Hayes, Rutherford Birchard

Average customer rating:

Disappointing Look at a National Hero
More a reflection on the author than on the subject
A good, brief biography of Eisenhower the president
Workmanlike
Not really a biography but a good introduction

Dwight D. Eisenhower
Tom Wicker , and Arthur M. Schlesinger
Manufacturer: Times Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Rutherford B. Hayes

ASIN: 0805069070

Amazon.com

"I have been in politics ... most of my adult life. There's no more active political organization in the world than the armed forces of the United States." So said Dwight Eisenhower, the subject of journalist-novelist Tom Wicker's thoughtful--and often critical--Dwight D. Eisenhower, shortly after leaving the presidency.

Eisenhower was never above politics, as his admirers claimed; Wicker shows that he was a political creature through and through, as Patton suspected while serving under him in World War II. ("Ike wants to be president so badly you can taste it," Patton said.) He held all the contradictory positions of a politician, too: a dedicated cold warrior and anti-Communist, he famously decried the power of the "military-industrial complex," resisted American involvement in Vietnam while setting the stage for it, and called himself a "liberal Republican" while doing little to attend to pressing domestic issues, especially in the realm of civil rights. He refused to stand up to Joe McCarthy and chose Richard Nixon as his running mate for reasons of political expediency.

Wicker gives Eisenhower middling marks: "The worst did not happen in his time, but neither did the best." His survey may not cheer Ike's fans, but it's balanced, highly readable, and useful for those seeking a window on American political life half a century ago. --Gregory McNamee

Book Description

A bona-fide American hero at the close of World War II, General Dwight Eisenhower rode an enormous wave of popularity into the Oval Office seven years later. Though we may view the Eisenhower years through a hazy lens of 1950s nostalgia, historians consider his presidency one of the least successful. At home there was civil rights unrest, McCarthyism, and a deteriorating economy; internationally, the Cold War was deepening. But despite his tendency toward brinksmanship, Ike would later be revered for keeping the peace. Still, his actions and policies at the onset of his career covered by Tom Wicker, would haunt Americans of future generations.

Customer Reviews:

Disappointing Look at a National Hero.......2006-06-19

There really could have been so much more said of this man, this General who led our troops during the Second World War, who entered politics in order to preserve the peace. In this short volume (the series is generally short and introductory in nature) the author, Tom Wicker, misses so many chances to engage his reader into discovering Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Something I found especially difficult to ignore was the glaring omission of any mention (I believe there was but one fleating reference) of the Interstate Highway Act...something which arguably did more to change the face of American life and culture than any other measure of the time.

Wicker does manage to capture a bit of character in discussing the 34th President of the United States. We are introduced to a man who served his country as both a military commander and as Commander-in Chief, who, following his first-hand experiences in war beleived that war should always be the option of last resort. Eisenhower's Farewell Address, warning his country against the dangers of an organized military complex, still is remarkable today.

However, what Mr. Wicker does most successfully is present Eisenhower's failures. As president, Eisenhower was unwilling to spend political capital on divisive, politically-charged issues such as the growing tension of the Civil Rights struggle and the anti-communist witch hunts spurned by Senator Joseph McCarthy and HUAC (the House Un-American Activities Commitee). A more compelling figure might have stood up and directed his country through such difficult times; Eisenhower failed to act.

Unfortunately, so does Wicker. The pages here feel as though the author slept through most of the writing. The book skims the surface of any real substantive discovery of what Wicker refers to as "the most popular president of modern times."

More a reflection on the author than on the subject.......2005-05-16

In his great biography of Dwight Eisenhower, Stephen Ambrose states that how Eisenhower's presidency is evaluated says more about the person doing the evaluation than it does about Eisenhower. Tom Wicker looks at Eisenhower's presidency through jaundiced eyes. He concludes this short biography by stating that Eisenhower was a great man but, not a great president. What is not clear is what kind of president Eisenhower was. If not great, was he, sort of like Truman, near great? Was he middling perhaps, or was he a poor president? Although Wicker does not provide that information, it is clear that he, at best, thinks Eisenhower's presidency was middling.

No matter what the event, Wicker takes a critical view of Eisenhower's action. He quotes Ambrose, for example, as follows: "Eisenhower's admiring biographer Stephen Ambrose reluctantly concluded that the president's failure to lead in this instance [support for the Brown v. Board of Education decision] was 'almost criminal.'" First of all, as admiring as Ambrose may have been, his biography was scrupulously fair and often critical. Wicker's characterization of Ambrose's conclusion as reluctant is an attempt to bolster Wicker's harsh criticism of Eisenhower. However, Wicker, unlike Ambrose, fails to give Eisenhower credit for the first Civil Rights legislation since Reconstruction.

If Wicker had been fair, he would have noted that the Civil Rights legislation was sponsored by Eisenhower and that Eisenhower was deeply troubled that citizens (black Americans) were being denied the right to vote. Eisenhower strongly wanted a powerful voting rights law and civil rights legislation did, in fact, pass. It was watered down but certainly, not due to anything the administration did. Rather it was congress, including some very liberal Democrats, who watered it down because the civil rights bill provided for penalties against voting rights violators without affording these violators a jury trial. Yes, many liberals watered that provision down. However, Wicker looks upon this as a failing of the president. In fact, his strong support for a voting rights bill was leadership and ultimately, under the Johnson administration, this provision was stregnthened. It was Eisenhower who put the issue on the table so that it ultimately led to the stronger legislation a few years later.

Wicker excoriates Eisenhower for an incident in the 1952 campaign in which he deleted a defense of general George Marshall. Eisenhower was appearing in McCarthy's home state of Wisconsin and Eisenhower's aids told him that defending Marshall, who had been attacked by McCarthy, would be an insult to McCarthy. Eisenhower would have been the first to admit that, in retrospect, he was not proud of what he had done. However, what Wicker fails to report is that earlier, in a venue other than Wisconsin, Eisenhower strongly defended General Marshall.

In foreign affairs, Wicker blows what he perceives to be failures way out of proportion. He seems to think that Eisenhower's exercise of covert activity in Iran and Guatemala was of biblically disastorous proportions. Meanwhile, he gives Eisenhower credit for keeping us out of war but, the very existence of a crisis in which war was averted, seems to reflect badly on Eisenhower. In fact, we were perilously close to nuclear war on several occasions. It is quite possible that nobody other than Eisenhower could have resisted the pressures to launch a first strike. That did not happen due to Eisnhower's great leadership. Getting us through the perilous 50s the way he did should make Eisenhower at least one of the near great presidents.

