Rutherford Birchard Hayes fue un político estadounidense, abogado, líder militar y el 19.º presidente de los Estados Unidos entre 1877 y 1881. Como presidente, supervisó la era de la Reconstrucción de los Estados Unidos y restauró la confianza en el gobierno. Fue un reformista que llevó a cabo la reforma de la función pública y trató de reconciliar las divisiones heredadas de la Guerra Civil y la Reconstrucción.
Nativo de Ohio, Hayes ejerció la abogacía. Se convirtió en abogado en la ciudad de Cincinnati desde 1858 hasta 1861. Cuando la Guerra Civil comenzó, Hayes dejó una exitosa carrera política para unirse al Ejército de la Unión como oficial. Herido cinco veces, más gravemente en la Batalla de la Montaña del Sur, se ganó una buena reputación por su valentía en combate y fue ascendido al rango de mayor general. Tras la guerra, sirvió en el Congreso entre 1865 y 1867 por el Partido Republicano. Hayes abandonó el congreso para ejercer el cargo de Gobernador de Ohio; fue elegido dos veces, sirviendo desde 1868 hasta 1872, y una vez más en los años 1876-77. En 1872, Hayes miró el teléfono de Alexander Graham Bell y le dijo que era un gran invento, aunque se preguntó quién querría usarlo.[1]
No se presentó de nuevo a las elecciones presidenciales de 1880, manteniendo su promesa de que no se presentaría a un segundo mandato. Hayes murió de complicaciones de un ataque cardiaco en Fremont, Ohio en 1893.
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“My policy is trust, peace, and to put aside the bayonet.”
Diary (14 March 1877)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Contexto: My policy is trust, peace, and to put aside the bayonet. I do not think the wise policy is to decide contested elections in the States by the use of the national army.
Diary (3 January 1892)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Contexto: Partisanship should be kept out of the pulpit... The blindest of partisans are preachers. All politicians expect and find more candor, fairness, and truth in politicians than in partisan preachers. They are not replied to — no chance to reply to them.... The balance wheel of free institutions is free discussion. The pulpit allows no free discussion.
Diary (20 November 1872)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Contexto: I have a talent for silence and brevity. I can keep silent when it seems best to do so, and when I speak I can, and do usually, quit when I am done. This talent, or these two talents, I have cultivated. Silence and concise, brief speaking have got me some laurels, and, I suspect, lost me some. No odds. Do what is natural to you, and you are sure to get all the recognition you are entitled to.
Diary (23 July 1851)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Contexto: Is there anything in which the people of this age and country differ more from those of other lands and former times than in this — their ability to preserve order and protect rights without the aid of government? … We are realizing the paradox, “that country is governed best which is governed least.” I no longer fear lynch law. Let the people be intelligent and good, and I am not sure but their impulsive, instinctive verdicts and sentences and executions, unchecked by the rules and technicalities of law, are more likely to be according to substantial justice than the decisions of courts and juries.
“Do what is natural to you, and you are sure to get all the recognition you are entitled to.”
Diary (20 November 1872)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Contexto: I have a talent for silence and brevity. I can keep silent when it seems best to do so, and when I speak I can, and do usually, quit when I am done. This talent, or these two talents, I have cultivated. Silence and concise, brief speaking have got me some laurels, and, I suspect, lost me some. No odds. Do what is natural to you, and you are sure to get all the recognition you are entitled to.
Letter to Emile Kahn (1 October 1881)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Contexto: One of its [James A. Garfield’s assassination] lessons, perhaps its most important lesson, is the folly, the wickedness, and the danger of the extreme and bitter partisanship which so largely prevails in our country. This partisan bitterness is greatly aggravated by that system of appointments and removals which deals with public offices as rewards for services rendered to political parties or to party leaders. Hence crowds of importunate place-hunters of whose dregs Guiteau is the type. The required reform [of the civil service] will be accomplished whenever the people imperatively demand it, not only of their Executive, but also of their legislative officers. With it, the class to which the assassin belongs will lose their occupation, and the temptation to try “to administer government by assassination” will be taken away.
