects
of the congressional plan of reconstruction. That plan
has the hearty support of the great generals (so far as
their opinions are known) — of Grant, of Thomas, of
Sheridan, of Howard — who led the armies of the
Union which conquered the rebellion. The statesmen
most trusted by Mr. Lincoln and by the loyal people of
the country during the war also support it. The
supreme court of the United States, upon formal ap
plication and after solemn argument, refuse to interfere

ENFRANCHISEMENT OF THE BLACKS. 143

with its execution. The loyal press of the country,
which did so much in the time of need to uphold the
patriot cause, without exception are in favor of the plan."

In the same effort — so nobly free from the arts of
the rhetorician and the clap-trap of the politician —
he said of the proposal to enfranchise the blacks : —

" There are now within the limits of the United
States about five millions of colored people. They are
not aliens or strangers. They are here not by the
choice of themselves or of their ancestors. They are
here by the misfortune of their fathers and the crime
of ours. Their labor, privations, and sufferings, unpaid
and unrequited, have cleared and redeemed one third
of the inhabited territory of the Union. Their toil has
added to the resources and wealth of the nation untold
millions. Whether we prefer it or not, they are our
countrymen, and will remain so forever.

" They are more than countrymen — they are citi
zens. Free colored people were citizens of the colonies.
The constitution of the United States, formed by our
fathers, created no disabilities on account of color. By
the acts of our fathers and of ourselves, they bear
equally the burdens, and are required to discharge the
highest duties of citizens. They are compelled to pay
taxes and to bear arms. They fought side by side with
their white countrymen in the great struggle for inde
pendence, and in the recent war for the Union. In the
revolutionary contest colored men bore an honorable
part, from the Boston Massacre, in 1770, to the sur
render of Cornwallis, in 1781. Bancroft says: ' Their

144 COLORED MEN AS SOLDIERS.

names may be read on the pension rolls of the country
side by side with those of other soldiers of the Revolu
tion.' In the war of 1812, General Jackson issued an
order complimenting the colored men of his army en
gaged in the defense of New Orleans. I need not
speak of their number or of the war of the rebellion.
The nation enrolled and accepted then; among her de
fendants to the number of about two hundred thousand,
and in the new regular army act, passed at the close of
the rebellion by the votes of Democrats and Union
men alike, in the Senate and in the House, and by the
assent of the President, regiments of colored men,
cavalry and infantry, form part of the standing army
of the republic.

" In the navy, colored American sailors have fought
side by side with white men from the days of Paul
Jones to the victory of the Kearsarge over the rebel
pirate Alabama. Colored men will, in the future as in
the past, in all times of national peril, be our fellow-
soldiers. Tax-payers, countrymen, fellow-citizens, and
fellow soldiers, the colored men of America have been
and will be. It is now too late for the adversaries of
nationality and human rights to undertake to deprive
these tax-payers, freemen, citizens, and soldiers of the
right to vote.

" Slaves were never voters. It was bad enough that
our fathers, for the sake of union, were compelled to
allow masters to reckon three fifths of their slaves for
representation, without adding slave suffrage to the
other privileges of the slave-holder. But free colored

NOT A WHITE MAN'S GOVERNMENT. 145

men were always voters in many of the colonies, and
in several of the States, North and South, after inde
pendence was achieved. They voted for members of
the Congress which declared independence, and for
members of every Congress prior to the adoption of the
federal constitution; for the members of the conven
tion which framed the constitution ; for the members
of many of the State conventions which ratified it, and
for every President from Washington to Lincoln.

" Our government has been called the white man's
government. Not so. It is not the government of
any class, or sect, or nationality, or race. It is a gov
ernment founded on the consent of the governed, and
Mr. Broomall, of Pennsylvania, therefore properly calls
it 'the government of the governed/ It is not the
government of the native born, or of the foreign born,
of the rich man, or of the poor man, of the white man,
or of the colored man — it is the government of the
freeman. And when colored men were made citizens,
soldiers, and freemen, by our consent and votes, we
were estopped from denying to them the right of suf
frage."

Up to the present moment Hayes has receded from
none of his positions upon reconstruction, and as to the
pacification of the South he has never ceased to desire
and promote it. But as the French philosopher said
in assenting to the proposition that capital punishment
should be abolished : " Very well ; let the murderers
begin." No white man throughout the whole length
and breadth of the South, no matter how rebellious he
10

146 A SOUTHERN DEMOCRAT'S TESTIMONY.

may have been ; no ex-Confederate steeped in North
ern blood, will be molested by President Hayes in the
rights of his restored citizenship ; no Southerner who
does not fear justice need fear him.' And this fact
Southerners understand as well as we. It is the banded
murderers who slay in secret and openly, who violate
the rights of other men to life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness — it is these alone who have cause to
dread his election, not such true men as the writer of
the following letter, who differs from tens of thousands
of others in the South only in publicly avowing what
they privately feel to be true.

GALVESTON, April 18, 1876.
HON. A. B. NORTON :

DEAR SIR, — I am indebted to your kindly feeling
for the intelligence of the 18th inst., containing your
article on Governor R. B. Hayes and " old Kenyon,"
the alma mater of each of us.

I have seen with much pleasure and satisfaction that
Governor Hayes has been frequently mentioned by the
press, and unanimously nominated by the Republican
convention of Ohio, for the presidency of the United
States.

Although I am, and have long been from principle,
a Democrat, and expect to support and vote the Dem
ocratic ticket at the next presidential election, yet I
hope Governor Hayes will receive the nomination of
the Republican party ; for, if your party should be
successful, there is no distinguished member of it I
would rather see President than Rutherford B. Hayes,

WHAT THE SOUTH NEEDS. 147

for I know him well, and I believe that he is honest,
that he is capable, and that he will be faithful to the
constitution. Having been in Congress four years,
and governor of Ohio the third time, he has experi
ence, and is a statesman of incorruptible integrity,
besides being a genial and dignified gentleman, a
scholar, a sound lawyer and patriot — one who, if
elected, would be President for the whole country, and
not for a section. What the South most needs is good
local government, and one in the presidential chair who
will do all he can under the constitutions, Federal and
State, to promote it. I believe, if elected, Hayes will
do this.

In addition to what I have said, I will add that he
has, of my own knowledge, a personal interest in our
State. He spent the winter and part of the spring of
1848 and 1849 in Texas. Since then he has kept up
his interest in our State, and to-day has a better Texan
library than many of our own educated citizens. In
the first speech of his late political campaign (which he
sent me), he spoke of Texas in the most compliment
ary manner. I can most truthfully say that my old
classmate, and almost life-long friend, Rutherford B.
Hayes, deserves all and more than all that you have
said of him ; and I believe, if he should be chosen
President, that he will make such a President as to se
cure the confidence of the South as well as the North ;
and if any one of your party can bring back the Mon
roe era of good feeling in politics, it is R. B. Hayes.
Very truly, etc., GUY M. BRYAN.

148 SECULAR FREE EDUCATION.

The reader will remember the writer of this letter,
and will honor his frankness and loyalty to his old
friend in a section where the terror of social ostracism,
quite as much as political conviction, will reduce the
white vote for Hayes to a minimum. Southerners like
him have the sympathy and compassion of all right-
thinking Northern men, and they may rest secure in
Mr. Bryan's confidence. But neither they nor any one
could make a greater mistake than to suppose that
Hayes is one of the vulgar sentimentalists who would
barter the sacred and terrible memories of the past for
a moment of unmeaning effusion ; one of the witless
and heartless milksops who befoul, in their brutal
phrase of the " bloody shirt," the fame of those who
died on battle-field and in prison:pen during the war,
and have since perished in the same cause by assassina
tion all over the South.

SECULAR FREE EDUCATION.

On this point, as on all others, Hayes has had per
fect confidence in the people. At a serenade given him
in Columbus after his last nomination for governor, he
said : " If it shall turn out that the party in -power is
dangerously allied to any body of men who are opposed
to our free schools, and have proclaimed undying hos
tility to our educational system, then I doubt not the
people will make a change in the administration."
And in his speech at Marion in the same canvass he
treated the question at length. " Altogether the most
interesting questions in our State affairs," he said, " are

THE WAR AGAINST PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 149

those which relate to the passage, by the last legisla
ture, of the Geghan bill [to provide Catholic books for
prisoners in the pententiary], and the war which the
sectarian wing of the Democratic party is now waging
against the public schools. In the admirable speech
made by Judge Taft at the Republican State conven
tion, he sounded the key-note to the canvass on this
subject. He said, ' Our motto must be universal liberty
and universal suffrage, secured by universal education.'
Before we discuss these questions, it may be well, in
order that there may be no excuse for further misrep
resentation, to show by whom this subject was intro
duced into politics, and to state explicitly that we at
tack no sect and no man, either Protestant or Jew,
Catholic or unbeliever, on account of his conscientious
convictions in regard to religion. Who began the agi
tation of this subject ? Why is it agitated ? All parties
have taken hold of it. The Democratic party in their
State convention make it the topic of their longest res
olution. In their platform they gave it more space
than any other subject except the currency. Many
of the Democratic county conventions also took action
upon it.

" The Republican State convention passed resolu
tions on the question. It is stated that it was con
sidered in about forty Republican county conventions.
The State Teachers' Association, at their last meeting,
passed unanimously the following resolution. Mr. Tap-
pan, from the committee on resolutions, reported the
following : —

150 DIVISION OF THE SCHOOL FUND.

"'Resolved, That we are in favor of a free, impartial,
and unsectarian education for every child in the State,
and that any division of the school fund or appropria
tion of any part thereof to any religious or private
school would be injurious to education and the best in
terests of the church/

" The assemblies of the different religious denomina
tions in the State which have recently been held have
generally, and I think without exception, passed similar
resolutions. If blame is to attach to all who consider
and discuss this question before the public, we have
had a very large body of offenders. But I have not
named all who are engaged in it. I have not named
those who began it ; those who for years have kept it
up ; those who in the press, on the platform, in the
pulpit, in legislative bodies, in city councils, and in
school boards, now unceasingly agitate the question.
Everybody knows who they are ; everybody knows that
the sectarian wing of the Democratic party began this
agitation, and that it is bent on the destruction of our
free schools

"The sectarian agitation against the public schools
was begun many years ago. During the last few years
it has steadily and rapidly increased, and has been en
couraged by various indications of possible success. It
extends to all of the States where schools at the com
mon expense have been long established. Its triumphs
are mainly in the large towns and cities. It has already
divided the schools, and in a considerable degree im
paired ax*d limited their usefulness. The glory of the

4

THE AMERICAN IDEA OF EDUCATION. 151

American system of education has been that it was so
cheap that the humblest citizen could afford to give his
children its advantages, and so good that the man of
wealth could nowhere provide for his children anything
better. This gave the system its most conspicuous
merit. It made it a republican system. The young
of all conditions of life are brought together and edu
cated on terms of perfect equality. The tendency of
this is to assimilate and to fuse together the various
elements of our population, to promote unity, harmony,
and general good-will in our American society. But
the enemies of the American system have begun the
work of destroying it. They have forced away from
the public schools, in many towns and cities, one third
or one fourth of their pupils, and sent them to schools
which it is safe to say are no whit superior to those
they have left. These youth are thus deprived of the
associations and the education in practical republican
ism and American sentiments which they peculiarly
need. Nobody questions their constitutional and legal
right to do this, and to do it by denouncing the public
schools. Sectarians have a lawful right to say that
these schools are ' a relict of paganism — that they are
godless,' and that ' the secular school system is a so
cial cancer.' But when, having thus succeeded in di
viding the schools, they make that a ground for abol
ishing school taxation, dividing the school fund, or
otherwise destroying the system, it is time that its
friends should rise up in its defense.
."We all agree that neither the government nor

I

152 DEMOCRATIC ATTACK ON THE SCHOOLS.

political parties ought to interfere with religious sects.
It is equally true that religious sects ought not to in
terfere with the government or with political parties.
We believe that the cause of good government and the
cause of religion both suffer by all such interference.
But if sectarians make demands for legislation of po
litical parties, and threaten that party with opposition
at the elections in case the required enactments are
not passed, and if the political party yields to such
threats, then those threats, those demands, and that
action of the political party become a legitimate sub
ject of political discussion, and the sectarians who thus
interfere with the legislation 'of the State are alone
responsible for the agitation which follows.

" And now a few words as to the action of the last
legislature on this subject. After an examination of
the Geghan bill, we shall perhaps come to the conclu
sion that in itself it is not of great importance. I
would not undervalue the conscientious scruples on the
subject of religion of a convict in the penitentiary,
or of any unfortunate person in any State institution.
But the provision of the constitution of the State
covers the whole ground. It needs no awkwardly
framed statute of doubtful meaning, like the Geghan
bill, to accomplish the object of the organic law.