Finally, in viewing the failure to reach arms control with the Soviets, Wicker states that Eisenhower attempted to reach an agreement due to Stevenson's pushing the issue in the 1956 presidential campaign. In fact, early on, Eisenhower sought innovative ways to limit arms including, a proposed agreement to have unlimited surveillance of the US by the Soviet Union and of the Soviet Union by the US. Each country would provide airfields for survellance flights to the other. Eisenhower resisted calls from Democrats and Republicans alike for more armaments. In double talk, Stevenson was urging production of more missles due to an alleged "missle gap" at the same time he was calling for arms control. Eisenhower, on the other hand, was resisiting the pressure to engage in an arms race. So, by reading Wicker, you would not know that Eisenhower was an innovative leader on this issue and that Stevenson was speaking out of both sides of his mouth.

The presidential biographies, in this series, are relatively short. Wicker's is a good 15 pages shorter than several others in the series. Wicker would have done well to add 10 or 15 pages to go into a little depth about Eisnhower's heroic leadership as Supreme commander of the Allied forces in WWII. In fact, if he had done so, he could have even raised the rumored sexual affair with Kay Summersby. Of course if he had done so, unlike biographers Ambrose and Geoffrey Perret who both concluded that the two did not have sex, Wicker's jaundiced view would have led to the opoposite conclusion.

I believe that, although this biography does a good job in reporting the facts of Eisenhower's presidency, Wicker's harsh analysis is unfair and, ultimately flawed.

A good, brief biography of Eisenhower the president.......2003-10-30

One reviewer complained that this was not a complete biography, and that is certainly correct. It is a biography of Eisenhower as president, in a series devoted to covering the American presidents. That is the focus of the series, and most of the books in this series ought to share that focus. Apart from a biography on William Henry Harrison and Garfield, the emphasis on all these books should be on the presidential career of each individual.

I will confess that I am an admirer of General Eisenhower, but not of President Eisenhower. He certainly did count many achievements to his credit during his two terms of office, but his administrations were marred by some utterly dreadful events, and not a few failures to take strong moral stands by Eisenhower himself. His administration also established several unfortunate precedents, such as overthrowing foreign governments. Wicker focuses more on the failures than the achievements, but the most he can be accused of here is a slight--and I think it is very slight indeed--lack of balance. In the more recent presidents, we tend sometimes to see what we want to see, and many simply do not want to see the failures of his years in office.

The general assessment of Eisenhower as president is that he had some real achievements in foreign policy but fared far worse in domestic policy. On the former, he is credited with keeping the United States out of war (and getting us out of Korea) during the increasing tension of the Cold War. He also, in what I believe was his greatest moment as president on the foreign front, intervened strongly when France and Britain attempted to seize control of the Suez Canal in conjunction with an Israeli invasion of the Sinai. As Wicker correctly points out, however, this has to be balanced with the tragedy of the Gary Powers incident, which sabotaged a probable arms treaty with the Soviet Union. Worse, Eisenhower supported some morally reprehensible covert operations in Iraq (where we deposed a popular leader and replaced him with the Shah), Guatemala (where we deposed a democratically elected government), and in Cuba (where Eisenhower's folks undertook the planning for what later became the Bay of Pigs--Kennedy's greatest failure being not to reject the plan entirely). Eisenhower also is responsible for our initial involvement in Vietnam, which would deepen tragically in the Kennedy and Johnson years.

Wicker does a fine job of covering the domestic issues, although I think he draws back from a rather obvious conclusion (though many other writers do not): Eisenhower, although himself a moral, good individual, was at best morally timid and at worst a moral coward. In the terms used my countless ministers in my own Southern Baptist church, Eisenhower engaged in sins of omission. He lamented the Brown v. Board of Education, and failed to support it or implement it, although he did intervene in my hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas when our governor Orville Faubus refused to allow the integration of Central High School. But overall, Eisenhower had a dreadful record on Civil Rights, and we know from numerous personal comments--many of which Wicker records--that he was personally not very sensitive on racial matters (and that is putting it somewhat mildly). Also, despite personally deploring Senator Joe McCarthy and his tactics, Eisenhower did not intervene for several years of his presidency and did not condemn McCarthy publicly. Especially tragic was his failure to defend his patron George Marshall, one of America's great public servants (both in running WW II from Washington and later in his tremendous service in the State Department) from explicit charges of treason by McCarthy. On the other hand, Eisenhower did oversee the creation of NASA (though he wouldn't promote it the way that Kennedy did upon becoming president, for whom going to the moon was a mania). Wicker does point out briefly his great achievement in overseeing the building of the Interstate Highway system, and spends rather more time on his largely ineffectual attempt to convince the American populace that no missile or nuclear gap existed between the US and the USSR. Ironically, during the Eisenhower years, it was the Democrats who were pushing for more military spending, with Ike convinced that the US had more than enough to deter and defeat the Soviet Union in any forthcoming war. Significant mention is made of Eisenhower's farewell address, the first significant farewell since Washington's. In that he warned of the expanding influence of the Military-Industrial complex, a warning that we have not yet heeded.

Wicker also does a good job of discussing the bizarre lack of support that Eisenhower gave Nixon, a lack that undermined Nixon's campaign in an excruciatingly tight election that might have cost him the presidency. It remains one of Eisenhower's most perplexing failures. Although I myself would have preferred Kennedy to Nixon, there is good reason to believe that Eisenhower negatively affected the outcome of the election, from a Republican point of view.

This is a good, brief book on the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Wicker, although admiring of Ike as a man, is unsympathetic to him as a president. But I would argue that he is fair. If one wants a full-length biography of Eisenhower, one could turn to Stephen Ambrose's two-volume biography, or Carlo D'Este's superb biography of Eisenhower's military career.

Workmanlike.......2003-09-25

Some might argue that the job Tom Wicker has done here is a perfect fit for the Eisenhower presidency - workmanlike, efficient, strong enough to keep your interest but not compelling enough to make the reader feel like an expert on the President or develop a strong viewpoint about him. ... I would have liked a little more. (Something, for instance, on the Interstate Highway system would have been helpful. Or his views/feelings on postwar culture.)

Not really a biography but a good introduction.......2003-04-05

Tom Wicker spent thirty years writing on politics for the New York Times. Having worked as a young reporter in the 1950s, he combines memories of actual events with secondary sources to produce a short, lively monograph on Eisenhower's presidency.

Older readers can remember the media Ike: the winning smile, the bumbling answers at press conferences, the incessant golf. The electorate loved him, but contemporary observers were not impressed. They looked on him as a career soldier who despised politics, leaving handling of foreign policy to the slightly frightening John Foster Dulles and domestic policy to no one at all.

