RUTHERFORD B. HAYES . 1877-1881

Beneficiary of the most fiercely disputed election in American history, Rutherford B. Hayes brought to the Executive Mansion dignity, honesty, and moderate reform.

Born in Delaware, Ohio on October 4, 1822, Hayes was educated at Kenyon College and Harvard Law School. After five years' law practice in Lower Sandusky, he moved to Cincinnati, where he flourished as a young Whig lawyer. He fought in the Civil War, was wounded in action, and rose to the rank of brevet major general. While he was still in the army, Cincinnati Republicans ran him for the House of Representatives. He accepted the nomination, but would not campaign, explaining, "an officer fit for duty who at this crisis would abandon his post to electioneer... ought to be scalped."

Party loyalty and a good war record made Hayes a Republican presidential candidate in 1876. Although many famous Republican speakers, including Mark Twain, stumped for him, Hayes expected to lose to Democrat Samuel J. Tilden. The popular vote did go to Tilden - 4,300,000 to 4,036,000 - but a loophole left the final outcome depending upon contested electoral votes in Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida. If every one of the disputed votes went to Hayes, he would win the presidency.

Months of uncertainty followed. In January 1877, an Electoral Commission was established to decide the dispute. The commission, comprised of eight Republicans and seven Democrats, determined in favor of Hayes by eight to seven.

As president, Hayes insisted that his appointments be made on merit and not political considerations. For his cabinet he chose men of high caliber, but many Republicans were outraged because one was an ex-Confederate and another a Liberal Republican.

Hayes pledged protection of blacks in the South, but also advocated the restoration of "wise, honest, and peaceful local self-government." This meant the withdrawal of troops. Hayes hoped such conciliatory policies would lead to the building of a "new Republican party" in the South, to which white businessmen and conservatives would rally. Many of the leaders of the new South did indeed favor Republican economic policies and approved of Hayes's financial conservatism, but they faced annihilation at the polls if they were to join the party of Reconstruction. Hayes and his Republican successors were persistent in their efforts but could not win over the "solid South."

Hayes had announced in advance that he would serve only one term, and retired to Spiegel Grove, his home in Fremont, Ohio, in 1881. He died in 1893.

JAMES A. GARFIELD . 1881

The last of the log cabin Presidents, James A. Garfield attacked political corruption, winning back for the presidency a measure of prestige it had lost during Reconstruction.

Born November 19, 1831, in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Garfield lost his father at age two. He drove canal boat teams to earn money for an education and graduated from Williams College in Massachusetts in 1856. Returning to Ohio, he taught classics at the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute (later Hiram College). He was made its president.

Garfield was elected to the Ohio Senate in 1859 as a Republican. He advocated coercing the seceding states back into the Union. In 1862, when Union victories had been few, he successfully led a brigade at Middle Creek, Kentucky, against Confederate troops. At 31, Garfield became a brigadier general, two years later a major general of volunteers. When Ohioans elected him to Congress in 1862, President Lincoln persuaded him to resign his commission. It was easier to find major generals than to obtain effective Republicans for Congress. Garfield repeatedly won re-election for 18 years.

At the 1880 Republican Convention, Garfield became the party’s "dark horse" nominee. Later, by only 10,000 popular votes, he defeated Democrat Winfield Scott Hancock.

As president, Garfield strengthened federal authority over the New York Customs House, stronghold of Senator Roscoe Conkling, leader of the Stalwart Republicans. When Garfield submitted to the Senate a list of appointments, he named Conkling's arch-rival to run the Customs House. Conkling tried to persuade the Senate to block the nomination, and appealed to the Republican caucus to compel its withdrawal. But Garfield would not submit: "This…will settle whether...the principal port of entry...be under the control of the administration or under the local control of a factional senator."

In foreign affairs, Garfield's secretary of state invited all American republics to a conference to meet in Washington in 1882. But the conference never took place. On July 2, 1881, in a Washington railroad station, an embittered attorney who had sought a consular post shot the president.

Mortally wounded, Garfield lay in the White House for weeks. Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, tried unsuccessfully to find the bullet with an induction balance electrical device which he had designed. On September 6, Garfield was taken to the New Jersey seaside. For a few days he seemed to be recuperating, but on September 19, 1881, he died from an infection and internal hemorrhage.

CHESTER A. ARTHUR . 1881-1885

Son of a Baptist preacher who had emigrated from northern Ireland, Arthur was born in Fairfield, Vermont, on October 5,1829. He graduated from Union College in 1848, taught school, was admitted to the bar, and practiced law in New York City. In the Civil War he served as quartermaster general of the State of New York.

In 1871, when President Grant appointed him collector of the Port of New York, Arthur marshaled the 1,000 Customs House employees on behalf of Roscoe Conkling's Stalwart Republican machine. He staffed the Customs House with more workers than it needed, retaining them for their merit as party members rather than as government officials. President Hayes, attempting to reform the Customs House, ousted Arthur in 1878. Conkling and his followers fought for the re-nomination of Grant in 1880. Failing, they reluctantly accepted the nomination of Arthur for the vice presidency.

