John Hay

Abraham Lincoln, William Seward, John Hay

One of the things that make At Times Dull cozy for me is the secondary characters of American history that I get to follow through 3, 4, or in this case 7 biographies. John Hay is one of my favorites. John Hay was born in Indiana (woohoo!) in 1838, and after graduating from Brown found himself clerking at a law office in Springfield, Illinois, right next door to the law office of Abraham Lincoln.

Hay and Lincoln got to know each other via proximity and Hay's school friend John Nicolay, and after being elected president Lincoln took both of them to Washington with him as his personal secretaries. In Spielberg's Lincoln, Hay is shown as the sweet and slightly befuddled right-hand man to Lincoln (as pictured above), and while it's true that their relationship was very close and loving, Hay was more like the life of the party. He was smart, funny, and boyish — the Josh Lyman trifecta — and a big hit with men and women alike. (Notable exception: Mary Todd Lincoln.) He and Lincoln used to wake each other up in the middle of the night to hang out, and they went horseback riding in the summer. He might have been closer to Lincoln than anyone.

While his relationship with Lincoln is the first line of his obituary, he went on to have an illustrious career in public service. Under Johnson and then Grant he was a US diplomat to Paris, Madrid, and Vienna, before leaving politics for a few years to write and edit for the New York Tribune.

Hayes pulled him back in as Assistant Secretary of State for the last 2 years of his term, but then Hay sat out the next 5 administrations. He spent that time in part working on the 10-volume biography of Lincoln he co-wrote with Nicolay, which remains the bedrock and final word on Lincoln’s legacy.

Then in 1897 William McKinley asked him to be US Ambassador to the UK, and a year later named him Secretary of State. When McKinley was assassinated, Hay reluctantly stayed on at State under Roosevelt and held that position until his death in 1905, eventually coming to love and admire him.

Hay had learned almost as much from William Seward (Lincoln’s SoState) as he had from Lincoln, and was a remarkable statesman. He helped negotiate the end of the Spanish-American War, authored the treaty that would allow construction of the Panama Canal, wrote the Open Door policy in China, and settled the eastern border of Alaska. Despite how good he was at his job, it never hurt that people saw him as the surviving link to Abraham Lincoln, and as his biographer said, he mourned Lincoln for his entire life.

Shortly before his death he was returning to the US from abroad, and getting ready to report to Roosevelt. While on the ship, he dreamt that he reported to the White House and was greeted instead by Lincoln. It’s no surprise that he never got over Lincoln — nobody really has. A statesman whose career began at the right hand of Lincoln and ended at the right hand of Roosevelt, he understood better than anyone the rarity and impact of a great man in the presidency. On the occasion of Roosevelt’s second inauguration, aware that his own life was coming to a close, he gave the young president a ring that contained a hair from Lincoln’s head.

Chet Arthur as president. Good God!

This is where Chester Arthur worked until Rutherford B Hayes fired him. He was the customs collector at the New York Customs House, a coveted position because of its power and potential for embezzlement. The customs house system was the largest source of income for the federal government until income tax was instated. It was also notoriously corrupt, in a time when every federal system was corrupt. Although Arthur's official salary was about $10,000 a year, he routinely took home about $60,000 in kickbacks, "bonuses," and outright theft, making more than the president ($50,000). Rutherford B Hayes was trying to clean up the civil service, and targeted Arthur as a high-profile scapegoat. Unfortunately, Arthur couldn't be removed without the approval of Congress (remember the Tenure of Office Act?), and Arthur's brofriend Senator Roscoe Conkling kept blocking it in committee. The Hayes administration finally succeeded after months of battle (Arthur was suspended and reinstated once or twice during the process) and Arthur was out.

The problem with this move, politically, was that Hayes and Arthur were both Republicans. So was Conkling! The Republican party was bitterly divided into factions - the Radicals, the Stalwarts, and the moderates in between (sometimes called Mugwumps, a term which also included Democrats). Although Congress was usually split quite evenly between parties, there hadn't been a Democratic president since Buchanan. The Republicans would fight amongst themselves during a presidency, but every 4 years would have to figure out a way to back the same person for president.

This is Roscoe Conkling and he was The Main Problem. As a senator from New York he led the Stalwart faction using fear and bribery. His deputies (Arthur among them) were extremely loyal but sometimes cautious because he was a megalomaniac, one of a long line of New York political bosses (M Van Buren, Thurlow Seed, William Seward) who were just the worst.

But Arthur had tied his fortunes to Conkling early on. The son of a poor preacher who moved around a lot, he seemed to want the opposite — a steady job, wealth, and moral bankruptcy. He started out idealistic, but shed his idealistic friends as he got older and more ambitious.