Wicker admits that this was once his view but no longer. However, he adds that Eisenhower's growing reputation owes nothing to domestic affairs. Perhaps his major success in this area was the Interstate Highway Bill of 1955, which is still financing our interstate roads. Trivia buffs note: this was the last major Republican program that required new taxes.

Wicker joins two generations of historians in condemning Eisenhower's refusal to speak out against McCarthy or in favor of civil rights. All agree this was politically astute but morally deplorable.

The 1954 Supreme Court decision on segregation came as an unpleasant shock to Eisenhower, but he was in good company. Most northern officials were lukewarm (an admirable exception was attorney general, Herbert Brownell). Holding racial views similar to Lincoln's, Eisenhower disapproved of mistreating Negroes but believed their capacities did not measure up to those of the white race. Wicker's discussion spends more time on Chief Justice Warren than the president, but it's an eye-opener. Legend gives Warren credit for the decision, but this is wrong. He didn't join the court until the case was nearing its end. On his arrival, it was already 5-4 in favor of desegregation. His accomplishment was convincing opponents to switch their votes. Such a controversial decision required unanimity, Warren pointed out. A split Court would encourage southern resistance, bringing disorder to the country and casting doubt on the Court's legitimacy. Good patriots all, they switched, including the hidebound southern racist, Stanley Reed. Does anyone believe this could happen today?

Among America's long line of political scoundrels, Joseph McCarthy stands out for sheer vulgarity. Many supporters in the Senate including Richard Nixon thought he was slightly creepy. That his wild accusations of rampant communist subversion ruined many careers without turning up any new spies was public knowledge. The New York Times and Washington Post pointed this out. Conservative Time Magazine heaped ridicule on him.

But no elected official dared cross McCarthy. Contemptuous in private, Eisenhower took care never to make his feelings public although newspapers regularly found hints between the lines. The Senate censure in 1954 happened only because of McCarthy's increasingly insulting behavior and a modest decline of anticommunist hysteria. It was a slap on the wrist, and McCarthy remained in charge of his committee, so no one can explain why he suddenly fell silent. Wicker has no explanation, and he concludes with the usual regret that Eisenhower failed to take a courageous moral position.

Historians always attack politicians for refusing to take courageous moral positions, forgetting that doing so is invariably disastrous. Perhaps the greatest example is Lincoln's emancipation proclamation in September 1862. Although a feeble antislavery gesture, it was unpopular in the north. Democrats happily pointed out that Lincoln had converted a war for the union into a war for the Negro, and they crushed Republicans in the election two months later.

Foreign policy is almost entirely responsible for Eisenhower's improving reputation. Even those of us who remember the 1950s forget how close World War III seemed. Many national leaders and several of the Joint Chiefs wanted to get on with it as soon as possible. America's foreign policy seemed in the hands of elderly secretary of state John Foster Dulles, a pugnacious, evangelical who had been lecturing foreigners on American virtues since the Wilson administration. He made almost everyone nervous with enthusiastic talk of liberating eastern Europe, regaining China, and using atomic weapons if provoked excessively. It turns out Dulles was firmly under Eisenhower's thumb, and this rhetoric mellowed as years passed. The president himself was far more peaceable than anyone thought at the time. He gets enough credit for ending the Korean war but too little for refusing to strike back at China's threats to Formosa (his military advisors were raring to go). When he aborted the English-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt in 1956, he was not reading opinion polls. Americans generally approved the invasion.

Most impressive of all, he kept the military firmly under his thumb. Despite the usual 1952 campaign rhetoric about defeating communism, Eisenhower held the defense budget level when he wasn't reducing it. His finest hour (although no one thought so at the time) came after Russia launched Sputnik in 1957. His announcement that orbiting a satellite was not a big deal produced universal dismay. Editorials denounced his short-sightedness; cartoons pictured him with his head in the sand. His poll ratings dropped to their lowest. Despite additional Russian space spectaculars, he did not change his mind, quashing all efforts to launch crash military programs. John F. Kennedy spent much of the 1960 campaign denouncing the administration for underestimating the communist threat, cruelly starving the armed forces, allowing the Russians to achieve military superiority. JFK was a far more aggressive cold warrior than his predecessor.

Like all volumes in the excellent American Presidents series, Wicker's is a quick read: 140 pages. Unlike the others, it's not really a biography. Eisenhower's greatest accomplishment was his meteoric rise to command in WWII after twenty years of obscurity. Winning the presidency was easy by comparison; after all he was the most popular man in the country. Wicker admits this, but he skips over the early life. As an account of his presidency, it breaks no ground but the author's anecdotes and outspoken opinions make it a lively addition to the definitive biographies.

Rutherford B. Hayes: Warrior and President
Average customer rating:

An admiring biography

A pro-Hayes work

a better man than president

The best Hayes biography available --- such as it is

Best Hayes biography I know

Rutherford B. Hayes: Warrior and President
Ari Hoogenboom
Manufacturer: University Press of Kansas
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0700606416

Book Description

Who was the real Rutherford B. Hayes? Was he a great or inconsequential president? How did his early life and career shape his later years? How did his triumphs and failures alter our history? And why should we care? Ari Hoogenboom's masterful life of Hayes definitively answers those questions and shows why our nineteenth president deserves far greater recognition than he's received in the past.

The first biography of Hayes in nearly fifty years, Hoogenboom's book recreates the rapidly changing world of Victorian America as experienced by one of its most reflective and perceptive figures. The Hayes that emerges is a much more progressive and far-sighted leader than previously suggested. He was, Hoogenboom argues, neither a Southern sympathizer nor an exemplar of the "Greedy Gilded Age." Rather, he was a devout, pragmatic champion of equal rights.

Hayes's colorful life was rooted in his frontier experiences in Ohio and galvanized on Civil War battlefields, where he survived five wounds and was ultimately promoted to major general. No other president was under fire on the front lines as much as Hayes.

Hayes's image as president (1877-1881), however, has not been quite so shining. He has been blamed for Reconstruction's failure and damned for an apparent bargain that guaranteed his election in exchange for withdrawing military support of Republican governments in the South. He has also been criticized for championing the gold standard, for breaking the Great Strike of 1877, for inconsistent support of civil-service reform, and for being an ineffectual politician.

Hoogenboom contends that these evaluations are largely false. Previous scholars, he says, have failed to appreciate Hayes's limited options and have misrepresented his actions in their depictions of an overly cautious, nonvisionary president. In fact, he was strikingly modern in his efforts to enlarge the power of the office, which he used as his own bully pulpit to rouse public support for his goals.

