The Cincinnati Commercial, of December 9, 1858, said: "R. B. Hayes, Esq., one of the most honest and capable young lawyers of the city, was elected city solicitor last night by the city council to fill the vacancy occasioned by the death of Judge Hart. It would have been very difficult to have made any other selection of a solicitor equally excellent and as generally satisfactory."
The Cincinnati Enquirer, of the same date, said: "Mr. Hayes, the city solicitor elect, is a lawyer of good acquirements and reputation, and is well qualified for the position."
Charles Reemelin, in a letter to the New York Evening Post, wrote: "I know of no young man in our city of higher promise than Mr. Hayes, and we hope for him a bright future."
The estimate of the people seemed to correspond with that of the press, for in the following spring he was elected to the office to which he had been appointed by a majority of two thousand five hundred and thirty-six on the popular vote. His Democratic opponent was W. T. Forrest.
He filled the office of corporation counsel for three years, during which time, as legal adviser of the municipal government of a great city, he passed judgment upon questions involving large interests, and discharged with high fidelity the duties of an important trust. As city solicitor, the opinion which perhaps aroused the most general attention and interest, was one delivered in February, 1859, denying the right of the city council to contract debts for waterworks purposes, without additional authority from the General Assembly. He was opposed to the increase of taxation and creation of new debts, on principle. In April, 1861, in common with the entire Republican ticket, he was defeated for re-election as city solicitor. His vote, however, was larger than that of any candidate on his ticket. He had suffered a similar defeat in the fall of 1856, when a candidate for Common Pleas Judge, his party being in a decided minority in Hamilton county. Had the election of 1861 occurred two weeks later, when the great uprising came with the fall of Sumter, the Republican war ticket, not the Democratic compromise ticket, would have carried the day.