" The author of the bill wrote, * the members claim
that such a bill is not needed.' The same opinion
prevails in New Jersey, where a similar bill is said to
have been defeated by a vote of three to one. But
the sectarians of Ohio were resolved on the passage of

PRIESTLY THREATS. 153

this bill. Mr. Geghan, its author, wrote to Mr. Mur
phy, of Cincinnati : —

" ' We have a prior claim upon the Democratic party.
The elements composing the Democratic party in Ohio
to-day are made up of Irish and German Catholics, and
they have always been loyal and faithful to the inter
ests of the party. Hence the party is under obligations
to us, and we have a perfect right to demand of them,
as a party, inasmuch as they are in control of the State
legislature and State government, and were by both
our means and votes placed where they are to-day, that
they should, as a party, redress our grievances.'

" The organ of the friends of the bill published this
letter, and among other things said : —

" * The political party with which nine tenths of the
Catholic voters affiliate, on account of past services that
they will never forget, now controls the State. With
draw the support which Catholics have given to it, and
it will fall in this city, county, and State as speedily
as it has risen to its long lost position and power.
That party is now on trial. Mr. Geghan's bill will
test the sincerity of its professions.'

" That threat was effectual. The bill was passed,
and the sectarian organ therefore said : —

" * The unbroken solid vote of the Catholic citizens
of the State will be given to the Democracy at the fall
election.'

" In regard to those who voted against the bill, it
said : * They have dug their political grave ; it will not
be our fault if they do not fill it. When any of them ap-

154 PASSAGE OF THE GEGHAN BILL.

pear again in the political arena, we will put upon them
a brand that every Catholic citizen will understand.'
No defense of this conduct of the last legislature has
yet been attempted. The facts are beyond dispute.
This is the first example of open and successful sec
tarian interference with legislation in Ohio. If the
people are wise, they will give it such a rebuke in Octo
ber that for many years, at least, it will be the last.

" But it is claimed that the schools are in no danger.
Now that public attention is aroused to the importance
of the subject, it is probable that in Ohio they are safe.
But their safety depends on the rebuke which the peo
ple shall give to the party which yielded last spring at
Columbus to the threats of their enemies. It is said
that no political party * desires the destruction of the
schools.' I reply, no political party ' desired ' the pas
sage of the Geghan bill ; but the power which hates
the schools passed the bill. The sectarian wing of the
Democratic party rules that party to-day in the great
commercial metropolis of the nation. It holds the bal
ance of power in many of the large cities of the coun
try. Without its votes, the Democratic party would
lose every large city and county in Ohio, and every
Northern State. In the presidential canvass of 1864,
it was claimed that General McClellan was as good a
Union man as Abraham Lincoln, and that he was as
much opposed to the rebellion. An eminent citizen of
this State replied : * I learn from my adversaries.
Whom do the enemies of the Union want elected?
The man they are for, I am against.' So 1 would say

ONE TERM; ELECTIVE JUDICIARY. 155

to the friends of the public schools : * How do the
enemies of universal education vote ? ' If the enemies
of the free schools give their ' unbroken, solid vote ' to
the Democratic ticket, the friends of the schools will
make no mistake if they vote the Republican ticket."

ONE TERM FOR PRESIDENT.

We find nothing in Hayes's published writings or
speeches, before the letter of acceptance, bearing upon
this point. But there are other evidences that he was
deliberately arriving at it, and we take leave to think
that a man who has dwelt so long, so closely, and so
penetratingly upon all questions bearing upon admin
istration has probably considered it more thoroughly
and wisely than any of his critics.

In regard to reforms not spoken of in the letter of
acceptance, the reader will be glad to see that Hayes's
progress had been constant and in the right direction.
His views upon the chief of these must suffice.

ELECTIVE JUDICIARY A FAILURE.

" Our judicial system is plainly inadequate to the
wants of the people of the State. Extensive alterations
of existing provisions must be made. The suggestions
I desire to present in this connection are as to the
manner of selecting judges, their terms of office, and
their salaries. It is fortunately true that the judges of
our courts have heretofore been, for the most part, law
yers of learning, ability, and integrity. But it must be
remembered that the tremendous events and the won-

•

156 ECONOMY IN ADMINISTRATION.

derful progress of the last few years are working great
changes in the condition of our society. Hitherto, pop
ulation has been sparse, property not unequally dis
tributed, and the bad elements which so frequently
control large cities have been almost unknown in our
State. But with a dense population crowding into
towns and cities, with vast wealth accumulating in the
hands of a few persons or corporations, it is to be ap
prehended that the time is coming when judges elected
by popular vote, for short official terms, and poorly
paid, will not possess the independence required to pro
tect individual rights. Under the national constitution,
judges are nominated by the executive and confirmed
by the Senate, and hold office during good behavior.
It is worthy of consideration whether a return to the
system established by the fathers is not the dictate of
the highest prudence. 1 believe that a system under
which judges are so appointed, for long terms and with
adequate salaries, will afford to the citizen the amplest
possible security that impartial justice will be admin
istered by an independent judiciary." (Inaugural of
1870.)

ECONOMICAL STATE AND LOCAL ADMINISTRATIONS.

" One of the most valuable articles of the present
State constitution is that which prohibits the State,
save in a few exceptional cases, from creating any debt,
and which provides for the payment at an early day oi
the debt already contracted. I am convinced that it
would be wise to extend the same policy to the creation

TAXES BY THE TAXED. 157

of public debts by county, city, and other local author
ities. The rule, * Pay as you go/ leads to economy in
public as well as in private affairs ; while the power to
contract debts opens the door to wastefulness, extrava
gance, and corruption." (Annual Message, 1871.)

TAXES TO BE VOTED BY TAX-PATERS.

" The constitution makes it the duty of the legis
lature to restrict the powers of taxation, borrowing
money, and the like, so as to prevent their abuse. I
respectfully suggest that the present laws conferring
these powers on local authorities require extensive
modification, in order to comply with this constitutional
provision. Two modes of limiting these powers have
the sanction of experience. All large expenditures
should meet the approval of those who are to bear
their burden. Let all extraordinary expenditures
therefore be submitted to a vote of the people, and
no tax be levied unless approved by a majority of all
the voters of the locality to be affected by the tax, at a
special election, the number of voters to be ascertained
by reference to the votes cast at the State election
next preceding such special election. Another mode is
to limit the rate of taxation which may be levied and
the amount of debt which may be incurred. It has
been said that with such restrictions upon the powers
of local authorities, the legislature will be importuned
and its time wasted in hearing applications for special
legislation. The ready answer to all such applications
by local authorities will be to refer them to their own

158 MUNICIPAL OUTLAYS TO BE CONTROLLED.

citizens for a decision of the question. The facility
with which affirmative votes can be obtained under the
pressure of temporary excitement upon propositions
authorizing indebtedness may require further restric
tions upon the power to borrow money. It is therefore
suggested, for your consideration, to limit the amount
of debt for a single purpose, and the total amount for
all purposes which any local authority may contract to
a certain percentage of the taxable property of such
locality." (Annual Message, 1869.)

" The attention of the legislature has often been
earnestly invoked to the rapid increase of municipal
and other local expenditures, and the consequent aug
mentation of local taxation and local indebtedness.
This increase is found mainly in the cities and large
towns. It is certainly a great evil. How to govern
cities well, consistently with the principles and methods
of popular government, is one of the most important
and difficult problems of our time. Profligate expendi
ture is the fruitful cause of municipal misgovernment.
If a means can be found which will keep municipal ex
penses from largely exceeding the public necessities,
its adoption will go far towards securing honesty and
efficiency in city affairs. In cities, large debts and bad
government go together. Cities which have the lightest
taxes and smallest debts are apt, also, to have the
purest and most satisfactory governments.

" It is not enough to require in every grant of special
authority to incur debt, as a condition precedent, that
the people interested shall approve it by their votes.

PURITY OF THE FRANCHISE. 159

It is well known how easily such elections are carried
under the influence of local excitement and local rival
ries. If the rule of the State constitution which forbids
all debts except in certain specified emergencies is
deemed too stringent to be applied to local affairs, the
legislature should at least accompany every authority
to contract debt with an imperative requirement that a
tax sufficient to pay off the indebtedness within a brief
-period shall be immediately levied, and thus compel
every citizen who votes to increase debts to vote at the
same time for an immediate increase of taxes sufficient
to discharge them." (Inaugural, January, 1876.)

PURITY OF THE FRANCHISE.

" The most important subject of legislation which, in
my judgment, requires the attention of the General As
sembly at its present session, relates to the prevention
of frauds upon the elective franchise. Intelligent men
of all parties are persuaded that at the recent impor
tant State and national elections great abuses of the
right of suffrage were practiced. I am not prepared to
admit that the reports commonly circulated and believed
in regard to such abuses would, so far as the elections
in Ohio are concerned, be fully sustained by a thorough
investigation of the facts. But it is not doubted that,
even at the elections in our own State, frauds were per
petrated to such an extent that all good citizens ear
nestly desire that effective measures may be adopted
by you to prevent their repetition. No elaborate at
tempt to portray the consequences of this evil is re-

160 MINORITY REPRESENTATION.

quired. If it is allowed to increase, the confidence of
the people in the purity of elections will be lost, and
the exercise of the right of suffrage will be neglected.
To corrupt the ballot-box is to destroy our free institu
tions. Let all good citizens, therefore, unite in enact
ing and enforcing laws which will secure honest elec
tions." (Annual Message, November, 1868.)

MINORITY REPRESENTATION.

" All agree that a republican government will fail, un
less the purity of elections is preserved. Convinced
that great abuses of the elective franchise cannot be
prevented under existing legislation, I have heretofore
recommended the enactment of a registry law, and also
of some appropriate measure to secure to the minority,
as far as practicable, a representation upon all boards
of elections. There is much opposition to the enact
ment of a registry law. Without yielding my own
settled convictions in favor of such a law, I content
myself, in this communication, with urging upon your
attention a measure of reform in the manner of con
ducting elections, the importance and justice of which
no one ventures to deny. The conduct of the officers
whose duty at elections it is to receive and count the
ballots, and to make returns of the result, ought to be
above suspicion. This can rarely be the case where
they all belong to the same political party. A fair rep
resentation of the minority will go far, not only to pre
vent fraud, but, what is almost of equal importance, to
remove the suspicion of fraud. I do not express any

FAVORED BY HAYES. 161

preference for any particular plan of securing minority
representation in the boards of judges and clerks of
elections. Various modes have been suggested, and it
will not be difficult to adopt a means of attaining the
desired result which will harmonize with our system of
election law." (Annual Message, 1869.)
11

CHAPTER XII.

CHARACTER : POLITICIAN, ORATOR, PUBLIC SERVANT,
SOLDIER, CITIZEN, MAN.

WE should have written to little purpose if we had
not already given the reader some distinct idea of the
sort of man of whom we have been treating : a man
who, if you look at him from the side of motive, is as
grandly simple a figure as any of " the simple great
ones gone forever and ever by," but who on his intel
lectual side has the due modern complexity. One of
the anomalies which most strikes the observer of his
character is the iron fight which instantly replaces what
seems the normal repose, almost indifference, of his
nature, when once he is called into action of any sort.
Before battle, when not actually charging the enemy,
he was perfectly tranquil ; but when the moment came,
his tranquillity was found heated through, and till the
end arrived his ardor knew no abatement. In his after
political life the same traits appeared, and the man who
never sought an office, who rigidly refused to advance
himself before a convention, had no sooner accepted a
nomination and become responsible for. the success of
a principle, than he threw himself into the work with
a fury that at first astonished, and always dismayed his
enemies.

METHODS OF POLITICAL WARFARE. 163

Some life-long habits of his peculiarly fit him for
success in a political campaign. He has been, as we
have already shown, a constant student of men from
his boyhood, and he has been as thorough a political
observer for as long a time. Every political event of
the smallest significance, every politician of whatever
calibre, has a place in his relentless memory ; he knows
the whole country politically, with only less fullness
than he knows Ohio. In addition to this, he has had
the habit of compiling history from the newspapers as
it was made, and from these collections he has been
able at any time to confront an opponent with the rec
ord of that opponent's political life from the outset. In
certain formidable little books, Mr. Thurman, and Mr.
Pendleton, and Mr. Allen successively found that he
had full and accurate trace of their political turns and
windings ; that a man who had nothing to regret in
his own past had forgotten nothing in theirs. When
these little books were opened on the stump, and their
contents supplemented from his unfailing memory, it
was like the opening of the books of doom for any
hapless politician anxious about his record.