Arthur was a young lawyer in New Yorker when governor Edwin Morgan took a shine to him and appointed him as the state's quartermaster general during the Civil War. This meant he was in charge of all the logistics for New York's troops (who numbered more than any other state's) such as housing, clothing, supplies, and food. [He may have taken this job, rather than fighting, because his wife and her family were from Virginia and sided with the South.] Either way, he was very, very good at his job. Whatever his motivations at any of his jobs, he remained an excellent administrator.

His work brought him to the attention of the party bosses, and he was ever after heavily involved in New York politics. He was especially good at coercing campaign donations out of government employees by threatening to fire them.

So he eventually runs the customs house and he's super rich and really fat and undoubtedly corrupt. He gets fired, and his friends the Stalwarts are really mad. The 1880 election is just around the corner, however, and the Radicals and Stalwarts will need to find a way to agree on a candidate. Conkling wanted Grant to run for a third term, which was bananas, the Radicals wanted Blaine. After they stalemated over that for a few days Garfield was chosen as a compromise candidate, and, as a concession to the Stalwarts, and to ensure their support, the Radicals told them they could pick the vice presidential candidate. They did not expect them to pick Chester Arthur, a man the sitting president had just fired in disgrace.

They also did not expect Garfield to die, and for Chester Arthur - a corrupt businessman who had never held elected political office - to become president. As one newspaper editor put it, while Garfield was dying: "Chet Arthur as president. Good God!"

I want to stop and point out that Arthur is one of the most fascinating men I've read about for At Times Dull. His story is so unpredictable and unlikely, and himself so enigmatic, and I was truly eager to see how it all worked out for him. I emailed Thomas C. Reeves to thank him for writing such a fascinating account, and I would recommend it. It's not only a great biography, but provides my best understanding of post-bellum politics, the civil service wars, and the national mood at this time.

So anyway, Arthur becomes president and everyone is wringing their hands. Surely he will just be a puppet for Conkling. Surely he will undo civil service reform and entrench the spoils system. Surely he will split the Republican party in two once and for all. Arthur read all of this bad press and was determined to prove it false. I wouldn't say he felt chastised by it, but perhaps abashed. He went public with the idea that he was simply there to see through the aims of the Garfield administration, of which he was now the executor. A lot of his Republican cronies, who thought they were going to cash in favors with him, eventually broke up with him because he wasn't being corrupt enough. He offered Conkling a few mid-level appointments, but certainly didn't hand him the reins of the country (thank God).

He wasn't a great or bad president. He passed civil service reform measures (the newspapers went to town with the irony of that), approved the rebuilding of the Navy, and his biggest problem, for real, was what to do with the gigantic federal budget surplus.

Also, he was recently widowed, and quite lonely. He spent a lot of money on entertaining and decorating, and hosted dinners for the bachelor Congressmen. He did his work as president dutifully, but never enjoyed it. He got a lot of flak for showing up to work late (like after lunch) and delegating too much. What his critics didn't know was that he had a SECRET FATAL DISEASE! I'm not kidding, it's just like The West Wing. Shortly after becoming president he was diagnosed with Bright's disease, a kidney condition now called nephritis. For most of his term he felt ill, had no energy, and was losing weight. He declined a run for re-election (because he knew about his secret disease) and died a year and a half after leaving office.

There were a lot of people in the country who thought Arthur had no business being president, and Arthur was first among them. Never has a forgettable presidency been such a high achievement.

President Facts: Hayes edition

Hayes was the first president to visit the West Coast while in office.

Hayes was the first president to have a telephone in the White House, but they barely used it because they had no one to call.

Rud and Lucy were total abstainers from alcohol. Alcohol was banned in their White House, although they were known for their lavish entertaining. They claim that the money they saved on alcohol allowed them to plan better parties.

Lucy Hayes was the first first lady to have attended college!

Lucy Hayes instituted the White House Easter Egg Roll when D.C. banned it from the Capitol lawn.

RBH and the sober second thought of the people

Here's something you may already know if you are a close and dedicated reader of ATD: I don't understand the economy and I'm not trying to correct that. "The president had to deal with some economic issues" is always my least favorite part of the biographies. Presidents whose entire tenures revolve around economic problems, such as Martin Van Buren, as far as I recall, really just slide right by without me getting interested in them. Sorry, Martin, you seem to have been a good Secretary of State.

I'm obviously ramping up to the economic issue of Rud's term, which was the coinage of silver. Some people wanted to keep doing it and some didn't. It was a big deal! That's all I can say. He also dealt with the railroad boom and continue the executive slog with the Indian Affairs Bureau. None of it, I have to say, is particularly exemplary.