Chief among these goals, Hoogenboom shows, was equality for all Americans. Throughout his presidency and long afterwards, Hayes worked steadfastly for reforms that would encourage economic opportunity, distribute wealth more equitably, diminish the conflict between capital and labor, and ultimately enable African-Americans to achieve political equality. Although he fell far short of his ideals, his unwavering commitment deserves our attention and respect.

Customer Reviews:

An admiring biography.......2006-03-10

Quoting Mark Twain, who felt that Hayes's presidency "would steadily rise into higher and higher prominence, as time & distance give it a right perspective, until at last it would stand out against the horizon of history in its true proportions," Ari Hoogenboom states that his purpose in writing this biography is "in the hope of fulfilling Twain's prediction ...." Thus from the beginning we are warned that Hoogenboom is out to cast his subject in as favorable a light as possible. He doesn't distort the facts to attain this goal, but his judgments at times seem overstraining and one-sided. For example, a pragmatist to a fault, Hayes compromised on a number of issues (black voting rights in the South, the Chinese Immigration Bill), seeing no use in a fight to perhaps capture the high ground, yet the author is able to dismiss these moves as politically prudent. Hoogenboom includes a 5-page Afterward that is one defense after another of Hayes and his actions as president; it's such a glowing explication of the man that the only thing missing is a standing ovation.

That doesn't mean Hayes was unworthy of any praise. His Civil War career was noteworthy, serving with and leading the 23rd Ohio in many engagements, including South Mountain in Maryland where he was severely wounded. As president, his stand on civil service reform was generally commendable, fighting unsuccessfully against Congress for a civil service commission, introducing the idea of competitive exams for appointments in some departments, and ordering that federal officers not be permitted to take part in political activities. Although hardly mentioned by Hoogenboom, the Hayes administration also did much to stop the wanton destruction of much of the national forest lands. Hayes also was the one who appointed the great Supreme Court justice John Marshall Harlan to the bench.

Of course, Hoogenboom describes in detail the "stolen" election that got Hayes into office. He also relates admirably the post-presidency years of Hayes, his great interest in education and prison reform. Hoogenboom is also a competent writer, and he sweeps the reader along laudably with his narrative. The biography is an informative and interesting account of the nineteenth president; it's just that the author's singular purpose in writing the book must be kept in mind while reading it.

A pro-Hayes work.......2006-01-05

One of my favorite biographies, Ari Hoogenboom's "Hayes" is a positive and incisive look at the 19th president. Hayes is the prototypical Midwesterner, successful, yet humble, proper and reform minded, but not priggish or censorious. Hayes had a genuine concern for humanity and America. Though limited in the lengths he would travel to enact social changes we would today deem necessary (or that he himself would wish for), Hayes should be better-remembered. Hoogenboom's work is quite thorough, covering both Hayes's political and personal life.
Hayes has been criticized for giving up on Reconstruction and thus dooming blacks to a century of repression, but Hayes had genuine concern for blacks. However, by 1877 Hayes was quite limited in what he could do politically to maintain Reconstruction. Hayes was traditionally criticized for doing little to address the growing inequalities of the American economy. But, although he did help put down nation-wide strikes, Hayes was more sympathetic to labor than any other late 19th century president. I was also surprised to read about the extensive post-presidency work of Hayes, comparable to Jimmy Carter.

a better man than president.......2005-05-08

Over the last few years I've read more than 30 presidential biographies, usually using Amazon to guide me to the best book on each president. Hoogenboom's biography of Hayes seemed the best, and I was not disappointed. Hayes comes off as a courageous man of good intentions, but also as a man who was unable to overcome the nation`s problems while he was president. His childhood story is told in detail, and it reminds us just how difficult it was to survive from day to day 200 years ago. He was a genuine Civil War hero. 1876 was certainly the US's most contentious national election. There were so many deals and chicaneries in determining the outcome in 1876 that no one will ever know who should have won.

As president Hayes lacked anything resembling a mandate, and the Republican Party was divided between spoils men and those who wanted reform. Reconstruction had failed, and it is beyond me to imagine what anyone could have done to develop a better outcome for African Americans or national unity. Suffice it to say Hayes didn't solve either problem, and although he could be criticized for not trying harder to bring out civil service reforms and to insure ensure voting rights, there simply was not enough support for these efforts. He did work to make the US economy sound after a stiff recession and he was probably the only president that cared a wit for treating Native Americans in a respectful manner.

To my surprise Hayes was genuinely a good man rather than just another Ohio politician who became a 19th century president. Hayes actually considered his world and shaped his beliefs and actions according to his synthesis of the truth, rather than going along with the crowd. His reactions to the temperance movement and organized religion are worthy of our respect. Hayes made a genuine commitment to education and was a catalyst for funding black universities and Ohio State. He was appalled at excessive wealth and championed redistribution of wealth. At his core he was a man of the people and a good husband. He simply cannot be compared to most politicos of his time.

Hoogenboom's narrative lays out Hayes and his times in readable detail. He is not a great biographer in terms of bringing his characters to life, but this biography is well organized. This is a better than average biography about a fascinating time in US history.

The best Hayes biography available --- such as it is.......2004-01-21

I have to give Professor Hoogenboom credit for giving it the old college try. He does his very best to portray Hayes as an effective politician and as a real reformer. Unfortunately, the case he makes is simply not convincing.

To be fair to Hayes, this is not to say that his life was uninteresting. This biography shows that Hayes was not just some non-entity that was tapped for the GOP nomination by the power-brokers of the party, but that he had a pretty interesting life (a Civil War record of real consequence, plus an impressive career in Ohio politics) prior to ascending to the presidency.

Unfortunately, the only reason we are reading a Hayes biography is because he became President, not because he was a Civil War general or a governor of Ohio. It is when dealing with Hayes' record as President that Hoogenboom fails to persuade the reader of Hayes' impact & commitment to reform.

For one thing, Hoogenboom pulls way too many punches when it comes to the 1876 elections. He equivocates; he is not willing to say that the elections were on the up-and-up, but neither is he willing to concede that Hayes was involved in what was a truly stolen election. Anyone who thinks the 2000 election was stolen ought to take a good look at 1876. Like it or not, Hayes was complicit in this, and his credibility was compromised from the very beginning of his term.

It really doesn't get any better from there. Was Hayes a dynamic, reform-minded president? Good luck trying to prove that --- the record simply does not support that contention, no matter how hard Hoogenboom tries accentuate the positive. Granted, Hayes' administration was not the embarrassment of scandals that typified Ulysses Grant's administration, and certainly corrupt Republicans like Roscoe Conkling & James Blaine make Hayes look quite pure, but this does not mean that Hayes had any genuine tendency towards reform. One only has to examine the not particularly comfortable relationship between Hayes and Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz to see how Hayes felt about the movement supporting civil service reform, for example.