"Whoever met Hayes in political conflict knew that
his warfare would be unsparing ; yet such has always
been the personal charm of the man, the quality of
his high and blameless character, that the bitterest of
his political enemies has been glad to have him for his
friend in social life. At the end of a campaign of
unwonted fierceness, when, last autumn, his success
threw into retirement a man too old to hope for any

164 CHARACTERISTICS ON THE STUMP.

future triumph, the election of Hayes was confessedly
more acceptable to Mr. Allen than that of any other
Republican could have been. " If we must have a
Republican, I am glad it is Hayes," said the ex-gov
ernor to the enterprising interviewer at once set upon
him. Let us hope that Mr. Tilden will be able to con
sole himself with equal magnanimity, when his turn
comes.

On the stump, Hayes is grave, simple, and earnest.
He is no great teller of stories, no maker of laughter;
the fine, rather delicate humor of his intimate life rarely
appears in arguments pressed solidly home to his listen
ers' sense of right. We shall give some idea of his
method of dealing with an opponent by quoting passages
from a speech delivered in the campaign against Thur-
man, but these can convey but a fragmentary impression
after all. If the reader will substitute another name
for Thurman's, he can hardly fail to believe that Hayes
was prophetically arraigning Mr. Tilden eight years ago.
These are the passages from his speech.

"I will quote also from Judge Thurman himself.
In a speech lecturing one of his colleagues, who thought
the Mexican war was unnecessary, he says : —

" * It is a strange way to support one's country right
or wrong, to declare after war has begun, when it exists
both in law and in fact, that the war is aggressive, un
holy, unrighteous, and damnable on the part of the
government of that country, and on that government
rests its responsibility and its wrongfulness. It is a
strange way to support one's country right or wrong in

ARRAIGNMENT OF THURMAN. 165

a war, to tax one's imagination to the utmost to depict
the disastrous consequences of the contest ; to dwell on
what it has already cost and what it will cost in future ;
to depict her troops prostrated by disease and dying
with pestilence ; in a word, to destroy, as far as possi
ble, the moral force of the government in the struggle,
and hold it up to its own people and the world as the
aggressor that merits their condemnation. It was for
this that I arraigned my colleague, and that I intend to
arraign him. It was because his remarks, as far as
they could have any influence, were evidently calculated
to depress the spirits of his own countrymen, to lessen
the moral force of his own government, and to inspire
with confidence and hope the enemies of his country.'

" He goes on further to say : —

" * What a singular mode it was of supporting her in
a war to bring against the war nearly all the charges
that were brought by the peace party Federalists against
the last war, to denounce it as an unrighteous, unholy,
and damnable war; to hold up our government to the
eyes of the world as the aggressors in the conflict ; to
charge it with motives of conquest and aggrandizement ;
to parade and portray in the darkest colors all the hor
rors of war ; to dwell upon its cost and depict its ca
lamities.' A

" Now, that was the doctrine of Judge Thurman as
to the duties of citizens in time of war — in time of
such a war as the Mexican war even, in which no vital
interest of the country could by possibility suffer.
Judge Thurman says that General Hayes, in his speech,

166 A TELLING ATTACK.

has a great many slips cut from the newspapers, and
that he must have had some sewing society of old ladies
to cut out the slips for him. I don't know how he
found that out. I never told it, and you know the
ladies never tell secrets that are confided to them. I
hold in my hand a speech of Judge Thurman, from
which I have read extracts, and I find that he has in it
slips cut from more than twenty different prints, ser
mons, newspapers, old speeches, and pamphlets, to show
how, in the war of 1812, certain Federalists uttered
unpatriotic sentiments. I presume he must have ac
quired his slips on that day in the way he says I ac
quired mine now.

" Now, my friends, I propose to hold Judge Thur
man to no severe rule of accountability for his conduct
during the war. I merely ask that it shall be judged
by his own rule : ' Your country is engaged in war,
and it is the duty of every citizen to say nothing and
do nothing which shall depress the spirits of his own
countrymen, nothing that shall encourage the enemies
of his country, or give them moral aid or comfort.'
That is the rule. Now, Judge Thurman, how does
your conduct square with it ? I do not propose to
begin at the beginning of the war, or even just before
the war, to cite the record of^Judge Thurman. I am
willing to say that perhaps men might have been mis
taken at that time. They might have supposed in the
beginning a conciliatory policy, a non-coercive policy,
would in some way avert the threatened struggle.
But I ask you to approach the period when the war

THE NATURE OF THE GREAT STRUGGLE. 167

was going on, when armies to the number of hundreds
of thousands of men were ready on one side and the
other, and when the whole world knew what was the
nature of the great struggle going on in America.
Taking the beginning of 1863, how stands the conflict ?
We have pressed the rebellion out of Kentucky and
through Tennessee. Grant stands before Vicksburg,
held at bay by the army of Pemberton ; Rosecrans,
after the capture of Nashville, has pressed forward to
Murfreesboro', but is still held out of East Tennessee by
the army of Bragg. The army of the Potomac and
the army of Lee, in Virginia, are balanced, the one
against the other. The whole world knows that that
exhausting struggle cannot last long without deciding
in favor of one side or the other. That the year 1863
is big with the fate of Union and of liberty, every in
telligent man in the world knows — that on one side it
is a struggle for nationality and human rights. There
is not in all Europe a petty despot who lives by grind
ing the masses of the people, who does not know that
Lincoln and the Union are his enemies. There is not
a friend of freedom in all Europe who does not know
that Lincoln and the loyal army are fighting in the
cause of free government for all the world. Now, in
that contest, where are you, Judge Thurman ? It is a
time when we need men and money, when we need to
have our people inspired with hope and confidence.
Your sons and brothers are in the field. Their success
depends upon your conduct at home.

" The men who are to advise you what to do have

168 ATTITUDE OF A PEACE DEMOCRAT.

upon them a dreadful responsibility to give you wise
and patriotic advice. Judge Thurman, in the speech I
am quoting from, says : —

" ' But now, my friends, I shall not deal with obscure
newspapers or obscure men. What a private citizen
like Allen Gr. Thurman may have said in 1861 is a
matter of indifference.'

" Ah, no, Judge Thurman, the Union party does not
propose to allow your record to go without investiga
tion because you are a private citizen. I know you
held no official position under the government at the
time I speak of ; but, sir, you had for years been a
leading, able, and influential man in the great party
which had often carried your State. You were acting
under grave responsibilities. More than that, during
that year, 1863, you were more than a private citizen.
You were one of the delegates to the State convention
of that year ; you were one of the committee that
forms your party platform in that convention ; you
were one of the central committee that carries on the
canvass in the absence of your standard-bearers ; and
you were one of the orators of the party. No, sir,
you were not_a private citizen in 1863. You were
one of the leading and one of the ablest men in your
party in that year, speaking through the months of
July, August, September, and October, in behalf of the
candidate of the peace party. You cannot escape as a
private citizen.

" Well, sir, in the beginning of that eventful year,
there rises in Congress the ablest member of the peace

AID AND COMFORT TO THE ENEMY. 169

party, to advise Congress and to advise the people, and
what does he say ?

" l You have not conquered the South. You never
will. It is not in the nature of things possible, espe
cially under your auspices. Money you have expended
without limit ; blood you have poured out like water.'

" Now, mark the taunt — the words of discourage
ment that were sent to the people and to the army of
the Union : —

" ' Defeat, debt, taxation, sepulchres, these are your
trophies. Can you get men to enlist now at any
price ? '

" Listen again to the words that were sent to the
army and to the loyal people : —

" ' Ah, sir, it is easier to die at home.'

" We knew that, Judge Thurman, better than Mr.
Vallandigham knew it. We had seen our comrades
falling and dying alone on the mountain side and in the
swamps — dying in the prison-pens of the Confederacy
and in the crowded hospitals, North and South. Yet
he had the face to stand up in Congress, and say to the
people and the world, * Ah, sir, it is easier to die at
home/ Judge Thurman, where are you at this time ?
He goes to Columbus to the State convention, on the
llth of June of that year, in all the capacities in which
I have named him — as a delegate, as committee-man,
and as an orator — and he spends that whole summer
in advocating the election of the man who taunted us
with the words, ; Defeat, debt, taxation, sepulchres,
these are your trophies.' "

170 MUTATO NOMINE, DE TE, MR. TILDEN !

Was it Mr. Thurman, or was it really Mr. Tilden
whom General Hayes meant ? And is it really of Mr.
Thurman that he goes on to speak ?

" This, my friends, is a part of that record which we
are invited to examine by my friend, Judge Thurman.
I ask you to apply to it the principle that whoever,
during the great struggle, was unfaithful to the cause
of the country is not to be trusted to be one of the
men to harvest and secure the legitimate fruits of the
victory which the Union people and the Union army
won during the rebellion. . . .

" It is not worth while now to consider, or undertake
to predict, when we shall cease to talk of the records of
those men. It does seem to me that it will for many
years to come be the voice of the Union people of the
State that for a man who as a leader — as a man having
control in political affairs — that for such a man, who
has opposed the interests of his country during the war,
* the post of honor is the private station.' When shall
we stop talking about it ? When ought we to stop
talking about that record, when leading men come be
fore the people ? Certainly not until every question
arising out of the rebellion, and every question which is
akin to the questions which made the rebellion, is set
tled. Perhaps these men will be remembered long after
these questions are settled ; perhaps their conduct will
long be remembered. What was the result of this ad
vice to the people ? It prolonged the war ; it made it
impossible to get recruits ; it made it necessary that we
should have drafts. They opposed the drafts, and that

171

made rioting, which required that troops should be called
from all the armies in the field to preserve the peace
at home. From forty to a hundred thousand men in
the different States of this Union were kept within the
loyal States to perserve the peace at home. And now,
when they talk to you about the debt and about the
burden of taxation, remember how it happened that the
war was so prolonged, that it was so expensive, and
that the debt grew to such large proportions."

As a politician, in the sense of a successful candidate
for office, Hayes has been, as Mr. Lowell says of Lin
coln, " wise without a plan." His only schemes, prac
ticed after he came to power, have been for the public
advantage. How to come to power never gave him an
hour's unrest. It would be idle to pretend that such a
man has not felt honored by the honors done him ; he is
neither so ungrateful, so obtuse, nor so arrogant as not
to have deeply felt them ; but he has always felt that
honesty was better than honor, and he has never sought
the one at the cost of the other ; he has asked no favors
and has used no arts.

As a public orator, a speaker for occasions, Hayes
has little of the ready eloquence that goes to the mak
ing of a brilliant speech. His political and legal argu
ments strike us as far better, with their weighty and
solid movement, their stalwart grace, their deep con
viction just touched and not more than touched with
poetry. Yet even in those slighter efforts in which he
does not shine, he satisfies with his sense and serious
fitness. Here, for example, is a little speech made at

172 HAYES AS AN ORATOR.

the dedication of the beautiful Davidson fountain iu
Cincinnati : —

" FELLOW CITIZENS, — It is altogether fitting that
the citizens of Cincinnati should feel a deep interest in
the occasion which has called together this large assem
blage. It is well to do honor to this noble gift, and to
do honor to the generous giver. This work lends a
new charm to the whole city.

" Longfellow's lines in praise of the Catawba that
grows on the banks of the Beautiful River give to the
Catawba a finer flavor, and render the Beautiful River
still more beautiful. When art and genius give to us
in marble or on canvas the features of those we admire
or love, ever afterward we discover in their faces and
in their characters more to admire and more to love.

" This work makes Cincinnati a pleasanter city, her
homes more happy, her aims worthier, and her future
brighter.

" But this fountain does not pour out its blessings
for Cincinnati, or for her visitors and guests alone.
Cincinnati is one of the central cities of the nation —
of the great continent. It is becoming the convention
city. Witness the national assemblies in the interest of
commerce, of industry, of education, of benevolence, of
progress, of religion, which annually gather here from
the most distant parts of America. This monument is
an instructor of all who come. Whoever beholds it
will carry away some part of the lesson it teaches.
The duty which the citizen owes to the community in
which and by which he has prospered, that duty this

DUTY OF RICH MEN TO THE PUBLIC. 17<J

work will forever teach. No rich man who is wise
will, in the presence of this example, willingly go to
his grave with his debt to the public unpaid and unpro
vided for. Many a last will and testament will have
a beneficent codicil, suggested by the work we inaugu
rate to-day. Parks, fountains, schools, galleries of art,
libraries, hospitals, churches, whatever benefits and ele
vates mankind, will here receive much needed encour
agement and support.

