There was also disagreement as to which branch of the government should have the lead role in this reconstruction of the seceded states. In the summer of 1864, Lincoln had killed by pocket veto the Wade-Davis Bill, which would have asserted congressional authority in this area. He felt that he might have more constitutional authority under his powers as Commander in Chief than Congress did under its enumerated powers. When Andrew Johnson succeeded Lincoln in April 1865, the new President’s expressed views on the subject seemed acceptable to the Radicals, but the passage of time revealed an ever-deepening rift. Johnson, a Tenneseean, had been one of the few southern Democrats to support the Union war effort and the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which outlawed slavery. But beyond this he was a states’ rights Democrat, agreeing in principle with a maxim of the Democratic Party: “The Union as it was, the Constitution as it is.”
When the full Republican caucus met, it agreed with Stevens’ proposal to create a joint committee of the House and Senate on Reconstruction to deal with the revival of representation for the former Confederate states. No new legislators from these states would be recognized until Congress decided to recognize them. Hayes was fully in accord with these views. He wrote to Lucy that the Republican leadership in the House consisted of Stevens, William Kelley of Pennsylvania, and Roscoe Conkling of New York. He was reunited in Washington with his Kenyon College friend Rowland Trowbridge, now a congressman from Michigan.
As a very junior member of the House, he could not expect important committee assignments, and his expectations were not disappointed. He was assigned to the Land Claims Committee, and he became chairman of the Joint House and Senate Committee on the Library. Literate as he was, he enjoyed this undemanding chairmanship.
A good deal of the House members’ energy was devoted to the drafting of a fourteenth amendment to the Constitution, which would prohibit any state from denying to any person the equal protection of the laws, and from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. Much of the debate centered around disenfranchisement of former Confederate officials and around devising a remedy if a state should deny the vote to persons because of race or color.
The Republican-dominated Congress decided to make ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment a condition of the readmission of the seceded states. The Republicans were convinced that if there were no constitutional protection for the newly freed slaves, the governments of the former Confederate states would be controlled by the same white oligarchy responsible for secession—with dire consequences for the former slaves. But there was also a less altruistic motive in the Republican view: unless the freed men were allowed to vote, these states would be solidly Democratic on election day. Southern whites regarded both the Civil War and the Reconstruction which followed it as Republican-inspired, and would not soon forget either of these events.
President Johnson opposed making the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment a condition of readmission, and the gulf between him and the congressional Republicans became wider. Johnson also vetoed a reauthorization of the Freedmen’s Bureau, an agency designated to operate in the South to help the freed slaves. Hayes was ambivalent about this measure, feeling that there was some truth in Democratic charges of corruption in the bureau. But otherwise he sided with the radicals to override the President’s veto of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, a statutory forerunner of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Hayes was easily reelected from his district in October 1866, and in December he returned to Washington with Lucy and his third son, Rutherford Jr., known as “Rud,” just as his father had been. The Radical wing of the Republican Party had greatly increased its strength in Congress in the election of 1866 and veered closer to a collision with the President. In the spring of 1867 Congress passed, over Johnson’s vetoes, a series of Reconstruction Acts which in effect imposed military government on the unreconstructed states in the South.
Early in 1867, Jacob Cox—Hayes’ commanding general at South Mountain—decided not to run for reelection as Governor of Ohio. William Henry Smith, Ohio Secretary of State, urged Hayes to run, but at first he demurred. Some of his backers used the time-honored claim that only he could carry the state ticket to victory, and he finally agreed to be a candidate. At the state convention in June he was supported by the Radical wing of the party led by Senator Wade and was opposed by supporters of Salmon P. Chase, now Chief Justice of the United States. He resigned from Congress in August, effective in October. His first foray into national political life had been competent but unspectacular.
He viewed the gubernatorial campaign as an opportunity to urge approval of a referendum measure which would allow blacks to vote in Ohio. Many Ohioans who favored the Union cause in the Civil War and emancipation of the slaves in the southern states drew back at the idea of political, to say nothing of social, equality in Ohio. Hayes also was not above “waving the bloody shirt” and denouncing the leading Democrats— including his opponent, Allen G. Thurman—as onetime supporters of secession.
Hayes won a narrow victory in October 1867, garnering a margin of less than 3,000 votes out of nearly half a million cast. The referendum allowing black suffrage failed. The Democrats gained control of the legislature and voted to rescind Ohio’s ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment. The amendment was nonetheless proclaimed as law by Secretary of State William H. Seward in the following year.
The Governor of Ohio had no veto power, and so Hayes was an outsider in the state legislative process. But members of the Ohio congressional delegation on occasion consulted him about public opinion in the state. Queried as to what Ohioans wanted in the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson, Hayes responded “conviction,” without referring to any opinion poll.
Hayes led the Ohio delegation to the Republican convention in Chicago in May 1868, held shortly after Johnson’s acquittal by a one-vote margin in the Senate. He was pleased with the nomination of Grant as the party’s candidate for President, but disappointed that his fellow Ohioan, Ben Wade, lost out to Schuyler Colfax of Indiana for the vice presidential candidacy. Grant handily carried Ohio in the November election.