So we are left with a mixed bag. The only other Hayes biography I have read was written in the early 1930's and was so appallingly racist that I couldn't put it down fast enough. There has been precious little written on Hayes since then, so Hoogenboom has provided a great service. It is a well-written & well-researched biography, so there are no complaints in that regard. I simply do not feel that the author has convincingly made his case.

Best Hayes biography I know.......2001-12-07

Hayes had an interesting life and an active time in the Civil War. This book is aimed at presenting a favorable picture of him, and is written kind of like old-fashioned biographies. It pays excessive attention ro Hayes' diary, and contains considerable trivia. Some chapters are boring. The most interesting chapters are are, obviously, on 1876 and 1877 and the dramatic events around Hayes' election to the Presidency. And yes, the Republicans stole that election too!

Average customer rating:

Leaves a lot to to be desired
An Excellent Biography, Though Maybe A Little Too Dry
Flawed, I agree
Flawed
A middling president

Rutherford B. Hayes
Hans Trefousse
Manufacturer: Times Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0805069089

Book Description

The disputed election of 1876 between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden, in which Congress set up a special electoral commission, handing the disputed electoral votes to Hayes, brings recent events into sharp focus.Historian Hans L. Trefousse explores Hayess new relevance and reconsiders what many have seen as the pitfalls of his presidency. While Hayes did officially terminate the Reconstruction, Trefousse points out that this process was already well under way by the start of his term and there was little he could do to stop it. A great intellectual and one of our best-educated presidents, Hayes did much more in the way of healing the nation and elevating the presidency.

Customer Reviews:

Leaves a lot to to be desired.......2007-01-02

This book does a good job of outlining President Hayes life but it falls short in other areas. It does not give a sense of the country and how Hayes affected it. It suffers from being far too brief and does not even hit all of the highlights in his life. For those who want to get a sense of the president that is about all this can be used for. If you are looking for something that gives you information on the corrupt bargain or the start of the Gilded Age this book falls short.

An Excellent Biography, Though Maybe A Little Too Dry.......2006-12-20

This is the fourth Presidential biography I've read, if you count "Dark Horse" by Ken Ackerman as a biography (which is debatable). Each of the other three have their individual strengths ("Dark Horse" reads like a novel, Kevin Phillips' "William McKinley" deals with political philosophy, and Judith Ickes' book on Taft gives a psychological profile). This one does not accomplish any of the above.

This book gives a fair description of Hayes' life. However, I find that Trefousse's writing style is hard to follow. Some of the details, like Hayes' schedule at school, were not really necessary.

I am glad I read "Dark Horse" first. "Dark Horse" dealt with James Garfield, Hayes' immediate successor. That book introduced me to some people who had a role in Garfield's election and presidency, such as Roscoe Conklin and James Blaine. This enabled me to have a picture of these gentlemen while reading Trefousse.

Trefousse mentioned the similarities between Hayes' election in 1876 and Bush's in 2000. He concluded the book by saying Hayes' healed divisions while Bush has failed to do so. I disagree. The first half of Hayes' administration found him at odds with his party, which was not true with Bush. Also, Hayes was stronger in leadership after the Democrats took over congress in the midterms. Bush now has the opportunity to show what he can do inspite of legislative opposition.

Flawed, I agree.......2006-09-17

I enjoyed how Trefousse provided alot of insight into the type of person Hayes was. But, he didn't spend enough time on what the administration was like. Also, the author was very repetitive and seemed to be writing as if his audience would be high schoolers. It seemed a little dumbed down from other titles in this biographical series.

Flawed.......2005-05-22

Too many minor factual errors and too much mediocre writing. Obviously, Schlesinger--or any other editor--never saw this work before it was printed.

A middling president.......2005-03-28

If not for one thing, Rutherford B. Hayes would be an entirely forgettable president, part of the pantheon of minor executives from John Tyler to Millard Fillmore to Benjamin Harrison. The one thing that makes Hayes stand out is the controversial way he was elected, a controversy we were reminded of in recent years due to the 2000 election.

In the history of the Presidency, there have actually been four questionable elections. In 1800 and 1824, the elections were thrown to the House where wheeling and dealing overrode democratic principles. In 1876, as in 2000, the doubts arose in the counting of certain votes and with the disenfranchisement of blacks in the South. In Hayes vs. Tilden, the iffiness was more-or-less resolved by a committee that was slightly skewed in favor of the Republican Hayes; this slight edge was all he needed.

Hayes, like Bush, would have the legitimacy of his Presidency questioned. Bush would be able to affirm his rights to the office by winning a second term; Hayes, however, opted for retirement, and would justify his Presidency by his actions, the belief that he would have won in a fair election and his being succeeded by a politically similar James Garfield. As a President, he was honest and reasonably competent, but did little of historical distinction.

Hans Trefousse's biography is similarly honest and competent but of no great distinction. Unlike many volumes of the American Presidents Series, Trefousse provides a full (if brief) biography as opposed to focusing solely on Hayes's Presidency. Indeed, Hayes's single term occupies only around a third of the book. The principal virtue of this book is that - as probably the first Hayes biography of the century - it offers a comparison to the 2000 election that previous biographies could not have had. Overall, this is a decently written book that gives some insight into an obscure President.

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Hayes as an able administrator and honorable man
This book provides a new interpretation on Hayes.

The Presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes
Ari Hoogenboom
Manufacturer: University Press of Kansas
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0700603387

Book Description

Mark Twain, who captured the essence of the Gilded Age, predicted that, in time, the "real and substantial greatness" of the Hayes presidency would cause it to "stand out against the horizon of history in its true proportions." This volume, an assessment of all significant aspects of the Hayes administration, may bring about just such a reappraisal. It is am important reevaluation of the administration that officially ended the Reconstruction era.

Hoogenboom covers all issues, decisions, and developments of consequence during the Hayes presidency--from the withdrawal of troops from Louisiana and South Carolina that signaled the end of Reconstruction, through the Great Strike of 1877--the most violent general strike in American history--to the Nez Perce War and the removal of the Poncas to the Indian Territory.

Hayes began his term with a vast segment of the population convinced that he had been elected by fraud. The election returns of four states were disputed in his race against Democrat Samuel J. Tilden; when a special commission awarded all disputed returns to Hayes, many indignant citizens concluded that he was not legally entitled to reside in the White House. In addition to that sever handicap, Hayes faced a hostile Congress, controversy over the last remaining Republican governments in the South, urgent demands for civil service reform, and severe economic depression.