" This work says to him who, with anxious toil and
care, has successfully gathered and hoarded, Do not
neglect your great opportunity. Divide wisely and
equitably between the few who are most nearly of your
own blood, and the many who in kinship are only a
little farther removed. If you regard only those
reared under your own roof, your cherished estate will
soon be scattered, perhaps wasted by profligate heirs in
riotous living, to their own ruin, and you and your for
tune will quickly be forgotten. Give a share, pay a
tithe, to your more distant and more numerous kindred
— to the general public, and you will be gratefully re
membered, and mankind will be blessed by your having
lived !

" Many, reflecting on the uncertainty of the future,
will prefer to see their benefactions distributed and ap
plied while they are still living. Regarding their ob
ligations to the public as sacred debts, they will wish to
pay as they go. This is commendable. Perhaps it is
safest.

" But at some time and somehow the example here

174 A TOUCHING SPEECH.

presented will and must be followed. All such deeds
are the parents of other similar good deeds. And so
the circle within which the blessings flowing from this
fountain are enjoyed will forever grow wider and
wider, and the people of distant times and places will
rejoice to drink, as we now do, healthful and copious
draughts in honor of its founder."

A far nobler effort, one that has deeply impressed
us with the strange qualities of its power, is the address
which Hayes delivered at the dedication of a soldiers'
monument in Findlay, Ohio, last year. Here, perhaps
more strongly than anywhere else, his manner has re
minded us of that of Lincoln ; yet Lincoln's eloquence
had much more of the oratorical movement. In this
singularly touching speech of Hayes's, there is no art.
It is almost as helpless in this respect as the utterance
of some able, slow-languaged Englishman. The dic
tion in the most pathetic passages is plain and blunt al
most to uncouthness ; yet word by word the speaker
draws nearer to you till, as if in the silence of the
pathos-stricken crowd, you seem to hear the very
throbbing of his heart. It is the supreme triumph of
pure and deep feeling that will have none but the
simplest expression.

" I know not," he said, speaking of the fallen sol
diers, " how many of them have been gathered into the
cemeteries near their home ; I know not how many
others have been gathered into the beautiful national
cemeteries near the great battle-fields ; I know not how
many are lying in swamps, along the mountain-sides.

HOW SOLDIERS WERE BURIED. 175

in nameless graves, the unknown heroes of the Union :
but wherever they are, and however many there may
be, you people of Hancock County have erected your
monument to all who fell, who left your county. All
soldiers, I am sure, feel like thanking you for this. I
remember well that one of the saddest days of my life
was after one of our great battles in the early period
of the war. Recovering from wounds, with other com
rades who had been wounded there, we passed near the
battle-field, as soon as we felt able to do so ; and, when
we came there, what did we learn ? Passing up the
mountain, charging the line of the enemy, they fell ;
and everywhere were the shallow graves in which were
deposited the remains of onr seven hundred companions
who had fallen. And how were they buried ? and how
was their last resting-place marked ? Hastily, tenderly,
no doubt, the parties detailed to bury them had gath
ered up their remains. You soldiers know how it was
done. They placed upon the face of each man who
died, whenever they could ascertain his name, a piece of
an envelope, or a scrap of a letter, or something of the
kind, containing his name, his company, his regiment,
fastening it there, hoping that some day his friends
might come and find him, and learn who was there
buried. And then, you remember, there were no coffins,
nothing of the sort ; but they took the blue overcoat,
and placed it around the man, and took the cape, and,
bringing it over the face, fastened it down. This was
his shroud ; this was his coffin ; and he was placed away
to rest until the resurrection morn. That was the man-

176 THE FIRST SOLDIERS' MONUMENT.

ner of his burial. And strange, I may say, was the re
sult of that woollen material over the face : saturated
with water, and covered with the earth, it did so protect
them from decay, that months afterwards many were
recognized by their friends, preserved as they were by
the overcoat cape. And how was the grave marked?
With a pencil they scratched upon a piece of pine
board — a thin piece of cracker-box — the name and
company, which was placed at the grave. This was all
then ; and we did not know what the result would be.
We did not know what friends would do, what monu
ments would be reared.

" As we left that field, talking to each other, we said
there must be a soldiers' monument for the soldiers of
our regiment. I would not claim that this was the first
regiment that built a monument ; that the twenty- third
Ohio, to which I had the honor to belong, built the
first monument : but I will say it was the first I heard
of. After the famous An tie tarn campaign was fought,
we called the men together, — four hundred and fifty
or five hundred men, — and from the scanty pay which
was to support the men, and to some extent their fami
lies, the majority of the remainder subscribed at least
one dollar, and others more, according to their ability,
and raised in the regiment two thousand dollars to
build a monument, on which, it was agreed, should be
inscribed the name of every man in the regiment who
had fallen, and every man who should fall during the
continuance of the war. We had it placed in the
cemetery at Cleveland, where more of our number

WHAT THE SOLDIERS DIED FOR. 177

came from than from any other place. Many a monu
ment has been built since, far grander than that, taller,
and finer, and more expensive ; but that, so far as I
know, was the first soldiers' monument.

" We are glad to know that you of Hancock County
have not neglected your duty in that regard. You
mean that those men shall have their monument, and
be remembered forever. It will be a monument that
will have its value to you and your children. It will be
an instructor, a teacher of lessons to all who look on it.
What is it ? Why did these men perish ? Why was
this monument built? Here is a great nation : here is
a country stretching from ocean to ocean, over the fin
est part of the best continent on the globe. On the
day that they volunteered, the only enemy that the
American nation could know, could fear, could dread,
was in war against us. We cared nothing for foreign
nations ; they were too far, too distant ; and anyway,
with the North and South united, as I believe they now
are, in feeling, we can meet the world in arms against
us. A house divided against itself — there was the
danger ; and that was the danger that these men went
out to meet. And now, how is it to-day ? How stands
the matter now ? We know every acre of that beauti
ful land belongs only to the stars and stripes, and be
longs to the flag forever.

" And not only that lesson does it teach ; but it
teaches, also, that this Union is dedicated to the princi
ples of the Declaration of Independence. I hardly
know what others may think about that ; but I believe

12

178 QUALITY OF OUR SOLDIERS.

that in fifty years past there never was a time when
there was that prospect of complete and enduring har
mony among all classes of people, in all sections of this
country, that there is to-day. Why, think of it ! On
the 17th of June, the hundredth anniversary of the
battle of Bunker Hill, we had Maryland Confederate
regiments and soldiers saluting — in the streets of Bos
ton, and on Boston Common and Bunker Hill — the
men of Massachusetts : we had South Carolina and
Massachusetts shoulder to shoulder, as in the days
when their fathers beat the British a hundred years
ago. All this, I think, is due, in a great measure,
to the success of our men to whom this monument is
erected, and their comrades in other States and other
organizations, living and dead. Think of the men
themselves who were there, — citizen soldiers, not one,
perhaps, of whom, was evei> acquainted with war, or
ever bred to war. Here and there one had been in the
Mexican war ; here and there one had been in some
Indian war ; but, as a rule, they all came from civil
life : they all came from where they were sovereigns,
to be, for three years, obedient to men who were not
better than themselves.

" Why, they tell us our bayonets could think. Yes,
and often and often it was the glory, in my judgment,
of the private soldier that the bayonet thought more
truly, more wisely, more accurately, than the sword.
A celebrated English statesman said, ' I can understand
why these Americans, to the number of millions, rushed
to arms to defend the government they had made.

LESSONS OF THE MONUMENT. 179

There is no mystery in that. Now, I do not under
stand how it was, that, at the end of that war, a million
of men quietly disbanded, and returned to the walks of
peaceful life, and went back about their old occupa
tions, and became again good citizens.' There was one
great advantage we had, — a people so educated, and
so intelligent in all classes, that we could raise an army
of that sort.

"Our monument, then, stands and teaches us of the
importance of the Union, the importance of the princi
ples of the Declaration of Independence, and the im
portance of universal education. My friends, what is
a monument, however costly and beautiful, if it does
not teach us some of the duties of practical life, how
the living shall deal with the living ? When you shall
see the widows of the soldiers, the parents and orphans
of the soldiers, every man whose heart is in the right
place feels his sympathies warmed towards them. There
is no doubt as to that, I am sure, in any Christian com
munity. But there is another lesson. The men who
fell, the men who lost an arm or leg, the widows and
orphans who are left, are not the only victims of the
war. There must always be another class. "We rejoice
to know that the great body of young men who went
out to the war returned to their homes, more manly,
braver, and better than when they left them, but they
were gone, many of them, at the critical period of life,
from sixteen to twenty years of age, just the period
when they must learn habits of thrift, and the knowledge
of occupations and trades that shall enable them to get

180 HAYES AS A SOLDIER.

that independence which every man in America ought
to have or try to have. They were during that period
in the army ; and some came back with habits to which
we regret to allude. But, my friends, when we look at
that monument, we should be reminded that that man
who may have thus formed any pernicious habits in the
army is always one of the victims of the war. He has
lost that which is better than life in trying to save the
republic. Avert not your gaze, patriotic men, from
that man. Lift him up, help him, never give him up.
Give him occupation, give him good words ; save him, if
you can. At any rate, treat him as one of the victims
of the war."

What Hayes was as a soldier, the reader can best
learn from his history in the war — a history only too
slightly and inadequately sketched in these pages. To
his regiment he was one of the good colonels, and to his
brigade one of the good generals, looking to the com
fort, the health, the honor, and the morality of his men
with literally the same studied care, the same enlight
ened vigilance, that a father bestows upon his children ;
and in return he enjoyed from them a devotion that
knew no limit ; wherever he led they followed ; what
ever he said they did. A private of the twenty- third,
writing of his colonel, says : " A braver or better man
was not in the army. He had an abundance of grit.
If he had a fault, it was that in battle he was too eager.
On a long, dusty march I could always tell Colonel
Hayes's horse, as it was always loaded with the guns
and knapsacks of ' the boys ' who were giving out, the

A FELLOW-OFFICER'S OPINION. 181

colonel himself walking by its side, no matter how great
the heat. Yes, sir, he was a kind man, but we had to
do our whole duty as soldiers."

When he was removed from the command of the first
brigade, " The boys looked upon you," wrote one of his
officers, " more in the light of a father than a military
commander, and while we all regret that old associa
tions must be broken off, yet we feel assured that what
ever station you may be called upon to fill in the future,
you will acquit yourself with like honors to those now
attending you as the commander of the old first brig
ade."

The testimony of officers and those competent to
judge of his professional qualities as a soldier, is of but
one effect. " In military life," writes General Comly,
who served under him throughout the war, and was
himself a soldier of heroic temper and achievement,
" he was noted among army men for his coolness, firm
ness, and daring. No emergency ever came upon him
that he was not equal to. The West Point men re
garded him as one of the very best officers in the vol
unteer service, and attributed to him a very high order
of military genius. His courage, though of the most
undemonstrative sort, was absolutely sublime, and was
attested by three or four wounds received in the very
front of battle. His charge at Winchester, where he
led his brigade through a deep slough in the face of
the enemy, plunging his horse into the mire up to the
saddle-bow, and being the first man over, though a per
fect storm of bullets swept about him, was scarcely ex-

182 AN EASTERN WEST POINTER'S OPINION.

celled during the whole war as a feat of personal
daring. Yet this was but one incident of a dozen sim
ilar ones in his army career that might be named. Had
he been as clamorous for promotion, and as impatient
for popular appreciation as some officers were, he would
have been placed at the head of a corps, or one of the
grand armies, instead of a division."

Not only do Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, and all the
other great Ohio soldiers of West Point education, or
of native military genius developed in the volunteer
service, esteem and praise his soldiership, but wherever
scientific soldiers of Eastern origin came in contact with
him they acknowledged his capacity and power. We
have just been shown a private letter from a New En
gland officer, a general of volunteers in West Virginia,
a graduate of West Point, and now holding very high
rank in the regular army, who speaks of Hayes in terms
no less cordial and unstinted than these : —

" September 4, 1876.

" I am glad to assure you, not only of my full and
undoubted conviction of the success of General Hayes,
but still more the further conviction that from week to
week comes over me, that he as fully merits that suc
cess. And though I was not so much brought in con
tact with him as if he had been in my own brigade, I
recollect very distinctly his quiet, unobtrusive, gentle
manly manner, and his faithful attention to duty in the
West Virginia campaign, from Carnifex Ferry to its
close. It was of the same type exactly with the modest

THE SAME TYPE OF SOLDIER AS THOMAS. 183

worth and quiet, reserved power of Grant and of

Thomas, since so well known to the country I

firmly believe his administration is to be our political
and national salvation.

