Historical Essays

by James Ford Rhodes

By many the resumption of specie payments was deemed impossible. The most charitable of Sherman’s opponents looked upon him as an honest but visionary enthusiast who would fail in his policy and be “the deadest man politically” in the country. Others deemed resumption possible only by driving to the wall a majority of active business men. It was this sentiment which gave strength to the majority in the House of Representatives, which was opposed to any contraction of the greenback currency and in favor of the free coinage of silver, and of making it likewise a full legal tender. Most of these members of Congress were sincere, and thought that they were asking no more than justice for the trader, the manufacturer, and the laborer. The “Ohio idea” was originally associated with an inflation of the paper currency, but by extension it came to mean an abundance of cheap money, whether paper or silver. Proposed legislation, with this as its aim, was very popular in Ohio, but, despite the intense feeling against the President’s and Secretary’s policy in their own state and generally throughout the West, Hayes and Sherman maintained it consistently, and finally brought about the resumption of specie payments.

In their way of meeting the insistent demand for the remonetization of silver Hayes and Sherman differed. In November, 1877, the House of Representatives, under a suspension of the rules, passed by a vote of 163 to 34 a bill for the free coinage of the 412½ grain silver dollar, making that dollar likewise a legal tender for all debts and dues. The Senate was still Republican, but the Republican senators were by no means unanimous for the gold standard. Sherman became convinced that, although the free-silver [p260] bill could not pass the Senate, something must nevertheless be done for silver, and, in coöperation with Senator Allison, he was instrumental in the adoption of the compromise which finally became law. This remonetized silver, providing for the purchase of not less than two million dollars’ worth of silver bullion per month, nor more than four millions, and for its coinage into 412½ grain silver dollars. Hayes vetoed this bill, sending a sound and manly message to the House of Representatives; but Congress passed it over his veto by a decided majority.

The regard for John Sherman’s ability in Ohio was unbounded, and it was generally supposed that in all financial affairs, as well as in many others, he dominated Hayes. I shared that opinion until I learned indirectly from John Hay, who was first assistant Secretary of State and intimate in inner administration circles, that this was not true; that Hayes had decided opinions of his own and did not hesitate to differ with his Secretary of the Treasury. Nevertheless, not until John Sherman’s “Recollections” were published was it generally known, I believe, that Sherman had a share in the Allison compromise, and did not approve of the President’s veto of the bill remonetizing silver.

The Federal control of congressional and presidential elections, being a part of the Reconstruction legislation, was obnoxious to the Democrats, and they attempted to abrogate it by “riders” attached to several appropriation bills, especially that providing for the army. While the Senate remained Republican, there was chance for an accommodation between the President and the Senate on one side and the House on the other. Two useful compromises were made, the Democrats yielding in one case, the Republicans in the other. But in 1879, when both the House and the Senate were Democratic, a sharp contest began between [p261] Congress and the executive, the history of which is written in seven veto messages. For lack of appropriations to carry on the government, the President called an extra session of Congress in the first year of his administration and another in 1879, which was a remarkable record of extra sessions in a time of peace. The Democratic House passed a resolution for the appointment of a committee to investigate Hayes’s title and aroused some alarm lest an effort might be made “to oust President Hayes and inaugurate Tilden.” Although this alarm was stilled less than a month later by a decisive vote of the House, the action and investigation were somewhat disquieting.

Thus Hayes encountered sharp opposition from the Democrats, who frequently pointed their arguments by declaring that he held his place by means of fraud. He received sympathy from hardly any of the leaders of his own party in Congress, and met with open condemnation from the Stalwarts; yet he pursued his course with steadiness and equanimity, and was happy in his office. His serene amiability and hopefulness, especially in regard to affairs in the Southern states, were a source of irritation to the Stalwarts; but it was the serenity of a man who felt himself fully equal to his responsibilities.

In his inaugural address, Hayes contributed an addition to our political idiom, “He serves his party best who serves the country best.” His administration was a striking illustration of this maxim. When he became President, the Republican party was in a demoralized condition, but, despite the factional criticism to which he was subject, he gained in the first few months of his Presidency the approval of men of intelligence and independent thought, and, as success attended his different policies, he received the support of the masses. The signal Republican triumph in [p262] the presidential election of 1880 was due to the improvement in business conditions and to the clean and efficient administration of Hayes.

In recalling his predecessor in office, we think more gladly of the Grant of Donelson, Vicksburg, and Appomattox than of Grant the President, for during his two administrations corruption was rife and bad government to the fore. Financial scandals were so frequent that despairing patriots cried out, “Is there no longer honesty in public life?” Our country then reached the high-water mark of corruption in national affairs. A striking improvement began under Hayes, who infused into the public service his own high ideals of honesty and efficiency. Hayes was much assisted in his social duties by his wife, a woman of character and intelligence, who carried herself with grace and dignity. One sometimes heard the remark that as Hayes was ruled in political matters by John Sherman, so in social affairs he was ruled by his wife. The sole foundation for this lay in his deference to her total abstinence principles, which she held so strongly as to exclude wine from the White House table except, I believe, at one official dinner, that to the Russian Grand Dukes.

Hayes’s able Cabinet was likewise a harmonious one. Its members were accustomed to dine together at regular intervals (fortnightly, I think), when affairs of state and other subjects were discussed, and the geniality of these occasions was enhanced by a temperate circulation of the wine bottle. There must have been very good talk at these social meetings. Evarts and Schurz were citizens of the world. Evarts was a man of keen intelligence and wide information, and possessed a genial as well as a caustic wit. Schurz could discuss present politics and past history. He was well versed in European history of the eighteenth [p263] century and the Napoleonic wars, and could talk about the power of Voltaire in literature and the influence of Lessing on Goethe. From appreciative discourse on the Wagner opera and the French drama, he could, if the conversation turned to the Civil War, give a lively account of the battles of Chancellorsville or Gettysburg, in both of which he had borne an honorable part. Sherman was not a cosmopolitan like his two colleagues, but he loved dining out. His manners were those of the old-school gentleman; he could listen with genial appreciation, and he could talk of events in American history of which he had been a contemporaneous observer; as, for example, of the impressive oratory of Daniel Webster at a dinner in Plymouth; or the difference between the national conventions of his early political life and the huge ones of the present, illustrating his comparison with an account of the Whig convention of 1852, to which he went as a delegate.

Differing in many respects, Hayes and Grover Cleveland were alike in the possession of executive ability and the lack of oratorical. We all know that it is a purely academic question which is the better form of government, the English or our own, as both have grown up to adapt themselves to peculiar conditions. But when I hear an enthusiast for Cabinet government and ministerial responsibility, I like to point out that men like Hayes and Cleveland, who made excellent Presidents, could never have been prime ministers. One cannot conceive of either in an office equivalent to that of First Lord of the Treasury, being heckled by members on the front opposition bench and holding his own or getting the better of his opponents.

I have brought Hayes and Cleveland into juxtaposition, as each had a high personal regard for the other. Hayes died on January 17, 1893. Cleveland, the President-elect, [p264] was to be inaugurated on the following fourth of March. Despite remonstrance and criticism from bitter partisans of his own party, who deprecated any honor paid to one whom all good Democrats deemed a fraudulent President, Cleveland traveled from New York to Fremont, Ohio, to attend the funeral. He could only think of Hayes as an ex-President and a man whom he highly esteemed.