Do you think Rutherford B. Hayes was a bad guy?

[RiffRandell]

I just read a biography about him, and found myself somewhat sympathetic towards him.

Enlighten me, please!

[Bicoastal]

1. FUCK Rutherford B. Hayes.

x(

[patrice]

2. He's the one who made the deal that cost "the South" its Reconstruction after the CW?

Bad, very BAD!

[RiffRandell]

3. Yep, that's him.

Jeez, this bio made him out to be a saint.

[patrice]

6. The truth is usually way more complicated than you or I think.

That IS pretty bad, though, trading away re-building the South, something that would have had a huge effect upon its economic future and, thus, might have affected their attitudes towards Black Americans and the rise of the KKK.

[Fearless]

11. Pretty sure Andrew Johnson already did that too.

[last1standing]

4. Is he the one who was palling around with terrorists?

Or the one who gave Mary Todd syphilis?

Either way, not cool, man. :(

[FarLeftRage]

5. They called his wife "Lemonade Lucy"

And this from Wikipedia:

Domestic policy

Hayes vetoed bills repealing civil rights enforcement four times before finally signing one that satisfied his requirement for black rights. However, his subsequent attempts to reconcile with his Southern Democrat opposition by handing them prestigious civil service appointments both alienated fellow Republicans and undermined his own previous attempts at civil service reform.

Hayes' most controversial domestic act – apart from ending Reconstruction – came with his response to the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, in which employees of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad walked off the job and were joined across the country by thousands of workers in their own and sympathetic industries. When the labor disputes exploded into riots in several cities, Hayes called in federal troops, who, for the first time in U.S. history, fired on the striking workers, killing more than 70. Although the troops eventually managed to restore the peace, working people and industrialists alike were displeased with the military intervention. Workers feared that the federal government had turned permanently against them, while industrialists feared that such brutal action would spark revolution along the lines of the European Revolutions of 1848.

During his presidency, Hayes signed a number of bills including one signed on February 15, 1879 which, for the first time, allowed female attorneys to argue cases before the Supreme Court of the United States.

[DireStrike]

8. holy crap

Sounds like he was just plain incompetent. His heart was... occasionally in the right place... but...

[Telly Savalas]

7. He campaigned a little to the left of the right wing of center leftists

but he governed about a third of the way between center right and right, thereby alienating progressives, who at the time were to the center left as what our center left is to the center right today.

The parallels between this and Obama's transition team are eerie, don't ya think?

[salguine]

9. What was the biography (title, author)?

[Bucky]

10. Before getting too pissed, remember that Democratic victories then depended on the Klan

Sure, Tilden in 1876 and Cleveland in 1888 both won the popular vote only to lose in the electoral college. But in the late 1800s, the Democratic party ran up its national vote totals by actively suppressing Republican black votes across the South by acts of legalized discrimination and outright terror.

Flame me if you will, but ongoing Northern occupation of the old confederacy had more than a few parallels to ongoing US occupation of Iraq. Both occupiers and occupyees were getting damned tired of the burdens (tho, of course, there were no attacks by southerner civilian terror groups on union occupation troops).