 |
Rutherford Birchard Hayesb. 4 Oct 1822, Delaware, Delaware County, Ohio |
| Title: | President of the United States of America |
| Term: | 4 Mar 1877 - 4 Mar 1881 |
| Chronology: | 7 Nov 1876, electors appointed/popular voting |
| 6 Dec 1876, elected by vote of the electors | |
| 29 Jan 1877, the Electoral Commission Act signed into law; the commission set up for resolving disputed electoral count [1] | |
| 2 Mar 1877, 04:10 a.m., after receiving the Electoral Commission directives and overrruling other objections, a joint session of Congress declared Hayes president elect [1] | |
| 3 Mar 1877, sworn in, privately in the Red Room, White House, Washington, D.C. | |
| 5 Mar 1877, sworn in, publicly on East Portico, U.S. Capitol, Washington, D.C. [2] | |
| 4 Mar 1881, term expired |
| Biography: | ||||||||||||||||
Attended the common schools, the Methodist Academy in Norwalk, Ohio, and the Webb Preparatory School in Middletown, Connecticut; graduated from Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, in August 1842 and from the Harvard Law School in January 1845; admitted to the bar on 10 May 1845, and commenced practice in Lower Sandusky (now Fremont); moved to Cincinnati in 1849 and resumed the practice of law; city solicitor (1857-1859); commissioned major of the 23rd Regiment, Ohio Volunteer Infantry (27 Jun 1861); lieutenant colonel (24 Oct 1861); colonel (24 Oct 1862); brigadier general of Volunteers (9 Oct 1864); brevetted major general of Volunteers (3 Mar 1865); elected as a Republican to the 39th and 40th Congresses (4 Mar 1865 - 20 Jul 1867); resigned, having been nominated for Governor of Ohio; Governor of the State of Ohio (13 Jan 1868 - 8 Jan 1872); unsuccessful candidate for election to the 43rd Congress; again elected Governor (10 Jan 1876 - 2 Mar 1877); resigned, having been elected President of the United States (2 Mar 1877); withdrew federal troops from those areas of the South still occupied, thus ending the era of Reconstruction (1865-1877); used federal troops against the strikers in the great railroad strikes of 1877; Congress overrode his veto of the Bland-Allison Act (1878), which provided for government purchase of silver bullion and restoration of the silver dollar as legal tender. [3] |
||||||||||||||||
| Election results: | ||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
| Sources and notes: | ||||||||||||||||
| [1] | HarpWeek | Hayes vs. Tilden: The Electoral College Controversy of 1876-1877 (web site); | |||||||||||||||
| [2] | Inauguration was postponed as 4 Mar 1877 fell on a Sunday. Hayes took the oath of office in the Red Room at the White House on 3 Mar 1877, and again on Monday, 5 Mar 1877, on the East Portico of the Capitol. | |||||||||||||||
| [3] | Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (web site). | |||||||||||||||
| [4] | Samuel Tilden received a popular majority but lacked one undisputed electoral vote to carry a clear majority of the electoral college. The crux of the problem was in the 22 electoral votes which were in dispute because Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Oregon each sent in two sets of election returns. In the three southern states, Republican election boards threw out enough Democratic votes to certify the Republican candidate, Hayes. In Oregon, the Democratic governor disqualified a Republican elector, replacing him with a Democrat. Since the Senate was Republican and the House of Representatives Democratic, it seemed useless to refer the disputed returns to the two houses for solution. Instead Congress appointed a special electoral commission of five senators, five representatives, and five Supreme court justices. The Congress began counting on 1 Feb 1877 taking a break each time when the disputed votes were referred to the Electoral Commission, which considered four cases and each time awarded the votes to Hayes by an 8 to 7 party-line vote. | |||||||||||||||
| Image: photograph of Rutherford B. Hayes (created between 1877 and 1893), Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. | ||||||||||||||||
Main Projects
RSS feed 