Benjamin Harrison versus Rutherford B.
Hayes:
Pairing Presidents XV
Tallulah Bankhead (1902-68) is
credited with quipping, “There’s less to him than meets the eye.” That
witticism is tailor-made for Benjamin
Harrison (1889-93) and Rutherford B.
Hayes (1877-81), two terrible presidents.
Full disclosure: I am a long
time member of the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era
(SHGAPE), headquartered at the Rutherford B. Hayes Center in Ohio. But no
conflict of interest—Hayes gets no love from me!
How they are similar:
 |
| Hayes |
Both talked a better game on
matters of race than they played.
Both were Republicans, but neither did Abe Lincoln proud. Hayes came to the
White House after the crooked election
of 1876. There is no way to parse this: Hayes’s operatives flat-out stole
twenty electoral votes (FL, SC, LA) even though his Democratic opponent Samuel J. Tilden easily won the popular
vote. The election was so crooked
it made the 2000 Bush-Gore nightmare look like a model of democracy. Bribe money
flowed through Congress like the fetid waters of a backed-up toilet. The only
mediating factor was that Democrats also tried to buy the election; they just
weren’t as good at it. Still, Hayes went to bed on election night thinking he
had lost and recorded in his diary that he didn’t mind losing, though he felt
badly for the “poor colored citizens” who would suffer under a Democratic
presidency.
Hayes’s remorse didn’t last
long. Once the fix was in, he signed off on the Compromise of 1877 in which Democrats agreed to allow Hayes to
occupy the White House if Hayes removed all federal troops from the former
Confederacy. This marked the official end of Reconstruction and the final triumph of Jim Crow segregation and second-class citizenship for African Americans.
Hayes is the president who abandoned federal commitment to racial justice, the
prevailing practice for the next 75years. Hayes wasn’t very good re: Native Americans either. Numerous
tribes were dispossessed and forced onto reservations. Most infamously, Hayes
authorized pursuit of the Nez Perce tribe
led by Chief Joseph as he sought to
remove his people to Canada. Their flight was stopped just short of safety, and
Joseph’s surrender speech now stands
as a metaphor for the tragedy that befell most Great Plains tribes. There are
only two bright spots in Hayes’s racial record. He did veto the Chinese Exclusion Act when it came
across his desk in 1879. Alas, his veto simply encouraged anti-Chinese
hysteria, including attacks on Asians, and Congress passed it anew in 1882,
after Hayes was out of office. His most outstanding achievement was the
appointment of John Marshall Harlan
to the SCOTUS; in 1896, Justice Harlan was the only court member to vote
against the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson decision on segregation.
 |
| Harrison |
The majority decision was
written by Justice Henry Billings Brown,
who was appointed by Harrison, and that tells you all you need to know about
the depth of his commitment to civil rights. Harrison always claimed to be in
favor of improving life for African Americans and even gave oral support to
what would have been a 19th century version of the Voting Rights Act
and another advancing black education. Both bills would have required a much
stronger president than Harrison to get them out of Congress. You can imagine
the fate of his proposed Constitutional amendment that would have overturned
the SCOTUS 1883 decision that declared the Civil Rights Act of 1875
unconstitutional. Harrison didn’t even bother when it came to Indian policy. The Ghost dances and the massacre
of Wounded Knee occurred on his watch. He also tried to annex Hawaii, but it was left undone when he
left office in 1893, and Grover
Cleveland quashed the effort. (William
McKinley revived it.)
Both men were pro-business and anti-labor. Hayes rightly earned the ire of wage earners. He was (probably)
the first president to use the U.S.
military to crush a labor strike, which he did during the nationwide Great Railroad Strike of 1877. There
was very little violence until Hayes kowtowed to railroad robber barons and
sent troops against workers. His craven act led to the deaths of more than a
hundred workers. Enraged workers retaliated with acts of sabotage that led to
the loss of untold millions of dollars. Worse, Hayes set the precedent that the federal government
was no longer an impartial party in capital/labor disputes. Organized capital
came to demand that action be taken
to smash strikes. This made U.S. labor history the bloodiest of any Western industrial democracy.
Harrison was nearly as bad.