Rud's big cause, and one that I can really get behind, was civil service reform. Particularly, he went after what they called patronage and the spoilsmen. Perhaps you have seen Lincoln? You know how they buy votes by promising mid-level federal jobs? That is patronage. Each president, after elected, got to fire anybody he wished - from the cabinet to the postmaster of Akron - and appoint whomever he wished. This system was the dumbest. First of all, if your wife's cousin's dad is Franklin Pierce and that means you get to be assistants customs collector at Baltimore, you are going to get fired as soon as Pierce is out of office. Second of all, the civil service was full of unqualified brothers-in-law. Third of all, appointments took up MONTHS AND MONTHS of the president's time after election and inauguration. The White House was flooded with office seekers or letters from office seekers at all times. Every single president has hated this part of their job, but none seriously questioned its necessity until Rud.

Patronage was at the heart of 19th century politics. This was still a time when it was unseemly to presidential candidates to campaign for themselves (just imagine!), so their "friends" would travel around giving speeches on their behalf and writing editorials. Once elected, the president would give these friends new jobs in return. Jobs were also given in return for votes or to get someone out of your state's Senate race. So when Rud started pushing for civil service reform, all the politicians who loved giving jobs out - known as spoilsmen - were like, how will we get anything done? Roscoe Conkling, a senator from New York and close friend of Grant, fought Hayes on this as hard as he could, because patronage was his main source of power. The customs collector at New York was the most powerful federal job in the country, and Conkling was usually able to dictate to the president who should have it. To prove a point, Hayes' fired the man whom Conkling had placed in that post. That man was Chester Arthur! It made Conkling so mad!

I commend Hayes for his effort, mostly because this blogger could do without 30 pages of "the president worried over federal appointments" that comes in the middle of every biography. Hayes certainly did not fix civil service reform, but he was right to introduce the issue, which would take decades to fix. Hayes angered a lot of people, but he frequently referred to "the sober second thought of the people," who he was confident would understand his motivations in time. It was a feeling for the long game that comes to many presidents once they're in office.

Unfortunately, in order to win the presidency four years later, Garfield really needed Conkling on his side, so the Republicans put Chester Arthur on the ticket as vice president, who obviously became president a few months into Garfield's term. When Grant died, Hayes attended the funeral with president Arthur. He was pretty sure it was going to be awkward attending a funeral with a man he had fired, but they had a great time and Arthur never brought it up. Way to go, guys!

This long-game perspective did not always make Rud a good president. When it came to Reconstruction, and all the horrible things that were going on down there, like the first black cadet having his ear cut off at West Point, Rud's opinion was: the South should be better educated. Which, true, but also people who cut off other people's ears should be prosecuted in the present day. (Technically, they were, but they were found innocent. The black cadet probably cut off his own ear for attention! was the verdict.) But we're entering a time when the presidents wanted to prove to the South that they trusted them again, so they were trying to be hands-off about egregious civil rights violations. It was going so-so.

1876: Just vote as many times as you want there, sir.

Have you seen Spielberg's Lincoln? Do you remember the scene when Lincoln is convincing the Congressman from Kentucky to vote for the amendment, and Rep. Kentucky says "We're not ready for freed slaves" and Lincoln says "We're not ready for peace either" and everyone goes ah hahaha rhetorical genius.

They were both right. Man, the 1860s sucked. Also the 1870s. Johnson was an unmitigated disaster of a president, Grant was a competent leader but not forceful enough for the times. Hoogenboom keeps calling the Grant administration "rife with corruption," and that hurts my feelings, but it's true that it was not an opportune time to lead with quiet dignity and hope everyone noticed.

ANYWAY. The Republican party was fixing to split in two. The radical faction were eager for full civil rights for freed slaves, the moderate faction was not. The division was stark enough that no candidate for the 1876 election could satisfy both sides. Enter Rutherford B Hayes, who had been out of national government for 11 years. He had served two terms as Ohio's governor (his pet project? prison reform! full of surprises, was Rud) and then retired. After a few years of leisure, adding on to his house and serving on library boards, he ran for a third term at the urging of his political allies, who had the express goal of nominating him for a president once he was back in office. And he did in fact emerge as the nominee from the 9 original candidates, because he's Rud Hayes and everything is easy, but especially because he was moderate and had been away from the fray for 11 years, so no one had any beef with him (just like how James Buchanan got nominated, except different because Hayes wasn't a blowhard).

He ran in the general election against Democrat Samuel Tilden, and here's where the horror of the 1870s comes in. The Republican party in the South was almost entirely black, the Democratic party almost entirely white. There had, at one point, been white Republicans, but when all the blacks got the right to vote and became Republican they were like, bye! Because of racism. Southern Democrats were not in favor of "Republicans" voting, and tried to stop them from doing so with intimidation, violence, and trickery. Some Democratic ballots were printed with pictures of Abraham Lincoln's head at the top so that illiterate "Republicans" would think they were voting for Republican when they were not. In other cases, Democratic election workers would allow fellow whites "Democrats" to vote as many times as they pleased.