Diary (15 May 1878)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Contexto: General education is the best preventive of the evils now most dreaded. In the civilized countries of the world, the question is how to distribute most generally and equally the property of the world. As a rule, where education is most general the distribution of property is most general.... As knowledge spreads, wealth spreads. To diffuse knowledge is to diffuse wealth. To give all an equal chance to acquire knowledge is the best and surest way to give all an equal chance to acquire property.
“We people in camp are merely big children, wayward and changeable.”
Letter to Lucy Webb Hayes (23 November 1864)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Contexto: When the weather is bad as it was yesterday, everybody, almost everybody, feels cross and gloomy. Our thin linen tents — about like a fish seine, the deep mud, the irregular mails, the never to-be-seen paymasters, and “the rest of mankind,” are growled about in “old-soldier” style. But a fine day like today has turned out brightens and cheers us all. We people in camp are merely big children, wayward and changeable.
Letter to Lucy Webb Hayes (9 December 1864)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Contexto: General Crook gave me a very agreeable present this afternoon — a pair of his old brigadier-general straps. The stars are somewhat dimmed by hard service, but will correspond pretty well with my rusty old blouse. Of course I am very much gratified by the promotion. I know perfectly well that the rank has been conferred on all sorts of small people and so cheapened shamefully, but I can’t help feeling that getting it at the close of a most bloody campaign on the recommendation of fighting generals like Crook and Sheridan is a different thing.
“My speaking is irregular. Sometimes quite good, sometimes not, but generally will do”
Letter to Lucy Webb Hayes (14 August 1875)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Contexto: My speaking is irregular. Sometimes quite good, sometimes not, but generally will do... I am too far along in experience and years both for this business. I do not go into [it] with the zest of old times. Races, baseball, and politics are for the youngsters.
“I feel the desire to be with you all the time.”
Letter to Lucy Webb Hayes (17 June 1866)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Contexto: I feel the desire to be with you all the time. Oh, an occasional absence of a week or two is a good thing to give one the happiness of meeting again, but this living apart is in all ways bad. We have had our share of separate life during the four years of war. There is nothing in the small ambition of Congressional life, or in the gratified vanity which it sometimes affords, to compensate for separation from you. We must manage to live together hereafter. I can’t stand this, and will not.
Letter to Lucy Webb Hayes (9 December 1864)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Contexto: General Crook gave me a very agreeable present this afternoon — a pair of his old brigadier-general straps. The stars are somewhat dimmed by hard service, but will correspond pretty well with my rusty old blouse. Of course I am very much gratified by the promotion. I know perfectly well that the rank has been conferred on all sorts of small people and so cheapened shamefully, but I can’t help feeling that getting it at the close of a most bloody campaign on the recommendation of fighting generals like Crook and Sheridan is a different thing.
Letter to Lucy Webb Hayes (25 August 1861)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Contexto: I never enjoyed any business or mode of life as much as I do this. I really feel badly when I think of several of my intimate friends who are compelled to stay at home. These marches and campaigns in the hills of western Virginia will always be among the pleasantest things I can remember. I know we are in frequent perils, that we may never return and all that, but the feeling that I am where I ought to be is a full compensation for all that is sinister, leaving me free to enjoy as if on a pleasure tour.
Diary (16 February 1890)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
“Races, baseball, and politics are for the youngsters.”
Letter to Lucy Webb Hayes (14 August 1875)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Contexto: My speaking is irregular. Sometimes quite good, sometimes not, but generally will do... I am too far along in experience and years both for this business. I do not go into [it] with the zest of old times. Races, baseball, and politics are for the youngsters.
“General education is the best preventive of the evils now most dreaded.”