Hoogenboom credits Hayes with being a patient reformer, principled but practical, cautious yet courageous. He vetoed popular legislation that would expand the currency and exclude Chinese laborers from the migrants allowed into the United States. He defeated congressional attempts to force him to make appointments. He vetoed appropriation bills that would destroy laws enforcing voting rights under the Fourteenth ad Fifteenth amendments. He did not attempt the impossible task of reforming the entire civil service, but supported the merit system in the New York Customhouse and Post Office and achieved excellent results. His restrained, legalistic response to the Great Strike saved lives and property. In foreign affairs, he took positions that anticipated both the Open Door with respect to China and the Theodore Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. Against great odds, Hayes defended the prerogatives of his office and enhanced its power and prestige.

This new interpretation contradicts the widely held view that Hayes was an inept politician and an ineffective leader. It was Hayes's character and personality, Hoogenboom argues, that set his presidency apart in the Gilded Age. His honesty and decency echoed the pristine values of the early American Republic, while his attempts to rally support by emphasizing issues and policies--rather than by relying on political organization--anticipated the style of twentieth-century presidents.

This book is part of the American Presidency Series.

Customer Reviews:

Hayes as an able administrator and honorable man.......2004-11-04

Rutherford B. Hayes' victory in the presidential election of 1876 was fraught with irregularities. In the end, he received 185 electoral votes to 184 for Samuel Tilden. After the initial election, Tilden had 184, Hayes 165 and the remaining 20 were disputed. To settle the dispute, a commission with fifteen members was appointed. Four were judges, 2 Democratic and 2 Republican, there were five Democratic and five Republican members of Congress and one additional judge that was supposed to be an independent. However, independent judge David Davis, who was slated to be the fifteenth member, could not serve and was replaced by Republican judge Joseph Bradley. By a series of eight-to-seven votes, all twenty disputed votes, and the presidency, were awarded to Hayes. As a consequence of the maneuvering that put him in the White House, Hayes was constantly referred to as "his fraudulency."
However, as Hoogenboom explains very well, the manipulations that ended with the Hayes victory involved a great deal of compromise. At the time he took office, federal troops still occupied several southern states, maintaining carpetbagger Republican governments that protected the voting rights of the recently freed black population. In exchange for Democratic acquiescence to his assumption of the Presidency, Hayes agreed to end the occupations. Hayes was concerned about black rights and extracted a hollow promise from the Democrats that they would not interfere with the voting rights of blacks. Once the troops were removed, the Democrats took over from the Republican governments and initiated the process of segregation.
Hayes was an able administrator and had the best of intentions in his attempts to aid the plight of blacks. However, the white leadership of the South was largely unrepentant and everyone wanted the conflict to finally be over. Therefore, while things did not go the way Hayes wanted in the South, what happened was probably inevitable. He was also a transitional figure, as the American economy was emerging from depression and the industrial revolution was about to explode. During his term, labor organizations were forming and the first major strike took place. Unlike other figures in power, Hayes at least had some empathy for the workers and worked only to keep the peace. He was very precise in staying within constitutional bounds and avoided taking sides as much as possible. As the author is careful to point out, Hayes did not break the strike. His role in ending it is limited to the consequences of his actions in maintaining the public order.
Hayes was also a transitional figure in terms of American foreign involvement. He is the last president to keep their focus within the borders of the United States and less than twenty pages are devoted to foreign affairs. All future presidents were forced by circumstances to pay a great deal of attention to the rest of the world. His involvement in the treatment of Native Americans was similar to what happened with southern blacks. His intentions were good and humane, however the circumstances prevented him from making a significant positive impact.
Hayes is often portrayed as an aloof and inept president, which is not the case. As Hoogenboom does an excellent job of explaining, Hayes was an honorable man who was pressed by circumstances to make compromises that he found distasteful. In reading this history of those times, I was convinced that Hayes did the best that anyone could have done, given the circumstances.

This book provides a new interpretation on Hayes........1998-12-02

This book is told from and unbiased standpoint. The author does an excellent job ofjust giving the facts and not letting his opinion or anyone else's get in the way. The best example of this is in the first two chapters which talks about his campaign and then the disputed election, where to sum it up quickly, Hayes did not have the popular majority and won by 1 electoral vote. The book supplies me quotes and historical references from both Republican and Democrats and then gets into of the details of the election. So before I know all the details I already have evidence from both sides. Once one gets to the details it is simply facts no opinions. Hoogenboom does an extraordinary job giving facts and references from the time period and making and unbiased point of view. That is tolled form all sides and does not just concentrate on Hayes' side. The book remarkably managed to take and unbiased stance and still attack the widely held belief that Hayes was and ineffective leader and an inept politician. The author bring an entire new perspective on how to view Hayes. According to the American Presidency Series this book is supposed to present historians and the general public with interesting, scholarly assessments of Hayes' administration. Yet I found this book to be geared to the historians and the scholarly. The book is obviously being written for someone with good amount of intelligence. After reading this book one gains an entire new respect for the 19th President of the United States, Rutherford B. Hayes. END

Fraud of the Century: Rutherford B. Hayes, Samuel Tilden, and the Stolen Election of 1876

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Who stole what.
An obviously partisan history
Both Sides
"Was there a Compromise of 1877?" -- revisited
War by other means

Fraud of the Century: Rutherford B. Hayes, Samuel Tilden, and the Stolen Election of 1876
Roy Morris Jr.
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

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The Stolen Election: Hayes Versus Tilden-1876
1912: Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft and Debs--The Election that Changed the Country
Centennial Crisis: The Disputed Election of 1876
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Adams vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800 (Pivotal Moments in American History)

ASIN: 0743223861

Amazon.com

Stop me if you've heard this one: election night comes and goes and the race between two American presidential candidates is too close to call. The popular vote supports the reticent Democrat, but the well-connected Republican is named president after a lengthy and controversial fight over recounts and electoral votes. Of course, we're speaking of the 1876 contest between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden as chronicled in Fraud of the Century by historian Roy Morris Jr. Morris spends much of the book setting the stage by illuminating the characters of both the folksy Hayes from Ohio and the urbane New Yorker Tilden. Though quite different, both men are presented as principled and, ironically enough, committed to wiping out corruption and chicanery. This helps the reader understand the players when the post-election mayhem ensues. The Electoral College is unable to declare a winner after Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida submit multiple "official" ballots with different victorious candidates. Numerous shady deals are worked out to Hayes's favor while forces loyal to Tilden threaten to march on Washington and install their man by force, if necessary. The most damaging result of the mess, according to Morris, is the pervasive mood of distrust and acrimony on the part of Congress, a mood that would contribute to the South's notorious Jim Crow laws. History buffs will appreciate Morris's extensive research but everyone enjoys a good political thriller. --John Moe

Book Description

In this major work of popular history and scholarship, acclaimed historian and biographer Roy Morris, Jr., tells the extraordinary story of how, in America's centennial year, the presidency was stolen, the Civil War was almost reignited, and black Americans were consigned to nearly ninety years of legalized segregation in the South.