" I have always felt that the daily letters, the record
of events written at the time by those engaged in them,
were the most valuable papers ever to be had, either as
to the truth of the events or to show the characters of
the writers ; and I doubt not the most interesting and
important articles for the national (I do not call it polit
ical) contest now coming on will be those which give
most fully the very words and thoughts of the moment
(as the great events of the war were passing), of this
brave, honest man, whom the people will delight to
honor, as his fellow soldiers now do; this modest
Bayard, in war or in peace — as the whole country
finds, and will ever find — sans peur et sans reproche"

It is superfluous to multiply these testimonies, as we
might to any extent, from rank and file alike. They
are as unanimous — a hater of Aristides might say as
monotonous — as the witnesses to the purity, efficiency,
and economy of Hayes's civil administrations. What his
character as a congressman was, we have already seen ;
and as governor of a great State we have allowed him
to speak for himself in extracts from his messages. On
some points he was necessarily silent. He could not
say what we know from examination of his letters
and diaries, that his smallest official act followed only
upon the most careful and conscientious deliberation.
His appointments have been made after the closest

184 HIS IDEAS OF A GOVERNOR'S DUTIES.

possible inquiry into the character and qualifications of
the persons appointed ; and no fault has been found
with them except by Republicans who have blamed him
for the impartiality with which he has named Democrats
for places in which he judged that purely partisan ap
pointments might be to the public disadvantage. We
have yet to know of a single instance in which that
eminent civil service reformer, Mr. Tilden, has laid
himself open to reproach by giving office to a political
opponent.

As governor, Hayes has conceived it his business to
attend to State affairs, and only to notice national ques
tions as they concern citizens of Ohio. He has not
been putting out feelers for the presidency, nor manu
facturing a reputation on which he could lift himself
mto partisan prominence ; and he has not, like Gov
ernor Tilden, lugged into his messages the discussion of
every sort of .irrelevant affair. He has applied himself
closely to the study of the sources of Ohio's prosperity,
and probably no man in the State knows them so well
as he. A gentleman who recently talked with him on
such matters confessed his astonishment at the extent
and minuteness of his knowledge relating to the agri
culture, manufactures, and mines of the State ; but
Hayes seemed to think it was part of his duty, as the
first citizen, to be second to none in this knowledge.

He has not only bestowed unusual attention upon
the condition of the asylums and prisons, but he has
been extremely careful in the exercise of the pardon
ing power, which he has used according to principles

HIS TEMPER AS A RULER. 185

arrived at through diligent study of the results iu cases
coming within his own experience or observation. In
clining always towards mercy, he has suffered no per
sonal feeling to cloud his judgment in such matters,
and in more public affairs, involving disturbances of
order or violations of law, he has acted with instant
vigor. His promptness in quelling the riots of the
striking coal-miners in Ohio, during the present year,
is an earnest of what his action would be on a larger
theatre in any greater emergency, and the following
letter to bis adjutant- general, who was sent with troops
to crush out the riots, shows the temper of a ruler not
disposed to dally with his duty, or to address a murder
ous mob as his " friends."

DEAR GENERAL, — I still feel that there is doubt
as to the sufficiency of your force. Be sure to have it
ample. If you call out too many men, I will be re
sponsible, but if you fail for want of enough, it will
be your fault. It now looks as if this trouble would
last a long time. I wish you to make preparations to
hold your men in camp near Massillon, until all danger
from lawless violence is at an end ; therefore let your
arrangements be of a more permanent character ; let
it be understood that you mean to stay until lawless
ness ceases, or is plainly controllable by the civil au
thorities. Sincerely yours, R. B. HAYES.

" Hayes's capacity for civil affairs," says a journal
ist of the State which knows him best, " has been

186 HAYES'S RECORD WITHOUT A FLAW.

severely tested, and the tests have developed executive
abilities of the very highest order. With a rare knowl
edge of men and affairs, he has shown a genius for
doing the right thing in the right way and at the right
time. In prudence, moderation, and sturdy good sense,
he bears a striking resemblance to Abraham Lincoln,
as he does also in his simplicity, and keen, almost un
erring sagacity. Few men have, with such caution,
such strength of will and power of decision."

Not more, but not less valuable than the praise of an
impartial friend, is that of an impartial enemy, and Mr.
Dana, of the "New York Sun," may now speak for
the man whose defeat he desires.: —

" Hayes is a man of talent ; he is a gentleman ; he
is rich and independent ; he served with credit as a
soldier in the war, and his record as governor of Ohio
is without flaw or spot."

Of Hayes as a citizen and a man, what remains to be
said ? Nothing truly that will not make him even more
hateful to those already weary of hearing Aristides
called just. Some of his moral and intellectual quali
ties have been admirably given by an old acquaintance
of his in a letter printed by " The Nation." " He is
not a i magnetic ' man ; he is not audacious, he is not a
' leader,' he does not impress one as a great force, and
all that. But when he has a duty to perform he first
proceeds to throw aside all nonsense, and, with a pecul
iar singleness and simplicity, sees just what the matter
is. After that, the devil can't scare him. I never
knew a man who listened with a franker willingness to

HAYES'S INTELLECTUAL " COLOR." 187

learn, and I have known very few men who were so
sure to end with an opinion of their own, which nothing
could shake. I observe that the little people of the
1 Herald ' and ' World ' speak of him as a ' colorless '
candidate. "Well, his color is not loud, but what they
actually mean is nonsense. They had better encounter
him some time when he has a duty to perform, and try
to turn him aside, and then tell us whether he has color.
I have seen him tried, and noticed that his color was a

good deal like steel I need say nothing about

his honesty ; you 've seen that mentioned by every
paper that names him, though perhaps I had as well
add that he is just absolute integrity. My main pur
pose was to speak of his capabilities, since that must be
the chief point of curiosity just now. For whatever it
is worth, my clear conviction is that he is a very able
man, very well informed, of a good deal of culture, of
rare soundness of judgment, and of a courageous and
high character."

Mr. Henry B. Blackwell, a friend of equally long
standing with the writer of the foregoing, has published
his impressions of Hayes's character in a letter to the
" Boston Advertiser," from which we transcribe a few

" Mr. Hayes has a calm, cool, intellectual temper
ament, which is not easily roused, but which when
roused, moves promptly and with singular precision.
He has a clear, judicial intellect. He is not want
ing in enthusiasm, but he never gushes. There is a
certain magnanimity, a stately and dignified repose of

188 MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL QUALITIES.

character, which underlies his frank and genial tem
per, and which keeps his generous impulses from run
ning away with him. He is always and everywhere
a gentleman. During our six or seven years of weekly
meetings,1 I never knew him to use a harsh or coarse;
expression, nor ever knew him to indulge in a per
sonality. He never made an enemy, nor lost a friend.
Nothing sordid or selfish was ever associated with his
character. Always cheerful, kind, frank, and sym
pathetic, he took a keen interest in every question,
and occasionally spoke, when roused, effectively and to
the purpose. But he seldom was roused to speak ex
cept in conversation. There he was always ready,
bright, and animated. It was a common remark in
those days, at the club, ' Hayes is capable of rising tc
any distinction, if he could only be impelled to seek it.'
But he seemed totally devoid of personal ambition, and
unwilling to take any of the ordinary steps to attain no
toriety ; yet this very coolness and indifference to per
sonal aggrandizement has proved the secret of his sub
sequent political success. He has never sought position.
He has never lifted his hand to become a candidate for
any place. The office has always sought the man, not
the man the office."

Some reminiscences, sketchily jotted down by an old
friend of Hayes's college days, and kindly transferred
to the present writer by Mr. J. Q. Howard, for whose
careful work2 they came too late, present traits of

1 In the Cincinnati Literary Club.

2 Life of Rutherford B. Hayes. (Robert Clarke & Co., Cincinnati.)

HAYES AT COLLEGE. 189

the man too essential to a good portrait to be lost. We
think the reader will enjoy these all the better, if given
without our manipulation. " Hayes was the champion
in college, in debate class section, and in the foot-path ;
cheerful, sanguine, and confident of the future, never
seeing cause for desponding ; was a young man of sub
stantial physique ; in my whole acquaintance, I never
knew of his being sick one day, and so free from any
weakness as to seem indefatigable. His greatest amuse
ments were fishing and chess. In company he was
humorous to hilarity, told quick, pungent stories, many
of which I remember with laughter to this day ; took
things as they came ; used to lau-h at the shape of our
boarding-house roast beef, but still ate.

" I grew from boyhood, knowing him as a good friend,
to whom I went whenever too lazy to study, or found
ered by my problems, and I always found help and
good cheer. Do not think he had many intimate
friends ; those with whom he was intimate were, and
are now, the best men of my acquaintance. I don't
remember a single man with whom he was intimate
but that has been successful in his vocation, showing
that Hayes either had an intuitive disgust for mean
spirits and rejected them, or else changed them. He
had all the appearance of a fighting man, and I think
in all college scrimmages was let alone. Have often
heard it said that he ' did nothing for his friends ; '
perhaps not, but his real friends generally needed no
help, or were not of that class who attached themselves
for selfish interests. Even in his political labors, I am

190 THOROUGHLY INDEPENDENT.

sure he never entangled himself by promises or by such
intimacies as to bind him, but never shrank from tack
ling any subject or measure of policy when brought to
him. He never walked around anything, but took it
by the horns and shook it, or was shaken. I think him
a square specimen of an Anglo-Saxon, honest man ;
stubbornly square in his views ; of simple ideas of life ;
that is, he had such ideas as would make him prefer
heaping, round measure of good to pretension and false
appearances.

" The independence of his character was shown on
commencement day at Kenyon. He was valedictorian,
and I remember how grand he looked in my boy eyes
because he was n't able to have splendid new clothes,
and was independent enough to do without. That was
the first impression made on my mind, evidencing a
pure, thorough self-sacrifice. I was but sixteen years
old, and think I see him now, with what we knew then
as a box-coat with side pockets, when all the rest were
dressed in new black cloth frock-coats.

"I spent the summer of 1844 with him at Cam
bridge, Mass., as a law student ; I as an amateur (i. e.
a listener who never studies), he as a regular stu
dent. He then showed himself thoroughly independent
of everything and everybody. Judge Story always
noticed him especially, as he ' came into the lecture
room. In the practice of law his advice was always
against litigation. When offered the city solicitorship,
we talked it over, and I urged him to take it for its in
troduction to the public. He always refused to do any-

NO ENTANGLING ALLIANCES. 191

thing to advance his own interests ; but, don't try to
make him a saint; he wasn't; he was nothing but a
good honest specimen of a man.

" Three months ago I wrote to him about his presi
dential prospects, and his reply was emphatically, 'I
cannot do anything to aid myself.' And on June 7,
1876, he writes, i I am luckily constituted, or the things
you allude to would be vexations ; the truth is, I am in
no way complicated, entangled, or committed with the
parties you name, or anybody else.' And I believe if he
is elected President of the United States, no man ever
went into office so free from obligations as he will be.
The head-quarters of the Hayes movement in this sec
tion during the campaign were projected by his per
sonal friends ; not one cent was contributed by an
office-holder or politician."

It was a good usage of the old-fashioned biogra
phers, with whom we would fain ally ourselves in some
sort, to delineate the persons of their heroes ; and the
reader, we hope, would not be content without some
such picture of Hayes. The material for such a pict
ure is vast enough, but the authorities upon his looks
are not so well agreed as those upon his morals. In
its way, a sketch by Judge Johnston, in an address to
a ratification meeting at Avondale, Ohio, is, we are
told, quite trustworthy : —

" Place him on a platform together with one hun
dred distinguished men, and call in an able connoisseur,
who has neither seen nor heard of any one of them,
and he will point him out as a model man ; neither too

192 PERSONAL APPEARANCE.

large nor too small, nor too tall nor too short, nor too
fat nor too lean, nor too old nor too young. A man
in the prime and vigor of healthful manhood, with
blood in his veins and marrow in his bones ; able to en
dure any labor, either of body or of mind, which may
devolve upon him. His face seems made to match his
form. No painful, care-worn wrinkles, indicative of
infirmities or misfortunes, to provoke a grudge against
nature, or engender sourness toward mankind. Nor
does he wear a smirking face, as if he were a candi
date for admiration ; but a fine, sunny countenance,
such as men and women respect, and children love.
His manners, like his countenance, are simple and sin
cere. He don't run to meet you, and call you ' My
VERY DEAR sir? He takes you by the hand, witli a
cordial kindness which recognizes the universal broth
erhood of man, and impresses you that he is a man
who gets above nobody, and nobody gets above him."