The state Republican convention nominated Hayes for his second term as Governor by acclamation in June 1869, and he again campaigned for equal rights for men of all races. The Democrats, on the other hand, opposed ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, which would prohibit denial of the right to vote because of race. They nominated George Hunt Pendleton, who had been the Democratic vice presidential candidate in the election of 1864. Pendleton championed a “soft money” policy, urging that the government’s Civil War debts be paid in depreciated greenbacks. The election in October was another close one, with the result not known until the following day. This time Hayes won by more than 7,000 votes, and the Republicans narrowly gained control of the state legislature.
Hayes liked being Governor. The office required little heavy lifting of any kind, and he loved the state of Ohio. He and his family moved into the former home of Noah H. Swayne, now a member of the Supreme Court of the United States. It was larger than their previous quarters, and the rent was reasonable. During his second term, Ohio ratified the Fifteenth Amendment and in response to Hayes’ pleas established the institution which would later become Ohio State University. When the legislature was not in session, Hayes traveled about Ohio and on one occasion to Washington, where he visited with President Grant. Grant extolled the need to annex the Dominican Republic, but Hayes remained unconvinced.
Hayes did not seek a third term as Governor, and retired to private life in January 1872. He and Lucy rented rooms in a hotel in Cincinnati for themselves and their two youngest children— Fanny, now four, and Scott, aged two. He dabbled in railroad promotions and land speculation, and continued to support Republican causes. The party suffered defeat in the election of 1873, partly because of the Panic, and partly because of the Crédit Mobilier and Salary Grab scandals, Hayes thought.
In the next year Sardis Birc
hard, who had been a substitute father as well as an uncle to Hayes, died. Birch and Webb, Hayes’ two oldest boys, were both attending Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Manning, the youngest child, took sick and died shortly after his first birthday. Hayes campaigned for Ohio Congressman Charles Foster from his district, who was reelected in spite of Democratic successes nationwide in 1874. He and Lucy now moved from Cincinnati to Spiegel Grove, a house built for them by Sardis in Fremont.
Hayes’ stint in private life was short; the Republican Party turned to him again in March 1875 and urged him to run for Governor for the third time. He was at first loath to do so— Alphonso Taft from Cincinnati very much wanted the nomination. But this time the governorship had an added appeal for Hayes; if elected, he would surely be “mentioned” as a potential Republican presidential nominee in 1876. Grant’s disclaimer of interest in a third term had an escape clause to it, but any doubt was put to rest by the House of Representatives, controlled as it was by Democrats, adopting a resolution declaring that any breach of the “no third term” tradition established by George Washington would be “fraught with peril to our free institutions.” The Republican convention then would be, for the first time since 1860, a genuinely open one, with no odds-on favorite. As an experienced Governor of a crucial state, Hayes would be bound to be a factor in the contest.
He was concerned about the small salary paid the Governor, but eventually gave his supporters the green light. At the state convention in June 1875, he defeated Taft by a margin of more than two to one. He campaigned diligently but with less enthusiasm than in the past. Hard times produced by the Panic of 1873, which had given the Democrats a national success in the 1874 congressional elections, still persisted. But the usual Hayes “luck” prevailed, and he defeated the incumbent Democrat, William Allen, by a margin of 5,000 votes in October 1875.
Hayes was inaugurated in January 1876 and went about performing the now familiar duties of that office. But almost immediately attention focused on him as a possible presidential candidate in the November election. Senator John Sherman in January urged his fellow Ohio Republicans to send a delegation to the national convention solidly committed to Hayes. The Governor had several years earlier refused to allow his name to be placed before the legislature as a candidate for senator in opposition to Sherman, and he now reaped the rewards of his instinctive good judgment at that time. At the state convention in April, the delegates voted unanimously to support Hayes for the party’s presidential nomination.
Hayes would have a number of rivals for that nomination, several better known to the party and to the country as a whole. First and foremost was Representative James G. Blaine of Maine. Born in Pennsylvania, and educated there, he moved to Maine when in his twenties after he purchased an interest in a newspaper in Augusta. He left publishing after a few years to devote his full time to politics. He had the look and bearing of a statesman and was regarded as probably the best political orator of his day. Elected to the state legislature in 1858, he went to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1863. After only three terms in that body, he was elected Speaker, an office which at that time gave its holder a good deal more authority than it does now. Blaine held this office until the Democrats gained control of the House in 1875. In July 1876, he would be elevated to the Senate to fill a vacancy created by the appointment of Senator Lot Morrill to Grant’s cabinet.
In Congress, Blaine walked a fine line, supporting much but not all of the legislative programs of the Radical Republicans. He made many friends in Congress, but he also had one bitter enemy—Roscoe Conkling, first a representative and then a senator from New York. The two men became the respective leaders of the Grant and anti-Grant factions within the Republican Party: Conkling led the “Stalwarts” favoring a third term for Grant, and Blaine led the “Half Breeds” in opposition to the President. Both would be seeking the Republican presidential nomination in 1876.
