Hayes, Rutherford Birchard definition of Hayes, Rutherford Birchard in the Free Online Encyclopedia.

Hayes, Rutherford Birchard, 1822–93, 19th President of the United States (1877–81), b. Delaware, Ohio, grad. Kenyon College, 1843, and Harvard law school, 1845. He became a moderately successful lawyer in Cincinnati and was made (1858) city solicitor. In the Civil War he began as a major of volunteers, took part in some 50 engagements, was several times wounded, and rose in rank to be (1865) major general of volunteers. Elected to Congress while still in the field, he served (1865–67) as a regular Republican, quietly supporting the radical Reconstruction Reconstruction, 1865–77, in U.S. history, the period of readjustment following the Civil War. At the end of the Civil War , the defeated South was a ruined land.
..... Click the link for more information. program. He was three times (1867, 1869, 1875) elected governor of Ohio and was chosen as the Republican candidate for President in 1876, opposing Samuel J. Tilden Tilden, Samuel Jones, 1814–86, American political figure, Democratic presidential candidate in 1876, b. New Lebanon, N.Y. Admitted to the bar in 1841, Tilden was an eminently successful lawyer, with many railroad companies as clients.
..... Click the link for more information. , the Democratic candidate. The election marked the resurgence of the Democrats and the political reentry of the South into the Union.

The chaotic political conditions brought on by Reconstruction resulted in disputed elections in South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana. This was complicated by the death of an elector from Oregon. Congress created an electoral commission to decide the elections. Although Tilden had won the popular vote by a small majority, the commission awarded all disputed returns to Hayes and thereby gave him a majority of one in the electoral college. Indignation over the obviously partisan decision affected Hayes's administration, which was generally conservative and efficient but no more than that. He withdrew federal troops from Louisiana and South Carolina, and the Reconstruction era was ended. His conciliatory policy toward the South and his genuine interest in civil service reform alienated important Republican groups, notably the "Old Guard" led by Roscoe Conkling Conkling, Roscoe, 1829–88, American politician, b. Albany, N.Y. On his admission to the bar in 1850, he was immediately appointed district attorney of Albany. The son of Alfred Conkling, Congressman and federal judge, he became a U.S.
..... Click the link for more information. . An advocate of hard money, he vetoed the Bland-Allison Act Bland-Allison Act, 1878, passed by the U.S. Congress to provide for freer coinage of silver. The original bill offered by Representative Richard P. Bland incorporated the demands of the Western radicals for free and unlimited coinage of silver.
..... Click the link for more information. , which was passed over his veto and provided for resumption of specie payments in gold. After his presidential term Hayes was active in philanthropic foundations.

Bibliography

See his diary ed. by T. H. Williams (1964); biographies H. J. Eckenrode (1957, repr. 1963) and T. H. Williams (1965); A. Hoogenboom, The Presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes (1988); P. L. Haworth, The Hayes-Tilden Disputed Presidential Election of 1876 (1906, new ed. 1927, repr. 1966); K. Polakoff, Politics of Inertia: The Election of 1876 and the End of Reconstruction (1973); R. Morris, Fraud of the Century: Rutherford B. Hayes, Samuel Tilden, and the Stolen Election of 1876 (2003); W. H. Rehnquist, Centennial Crisis: The Disputed Election of 1876 (2004).