If this is not enough, there is a yet closer portraiture
— also said to be faithful — by Mr. Keenan, writing
for one of the Chicago newspapers. It is well to pre
mise that Hayes's complexion is of the true Scotch
sandiness, and that his once tawny beard and hair are
both now touched with gray. " His complexion," says
Mr. Keenan, " has the ripe tinge of health. lie is
much in the open air, and has cheeks like a reaper's —
fresh, brown, and thickly bearded. He has no gift of
music evidently, for his bright, frank, blue eyes are set
closely together, under a fair, clear, shapely forehead.
The nose is a column of strength, if physiognomy's laws

A NOBLE LETTER. 193

are to be trusted. It is not the hooked beak of the
Caesars, but the complex formation which marks the
stronger type of the Anglo-Saxons. The lower face,
where the lines can be seen, is symmetrical, strong, and
reassuring. In repose or animation the face is a fine
one."

And now that we stand, as it were, in the very
presence of the man, let him speak once more for him
self, and let his final utterances be those magnanimous
words which are truest to his broad and generous na
ture. Here is a letter written home in the very midst
of the Shenandoah Valley campaign, which we com
mend to the perusal of the whole country, North and
South: —

" CHARLESTON, CAMP ELK, July 2, 1864.

" You wrote one thoughtless sentence, complaining
of Lincoln for failing to protect our unfortunate pris
oners by retaliation. All a mistake ! all such things
should be avoided as much as possible. We have done
too much rather than too little. You use the phrase
' brutal rebels.' Don't be cheated in that way. There
are enough 'brutal rebels,' no doubt, but there are
plenty of humane rebels. I have seen a good deal of it
on our late trip. War is cruel business, and there is
brutality in it on all sides, but it is very idle to get up
anxiety on account of any supposed peculiar cruelty on
the part of rebels."

The man who could feel so justly towards enemies
from whom he was in daily, hourly peril, wrote home
13

194 THE PROPORTIONS OF OUR LEADER.

yet one other letter which we must give to show how
tolerantly he could feel toward one consenting to repre
sent a cause which he abhorred : —

"CAMP SUMMIT POINT, VIRGINIA, September 9, 1864.
" Speaking of politics, it is quite common for young
sters, adopting their parents' notions, to get very bitter
talk into their innocent little mouths. I was quite

willing W. [his son] should l hurrah for ,' last

summer with the addition, « and a rope to hang him, '
but I feel quite different about McClellan. He is on
a mean platform, and is in bad company ; but I do not
doubt his personal loyalty ; and he has been a soldier,
and what is more, a soldier's friend. No man ever
treated the private soldier better. No commander was
ever more loved by his men. I therefore want my
boys taught to think and talk well of General Mc
Clellan."

This, then, is our leader. The proportions are he
roic, but the figure is not larger than life ; and the
nearer we draw to it, the more august and benign are
the lineaments. A scholar, and a lover of letters and
the arts ; fine by nature and refined by culture, careful
self-study, and wide knowledge of both men and books ;
a soldier of dauntless bravery and approved genius ;
a statesman and public servant of the best principles
and of irreproachable performance, his highest com
mendation to our honor and our trust is still that he
is a true and good man.

THE LEGEND OF A SHIELD. 195

Among the escutcheons of the old Scottish borderers
which hang on the walls of Sir Walter Scott's library,
at Abbotsford, are those of the Rutherfords and the
Hayeses. The arms of the Hayeses are a shield with
a Greek cross and four stars, surmounted by a dove,
and having for legend one word — a word which has
always been the instinct and the principle of the man
whose life we have so imperfectly portrayed —

" RECTE ! "

SKETCH OF THE LIFE

OP

WILLIAM A. WHEELER.

SKETCH OF THE LIFE

WILLIAM A. WHEELER

THE writer of this sketch, though counting himself
among the friends of Mr. Wheeler, does not feel at
liberty to indulge in mere eulogy of him, regarding him
only from the standpoint of personal friendship. The
attitude of Mr. Wheeler as a candidate for one of the
highest offices in the gift of the people, gives them a
right to exact and impartial information respecting both
his public career and his personal character as bearing
on the question of his fitness for the high position to
which he has been named. For in this canvass, more
perhaps than in any previous one, personal integrity as
the surest guaranty of official rectitude, is emphasized
beyond all other qualifications. And most happily both
for Mr. Wheeler and the nation, the more both his
public career and his personal character are known,
the more deserving of the confidence of the people at
this critical time, will he be proved. " Let them turn
their calcium light on me," he said to one who rallied
him on his calmness under public scrutiny just before

4 PARENTAGE.

the Convention, " they will find nothing which will
make my friends ashamed of me." To this proud as
sertion of the consciousness of right,, limiting itself to
modest self-acquittal, may be added by those who know
the man and have watched his career, that " the fiercest
light which beats upon " a candidate can reveal in him
only new traits to admire and new virtues to honor.
And more : Mr. Wheeler's character is such that it not
only endures this strong light, but needs it in order to
be brought out into observation. Some men show to
advantage in the shade of common -place events, but
wilt under the glare of great responsibilities. Mr.
Wheeler belongs to the class of men who are greatest
on great occasions and under the stress of great de
mands. This sketch — the writer must stipulate with
his readers that this be understood — will not do him
justice ; no written life can, because the best part of his
life is as yet unrevealed. He has spoken many brave
and wise words which have had their influence in shap
ing memorable events ; but what he has done is greater
than what he has said ; and he is greater than all he
has said and done. If the people confirm him in the
position of leadership to which one of the great na
tional parties has designated him, it will be found that
he has still in reserve resources of greatness and good
ness upon which neither his party nor the nation has
yet drawn.

PARENTAGE.

Mr. Wheeler comes of good stock. Three great
New England principles are traceable in the family for

EDUCATION. 5

several generations : love of freedom, love of knowledge,
and the fear of God. The grandfather Wheeler was
in the first Concord fight. The maternal grandfather,
William Woodward, was a soldier all through the
Revolution. The Wheeler branch of the family, from
Massachusetts, and the Woodward branch, from Con
necticut, came together in Vermont, where Almon
Wheeler, father of William, was born, and where he
lived till two months before his son's birth. It thus
appears that both the Republican candidates are of
Vermont parentage. We may be permitted to hope
that this fact is no bad omen either for the character
of the men or the success of the candidates. Mr.
Wheeler at least seems not to augur ill of his origin.
" I have Vermont blood in my veins," he said at Mont-
pelier, " and Vermont ideas in my head. My father
was a Highgate man and my mother a Castleton
woman, and in my early days I lived in the town of
Fairfax, where under the shadow of old Fletcher
Mountain, I learned from a valued uncle, in the inter
vals of the toil which was the common lot of almost all
men in those days, those lessons which only the true
New Englander could inculcate."

EDUCATION.

There runs through the Wheeler family the story, so
common in New England families of those times, of
struggles with poverty and hardship in the pursuit of
education. In this case it was the old story in its most
pathetic form, ambition saddened by ill health and ar-

6 EDUCATION.

rested short of the hoped-for success. Almon Wheeler,
obliged by sickness to suspend his studies in the Uni
versity of Vermont, at Burlington, entered upon the
practice of law, in which he gave promise of eminence,
but died at the early age of thirty-seven. His son,
William Almon, born at Malone, New York, June 30,
1819, was but eight years old at his father's death.
For the support of the family, consisting of William
and two sisters, the widowed mother found herself in
possession of an estate valued at about $300, and
encumbered by a mortgage. But this mother, Eliza
Woodward Wheeler, — her name deserves to be writ
large, — was a woman of great force of character, con-
, cealed under the gentlest exterior. By taking boarders
for the academy at the rate of $1.25 a week, she con
trived to keep her little family from want, and to give
William the chance to attend the district schools until
he was old enough to earn something for himself while
pursuing his studies preparatory to college. During
this time he taught schools and " boarded round," in
winters, and worked at farming in the laboring season,
sometimes for months' wages, sometimes for the tenth
bushel of corn husked, the tenth basket of potatoes
dug, according to the custom of the region. If ever
his ambition flagged or his hope grew dim, in view of
all that lay between him and the great prize of a liberal
education, the mother's heroic spirit came to the rescue
and helped him through the momentary lull of his own
aspirations. And as Providence would have it, in all
this brave, patient, strenuous battle with the hardships

LEGAL PRACTICE. 7

of his life, the lad was not only knitting his physical
and moral frame into condition for manly work, but was
drawing the attention of many to himself as one whom
they might well put in the way of promotion when the
opportunity should come. At the age of nineteen, with
a capital of $30 lent him by a former friend who
had more faith in William than in himself, he entered
the University of Vermont and pursued the course of
study for two years, absent from the classes much of the
time to work and teach. His college contemporaries
speak of him as a good scholar, studious, thoughtful,
and having a great many ideas of his own. At the
end of two years, the family necessities and an affection
of the eyes compelled him, though with great reluc
tance, to leave college. Mr. Wheeler did not, however,
cease to be a student. He has always been a thought
ful reader of the best books, especially in English litera
ture. His style and utterance are those of an educated
man. The writer does not remember to have ever
heard him misconstruct a sentence or mispronounce a
word, and this is much to say of the most finished
scholar.

LEGAL PRACTICE.

Immediately on leaving college, Mr. Wheeler entered
upon the study of law with Asa Hascall, a leading law
yer of Malone, and after four years' study, three of the
seven years then required being remitted on account of
his classical discipline, was admitted to the bar and
" soon acquired," says a former legal brother, " an en
viable position as a keen advocate and wise counsellor,

8 LOCAL AND STATE OFFICES.

which brought him clients, friends, and competence."
A throat trouble which seriously interfered with his
practice as an advocate, finally compelled him to aban
don the profession of the law, which he did in 1851.

LOCAL AND STATE OFFICES.

From his early manhood, Mr. Wheeler has held a
succession of offices, the variety and importance of which
attest the confidence of those who know him best.
During his early struggles to maintain himself and his
family, his neighbors seemed to have bestowed all
their offices on him, one after another, as fast as he grew
up to them. While studying law, he was made town
clerk, school commissioner, and school inspector. At
the first election under the Constitution of 1846, by
which the county judges and district attorneys were
made eligible by popular vote, Mr. Wheeler, who was a
pronounced Whig, was elected district attorney, and
his partner, a Democrat, was elected judge, on a Union
ticket, it being then the desire of both parties to keep
judicial elections free from party strifes. In 1849, and
again in 1850, Mr. Wheeler was elected by the Whigs
a member of the New York Assembly, and in 1859 and
1860, was State senator for his district. Although he
was always an active, and was at times an ardent party
man, and was outspoken in the advocacy of the meas
ures he approved, it is the testimony alike of his
political friends and opponents, that he had a delicate
sense of official responsibility ; that he was broad and
catholic in his sympathies and acts as a legislator ; and

LOCAL AND STATE OFFICES. 9

severely just in giving or refusing his great influence
to the many interests that appealed to him. This may
explain the high respect which he has always enjoyed
from men of all parties, and his singular exemption
from that partisan calumny which is the disgrace of
American politics.

How Mr. Wheeler felt toward those who had ad
vanced him to so many honors is touchingly mani
fested by an impromptu address made to them shortly
after his nomination to the Vice-Presidency, which we
give at length, because it fills in with warmer touches
our meagre outline of his early life, and shows in
what estimate he holds the mere honors and rewards
of office as compared with the esteem of good men and
the approbation of his own heart : —

TOWNSMEN AND FRIENDS : Of the many congrat
ulations proffered me since my nomination by the Re
publican Convention for the second place in the gov
ernment of the United States, none have so stirred me
and come so near my heart as yours. If this nomi
nation be an honor — and who shall gainsay it ? — it is
your honor and not mine ; I am the simple instrument
through which it is reflected. For what am I, and
what have I, that I have not received from you ? It
was in the early confidence of the people of Malone,
in their cheering words of encouragement, and in their
unwavering support, that the foundations of whatever
success I have achieved in life were laid. In boy
hood, in manhood, and now that the sun of life is well

10 LOCAL AND STATE OFFICES.

past the meridian, these have been, and are now, my
refuge and strength.

No honor, however exalted, shall ever dim my grat
itude to those who extended to me the helping hand
in my early struggles, and who have honored me with
life-long trust and substantial acts of kindness. Nor
can the glare and glitter of life at the national capital,
or the blandishments and hollow arts of its society,
ever efface the simple tastes and early habits learned
by me from the New England pioneers of this goodly
town, to which I always return with renewed pleasure
and gratitude. How many of those pioneers whose
memory is hallowed by me, would, if they could speak,
this morning join in your congratulations !

From the people of Malone I received my first po
litical recognition. Even before I had attained my
majority they made me clerk of the town, an office in
which I magnified myself more than in all the offices I
have since possessed, and whose pecuniary emoluments
— $30 for the year — for recording the estrays of the
town and the laying out of new roads, were of more
value to me than the thousands I have since attained.