During his brief tenure as vice president, Arthur stood beside Conkling in his struggle against President Garfield. But when Arthur succeeded to the presidency, he was eager to prove himself above machine politics. Avoiding old political friends, he associated with the elite of Washington, New York and Newport. To the indignation of the Stalwart Republicans, Arthur now championed civil service reform. Public pressure forced an unwieldy Congress to heed the President. In 1883 it passed the Pendleton Act, which established a bipartisan Civil Service Commission and provided for a "classified system" that made certain government positions obtainable only through competitive written examinations. The system also protected employees against removal for political reasons.

Enacting the first general federal immigration law, Arthur’s administration approved a measure in 1882 excluding paupers, criminals and lunatics. Congress suspended Chinese immigration for ten years, later making the restriction permanent. Arthur also tried to lower tariff rates so the government would not be embarrassed by annual surpluses of revenue. But Congress raised about as many rates as it trimmed. When Arthur signed the Tariff Act of 1883, angry westerners and southerners looked to the Democratic Party for redress, and the tariff emerged as a major political issue between the parties.

Arthur demonstrated as president that he was above factions within the Republican Party, if indeed not above the party itself. Perhaps in part his reason was the well-kept secret he had known since a year after he succeeded to the presidency, that he was suffering from a fatal kidney disease. He ran for the presidential nomination in 1884 in order not to appear that he feared defeat, but was not re-nominated. He died in 1886.

GROVER CLEVELAND . 1885-1889, 1893-1897

The first Democrat elected after the Civil War, Grover Cleveland was the only president to leave the White House and return for a second term four years later.

One of nine children of a Presbyterian minister, Cleveland was born in Caldwell, New Jersey, on March 18,1837. He was raised in upstate New York. As a lawyer in Buffalo, he was known for his single-minded concentration upon whatever task faced him. He emerged into a political prominence that carried him to the White House in three years. Cleveland won the presidency with the combined support of Democrats and reform Republicans, the "Mugwumps," who disliked the record of his Republican opponent.

Cleveland pursued a policy barring special favors to any economic group. He vetoed many private pension bills to Civil War veterans whose claims were fraudulent. When Congress passed a bill granting pensions for disabilities not caused by military service, Cleveland vetoed it. After vetoing a bill to appropriate $10,000 to distribute seed grain among drought-stricken farmers in Texas, the president wrote: "Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character. . . "

Cleveland angered the railroads by forcing them to return 81,000,000 acres of western lands they held by government grant. He then signed the Interstate Commerce Act, the first law attempting federal regulation of the railroads. Calling on Congress to reduce high protective tariffs, he was told that he had given Republicans an issue for the next campaign. He retorted, "What is the use of being elected or reelected unless you stand for something?" Cleveland was defeated in 1888 by Republican Benjamin Harrison.

Elected again in 1892, Cleveland faced a depression. He dealt directly with the Treasury crisis rather than with business failures, farm mortgage foreclosures, and unemployment. With the aid of Wall Street, he maintained the Treasury's gold reserve. When railroad strikers in Chicago violated an injunction, Cleveland sent federal troops to enforce it.

His blunt treatment of the railroad strikers stirred the pride of many Americans. So did the vigorous way in which he forced Great Britain to accept arbitration of a disputed boundary in Venezuela. But his policies during the depression were generally unpopular. The Democratic Party deserted him and nominated William Jennings Bryan in 1896.

BENJAMIN HARRISON . 1889-1893

Nominated for president at the 1888 Republican Convention, Benjamin Harrison conducted one of the first "front porch" campaigns, delivering short speeches to delegations that visited him in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Born in North Bend, Ohio, on August 20, 1833, Harrison, grandson of "Old Tippecanoe," attended Miami University in Ohio. He moved to Indianapolis, where he practiced law and campaigned for the Republican Party. In the Civil War, he was colonel of the 70^th Volunteer Infantry. He served in the United States Senate throughout the 1880s, championing the rights of Indians, homesteaders and Civil War Veterans.

Once elected president, Harrison was proud of the vigorous foreign policy he helped shape. The first Pan American Congress met in Washington in 1889, establishing an information center which later became the Pan American Union. At the end of his administration, Harrison submitted to the Senate a treaty to annex Hawaii. President Cleveland later withdrew it.

Substantial appropriations bills were signed by Harrison for internal improvements, naval expansion and steamship lines. For the first time except in war, Congress appropriated a billion dollars. When critics attacked "the billion-dollar Congress," Speaker of the House Thomas B. Reed replied, "This is a billion-dollar country."

President Harrison also signed the Sherman Anti-Trust act, the first federal act attempting to regulate trusts by protecting trade and commerce against "unlawful restraints and monopolies."

The most perplexing domestic problem Harrison faced was the tariff issue - some rates were intentionally prohibitive. He tried to make the high rates more acceptable by writing in reciprocity agreements. To cope with the Treasury surplus that the high rates had created, he removed the tariff from imported raw sugar and gave sugar growers in the United States two cents a pound bounty on their production. Long before the end of his term, the Treasury surplus had evaporated, and prosperity seemed about to disappear as well. The Congressional elections of 1892 went stingingly against the Republicans, and party leaders moved to abandon Harrison. Nevertheless, his party re-nominated him in 1892, but he was defeated by Grover Cleveland.

After he left office, Harrison, a widower, returned to Indianapolis and married his first wife’s former secretary. A dignified elder statesman, he died in 1901.