Rutherford Hayes: Tend the home front

Leadership lessons of the presidents

The circumstances of the election of Rutherford Hayes constrained what he could expect to accomplish in office. The 1876 contest was close and disputed. Samuel Tilden, the Democratic nominee, won the popular vote. But the electoral vote hung on the disposition of challenges to the legitimacy of electors from Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina and Oregon. For months the decision hung in the balance. Hayes and his wife Lucy left their Ohio home for Washington not knowing if he was the one who would be inaugurated.

Finally a bargain was struck. Democrats dropped their opposition to the contested Republican electors, and Hayes agreed to withdraw the remaining federal troops from the South and thereby terminate Reconstruction. Hayes additionally agreed not to run for a second term.

A minority president and a lame duck, Hayes refrained from ambitious projects. Instead he focused on improving the tone of American politics. To the surprise of some and the gratification of others, he announced that social events at the White House would be dry — liquor-free.

Hayes didn't find his way to this position on his own. Lucy had been a temperance advocate for years. Her family were Methodists, and as a teenager she had taken the temperance pledge to abstain from alcohol. Whether that made her more or less attractive to Hayes, nine years her senior, is unclear. But he was smitten and after she reached marriageable age the two were wed.

When Hayes became an officer in the Union army during the Civil War, Lucy often joined him and served as a nurse to the sick and wounded in the Union camps. She became the first lady of Ohio when Hayes was elected governor and she promoted various worthy causes, including the construction of a home for orphans of Civil War soldiers.

Within weeks of Hayes’s inauguration as president, the White House announced that alcohol would no longer be served at its functions. Hayes didn't make a speech on the subject, but the decision alone spoke volumes.

Temperance was the leading social reform movement in America during the Gilded Age. Abolitionism had achieved its goal with the 13th Amendment. Advocates of suffrage for women had been disappointed that the 15th Amendment, barring restrictions on voting on account of race, had not forbidden restrictions based on sex as well. The failure caused many to look elsewhere to scratch their reformist itch.

Temperance grew more popular than ever. Supporters touted its benefits for public health, for family life, for the soul of the nation, for the efficiency of the economy, and for many other ills that afflicted the body politic.

Some openly, and others quietly, recommended temperance as a way of controlling the behavior of immigrants, who were entering the United States in record numbers. Saloons and public houses were places where immigrants congregated. They enjoyed one another's company but also organized politically, undermining the hold of the native-born on state and local politics.

Then as later, the Democrats were the party friendlier to immigrants. Partly for this reason, Democrats, especially in the cities, were cool to the temperance movement, believing it a first step toward prohibition. Republicans, conversely, were more sympathetic. Yet Hayes's party was far from unified in opposition to alcohol, and the president's decision to ban it from the White House caught the attention of the country.

Many mocked Hayes and Lucy. Washington in that era was less a city than a parttime outpost for government officials. Few members of Congress kept homes there. They lived in their districts and came to Washington only for the sessions of the legislature. They stayed in hotels and boarding houses, having left their wives and families at their permanent homes. The turnover among them was great, as government pay was poor.

The same was true for members of the executive branch. Before the civil service system, they expected to hold their jobs no longer than their party controlled the government.

This being so, many of them looked on Washington the way Americans of a later generation would look on Las Vegas, as a destination apart from their ordinary lives, a city where ordinary rules didn't apply. What happened in Washington stayed in Washington.

And so when Hayes and Lucy closed the bar at the White House, many feared the party was ending. They joked about it, because it was too serious not to. Lucy, understood to be the prime mover behind the change, became notorious for serving fruit juice rather than wine at table. Inevitably she acquired the nickname Lemonade Lucy. Visitors to the White House learned to fortify themselves before arriving. Some slipped flasks into their pockets.

Public opinion polls didn't exist in those days. It's hard to know what Americans in general thought about the new dispensation at the White House. It probably played to Hayes's benefit. Temperance advocates applauded the example the country’s first couple were setting. Even among the critics were some who respected the president's willingness to honor his wife's strong conviction. Hayes might run the country, but Lucy got to run the household.

The dry spell didn't outlast the Hayes presidency. James Garfield, Chester Arthur and subsequent presidents restored the imbibing practices of Hayes's predecessors going back to George Washington.

Yet temperance persisted. It strengthened into prohibition, which took the country by constitutional amendment in the 1920s.

As for Hayes and Lucy, they retired to Ohio. She lived until 1889. He died four years later. By all evidence their marriage was a happy, affectionate one. It was a union that might have been toasted on their many anniversaries, as long as the raised glasses held nothing stronger than lemonade.