The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes

The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes is a classic US president biography by James Quay Howard. The conclusions which we draw from the examination of the records of the ancestral descent of Rutherford B. Hayes are, that his progenitors have in each generation displayed courage and capacity to fight limited only by the strength of the enemy to hold out. It was a habit they had to fight on the side in the right, and on the side that won. Three of his immediate ancestors--Elias Birchard, Israel Smith, and Daniel Austin--gave proofs of valor and patriotism in the War of Independence. Another characteristic of the Hayes stock is the almost uniform tendency toward longevity. It is a robust race, presenting an extraordinary number of large families.Rutherford Birchard Hayes (October 4, 1822 – January 17, 1893) was an American congressman, governor of Ohio, and the 19th president of the United States from 1877 to 1881. Hayes was a lawyer and staunch abolitionist who defended runaway slaves in court proceedings. He fought and was seriously wounded fighting in the Union Army during the American Civil War. He assumed the presidency at the end of the Reconstruction Era through the Compromise of 1877. In office he ended Army support for Republican state governments in the South, promoted civil service reform, and attempted to reconcile the divisions left over from the Civil War and Reconstruction.Hayes, an attorney in Ohio, was city solicitor of Cincinnati from 1858 to 1861. When the Civil War began, he left a fledgling political career to join the Union Army as an officer. Hayes was wounded five times, most seriously at the Battle of South Mountain. He earned a reputation for bravery in combat and was promoted to the rank of brevet major general.…