And right here I want to say a word especially to
the young men, so many of whom I see before me —
a class in whom I always take the deepest interest,
and with whose efforts in life to achieve honorable suc
cess I am always in deep sympathy. It is said that
a fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind. There are
few phases in the struggles of the boy or young man
to make his way in life in which I have not had severe

LOCAL AND STATE OFFICES. 11

experience. When, forty years ago, on a cold Decem
ber morning, before the dawn of day, I emerged from
the humble home which then stood upon the site from
which I now address you, to make my way on foot
through the falling snow to an adjoining town to teach
my first district school at ten dollars a month, " half
store pay ; " and when, during that winter, in the
progress of boarding around, in the chambers of the
log houses, through the shrunken roof boards, I was
literally a " star gazer," had any one predicted to me
that at some future period of my life I should be nom
inated by a great party to the second office in the gift
of forty millions of people, it would have been deemed
stranger to me than any of the tales of the " Arabian
Nights " which so stirred my boyish wonder. With an
imagination naturally vivid, I built many air castles in
those days, but this nomination was not among the
structures. My nomination has this lesson for you,
young men. In this beneficent people's government of
ours, every man, without regard to the accidents of
birth or fortune, is, with character, industry, and per
severance, the equal of every other man, and honest
efforts to make an honorable name in life are sure of
recognition and reward. And despite the hard things
we say of the world, my own experience is that it
never withholds a helping hand from a young man who
shows an upright, stern determination to help himself.
Doing this, though he fail of political distinction, he
will obtain the respect and confidence of his fellow
men, which is far better.

12 LOCAL AND STATE OFFICES.

"Honor and shame from no condition rise;
Act well your part, there all the honor lies."

To be selected from this great, imperial common
wealth as its exponent of that party whose achievement)*
for liberty and unity, and for the advancement of the
great cause of human brotherhood, have no parallel in
the annals of the world, is an honor which ought to
gratify any man's ambition. But it is an honor which
comes to me unexpectedly, which I did not seek, and
which I say in all frankness I did not desire. So long
as I might remain in the public service my preference
was to remain in the House of Representatives. But
how utterly empty and meaningless is the honor to me,
standing in the shadow of this desolate home, you all
well know.

To the great tribunal of the American people, in
which issue is again joined by the two great leading
parties which divide the country, we can safely leave
the argument and the verdict. In the meantime, how
ever our party relations may be ruffled, I trust our per
sonal relations may remain undisturbed. And when
the verdict shall be rendered in November, we shall
all, as good citizens, desiring only the prosperity of our
common country, cheerfully acquiesce in it, whatever
it may be. And whatever the result shall be as to my
self, I shall hope to remain secure in your personal
confidence. That is my highest purpose and ambition.
And when, in obedience to universal and inevitable
law, after the fitful fever of life, its weary wheels shall
at last stand still, and I shall go to the rest which,

THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION. 13

thank God, beyond the conflicts and bereavements of
this life " remaineth" I know I shall be followed by that
charity with which our better nature covers the short
comings and imperfections of those who lay aside life's
armor, and cross the flood to join the great, silent ma
jority.

THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION.

In 1867 Mr. Wheeler was chosen one of the dele
gates at large to the Constitutional Convention of the
State of New York. This body was one of the ablest
ever assembled in the State, embracing a large number
of such men as Wm. M. Evarts, George W. Curtis,
Horace Greeley, Sanford E. Church, Ira Harris, Sam
uel J. Tilden, Edwards Pierrepont, representatives of
the best legal, financial, and administrative talent of the
Empire State. Over this imposing body Mr. Wheeler
was called to preside by the highly complimentary vote
of 100 over 49, no competitor receiving over 9 votes.
He took no part in the debates, " having to undergo "
as Mr. Erastus Brooks, his colleague, expressed it, " a
severe ordeal for a man of ability, literally putting a
padlock upon his mind, being unable in consequence of
his position to mingle in the debates." In making up
the committees of this body, with characteristic magna
nimity he put leading Democrats into several important
positions. " I came to the chair," said he in his closing
speech, " with the single purpose of administering its
duties fairly and impartially ; remembering that the
trust confided to us was neither for majorities nor mi-

14 AS A PRESIDING OFFICER.

norities, but for all alike as citizens of a common State."
Some of his ultra Republican friends were at first of
fended by this course of action, but afterward acknowl
edged both its justice and policy.

AS A PRESIDING OFFICER,

there can be no question that Mr. Wheeler would
bring preeminent ability to the position of President of
the Senate. His mental characteristics, his quick per
ception of the real issue through all perplexities, his
promptness of utterance and action, his habit of im
partial judgment, mark him out for a presiding officer.
The Senate of New York discovered his parliamentary
ability and chose him its speaker pro tempore. Speak
ing to a resolution of thanks tendered to the president
at the close of the Constitutional Convention, Mr. San-
ford E. Church said : " I have had some experience in
deliberative bodies, and I can say without qualification
that for impartiality, fairness, and ability, I have never
seen a presiding officer excel the presiding officer of this
body." And to this high testimony Mr. George W.
Curtis added : " I shall carry from this Convention the
profoundest impression of the dignified deliberation
which is possible for gentlemen in a period of great
political excitement, but who are called together to ad
minister a great public trust. As for the gentleman
who has presided over our deliberations, we shall all, I
am sure, to the latest hour of our lives, bear his image
in our memories, as that of a most able, a most urbane,
and most skillful officer."

IN CONGRESS. 15

IN CONGRESS.

Mr. Wheeler has sat as Representative in the thirty-
seventh, forty-first, forty-second, forty-third, and forty-
fourth Congresses. During most of this time, while
he has been recognized as one of the leading men
in Congress by those within, he has been one of the
least conspicuous in the eyes of those without. He
has been a working rather than a talking member.
His oratory, which is vigorous and effective, has been
devoted to advocating and defending measures which
came from his committees. During his whole career
he has never made a volunteer speech. Our constitu
encies are coming slowly to understand that the men
who are the most valuable in Congress, the men who
influence legislation most effectually, are those who
work hard in committees, talk but seldom on the floor,
and then with business-like point and directness. Mr.
Wheeler belongs to this class. When ordinary men
have confused and muddled a question beyond any ap
parent hope of a settlement, a few words of clear good
sense from Mr. Wheeler often closes the dispute. He
has also another method of influencing votes, which is
quite effective, but does not seem to be emulated by as
piring Congressmen as much as might be wished. He
keeps such a vigilant watch over measures in progress,
and forms his opinions on them so honestly and care
fully, that men who want to rely on a sound judgment,
and who distrust their own, find out how Mr. Wheeler
intends to vote, and act accordingly. He is thus a kind

16 IN CONGRESS.

of legislative conscience to a considerable number of
members. His standing with his political opponents is
shown by his being unanimously selected in the Demo
cratic caucus as a member of the Belknap Impeach
ment Committee. With regard to the measures in
Congress by which so many fair names have been
smirched, let his colleague, Hon. Robert H. Ellis,
speak for him : —

" No inquiry has ever connected his name with any
transaction depending in the most remote degree on
his legislative action. When it was the fashion for all
men to dabble in railroad stocks and bonds, and his
own training might have induced him to invest in such
securities, Mr. Wheeler never bought or sold a share of
stock or a single bond in any of the Pacific roads. His
experience on his local railroad would have rendered
his services of rare value to any one of the great en
terprises with which he was brought into contact ; and
the cases are many where legislators have by such re
lations been introduced to remunerative employment.
Mr. Wheeler is free from even such imputation upon
his disinterestedness.

" Other men have not accounted it an offense to use
knowledge obtained by them as legislators as a basis for
investments and business transactions. Such knowl
edge Mr. Wheeler often had, but his sense of right and
his instincts of fair play forbade his taking any such
advantage. He has served his country in Congress for
ten years, without adding to the moderate competence
with which he first went to Washington. With simple

ECONOMY IN EXPENDITURE. 17

tastes, he has never been greedy of gain either for its
own sake or the luxury it would buy. As a legislator,
the thought never occurred to him that his influence
could bring riches, and not the shadow of a stain rests
on his name.

" In the last Congress he was chairman of the Com
mittee on Commerce, and a member of the Committee
on Appropriations, and in the present Congress he
serves on the same committees. In these positions, he
has never been self-asserting. His leadership has not
been that of push; he has never sought notoriety. He
has walked modestly in the path of duty, without self-
seeking, and fearing no consequences."

. ECONOMY IN EXPENDITURE.

A short specimen of Mr. Wheeler's style of speak
ing in Congress is here appended. Let the reader
note the ring of sincerity in this plea for economy, and
make his own contrasts.

" In presenting the regular appropriation bill for the
support of the army for the next fiscal year, the
committee on appropriations invite for it close atten
tion and examination. Economy in public expendi
ture is now the profession of every lip ; its practice is
the universal, imperative demand of the hour. The
time has passed, for a while at least, when millions of
the public funds can, as at some former periods, flow
safely through *he open sluice-ways of legislation with
out careful consideration and critical scrutiny. The
specter of renewed and increased taxation now haunts

18 ECONOMY IN EXPENDITURE.

every hamlet in the land, and upon us, as possessing
the power, and in the exercise of a wise prudence and
discretion, the people rely to beat back from their
homes the unwelcome reality.

" Probably there has been no period in our history
when the people were more sensitive upon the subject
of taxation, or more keenly inquisitive as to its neces
sity. The great and, until quite recently, steady re
duction of our national indebtedness, and the removal
of the greater portion of the burdensome taxation im
posed by the war, led our people to believe, with rea
son, that their long-fettered energies and industries
were at length unloosed, and the country once more
placed upon the sure road to permanent prosperity.
The sudden dissipation of these hopes surprises and
disheartens thorn, and all the more, as they are now
suffering from severe monetary derangements and the
great reduction of values ever, in time, inseparable
from an inflated paper currency.

" The people are now ill able and ill disposed to bear
burdens not demanded by palpable, immediate, pressing
necessity. They demand of us to practice here the
economy to which they are forced, and to bend to the
necessity which overpowers them.

" We ought now and here to accept and legislate for
the future upon the fact that certain great questions,
which have for the past few years overshadowed all
others, and to which, for the time, all others were
justly subordinated, have been substantially settled.
In a certain sense we are called upon to take, in leg-

ECONOMY IN EXPENDITURE. 19

islation, what our Democratic friends style a ' new de
parture.' The questions of slavery, of the integrity
of the Union, of reconstruction, and the like, are
hereafter to live mostly, if not wholly, in the memory,
soon, we trust, to be erased even from its tablet, in the
closer, .more cordial fraternity, the better civilization,
the general prosperity and high advancement in every
thing which exalts and refines a nation, for all which,
with wise and just government to foster and aid, the
costly experience of the last few years has laid the
sure foundation.

" "With the adjustment of old difficulties comes the
era of peace, leaving the people free for the pursuit of
avocations which respect their material interests. He
is a poor statesman who imagines for a moment that
the record of the past, however brilliant or beneficent,
can cover present dereliction of duty, or atone for
want of fidelity, capacity, and adaptation to grapple
successfully with the questions which now confront us.
No party can or ought to command the confidence and
support of the people which is not equal and faithful
to current duties and responsibilities, and whose rep
resentatives do not demonstrate by wise action that they
exercise their trust broadly, intelligently, effectively,
and honestly in the interest of the whole people. He
scans the political horizon to little purpose who does
not discern this sure sign of the times."

20 THE SALARY GRAB. — WAR RECORD.
THE SALARY GRAB.

A few days after the passage of the act known as
the " Salary Grab Law," Mr. Wheeler wrote to the
Secretary of the Treasury : " As this measure was op
posed by my vote in all its stages, it does not comport
with my views of consistency or propriety to take the
above sum to my personal use. I desire, therefore,
without giving publicity to the act, to return it to the
treasury, which I do by enclosing herewith five-twenty
bonds of the United States, purchased with said funds
and assigned by me to you for the sole purpose of can
cellation." Mr. Wheeler is said to have been the first
to adopt this mode of returning his extra pay into the
treasury.

WAR RECORD.

