Episode 5: Rutherford B. Hayes

A full transcript of this episode can be found here.

Show Notes

Overview:

Today’s episode is all about Rutherford B. Hayes, the 19th president of the United States, a man whose name is synonymous with the end of Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow in the south. But perhaps his legacy isn’t quite that simple.

Here’s a quick refresher on Hayes.  Born in Ohio in 1822, he was trained as a lawyer, prior to enlisting in the Union Army during the Civil War. After serving bravely in the war, he was elected to Congress and then as Governor of Ohio. Although Hayes had been a staunch abolitionist, had defended enslaved individuals in runaway court proceedings before the war, and supported Radical Republican Reconstruction programs, he made a deal with the devil to win the presidency. In the 1877 election, Hayes lost the popular vote, but won the Electoral College through a congressional deal that gave him the victory, in return for withdrawing federal troops from the south.

We will learn from two Hayes experts today about why Hayes’ election is often seen as a dividing line in our nation’s history—defining the end of federal government intervention on behalf of formerly enslaved people in the South, and the beginning of a prolonged era of state-sanctioned terror for black Americans. This era also ushered in increased encroachment upon Native American lands and sovereignty—and raised new questions about land ownership and citizenship rights—as the nation moved westward.

For this episode, we spoke to two esteemed scholars. Dr. Brooks Simpson and Dr. Alaina Roberts helped us grapple with three critical themes:

• First, the official end of Reconstruction during President Hayes’s administration.

• Second, the important role of the west in racial relations during this time.

• Third, the role of the federal government in both bolstering civil rights for African Americans in the west, while simultaneously diminishing Native sovereignty.

Guest 1: Professor Brooks Simpson

Brooks D. Simpson is an ASU Foundation Professor of History at Arizona State University, where he is a member of the College of Integrative Sciences and Arts faculty and serves as faculty head of the interdisciplinary humanities and communication faculty.

A member of the honors faculty at Barrett, The Honors College, during the spring 2017 semester he served as associate dean (interim) at Barrett's Downtown campus. As a historian of the United States, Professor Simpson studies American political and military history as well as the American presidency, specializing in the era of the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Publications:

• Brooks D. Simpson, ed. Reconstruction: Voices from America's First Great Struggle for Racial Equality (2018)

• Brooks D. Simpson, ed. The Civil War: The Third Year Told By Those Who Lived It (2013).

• Albert Castel with Brooks D. Simpson. Victors in Blue (2011).

• Brooks D. Simpson, The Civil War in the East, 1861-1865 (2011).

• Brooks D. Simpson, Stephen W. Sears, and Aaron Sheehan-Dean. The Civil War: The First Year Told By Those Who Lived It (2011).

• Brooks D. Simpson, The Reconstruction Presidents (1998, 2009).

• David W. Blight and Brooks D. Simpson. Union and Emancipation: Essays on Politics and Race in the Civil War Era (1997, 2009).

• Simpson, Brooks D, Grimsley, Mark. The Collapse of the Confederacy. (2001).​

• Simpson, Brooks D. Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph over Adversity, 1822-1865. (2000).

Dr. Simpson on Twitter.

Guest 2: Professor Alaina Roberts

Alaina E. Roberts is a historian of African American and Native American life in the Civil War and Reconstruction Eras. She is currently an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Roberts holds a Doctorate in History from Indiana University and a Bachelor of Arts in History, with honors, from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Dr. Roberts writes, teaches, and presents public talks about Black and Native history in the West, family history, slavery in the Five Tribes (the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole Nations), Native American enrollment politics, Indigeneity in North America and across the globe, Black and Native American portrayals in the media, and identity.

Her first book, I’ve Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land will be published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in April 2021. You can learn more about her work on Twitter by following the hashtag #allthewhile.

Perhaps no other symbol has more resonance in African American history than that of “40 acres and a mule”—the lost promise of Black reparations for slavery after the Civil War. In I’ve Been Here All the While, readers meet the Black people who actually received this mythic 40 acres, the American settlers who coveted this land, and the Native Americans whose holdings it originated from. Through chapters that chart cycles of dispossession, land seizure, and settlement in Indian Territory, Alaina E. Roberts draws on archival research and family history to upend the traditional story of Reconstruction. She connects debates about Black freedom and Native American citizenship to westward expansion on to Native land. As Black, white, and Native people constructed ideas of race, belonging, and national identity, this part of the West became, for a short time, the last place where Black people could escape Jim Crow, finding land and exercising political rights, until Oklahoma Statehood in 1907. 

Dr. Roberts on Twitter.

Dr. Roberts’s website.

Call to Action:

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Further Readings

Books

• Alaina E. Roberts, I’ve Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021)

• Ari Hoogenboom, Rutherford B. Hayes: Warrior & President (University Press of Kansas, 1995)

• Roy Morris, Jr., Fraud of the Century (Simon & Schuster, 2007)

• Brooks Simpson, The Reconstruction Presidents (University Press of Kansas, 1998)

Primary Resources

• Acceptance of the Republican Nomination (Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library, 1876)

• Hayes' Diary and Letters (Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library Digital Collection, 1834-1892)

• Hayes' Inaugural Address (Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library, 1887)

Other Resources

• Disputed Election of 1876 (Article, Shelia Blackford, UVA Miller Center)

• The Long History of American Slavery Reparations (Article, Manisha Sinha, The Wall Street Journal, 2019)

• The Curse of Good Times (Article, Hugh Sidey, Time Magazine, 2001)

• Another Look at the Election of 1876 (Lecture, Michael F. Holt, Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library and Museums, 2006)

• Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library at Spiegel Grove, Ohio

• Exhibit on the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre (Tulsa Historical Society and Museum, 2021)

In this episode, we spoke with scholars Alaina E. Roberts and Brooks Simpson about Rutherford B. Hayes and why historians often use his election to mark the moment Reconstruction ended in the South. Our discussions with our guests explored how Hayes’s administration affected the free black community across the country, including those living in Native American territory.

We've provided an episode transcript, primary and secondary sources, and other materials for those who want to dive deeper into the story of Rutherford B. Hayes and race.