The 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act was
passed to curtail business monopolies; the Harrison administration seldom found
business interests to be illegal restraints
of trade, but it did apply tortured logic to crack down on labor unions. This established a
precedent not fully overturned until the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt. It also undid many of the workplace and ballot
box gains made during the 1885-86 Great
Upheaval. The Knights of Labor, the
nation's largest labor federation, was reduced to near impotency courtesy of
Harrison. Several very bad strikes nonetheless took place, including the 1890 New York Central strike and the 1892 Homestead Steel strike.
Neither president was much
kinder to farmers. Hayes's decision
to crush the 1877 railroad strike left intact the very industrial juggernaut
that most repressed farmers. Moreover, his veto of the Bland-Allison Act kept the U.S. firmly on the gold standard instead
of adopting bimetallism, which would
have made it much easier for farmers to pay off their debts. Ironically, the
bill would have also softened many of the monetary problems that plagued
Harrison and Cleveland and contributed to the Panic of 1893. His signature on the Sherman Silver Purchase Act was too little, too late and hastened
the onset of depression.
Harrison's high import taxes
(McKinley Tariff) hurt export-minded
farmers. He also did very little to combat a ban on U.S. pork (shades of a contemporary problem!), which was
(falsely) thought to be unsafe. The allegation of the time–largely correct–was
that GOP Congressmen personally benefitted from Harrison's pro-business/high
tariff policies, and the House of Representatives– dubbed the Billion Dollar Congress–reverted to
Democratic control in 1890. Harrison's presidency was the final straw that led
to the formation of a national People's
Party ("Populists") in 1892, one far more sympathetic to laborers
and farmers.
Both men struggled with foreign policy, especially in Latin America. Hayes invoked the Monroe Doctrine to discourage French
canal plans in Panama (then part of Venezuela). He also
authorized U. S. troops to enter Mexico in
pursuit of bandito border raiders. On
a positive note, he marshaled a diplomatic settlement of a war between Paraguay
and Argentina.
Harrison nearly went to war
with Chile when simmering disputes
led to the deaths of two U.S. sailors of shore leave. His administration also
endured tense relations with Canada over
fishing rights off the coast of Alaska's Aleutian
Islands and with Germany over Samoa.
He also struggled (and often failed) to develop reciprocity treaties with European powers to counter the effects of
his high tariffs.
How they were different:
Although both claimed to be in favor of civil service
reform, Hayes tried to do more about it. He battled a GOP patronage faction (Stalwarts) led by Roscoe Conkling, who usually got the better of Hayes, but Hayes did
succeed in removing several notorious grafters. Ironically, one was Chester Arthur, who later enacted
important reforms. Hayes also fired Postmaster-General Thomas J. Brady, though he was exonerated of corruption charges.
Harrison cooperated with the spoils system, though this led the Billion Dollar
Congress to lose power, ushered in gridlock, and ended what little
effectiveness Harrison had. Nor did it escape notice that the six new states admitted under Harrison
(ND, SD, MN, ID, WY, WA) benefitted the GOP and provided patronage
opportunities.
Harrison was more
environmentally conscious and his longest lasting achievement was the Land Revision Act of 1891, which
allowed the federal government to add abandoned lands to the public domain.
Harrison gave the pensions to disabled vets that
Cleveland had been loath to grant.
Hayes is a minor folk hero
among term limit advocates for
keeping his pre-election promise that he would not run for a second term.
Do you care that Harrison's was the first presidential voice ever recorded (wax cylinder)? Didn't think so.
Rankings:
Oddly, Hayes is currently
ranked slightly higher (#25) than Harrison (#29). Sorry, SHGAPE folks, but
Hayes is among our absolute worst presidents. One need look no further than the
impact of ending Reconstruction and his assault on working people to see his as
a presidency with long-term negative effects. In my mind, presidents whose actions have negative repercussions
deserve to be ranked lower than those who are merely inept. Dump Hayes to the
lower tier.
Harrison might have been
better if he had more spine than a Teddy bear fashioned from Jell-O, but he
didn't. Tallulah Bankhead's words resonate when I think of either man.
Rob Weir
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