When the old Whig party wavered, and finally broke
in the onset with slavery, Mr. Wheeler was among the
first to hail the new party of freedom. He threw him
self with characteristic vigor into the campaign of 1856,
with the loss of which by the friends of freedom went
out the last hope of averting civil war. His sympathy
with the victims of border ruffianism in Kansas, was due
in part to the conviction that they were in reality the
picket line in the great conflict shortly coming on be
tween slavery and freedom. But his sympathy and his
conviction are revealed in this letter : —

WAR RECORD. 21

TREMOXT HOUSE, CHICAGO, June 2, 1856.
Editors of the Chicago Daily Tribune: —

Herewith I send draft on Metropolitan Bank, New
York, for one hundred dollars, which I will thank you
to hand to the appropriate committee for distributing
material aid to our hunted and oppressed brethren in
Kansas. Residing in the State of New York, to which
I shall not return for several days, I am induced to
contribute my mite here, that it may be made available
as soon as possible. I shall always number among the
cherished events of my life, that I had the opportunity
of attending the meeting in this city on Saturday even
ing last. To see here, in the residence of Douglass,
such a breaking away from party trammels ; such a
spontaneous and hearty outburst of sympathetic free
dom, and of determined resistance to oppression and
wrong, makes one more hopeful for the future, and is
an encouraging indication that the free North is at last
aroused, and will assert and maintain its just rights in

the government Now that the banner is

thrown to the breeze, there will be no faltering in its
support. Kansas will inevitably become free. Slavery

has made its last stride

W. A. WHEELER.

A few days after the firing on Sumter, a meeting of
the citizens of Malone was held, at which Mr. Wheeler
made a stirring appeal to his fellow-citizens to sustain
the government, and headed a subscription for the re-

22 THE LOUISIANA ADJUSTMENT.

lief of soldiers' families with $1000. During the two
following years he was in Congress, where he was
among the foremost in devising and urging ways and
means for the successful prosecution of the war. He
also gave a large amount of time and attention to car
ing for the soldiers from his State, making use of his
extensive banking connections to forward their earnings
to their families, and in every possible way, contribu
ting to their comfort and looking after their interests.
If soldiers' gratitude could be quarried, Mr. Wheeler's
bundles of letters contain enough to make a pyramid.

THE LOUISIANA ADJUSTMENT.

Probably the one act of Mr. Wheeler's life which
comes nearest to furnishing a measure of the real power
and greatness of the man, is his 'management of the
Louisiana difficulties in 1875. This is often referred to
as the " Wheeler compromise." But it was not in the
ordinary sense of the term a compromise ; Mr. Wheeler
himself does not so style it ; but an adju-stment, a plan
which aimed first to determine what was just between
the two contending parties and then to bring both
parties to accept it. The situation was one of the an
griest and most threatening among all the scenes which
have attended the progress of reconstruction at the
South. Intimidation and proscription of the colored
voting population on the one side, false returns and
military interference on the other ; two hostile factions
with inflammable Southern passions already heated to
madness ; leaders on both sides eager to head, but tin-

THE LOUISIANA ADJUSTMENT. 23

able to guide their followers ; the semblance of a legis
lature in session and therefore no colorable pretext ex
isting for calling in Federal aid to meet the progress of
sedition ; here were all the elements of a revolution in
which violence. and atrocity would have run full riot.
Where was the hand that could stay the disaster, and
bring these wild elements into harmony ? "Was there a
man in the nation who, answering Virgil's description,
revered for his piety and services, could " soothe with
sober words their angry mood," and lay this storm of
sectional and political passion ? It would be hazardous
to say that there was more than one : one, happily, there
was. Mr. Wheeler, having by means of his position on
the Committee on Southern Affairs become thoroughly
informed of the facts in the case, first decided in his
own mind upon a plan of adjustment, and then went
to New Orleans and laid it before the most ultra men
of both parties, urging it upon them with all the force
of cogent reasoning and strong appeal. Having secured
the assent of the leaders, his next and harder task was
to bring over the masses of the two parties to accept
the plan proposed. While this was in process, Mr.
Wheeler remained in New Orleans during a long month
of toil and peril, exposed to popular insult, threatened
with assassination, on one occasion actually fired on,
but holding firmly to his original scheme against all
appeals for modifications urged upon him, now by one
side, now by the other, until the adjustment was finally
effected, and Louisiana had peace. And be it under
stood that in all this Mr. Wheeler, though a member of

24 AS RAILROAD MANAGER.

the Committee of Congress on Southern Affairs, was
clothed with no authority to enforce his views. The
settlement he effected cannot even be called an arbitra
tion, for the contending parties had not agreed to sub
mit their differences to him. It was the case of a citi
zen of the United States going to the rescue of his
fellow citizens involved in difficulty and persuading
them to accept deliverance at his hands. And never
before in our history has one man so changed the con
dition and prospects of a whole State as did Mr. Wheeler
in Louisiana, though acting unofficially, and carrying his
measures by sheer force of character. It is pleasant to
be able to add that during a subsequent visit to New
Orleans, made for the purpose of aiding the execution
of his plan, Mr. Wheeler found himself the applauded
and feted hero of that brilliant city, the two parties
vying with each in doing him homage.

AS RAILROAD MANAGER.

In endeavoring to give some continuity to the ac
count of Mr. Wheeler's political career, we have passed
by a large section of his life during which he devoted
himself to business pursuits. He was cashier of the
Maloiie Bank from 1851 to 1865. In 1854, he was
appointed one of the trustees of the second mortgage
bonds of the old Northern Railroad, which has since
been merged in the Ogdensburg and Lake Champlain
Railroad. As president of the Board of Trustees, he
was virtually manager of the road for eleven years.
When it first came into his hands, the bonds were sell-

KELIGIOUS CHARACTER. — PERSONAL TRAITS. 25

iiig for four and five cents on the dollar ; but obtaining
a decree of the court allowing the trustees to bid in
the road, he raised the property for the benefit of the
bondholders, until every dollar of the bonds was pay
ing a fair interest to the holders. Mr. Wheeler him
self never owned a dollar of the securities of the road.
On laying down his trust in 1865, his accounts for the
total period of his trusteeship were audited and allowed
by the Supreme Court, and he was fully discharged by
decree of the court, to which all persons interested
were made parties.

RELIGIOUS CHARACTER.

For many years past, Mr. Wheeler has been a mem
ber of the Congregational church in Malone. He
maintains worship in his family, takes part in the de
votional meetings of his church, and is earnest in all
Christian activities and benevolences. As, however, he
is broader than his party in politics, so his religious
sympathies extend beyond his own denomination in the
Church. A few years ago, when the Methodists of
Malone . built a new church edifice, Mr. Wheeler gave
$1000 to aid the enterprise. Other denominations
have also had from him liberal testimonials of his in
terest in their prosperity.

PERSONAL TRAITS.

Mr. Wheeler has a dignified and commanding pres
ence ; his manners are cordial ; his conversation is un
usually interesting, as that of a man who has seen and

26 A REPRESENTATIVE MAN.

thought much, and who takes pleasure in sharing his
views with others. His face has an expression of min
gled sternness and sweetness, saying to you at the first
look, " Here is a man whom no one would dare ask to
do wrong," and at the second look, " Here is a man of
whom any one may ask a kindness."

A REPRESENTATIVE MAN.

Take him for all in all, Mr. Wheeler is a representa
tive American. His political principles are grounded
in the fundamental ideas of American Republicanism.
He is in cordial sympathy with the people and is an
exponent of their best spirit and purpose. Endowed
with faculties whose combination begets that rarest in
telligence which in private life we call good sense and
in a statesman wisdom ; raised by education to the level
of our ablest men in self-respect and in the power to
maintain opinions in their presence, and yet not lifted
out of the associations and sympathies of the common
people ; a man of such rare purity of character that
although he has been in public office nearly all his life,
his reputation, even in these scandalous times, is unsul
lied by even the breath of suspicion ; a " plain man,"
a true gentleman, a wise statesman, a sincere Christian,
Mr. Wheeler is a man singularly fitted, in this time of
revived national spirit, to represent the American peo
ple and the results of a century of American institu
tions, in one of the two national offices directly in the
gift of the people. May they not lose their opportu
nity !

LETTER OF ACCEPTANCE. 27

LETTER OF ACCEPTANCE.

MALOXE, July 15, 1876.

Hon. Edward McPherson, and others of the Com
mittee of the Republican National Convention : —
GENTLEMEN : — I received, on the 6th inst, youi
communication advising me that I had been unani
mously nominated by the National Convention of the
Republican party, held at Cincinnati on the 14th ult.,
for the office of Vice-President of the United States ;
and requesting my acceptance of the same, and asking
my attention to the summary of Republican doctrines
contained in the platform adopted by the convention.

A nomination made with such unanimity implies a
confidence on the part of the Convention which in
spires my profound gratitude. It is accepted with a
sense of the responsibility which may follow. If elect
ed, I shall endeavor to perform the duties of the office
in the fear of the Supreme Ruler, and in the interest
of the whole country.

To the summary of doctrines enunciated by the
Convention I give my cordial assent. The Republican
party has intrenched in the organic law of our land
the doctrine that libertv is the supreme, unchangeable
law for every foot of American soil. It is the mission
of that party to give full effect to this principle by
" securing to every American citizen complete liberty
and exact equality in the exercise of all civil, political,
and public rights." This will be accomplished only
when the American citizen, without regard to color,

28 LETTER OF ACCEPTANCE.

shall wear this panoply of citizenship as fully and as
securely in the cane brakes of Louisiana as on the
banks of the St. Lawrence.

Upon the question of our Southern relations, my
views were recently expressed as a member of the
Committee of the United States House of Represen
tatives upon Southern Affairs. Those views remain
unchanged, and were thus expressed : —

" We of the North delude ourselves in expecting
that the masses of the South, so far behind in many
of the attributes of enlightened improvement and civil
ization, are, in the brief period of ten or fifteen years,
to be transformed into our model Northern communi
ties. That can only come through a long course of
patient waiting, to which no one can now set certain
bounds. There will be a good deal of unavoidable fric
tion, which will call for forbearan.ee, and which will
have to be relieved by the temperate, fostering care of
the government. One of the most potent, if not in
dispensable agencies in this direction, will be the de
vising of some system to aid in the education of the
masses. The fact that there are whole counties in
Louisiana in which there is not a solitary school-
house, is full of suggestion. We compelled these peo
ple to remain in the Union, and now duty and interest
demand that we leave no just means untried to make
them good, loyal citizens. How to diminish the fric
tion, how to stimulate the elevation of this portion of
our country, are problems addressing themselves to our
best and wisest statesmanship. The foundation for

LETTER OF ACCEPTANCE. 29

these efforts must be laid in satisfying the Southern
people that they are to have equal, exact justice ac
corded to them. Give them, to the fullest extent,
every blessing which the government confers upon the
most favored — give them no just cause for complaint,
and then hold them, by every necessary means, to an
exact, rigid observance of all their duties and obliga
tions under the Constitution and its amendments to se
cure to all within their borders manhood and citizen
ship, with every right thereto belonging."

The just obligations to public creditors, created when
the government was in the throes of threatened disso
lution, and as an indispensable condition of its salva
tion — guarantied by the lives and blood of thousands
of its brave defenders — are to be kept with religious
faith, as are all the pledges subsidiary thereto and con
firmatory thereof.

In my judgment the pledge of Congress of January
14, 1875, for the redemption of the notes of the United
States in coin, is the plighted faith of the nation, and
national honor, simple honesty, and justice to the peo
ple whose permanent welfare and prosperity are de
pendent upon true money, as the basis of their pecuni
ary transactions, all demand the scrupulous observance
of this pledge, and it is the duty of Congress to sup
plement it with such legislation as shall be necessary
for its strict fulfillment.

In our system of government intelligence must give
safety and value to the ballot. Hence the common
schools of the land should be preserved in all their

30 LETTER OF ACCEPTANCE.

vigor, while in accordance with the spirit of the con
stitution, they and all their endowments should be
secured by every possible and proper guaranty against
every form of sectarian influence or control.

There should be the strictest economy in the ex
penditures of the government consistent with its effec
tive administration, and all unnecessary offices should
be abolished. Offices should be conferred only upon
the basis of high character and particular fitness, and
should be admistered only as public trusts, and not for
private advantage.

The foregoing are chief among the cardinal principles
of the Republican party, and to carry them into full,
practical effect is the work it now has in hand. To
the completion of its great mission we address our
selves in hope and confidence, cheered and stimulated
by the recollection of its past achievements ; remem
bering that, under God, it is to that party that we are
indebted in this centennial year of our existence for a
preserved, unbroken Union ; for the fact that there is
no master or slave throughout our broad domains, and
that emancipated millions look upon the ensign of the
Republic as the symbol of the fulfilled declaration that
all men are created free and equal, and the guaranty
of their own equality, under the law, with the most
highly favored citizen of the land.

To the intelligence and conscience of all who desire
good government, good will, good money, and universal
prosperity, the Republican party, not unmindful of the
imperfection and short-comings of human organizations,

LETTER OF ACCEPTANCE. 31

yet with the honest purpose of its masses promptly to
retrieve all errors and to summarily punish all offenders
against the laws of the country, confidently submits
its claims for the continued support of the American
people.

Eespectfully,

WILLIAM A. WHEELER.

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THE NATION:

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