(You can view the rest of our presidential Best Book lists by going to our Best US President Books page, or for a more in-depth look at how we found and ranked the books you can visit our Best Book About Every United States President article.)
Rutherford B. Hayes Quick Facts |
President Number | 19 |
Terms In Office | 1 |
Years | 1877-1881 |
Political Party | Republican |
Vice President | William A Wheeler |
Home State | Ohio |
Presidential Pet | Several Dogs and Cats (One nammed: Miss Pussy) |
Articles Used in Ranking | 13 |
Number of Unique Books | 10 |
Historian Hans L. Trefousse explores Hayes’s new relevance and reconsiders what many have seen as the pitfalls of his presidency. While Hayes did officially terminate the Reconstruction, Trefousse points out that this process was already well under way by the start of his term and there was little he could do to stop it. A great intellectual and one of our best-educated presidents, Hayes did much more in the way of healing the nation and elevating the presidency.
Excellent biography of a president who is often dismissed or ignored. Within the realities of his time Hayes, particularly in retirement, was quite progressive in his thinking on issues of social justice and universal education. Pragmatic and realistic in his approach, Hayes accomplished quite a bit during his administration given the congress and public sentiment he had to work with during his term.
The bitter 1876 contest between Ohio Republican governor Rutherford B. Hayes and New York Democratic governor Samuel J. Tilden is the most sensational, ethically sordid, and legally questionable presidential election in American history. The first since Lincoln’s in 1860 in which the Democrats had a real chance of recapturing the White House, the election was in some ways the last battle of the Civil War, as the two parties fought to preserve or overturn what had been decided by armies just eleven years earlier.
Rutherford B. Hayes became president of the United States after the disputed election of 1876. But for Hayes the “golden years” were not the four he spent in the White House but the four he served as a unit commander in the Civil War. “It was as though he had encountered in the war a largeness of the human spirit, courage, generosity, sacrifice, that disappeared in the peace. . . . No matter how high he went, he would always be Colonel Hayes of the Twenty-third Ohio Volunteer Regiment from 1861 to 1865. This is the exciting story of his part in the western Virginia campaign, chasing the Confederate John Morgan up and down the Ohio, and fighting under Phil Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley.
This new interpretation of the Hayes administration contradicts the widely held view that Hayes was an inept politician and an ineffective leader. Hoogenboom argues that it was Hayes’s character and personality that set his presidency apart in the Gilded Age.
One of the most personal, compelling, and enduring accounts of life as an American Civil War battlefield commander is in these pages. Wounded five times and promoted to General in January, 1865, Rutherford B. Hayes would later become the 19th President of the United States.
Lists It Appears On:
As the nineteenth president of the United States, Rutherford B. Hayes brought an end to Reconstruction and returned order to the White House. But it was his service as a volunteer officer in the Union army during the Civil War that provided the most glorious years of his life and made his post-war political accomplishments possible.
Source | Article |
All The Presidents Books | One Through Forty-Two or Forty-Three |
At Times Dull | Janet’s Presidential Biography Project & Blog |
Best Presidential Bios | The Best Presidential Biographies |
Huffington Post | Presidents’ Day History: The Must-Reads Of Presidential Biographies |
Library of Congress | Selected Bibliography |
Mandi Lindner | 44 Presidents and Their Definitive Biographies |
Mashable | Why I’m spending a year reading about every U.S. president |
Presidential History | Presidential Resources |
Presidential History (Again) | Pulitzer Prize Winning Books About Presidents |
Presidents USA | FURTHER INFORMATION ABOUT RUTHERFORD B. HAYES |
The Christian Science Monitor | 5 great books about obscure presidents |
The Tailored Man | The 44 Best Presidential Biographies |
The Washington Post | The Fix’s list of best presidential biographies |
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