Presidents 19-21

Rutherford B. Hayes

Republican party officials approached Rutherford Birchard Hayes while he was serving as an officer in the Union army during the Civil War. The party officials wanted Hayes to run for Congress. Hayes felt his duty was to his unit and his country and he refused. The Republicans ran Hayes without his permission. Though he won the election, the new member of Congress would not leave the army until after the war was over.

Hayes was an honest and hard-working Ohio lawyer and politician. He entered the Union army two months after the Civil War began, led a gallant charge at the Battle of South Mountain, and was badly wounded in his left arm. By the end of the war, he had been promoted to major general.

Hayes served in Congress after the war, and then became governor of Ohio. In 1876, the Republicans chose Hayes as their presidential candidate after the convention could not agree on anyone else.

The Democratic candidate was Samuel Tilden. Like Hayes, Tilden had a reputation for reform and honest government. The two candidates split the vote nearly evenly and the crucial deciding electoral votes were disputed. Congress established a commission to decide who had won. When it became clear that Hayes would be declared the winner, the Democrats made a deal. The Democrats would support the commission's decision if Hayes agreed to end Reconstruction and withdraw the last federal troops from the South. After securing pledges from prominent southerners that the rights of African Americans would be respected, Hayes agreed.

The end of Reconstruction helped ease tensions between the North and the South, but the promises made to Hayes proved hollow. African Americans living in the South found themselves deprived of their political rights.

Hayes ran an honest government. He did his best to reform the civil service and the spoils system. But Hayes tired of the presidency. He called it a "life of bondage, responsibility, and toil." He did not seek a second term.

James A. Garfield

James Abram Garfield was the last President to be born in a log cabin. But he never romanticized the hardships of his childhood. "Let no man praise me because I was poor," he once said. "It was . . . in every way bad for my life."

Garfield was an Ohio college teacher and administrator who had turned to politics to get ahead in life. He helped organize the 42nd Ohio Infantry during the Civil War, fighting at the battles of Shiloh and Chickamauga. Eventually, he became the youngest general in the Union army. Like President Hayes, Garfield was elected to Congress while still serving in the army. And like Hayes, Garfield thought his duty lay with the military. But after a personal letter from President Lincoln, he agreed to take his seat in Congress.

After the war, Garfield served in Congress for 17 years. The Republicans chose him as their presidential candidate in 1880 when party leaders could not decide between ex-President Grant and Senator James Blaine of Maine. Garfield defeated Democrat Winfield Scott Hancock, with a majority of less than 7,500 popular votes.

Garfield's presidency lasted only 200 days. On July 2, 1881, the President was shot in the back while passing though the Washington D.C. railroad station; he died eleven weeks later. The assassin, Charles Guiteau, was a disappointed office-seeker. As a result of the assassination, Congress passed the Civil Service Reform Act in an attempt to do away with the spoils system which had played a part in Guiteau's demented act of frustration.

Chester A. Arthur

The presidency has the power to change men, but few men have been as transformed by the office as Chester Arthur. After a lifetime as a political boss, Arthur began calling for political reform as soon as he became President. His former political cronies could not believe their ears.

Chester Alan Arthur was born in Vermont, but he became a New York lawyer. During the Civil War he joined the New York State militia and was eventually promoted to quartermaster general. After the war, Arthur became a part of the powerful New York Republican political machine and worked closely with the party boss, Senator Roscoe Conkling. President Grant appointed Arthur Collector for the Port of New York. There, Arthur continued the customhouse practice of "creating" jobs and handing them out as rewards for loyalty to Conkling. President Hayes, attempting to end corruption in the civil service, fired Arthur.

Arthur was nominated as James Garfield's running mate at the Republican Convention in 1880. Making him the vice presidential candidate was an attempt to win the support of New York Senator Roscoe Conkling and his "Stalwart" supporters. The Stalwarts were Republicans who opposed governmental reform. Garfield and Arthur won the election. The vice presidency was the first elected office Arthur had ever held. He did not hold it for long.

When Garfield was assassinated by a man who cried "I am a Stalwart and now Chester Arthur is President!" Arthur was horrified. It seemed as if the corrupt spoils system had helped cause the assassination. The new President decided to support reform even though it angered Conkling and many Republican party bosses. In 1883, he signed the Pendleton Act, which created the modern civil service. Under the new law, many federal positions would be filled on the basis of competitive exams, rather than handed out as political favors.

The Republican bosses did not renominate Arthur, and he retired to New York City. He died on November 18, 1886, from Bright's Disease, a kidney ailment.

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