Another message on the precedence of the United States, what effect they had on America and the world in their time. Let's go to Romans the 13th chapter. We always need to remember this. Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those who exist are established by God. Therefore, he who resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God, and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves. You go all the way back to human government here, right here in our dispensational chart. Human government was set up to protect people from people, and the people from the government and governing powers. That's the purpose of government. All governments have been righteously legitimate. But government is supposed to protect the honest citizen from the criminal and the honest citizen from the government and abuse. Rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Do what you have, you want, to have no fear of authority. Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. Surely, that's what the way of government is supposed to be. For it is a minister of God to you for good, but if you do what is evil, be afraid, for it does not bear the sword. That means capital punishment in vain. For it is a minister of God, an avenger, who brings wrath upon the one who practices evil. or for it is necessary to be insubject to not only because of wrath but also for good content's sake. Be a good citizen. It says because of this you also pay taxes. For rulers are servants of God devoting themselves to this very thing. Render what is due to them, tax to whom tax is due, custom to whom custom is due, and fear to whom fear and honor is due." Now, there have been times in the history of America when that didn't quite work out right. We looked in the past at Presidents. Abraham Lincoln was basically He rewrote the Constitution, reinterpreted the Constitution. He was a corporate lawyer. He just threw this nation into a civil war, which didn't even need to be fought in all reality. States were dissolving their slavery unwillingly and with states' rights one after the other in America. We have a lot of differences of opinion in America. But he shut down Freedom of Press, took people's guns away from them. First and Second Amendment rights were just thrown away. 600,000 to 750,000 people died because of his decisions. Another man came on the scene, Andrew Johnson. Andrew Johnson had been a former slave. He tried to heal the difference between the North and the South, but the Republican Party was in total control, so they fought him all the time. And he has probably one of the worst reputations of a president in history. But yet, he was a good man. He was the one that put in the Homestead Act. He tried to heal the wounds between the North and the South. The carpetbaggers had gone in the South and there was an absolute rapacious amount of criminal activity in the South by the North for twelve years. The wounds were not healed for more than a hundred years because of what Lincoln did and what Grant would do. Grant came on the scene. Grant was an honest man. He was a great warrior. But he never would have swept the South without breaking all the rules of war and absolutely declaring war on the civilians, every civilian in the South. Under the Geneva rules of war today he would have been a war criminal. Sherman especially, William Tecumseh Sherman. The United States was so in an absolute turmoil The corruption in Grant's presidency was horrible. Grant was an honest man. He made some horrible mistakes. He despised Indian culture. He set in Indian concentration camps called reservations and Indian schools which were nothing but reformatories. My family was in them. I am American Indian. We tasted of that wrath. The Black Hills was stolen, the trees were destroyed, broken. Grant made a lot of mistakes in dealing with the Native Americans and a lot of mistakes in allowing the South to be ravaged and pillaged. The Ku Klux Klan rose hard during Grant's administration because the whites were trying to protect themselves from the carpetbaggers. And then the blacks that had gotten so much power, it was an absolute upheaval in the South. He fought the Ku Klux Klan but he didn't by any means take it over. Then we have another man. that comes on the scene. One of the most honest Presidents we ever have had. I'll repeat that, one of the most honest, God-fearing Presidents that we ever had. And he made a lot of mistakes too. Rutherford B. Hayes. He was President, the 19th President of the United States. He was a scholar and a gentleman. a scholar and a gentleman. When he said something, he meant it. When he made a promise, he kept it. He may have not understood everything that needed to be done in this nation, but he did the best with what he could. We're going to look at because I've got a lot of notes here. Please bear with me, because the President of the United States, I