The Presidents #19: Rutherford Hayes

[Ardent15]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutherford_Hayes

Discuss him and his Presidency.

[jsmirman]

1. Participant in a nauseating bargain

apparently courageous in battle (I actually didn't know about his civil war history until reading the wiki article on him), but severely lacking in political will.

[BlueIris]

2. Awful.

Benefitted from one of the worst (and most obvious) piles of election fraud to get into office.

[Odin2005]

3. His Fraudulency!

[BlueIris]

4. 'Zackly.

Ugh.

[Alexander]

5. The Compromise of 1877 single-handedly ended Reconstruction and kept Jim Crow around for a century.

Then again, Samuel Tilden might very well have done that anyway had he become president.

[The_Commonist]

6. There was talk of Hayes...

...in 2000 during Bush v. Gore.
That was another one that probably should have been decided in the House.
What the SCOTUS did then was reprehensible.

[SoxFan]

7. GET OUT OF TILDEN'S HOUSE! GET OUT OF TILDEN'S HOUSE!

[Arkana]

8. The election of 1876--perhaps the only election uglier than 2000.

Also, Hayes was rather worthless as a chief executive--he seemed to be under the impression that the white patrician class in the South would protect blacks rather than crush them under the heels of their boots (which is what they did).

Also, his wife was an uptight prude who banned liquor in the White House.

[Zomby Woof]

9. Wasn't she nicknamed 'Lemonade Lucy'?

[Zynx]

10. A fairly progressive man, actually.

I read a biography of him not that long ago. He would not be a Republican these days. He felt that the distribution of wealth in the 1870s was intolerable and that we were heading down a dangerous path when we locked up so many people in prisons.

[Drunken Irishman]

11. He's apart of the mediocre presidents...

We are the mediocre presidents.
You won't find our faces on dollars or on cents!
There's Taylor, there's Tyler,
There's Fillmore and there's Hayes.
There's William Henry Harrison...he died in 30 days!

We... are... the...
Adequate, forgettable, Occasionally regrettable..Caretaker presidents of the U-S-A!