Walks about Washington

by Francis E. Leupp

Hayes entered office under cloudy auspices. His competitor for the Presidency was Samuel J. Tilden, a powerful Democratic leader. In some of the Southern States which were still in the throes of reconstruction, United States troops were doing police duty, the Governors were appointees of a Republican President, and the election machinery was in the hands of Republican office-holders, though the bulk of the white voting population was Democratic. In these States the official canvassers had reported the Republican electors chosen, the electors had cast their ballots for Hayes, and the Governors had signed and forwarded their certificates accordingly, in defiance of Democratic protests that the returns were fictitious. Without these States, the Democratic candidate had one hundred and eighty-four of the one hundred and eighty-five electoral votes necessary to a choice, while the Republican candidate could win only with their aid; so a single electoral vote would tip the scale either way. The duty of opening the certificates and

St. Paul’s, the Oldest Church in the District

announcing the results devolved upon the President of the Senate, a strong Republican.

The Democrats made so serious charges of falsification of the records that the whole country became much excited, and fears were entertained in Congress that another civil war might be impending. In the midst of the turmoil, a joint committee of both chambers worked out a plan for a bi-partisan Electoral Commission, to consist of five Senators, five Representatives, and five Justices of the Supreme Court, before whom all the questions at issue should be argued by counsel, and whose decisions should place the result beyond immediate appeal. The Commission, as made up, contained eight Republicans and seven Democrats, and its decisions were always given by a vote of eight to seven. It held its sessions in the room now occupied by the Supreme Court, where it began its work on February 1, 1877, and at the end of a month rendered its last ruling, which gave the Presidency to Mr. Hayes.

As the fourth of March was to fall on Sunday, President Grant had Hayes meet Chief Justice Waite in the red parlor of the White House on the evening of the third and take the oath privately. The inaugural ball was omitted because the Electoral Commission had finished its work too late to enable preparations to be made. President Hayes was not nearly so conspicuous a figure during the following four years as his wife, who was a woman of very positive convictions, especially on the subject of alcoholic stimulants. At her instance, wines were banished from the White House table, the only exception occurring when the Grand Dukes Alexis and Constantin of Russia visited Washington. It is said to have been some incident at the entertainment given in their honor which fixed Mr. and Mrs. Hayes definitely in the determination not to depart again from the rule of teetotalism.

The newspapers poked a good deal of innocent fun at the Hayes parties on the score that, though the ban was never lifted from the ordinary intoxicants drunk from glasses, there was always plenty of strong Roman punch served in orange-skins. The nickname which presently fastened itself to this deceptive course was the “life-saving station.” In his diary, however, Mr. Hayes has left us the statement: “The joke of the Roman punch oranges was not on us, but on the drinking people. My orders were to flavor them rather strongly with the same flavor that is found in Jamaica rum. This took! It was refreshing to hear the drinkers say, with a smack of their lips, ‘Would they were hot!’” I am bound to add that, in spite of the good man’s enjoyment of his ruse, the suspicion still survives that his steward used to put a private and particular interpretation on his orders.

Although Mr. Hayes was not a member of any church, his wife was an ardent Methodist, and one marked feature of their life in Washington was the Sunday evening sociables at the White House, when Cabinet officers and other dignitaries would come in and pass a couple of hours singing hymns, with light conversation between. Among the most interested attendants at these gatherings was General Sherman, who used to join vigorously in the singing—or try to. Another, who was destined to play an independent part in history a few years afterward, was a clever young Congressman from Ohio named William McKinley, Junior. He had been a volunteer soldier in Hayes’s regiment early in the war, and they had grown to be fast friends. At one of the first of the secular receptions during the Hayes régime, the guest of honor was a budding celebrity, Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii. She labored under the handicap of knowing no English, and had to carry on most of her conversation through an interpreter.

President Hayes provoked a good deal of criticism among the Southerners in Washington by appointing Frederick Douglass, the negro ex-slave and orator, United States Marshal of the District, for the office had up to that time carried with it the duties of a sort of majordomo at the President’s receptions, including the presentation of the guests. A visitor to Washington about these days who did not attend the state receptions, but held some of his own in the open air, was a man of small and unimpressive stature, with black hair and mustache and a rather good-natured face, whose portrait appeared repeatedly in the illustrated papers, and whose name carried with it a certain terror to timid souls who expected to see him launch a social revolution. This was Dennis Kearney, who had made himself notorious by his speeches in the sand-lots of San Francisco, declaring that “the Chinese must go,” and denouncing every one, regardless of race, who had been thrifty enough to accumulate any of this world’s goods. His remarkable coinage of words and generally unique English gave currency to a multitude of epigrammatic phrases, which for several years were known as “Kearneyisms.”

All through the campaign of 1880 a great deal was made of the sayings and doings of “Grandma Garfield,” the mother of the Republican candidate: an old lady of a type rarely seen now, who was not ashamed of her years, wore her cap and spectacles as badges of distinction, and never forgot that, however great he might have grown, her son was still her son. Nor did he forget it; and on the east portico of the Capitol, with his assent to the constitutional oath barely off his lips, his first act as President was to bend down and kiss her. The inauguration was notable, too, for the important part taken in the parade by the defeated competitor for the Presidency, General Winfield S. Hancock. He was a splendid-looking man and a superb horseman, and in his uniform as a Major-general was the most imposing object in the procession. The spectators, delighted with his sportsmanlike spirit, paid him as hearty a tribute as they paid the President.