The bitter 1876 contest between Ohio Republican governor Rutherford B. Hayes and New York Democratic governor Samuel J. Tilden is the most sensational, ethically sordid, and legally questionable presidential election in American history. The first since Lincoln's in 1860 in which the Democrats had a real chance of recapturing the White House, the election was in some ways the last battle of the Civil War, as the two parties fought to preserve or overturn what had been decided by armies just eleven years earlier.

Riding a wave of popular revulsion at the numerous scandals of the Grant administration and a sluggish economy, Tilden received some 260,000 more votes than his opponent. But contested returns in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina ultimately led to Hayes's being declared the winner by a specially created, Republican-dominated Electoral Commission after four tense months of political intrigue and threats of violence. President Grant took the threats seriously: he ordered armed federal troops into the streets of Washington to keep the peace.

Morris brings to life all the colorful personalities and high drama of this most remarkable -- and largely forgotten -- election. He presents vivid portraits of the bachelor lawyer Tilden, a wealthy New York sophisticate whose passion for clean government propelled him to the very brink of the presidency, and of Hayes, a family man whose midwestern simplicity masked a cunning political mind. We travel to Philadelphia, where the Centennial Exhibition celebrated America's industrial might and democratic ideals, and to the nation's heartland, where Republicans waged a cynical but effective "bloody shirt" campaign to tar the Demo-crats, once again, as the party of disunion and rebellion.

Morris dramatically recreates the suspenseful events of election night, when both candidates went to bed believing Tilden had won, and a one-legged former Union army general, "Devil Dan" Sickles, stumped into Republican headquarters and hastily improvised a devious plan to subvert the election in the three disputed southern states. We watch Hayes outmaneuver the curiously passive Tilden and his supporters in the days following the election, and witness the late-night backroom maneuvering of party leaders in the nation's capital, where democracy itself was ultimately subverted and the will of the people thwarted.

Fraud of the Century presents compelling evidence that fraud by Republican vote-counters in the three southern states, and especially in Louisiana, robbed Tilden of the presidency. It is at once a masterful example of political reporting and an absorbing read.

Customer Reviews:

Who stole what........2007-05-23

A classic case of a grand theft. But who really stole what. One party cheats the electorate in the states of Oregon, Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana. The other party disenfranchises millions of former slaves in these states and the other 10 Southern states. Morris does a great job detailing the crimes of the board of election in the three states. He spends less time in detailing how a newly liberated people had their votes taken away. All that said, this is a great read on how the election was pushed away from the statistical winner (Sam Tilden). Both Hayes and Tilden were ethical men, it was their party people who were the decievers.

I like this book and believe that it is a great story. However it only tells part of the story.

An obviously partisan history.......2007-04-16

Roy Morris is obviously an extremely partisan Democrat. He clearly believes that Gore had the 2000 election stolen from him by the Supreme Court, and that a similar miscarriage of justice happened to Samuel Tilden in 1876. He thus makes a lot of analogies between the two elections, and apologizes for Tilden's flaws so as to make him out to be the superior Presidential candidate. (For example, he forgives Tilden for his working with Tammany Hall, because he later came to oppose the machine.)

The analogies are quite flawed, of course, because the issues were quite different. In particular, African-Americans in 1876 were by and large Republicans, while white supremacists were strong Democrats (even if Tilden was not himself a white supremacist), while those positions were reversed in 2000. Therefore, the issue of intimidation of African-Americans cut the opposite way. And one feature of the 1876 election was unique: the Illinois (Democratic-controlled) state legislature essentially elected Republican Hayes, because they chose David Davis, the "independent" Supreme Court Justice on the 15-member Electoral Commission that oversaw the vote review, to a Senate seat, forcing a new member to be chosen to the commission, and that one, Justice Bradley, while the most nearly independent justice they could find, was still a Republican who joined the others in an 8-7 party-line vote on all the disputed electors.

Trying to get the facts from this book, I conclude that Tilden probably did deserve to get the electoral vote of Louisiana (and thus the presidency), with Hayes deserving the other disputed votes. But the obvious partisanship of the book makes me doubt this conclusion, because I suspect relevant facts have been omitted.

I would wish for a more impartial treatment of this, the most controversial election ever up to 2000. Too bad.

Both Sides.......2006-06-27

Like the Election of 1960 there was fraud on both sides. It is truely unlikely to know who actually won the vote. Tilden was a Tammey Hall puppet. Hayes was a liberal republican who wanted to be president and was willing on calling an end to reconstruction
to get the post. The democrats did not protest becuase of the true deal.

"Was there a Compromise of 1877?" -- revisited.......2004-07-20

If you're looking for a fresh account of the 1876 presidential election that will provide the relevant background, relate the principal facts, and describe the roles of the various players in the drama, Roy Morris' book will do fine. (His vivid retelling of the actual "counting" of the Electoral College votes would by itself recommend the book to such a reader.) If instead you are seeking an in-depth, defensible interpretation of the events, one that will make use of the latest scholarship, then I feel "Fraud of the Century" falls short.

Author Roy Morris, Jr. relies heavily on cliches in his recounting of the campaign, election, and aftermath. Pejorative terms and expressions such as scalawag, carpetbagger, and "waving the bloody shirt" abound, used by Morris without reservation or even definition. The "bloody shirt" characterization is applied whenever he tells of a speech defending black voting rights in the South. Overall, the impression builds that Morris' sympathies are distinctly on the side of those who sought to restore the pre-war power balance in the Confederate states. While forthrightly condemning the means -- thus the "stolen election" of the subtitle -- he nevertheless sees the result as a necessary and inevitable restoration of "home rule". His treatment of the various Reconstruction state governments -- particularly that in Mississippi under the estimable Adelbert Ames -- fails to properly recognize the validity of what those regimes were trying to accomplish. Instances of fraud, incompetence, and the use of force in those Reconstruction governments are presented as if they were defining and unique characteristics, rather than attributes at least equally found in the preceding and succeeding white regimes. And by and large he accepts the self-serving accounts in Hayes' diary as truth, while always casting aspersions on the motives of the Radical Republicans.

