Every Day Is Special: October 4 - President Hayes's Birthday!

October 4 - President Hayes's Birthday!

Posted October 4, 2017

Did you know that more U.S. presidents were born in October than in any other month?

I guess I missed my calling, because I was born in October, too.

With only 44 people having been president (Grover Cleveland was president for two non-consecutive terms, so his two terms have separate numbers), and 12 months of the year, we might expect 3 or 4 presidents to be born in each month. However, 6 presidents were born in October!

Jimmy Carter - October 1

Rutherford Hayes - October 4

Chester Arthur - October 5

Dwight D. Eisenhower - October 14

Teddy Roosevelt - October 27

John Adams - October 30

Rutherford Hayes was a Republican, back when Republicans were still the "Party of Lincoln." He was a Civil War hero who fought to maintain the Union.

And he paid a dear price for his support-of-nation: he was wounded five times during the war!

Hayes earned a reputation as a courageous soldier, and he was rewarded for his bravery: he became Governor of his home state of Ohio through three terms, and then was elected president in 1876.

The 1876 election was full of shenanigans. At this time, many people in the Southern states were still upset that they lost the Civil War. They were upset that slavery had been ended, and they were even more upset with the new constitutional amendments ensuring that black people - even former slaves! - could vote and (in theory, at least) enjoyed equal protection of the law.

Some of those upset Southerners deliberately suppressed the vote. I read that there were threats of violence against black people to make sure that they wouldn't vote. There were also several different sorts of voter fraud.

For example, in South Carolina, there were more votes cast than there were voters. So obviously, someone was cheating!

At that time, the political parties would print ballots or "tickets" to encourage people to support them. Many voters were not able to read - or were not able to read well - and to help illiterate voters, he parties would print their symbols on the tickets.

But in this election, many Democratic ballots were printed with the Republican symbol, which was a picture of Abraham Lincoln.

South Carolina's election commission saw this fraudulent move and disallowed enough Democratic ballots so that they could award their electoral votes to Hayes.

It's unknown how much the voter suppression and fraud cost Hayes and the Republican Party in the general election, but the Democratic candidate, New Yorker Samuel J. Tilden, seemed at least to win the popular vote.

But the popular vote isn't the actual election - that happens in the electoral college. And the vote there was 184 for Tilden to 165 for Hayes, with 20 votes disputed (mostly for very good reasons).

Accusations and counter-accusation flew about. It was the most controversial election in the young nation's history - and it ended in a back-room deal, apparently:

The Republicans agreed to take federal troops out of the South - which basically ended the Reconstruction Era - in return for the Democrats allowing ALL of the disputed votes to go to Hayes.

And that deal - called the Compromise of 1877 - resulted in the tightest electoral college election ever (Hayes with 185 votes beating Tilden with 184).

But the biggest result was that the Republicans basically gave away the South to the folks who wanted to return it to pre-Civil-War times. These white Southerners couldn't re-enslave black people, but they did a LOT to keep black people down in both political power and in earning power, and they did a LOT to keep black and white people separate.

It took almost a century before the segregation and discrimination that Southern Democrats inflicted on an already racially-troubled society began to be unraveled. And we are still trying to unravel the inequalities today.

(Interestingly enough, the party of voter suppression and of bigotry has basically flipped from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party, starting in 1968 with the Republicans' "Southern Strategy," which was designed to attract racist former-Democrats to the Republican Party, and culminating in the current Republican president, who regularly makes bigoted statements and who was a big pusher of the racist "birther" conspiracy against former President Obama.)

Probably not Hayes's fault...

I find myself feeling quite bad about Hayes's election, because of the uptick in institutionalized racism in the South. However, I cannot see any indication that Hayes was power hungry or that he, himself, thought up the Compromise. He had promised not to run for a second term as president, and he kept that promise.

Also, he seemed to have some good ideas, according to these quotes:

Abolish plutocracy if you would abolish poverty. As millionaires increase, pauperism grows. The more millionaires, the more paupers.

Diary (16 February 1890)

The progress of society is mainly—is, in its proper sense, the improvement in the condition of the workingmen of the world.

Diary (27 February 1890)

The unrestricted competition so commonly advocated does not leave us the survival of the fittest. The unscrupulous succeed best in accumulating wealth.

Diary (12 December 1890)

Personally I do not resort to force — not even the force of law — to advance moral reforms. I prefer education, argument, persuasion, and above all the influence of example — of fashion. Until these resources are exhausted I would not think of force.

Diary (9 October 1883)

The man who thinks that the perpetuity of slavery is essential to the existence of the Union, is unfit to be trusted. The deadliest enemy the Union has is slavery — in fact, its only enemy.

Diary (5 June 1862)

We all agree that neither the Government nor political parties ought to interfere with religious sects. It is equally true that religious sects ought not to interfere with the Government or with political parties. We believe that the cause of good government and the cause of religion both suffer by all such interference.