Rutherford B. Hayes was prouder of having been a soldier than of having been President. "I am more gratified by friendly references to my war record," he wrote toward the end of his life, "than by any other flattery." And he added: "I know that my place was a very humble one--a place utterly unknown in history. But I also am glad to know that I was one of the good colonels." When the Civil War came, Hayes volunteered at once; he participated in several engagements, was praised by Grant for "conspicuous gallantry," and rose to the rank of major general. Ever afterward he enjoyed being addressed as "General Hayes." Being Governor of Ohio and even President of the United States did not afford him nearly as much pleasure.

As President, Hayes was, in fact, called "His Fraudulency," "Rutherfraud B. Hayes," and "the Usurper" for a time. Many Democrats felt that he had not come by his office fairly and squarely and that Samuel J. Tilden, the Democratic candidate, had really won the election of 1876. During the election, both parties had resorted to fraud in the South (still partly occupied by federal troops), with the result that the House of Representatives appointed an electoral commission to decide the outcome. Voting along strict party lines, the commission gave Hayes the victory by one electoral vote; many people were outraged. During the election crisis Hayes received many threatening letters, and one evening someone even fired a bullet into his house while he was at dinner. When he finally started for Washington on March 1, 1877, he was not sure the Democrats would accept his Presidency. On leaving Columbus, Ohio, he told a crowd assembled to see him off that "perhaps" he would "be back immediately." Not until dawn on March 2, when he reached Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, did he receive a telegram announcing that the Democrats had agreed not to contest his election further. When people in his car began cheering the news, he admonished them, "Boys, boys ... you'll waken the passengers."

In his inaugural address, which the Democrats boycotted, Hayes noted the unusual circumstances under which he had come into office and promised to be as non-partisan as possible as President" "He who serves his country best serves his party best." As President he followed a policy of conciliation toward the South, appointing so many Democrats to office and backing so many bills for internal improvements in the South that northern newspapers began protesting the "looting of the treasury for the former rebels." Even so, in 1878, the House of Representatives, controlled by the Democrats, launched an investigation of Hayes's election; there was talk of removing him from office because of the corrupt voting uncovered. Queried about this possibility, Hayes said, "Who is to take my place?" "Mr. Tilden," was the reply. "Mr. Tilden will be arrested and shot," said Hayes angrily. "He cannot attempt to take possession of the White House without being shot. That means civil war and in that event we will whip them badly." Later he explained more calmly what he meant: "Such schemes cannot be carried out without war. I swore to preserve the Constitution of the United States, and will deliver the Executive Office in its integrity to my successor. They can impeach me in the House of Representatives and try me in the Senate. There is no other way in which I will recognize any attempt of Congress to remove me... I should defend my office and the independence of the Executive against any intruder." In the end, the Democrats stopped contesting Hayes's election; Democratic leader Abram Hewitt acknowledged that his administration. "was creditable to all concerned and was far better than four years of unrest which we should undoubtedly have had if Tilden had occupied the office of President."

Hayes's Presidency was generally lackluster. "It may be asked whether this man of destiny has any marked peculiarities," said a friend. "I answer none whatever. Neither his body nor his mind runs into rickety proportions."" One biographer insisted that Hayes possessed an insatiable intellectual curiosity, but his evidence rested largely on the fact that Hayes greeted acquaintances with the words, "Well, what do you know?" Hayes sought the middle way; he had an abhorrence of "ultras." "Virtue," he decided, after reading Aristotle, "is defined to be mediocrity, of which either extreme is vice." Bankers applauded his sound-money policy, pious people his temperance views, and civil-service reformers his efforts to reduce the spoils system. But when he went after the notorious New York customs-house, spoilsman Roscoe Conkling denounced him bitterly in the Senate and climaxed his remarks by declaring that "when Dr. Johnson said that patriotism was the last refuge of a scoundrel, he ignored the enormous possibilities of the word "refawr-rm."

With the Hayeses in the White House morning prayers and nightly "hymn sings" were the rule; profanity, tobacco, and liquor vanished. People blamed Mrs. Hayes ("Lemonade Lucy") for the ban on liquor, but Hayes took the credit himself. He had long been a temperance man, though not a prohibitionist, and at the first official White House function, a dinner for two Russian Grand Dukes, wine was served; but it was never served again. "It seemed to me," Hayes explained, "that the example of excluding liquors from the White House would be wise and useful, and would be approved by good people generally. I knew it would be particularly gratifying to Mrs. Hayes to have it done." He hoped, too, that it would keep temperance people in the Republican party and induce members of temperance organizations to vote Republican. But some Republicans thought it was too high a price to pay for votes. After one official dinner, Secretary of State William M. Evarts remarked dolefully: "It was a brilliant affair; the water flowed like champagne." Even Republican Congressman James A. Garfield of Ohio, not exactly a tippler, sneered that he had attended "a State dinner at the President's wet down with coffee and cold water." For a time it seemed that a sympathetic White House steward was trying to get around the ban on liquor by putting frozen punch made of Santa Croix rum into the oranges served at official banquets. "This phase of the dinner," according to one reporter, "was named by those who enjoyed it the Life-Saving Station" But after leaving the White House, Hayes firmly denied that there had ever been any "Life-Saving Stations" at his and Lucy's parties. "The joke of the Roman punch oranges was not on us," he insisted, "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! There was not a drop of spirits in them! This was certainly the case after the facts alluded to reached our ears. It was refreshing to hear 'the drinkers' say with a smack of the lips, 'Would they were hot!'"

Hayes had never intended to run for a second term. "I am heartily tired of this life of bondage, responsibility, and toil," he told his wife. Lucy heartily agreed: "I wish it was at an end." When William Dean Howells and his wife visited the White House in May 1880, Mrs. Howells told the President, "Well, you will soon be out of it." "Yes," rejoined Hayes, "out of a scrape, out of a scrape." As his administration neared its end, he was pleased to note that the acrimony surrounding his elevation to high office had given way to general approval of his conduct by the people he thought counted most. "Coming in," he wrote in his diary, "I was denounced as a fraud by all the extreme men of the opposing party, and as an ingrate and a traitor by the same class of men in my own party. Going out, I have the good will, blessings, and approval of the best people of all parties and sections."

After returning to private life, Hayes quickly slipped into obscurity and was soon forgotten by most people. New York lawyer Chauncey Depew met him one day in front of a fruit display in a fancy grocery store and after a cordial greeting said to the groceryman, "That is ex-President Hayes. Don't you want to meet him?" Replied the grocer: "I am not interested in him, but I have the finest collection of pears in the city and want to sell you some." Toward the end of his life, Hayes began wondering whether he had been too Puritanical. "In avoiding the appearance of evil," he reflected, "I am not sure but I have sometimes unnecessarily deprived myself and others of innocent enjoyments." He found too that he could joke about it. One day he got up to speak ruddy with poison ivy, and told his audience: "When your eyes met mine a suspicion arose in your minds which I assure you is without foundation. I have not forsaken my temperance principles and practice. Appearances, I admit, are against us. But in truth it is not whiskey but poison ivy which did it."

Source: Paul F. Boller Jr., Presidential Anecdotes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 163-67.