Was there was an explicit quid-pro-quo that motivated Southern Democrats to acquiesce in the reversal of the actual results and to give the presidency to the Republican Hayes? This question has been a significant one in the historiography of the period and has been framed in part as "Was there a Compromise of 1877?" Morris seems to conclusively build the case that there was such an arrangement and then surprisingly to write that the resolution of the electoral crisis "did not depend on any secret deals."

This could possibly be read as a nuanced view that pivots on what actually constitutes a "secret deal." Or that there was such a deal, but that delivery of the presidency was only the occasion for it and not actually an element in the deal. But to this reader, Morris' interpretation seems to be simply that, since the "understandings" were never embodied in a written contract, and since Hayes managed to retain deniability of any such deal, one therefore did not exist. This seems to me to be a naive view, and the events Morris relates argue against it.

Overall, the author accepts the interpretation of Reconstruction -- and thus the merits of its demise -- that dominated both scholarly works and textbooks in various forms for over a hundred years. Generally, that view claimed that the end of Radical Republican governments in the South "marked the end of force as an element in American political life and a return to the ways of conciliation" (Randall and Donald). That view has recently been effectively challenged by works such as the well-documented "Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory" by David Blight. Although Morris cites that work in his bibliography, he seems to have ignored its uncovering of how our collective perception of Reconstruction had been warped by the need to reintegrate the (white) South back into the Union.

Putting aside this somewhat stale interpretation and the effect it seemingly has on the way Morris characterizes many events, his book otherwise serves as a compelling look at the circumstances that produced a turning point in American history.

War by other means.......2004-03-29

It is unfortunate that the election of 1876 continues to be described in terms the Ku Klux Klan would smile upon. Consider the casual use of honored Klan terms such as 'carpetbagger' (any northern federalist) and 'scalawag' (any southern federalist). For Democrat Tilden, Morris quotes but immediately rebuts newspaper slander. For black election commissioners, the newspaper slander is gospel. When white 'rifle clubs'murder former members of federal colored units in Edgefield, it is explained away with conflicting testimony. When (federalist) South Carolina election officials throw out the Edgefield votes, Morris tells us the black vote was probably split. When former slaves lose the right to vote, we are told their 'rights' were just an 'experiment.'

Just what was the 'Fraud of the Century'? Morris concludes the book by claiming he finds Hayes 'personally blameless'. I wondered just what Morris thought the fraud to be until discovering the book is an elaboration of a 1988 article and the title is a quoted headline used to conclude the article. Morris makes no argument for a specific 'fraud', instead he is simply sharing one contemporary opinion.

I came to the book to read about Hayes and his fraud. The fraud I was interested in reading about was not covered, though. I thought the fraud of 1876 was Hayes' 'bargain' with Wade Hampton and other Southern slave-ocrats. In return for the presidency, Hayes agreed to forget the 15th amendment to the US constitution.

Morris convinced me the fraud lay elsewhere. If nothing else, Morris argues the election of 1876 was 'war by other means.' Both Republican and Democrats were led by former generals. Prior to 1876, the activity was called a 'canvass'. After 1876, it was called a 'campaign'. Tilden, a man without military connections and experience in command of troops, never had a chance.

Consider a less Klanish version of events in Charleston. On Feb 18th, 1865, Charleston fell to units of the 21st US Colored Troops, followed by two companies of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteers (colored). After Lincoln's death, slave-ocrat leaning President Johnson kept southerners of color who had served in the federal army from voting and allowed the election of slave-ocrat colonel, James Orr. Orr's term in office was cut short by Federal General Robert K. Scott, who establish voting rights for federal colored soldiers. In 1874, a former lieutenant of Colored calvary, with the support of former colored South Carolina troops was elected governor, Daniel Chamberlain. This brings us to 4 murders in Edgefield, rifle clubs, night riders and the election of slavo-crat hero Wade Hampton.

Which brings us back to locating the 'fraud of the century' and its meaning in the context of 'war by other means.' Until the readmission of rebel states, the civil rights of the slavo-crat soldiers were suspended, including their right to vote in elections. In fact, because the Rebels had taken up arms against their own nation - an act of treason according to the Constitution ("Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them . . ." Art. III, Sec. 3, cl. 1), they could have been executed (Art. III, Sec. 3, cl. 2). Instead, amnesty was granted to the Rebels if they took an oath of fidelity to the United States, including the 15th Amendment which guaranteed the voting rights of former federal colored soldiers. Maybe, the artful way these oaths were circumvented represented the 'fraud of the century.' Morris was right. Hayes could do little to change the reality of politics south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Book Description

Rutherford B. Hayes became president of the United States after the disputed election of 1876. But for Hayes the "golden years" were not the four he spent in the White House but the four he served as a unit commander in the Civil War. "It was as though he had encountered in the war a largeness of the human spirit, courage, generosity, sacrifice, that disappeared in the peace. . . . No matter how high he went, he would always be Colonel Hayes of the Twenty-third Ohio Volunteer Regiment from 1861 to 1865. This is the exciting story of his part in the western Virginia campaign, chasing the Confederate John Morgan up and down the Ohio, and fighting under Phil Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley.

Customer Reviews:

A great study of a Civil War unit commander.......2001-12-13

Any book by Professor Williams is worth reading. He is a wonderful stylist and meticulous researcher. He is analytical and has a simple, plain spoken narrative style that educates the reader along with making it simple to follow his thesis, though by no means is his thinking simple. This book deserves to be read by all Civil War enthusiasts and also provides some insight to later historians who studied under this man, including Stephen Ambrose. This is a great book, and a much needed one.

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First Lady: The Life of Lucy Webb Hayes
Emily Apt Geer
Manufacturer: Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Political | Leaders & Notable People | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0967839610

Book Description

The only biography of the wife of President Rutherford B. Hayes. Lucy Hayes was First Lady from 1877-1881. The book covers her early life, the Civil War, and emphasizes her influence in expanding the role of presidential wives.

The Presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes (Contributions in American Studies)

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The Presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes (Contributions in American Studies)
Kenneth E. Davison
Manufacturer: Greenwood Press
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Binding: Hardcover

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Rutherford B. Hayes: Nineteenth President 1877-1881 (Getting to Know the Us Presidents)

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Rutherford B. Hayes: Nineteenth President 1877-1881 (Getting to Know the Us Presidents)
Mike Venezia
Manufacturer: Children's Press (CT)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Lucy Webb Hayes: A First Lady by Example (Presidential Wives Series.)

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Lucy Webb Hayes: A First Lady by Example (Presidential Wives Series.)
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