Blaine was falsely accused of participation in the Crédit Mobilier scandal, but he had a scandal of his own to explain. An investigating committee of the Democrat-controlled House accused him of having saved a land grant for the Little Rock & Fort Smith Railroad when he was Speaker of the House. In return, he requested and received from the railroad the privilege of selling bonds of the company on a very generous commission basis. Evidence of the truth or falsity of the charges was thought to rest in a collection known as the Mulligan Letters. Blaine obtained the letters from Mulligan but refused to turn them over to the committee. Instead, he read selected passages from the letters on the House floor, in a dramatic speech which satisfied his admirers but left a permanent cloud on his reputation.
Conkling was the undisputed Republican boss of New York State. He was elected to Congress in 1858 and to the Senate in 1867. He was a tall and impressive figure, thought to be overbearing by his detractors. Blaine, in a memorable jibe at him when they were both members of the House, decried his “haughty disdain, his grandiloquent swell, his majestic super-eminent, overbearing, turkey-gobbler strut.”4 Conkling, noted for his vanity, would not forget those words.
Benjamin Bristow, who served in Grant’s cabinet as Secretary of the Treasury, was also mentioned as a candidate. He was a favorite of the Reform element in the party, and no one doubted his ability. It was demonstrated by his detection, prosecution, and conviction of the Whiskey Ring described in the preceding chapter. But Grant felt that Bristow had unnecessarily brought about the prosecution of his private secretary, Orville Babcock, and he welcomed if he did not force Bristow’s resignation from his cabinet. Grant himself would not be a candidate in 1876, but his unyielding opposition to Bristow prevented the latter from gaining any convention votes from the Stalwart wing of the party.
Oliver Perry Morton of Indiana was the favorite of the Radical Republicans. He had gone to work at age fifteen, first as apprentice to a druggist, and then as apprentice to a hatter. Dissatisfied with this life, he entered Miami University of Ohio and studied there for two years, becoming recognized as a skilled debater. He left college to read law in Centerville, Indiana, and eventually established a successful law practice in Wayne County in that state. He was one of the first to join the newly formed Republican Party in Indiana, and was the party’s unsuccessful candidate for Governor in 1856. He became Indiana’s wartime Governor, and was recognized as one of the ablest of the northern Republican executives. He fought a protracted battle with the Democratic state legislature, financing out of his own pocket the necessary expenses of the state government when the legislature refused to appropriate funds for that purpose.
Morton was crippled by a paralytic stroke in 1865 but lost none of his zest for politics. He was elected to the Senate in 1867, where he served until his death in 1877. He was one of the most fervent supporters of the radical reconstruction program in Congress. Just because he was so clearly identified with that wing of the party, and because he showed no enthusiasm for “reform,” he had disadvantages as a candidate for the presidential nomination: “To the end of his life he was a power to be reckoned with in American politics, loved and honored by his friends, cordially hated by his enemies, and almost never ignored.” 5
The sixth aspirant for the nomination was John Hartranft, Governor of Pennsylvania. Like Hayes, he came from a populous state, and like Hayes, he had also served with distinction in the Union Army during the Civil War. But he was no better known nationally than Hayes, and less “available” than Hayes because Pennsylvania was likely to vote Republican whoever the party’s candidate was; Ohio was a more doubtful state, which its Governor might carry but which another nominee might not.
Rutherford Hayes was assuredly not the favorite among these six aspirants for the Republican nomination; Blaine held that position. But Hayes had the unique distinction among this sextet of being the Governor of a swing state and of being acceptable to all factions of the party, even though he was the first choice of only a small minority. If the better-known candidates faltered, he could be a compromise
choice.
The Republican National Convention met in Cincinnati on June 14. Such quadrennial conventions today generally do no more than confirm the results already reached in state-by-state primary elections held during the spring. But primaries were unknown in 1876. State delegates were chosen in state conventions, and these conventions had given Blaine more delegates than any of his rivals, but not enough to win the nomination on the first ballot.
Blaine had suffered a psychological blow to his candidacy the preceding Sunday, when ascending the steps of his church in Washington he collapsed and fell unconscious into the arms of his wife. He remained in that state for two days, but revived on the day before the convention opened and wired his managers in Cincinnati that he was on his way to complete recovery.
The convention was called to order on Wednesday in Exposition Hall, a huge wooden structure with twin towers, described by one observer as an “ambitious and disappointed railroad depot.” Following the keynote speech and speeches devoted to proposed resolutions and the adoption of the party platform, the convention proceeded to the nominating speeches for the candidates on the afternoon of June 15. Sixteen speakers took the rostrum to nominate or second the nomination of no fewer than seven candidates. The most dramatic moment in this process was the speech by Colonel Robert Ingersoll nominating Blaine. A splendid orator at a time when oratory was valued far more than it is now, his speech concluded:
“Like an armed warrior, like a plumed knight, James G. Blaine marched down the halls of the American congress and threw his shining lance full and fair against the brazen forehead of every traitor to his country and every maligner of his fair reputation. For the Republican party to desert that gallant man now is as though an army should desert their general upon the field of battle. James G. Blaine is now and has been for years the bearer of the sacred standard of the Republican party. I call it sacred, because no human being can stand beneath its folds without becoming and without remaining free.
Centennial Crisis- the Disputed Election of 1876 Page 5