Diary (15 May 1878)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Contexto: General education is the best preventive of the evils now most dreaded. In the civilized countries of the world, the question is how to distribute most generally and equally the property of the world. As a rule, where education is most general the distribution of property is most general.... As knowledge spreads, wealth spreads. To diffuse knowledge is to diffuse wealth. To give all an equal chance to acquire knowledge is the best and surest way to give all an equal chance to acquire property.
Diary (11 March 1888])
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Contexto: The real difficulty is with the vast wealth and power in the hands of the few and the unscrupulous who represent or control capital. Hundreds of laws of Congress and the state legislatures are in the interest of these men and against the interests of workingmen. These need to be exposed and repealed. All laws on corporations, on taxation, on trusts, wills, descent, and the like, need examination and extensive change. This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations. — How is this?
“As to Mr. Lincoln’s name and fame and memory, — all is safe.”
Letter to Lucy Webb Hayes (16 April 1865)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Contexto: As to Mr. Lincoln’s name and fame and memory, — all is safe. His firmness, moderation, goodness of heart; his quaint humor, his perfect honesty and directness of purpose; his logic his modesty his sound judgment, and great wisdom; the contrast between his obscure beginnings and the greatness of his subsequent position and achievements; his tragic death, giving him almost the crown of martyrdom, elevate him to a place in history second to none other of ancient or modern times. His success in his great office, his hold upon the confidence and affections of his countrymen, we shall all say are only second to Washington’s; we shall probably feel and think that they are not second even to his.
Diary (6 June 1879)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Letter to Lucy Webb Hayes, whose cousin was a prisoner and died at Andersonville prison (2 July 1864)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Contexto: You use the phrase “brutal Rebels.” Don’t be cheated in that way. There are enough “brutal Rebels” no doubt, but we have brutal officers and men too. I have had men brutally treated by our own officers on this raid [to Lynchburg, Va. ]. And there are plenty of humane Rebels. I have seen a good deal of it on this trip. War is a cruel business and there is brutality in it on all sides, but it is very idle to get up anxiety on account of any supposed peculiar cruelty on the part of Rebels. Keepers of prisons in Cincinnati, as well as in Danville, are hard-hearted and cruel.
“Disunion and civil war are at hand; and yet I fear disunion and war less than compromise.”
Diary (4 January 1861)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Contexto: Disunion and civil war are at hand; and yet I fear disunion and war less than compromise. We can recover from them. The free States alone, if we must go on alone, will make a glorious nation.
“War is a cruel business and there is brutality in it on all sides”
Letter to Lucy Webb Hayes, whose cousin was a prisoner and died at Andersonville prison (2 July 1864)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Contexto: You use the phrase “brutal Rebels.” Don’t be cheated in that way. There are enough “brutal Rebels” no doubt, but we have brutal officers and men too. I have had men brutally treated by our own officers on this raid [to Lynchburg, Va. ]. And there are plenty of humane Rebels. I have seen a good deal of it on this trip. War is a cruel business and there is brutality in it on all sides, but it is very idle to get up anxiety on account of any supposed peculiar cruelty on the part of Rebels. Keepers of prisons in Cincinnati, as well as in Danville, are hard-hearted and cruel.
Diary (5 June 1862)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Contexto: These semi-traitors [Union generals who were not hostile to slavery] must be watched. — Let us be careful who become army leaders in the reorganized army at the end of this Rebellion. The man who thinks that the perpetuity of slavery is essential to the existence of the Union, is unfit to be trusted. The deadliest enemy the Union has is slavery — in fact, its only enemy.
Diary (14 February 1879)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Letter to Lucy Webb Hayes (25 October 1864)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Letter to his mother, Sophia Birchard Hayes (27 January 1849)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Letter to William McKinley (27 December 1892)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Diary (6 June 1879)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Letter to Oliver Downing (15 March 1889)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Letter to Austin Birchard (21 April 1874), when he was approximately $46,000 in debt.
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