So, according to historical record, Tilden "won the popular vote," but the real story is complicated. Many of Tilden's votes were fraudulently obtained or duplicate. Many, many Republicans were prevented from voting. The election results in Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Oregon were contested, leaving 20 electoral votes unassigned after the initial counts came in. (Oregon was disputed merely because one of its electors had a federal job, and therefore was ineligible to be an elector, but there was never any questions Oregon would go to Hayes.)

It was up to the president of the Senate, Senator Thomas Ferry, to decide which electoral votes to count (there was at that moment no vice president). Ferry was like, thanks but no thanks, so Congress formed an Electoral Commission made up of 5 Senators, 5 Representatives, and 5 Supreme Court justices. They heard arguments on the voting results in the 3 disputed states. Their decision boiled down to the fact that, while thousands of votes for each candidate were thrown out, more Democratic votes were thrown out than Republican votes, and they gave all 20 disputed electoral votes to Hayes, 2 days before inauguration.

A lot of attention is paid to the fact that Tilden won the popular vote but lost the election, but the popular vote he won is made of fictions. A just election of registered votes would probably have elected Hayes. A just election did not take place in 1876, but I'm convinced the people's preferred candidate got the job anyway. Hurray for the legislature!

This is an interesting recap of the election, if you like numbers.

The Beards

As some you know, I like to group the presidency into relative phases.

1 - Founding Father (Washington, Adams, Jefferson)

2 - Nation Builders (Madison, Monroe, Quincy Adams)

3 - Expansionists (Jackson, Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler, Polk)

4 - Compromisers (Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan)

5 - Civil War Presidents (Lincoln, Johnson, Grant)

and now









6 - Welcome to the beard years, America (Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, Harrison)

For the next few decades, it will be impossible to become president without a lot of unruly hair on your face. I suppose these guys are more like The Reconstructionists, or the The Guys Who Attempt Reconstruction But It Is So Hard.

The two main themes of Hayes' political career were equal rights and social justice, which were both cornerstones of the Republican platform in the 1870s. (Take a minute with that one.)

Hayes was not a genius - fewer and fewer presidents are as we go along - but he was driven and well-liked. He graduated as valedictorian from Kenyon College and then went to Harvard Law before moving back to Ohio, where he started practicing law in Cincinnati and married Lucy (who is awesome, more on her later.) His work on fugitive slave cases brought him to the attention of the Republican party, and the city council eventually elected him City Solicitor (thus inaugurating a tradition of Republicans saying "Hey Rud! You should have this job!" and him being like "Sure!" This will later include a seat in Congress, the governorship, and the presidency. His ambition was almost entirely external.)

Then he met the second love of his life, the 23rd Regiment of Ohio Volunteer Infantry. Don't even try to get Rud to shut up about the 23rd Ohio. He named his fourth son after his Civil War commander, George Crook. (Remember when Zachary Taylor named his daughter after his favorite fort? I love that guy.) He was wounded 4 times, one of which was serious enough that Lucy heard he was dead, and ended the war as a major general, although he was always quick to point out that he never fought as one, his last engagement coming when he was still a colonel.

While still in the army, he was elected to Congress. He refused to take a break to campaign, but won anyway. See? He never had to do anything. He beat a Democratic incumbent by writing open letters to voters. He was sworn in to Congress in December 1865, right in time for the grand showdown between Thaddeus Stevens and Andrew Johnson. He entered a moderate, but was quickly taken by Stevens and ended up voting the radical line on the 14th Amendment, the Civil Rights Act, The Tenure of Office Act, and The Reconstruction Acts.

He resigned from Congress in July 1867 after only a year and a half, although a historic year and a half it was, to run for Governor of Ohio. Some would think it strange to leave Congress during one of the most important times in our nation's history to run Ohio, but hey, when you're Rutherford B Hayes everything seems to work out for you.

Guess who was super good-looking?

The Hayes boys!

First of all, Rutherford (Rud) B. Hayes was a fine-looking young man. Everyone talks about Franklin Pierce being the best-looking president. Have they seen Rud Hayes?

Cowabunga!

















But his sons were also gorgeous. [Side note: Rud and Lucy were awesome at naming their kids: Birchard, Webb, Rud, Joseph, Georgey, Fanny, Scott, and Manning.]

Of the four sons who lived into adulthood, Webb and Rud were particularly dreamy.

Riiiiiiiight? Their older brother, Birch, seems to have gotten his looks from....somewhere else. (I've never seen a picture of their young brother above the age of 17, because he was a little tyke when Rud Sr. was in the White House.)

I think HBO needs to get on a pilot about Webb and Rud, two hot young governor's sons who grew up in Ohio and then went into the law and engineering. I would watch it.