can go through the Bible and not quite have to look at notes so much, but this is something that, I need notes, let's put it that way, and I have to follow my notes. When I was a young boy here in Fish Lake Valley growing up, my teacher was Orville Taylor, an ex-professional baseball player, professional. We played one game and that was baseball. But we studied history. I mean, he made me fall in love with history. And we had to memorize a lot of things. We were just scared to death of all the things we had to do when he came here as the first year. It was frightening because we'd have to memorize all the states in the Union and the capitals. We had to remember every president in the United States and the vice presidents and when they were born and when they died. We had to draw a map of the United States and then of the world in a globe. We got balloons, blew them up, put glue with newspapers on it, painted it white, and then we proceeded to paint all the continents. That was quite a deal. We learned. And he told us, every president, I was in the class from the 5th grade to the 9th grade. I learned everything that the 8th graders and the 9th graders did, even though I was in 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th. When I went to California, I just sat down in class and go to sleep for 4 or 5 years. in history. Besides that, my history teachers there were boring. Mr. Taylor was fantastic. Now let's go on. He was born Rutherford Birchard Hayes, October 4, 1822, in Delaware, Ohio. He died January 17, 1893. He was age 70. in Fremont, Ohio. His political party in the beginning was the Whigs in 1854 and then the Republicans from 1854 to 1893. His wife's name was Lucy Ware Webb. She was born in 1852 and died in 1889. He had eight Webb C. Hayes and Rutherford P. Hayes. And he went to Kenyon College and also Harvard University. He was a lawyer mainly and a politician. He was a in the service from 1861 to 1865. He was wounded five times in the Civil War. He wasn't one to set back like Lincoln and pull strings. He fought. Andrew Johnson fought. Brother B. Hayes was out there in the front lines fighting battles. He was wounded five times. He would have had five Purple Hearts today. He was in the 23rd Ohio Infantry in the Kanawha Division. And the battles that he fought in the Civil War was the Battle of the South Mountain, the Battle of Clough Mountain, and the Valley Campaigns in 1864. His father was Rutherford Hayes. His mother was Sophia Burchard. His father was a Vermont storekeeper and a farmer also. He had taken his family to Ohio in 1879. He died ten weeks after Rutherford was born. Sophia took charge of the family raising Hayes and his sister and Fannie. And only two of the four children survived to adulthood. She never remarried. Sophia's younger brother, Sardis Burchard, lived with the family for a time, and he was always close to Hayes and became a father figure to him, contributing to his early education. Here is a single mother now, raising a family, in the early 1800s. This is tough people. Through each of his parents, Hayes was descended from New England colonists. His earliest immigrant ancestor came to Connecticut from Scotland in 1625. Hayes' great-grandfather Ezekiel Hayes was a militia captain in Connecticut in the American Revolutionary War, but Ezekiel's son Hayes' grandfather, also named Rutherford, left his Brantford home during the war for a relative peace of Vermont. His mother's ancestors migrated to Vermont at about the same time, and most of his close relatives outside of Ohio continued to live there. John Knowles, an uncle by marriage, had been his father's business partner in Vermont. and was later elected to Congress. His first cousin, Mary Jane Meade, was a mother of the sculptor Larkin Goldsmith Meade and architect William Rutherford Meade. John Humphrey Knowles, the founder of the Oneida community, was also a first cousin. This man's family were movers and shakers. He attended the common schools in Delaware, Ohio and enrolled in 1836 in the Methodist Norwalk Seminary in Norwalk, Ohio. He did well. He was always at the top of his class. He was a student. He was a scholar. And he was a gentleman. And he was a truthful man. He studied Latin and Koine and Classical Greek. Returning to Ohio, attended a Kenyan college. In Gambier in 1838, he enjoyed his time at Kenyan and was successfully scholastically, he was a scholar. He joined several student societies and became interested in the weak politics. His classmates included Stanley Matthews and John Sylvagos Sakos. And he graduated Phi Beta Kappa. And he was the valedictorian of his class in 1842. He briefly read law in Columbus, Ohio, and Hayes moved east to attend Harvard Law School in 1843. graduating with a LLB. He was admitted to Ohio Bar in 1845 and opened his law office in Lower Sandsbury, now Fremont. It was slow to take off, but in 1847, Hayes became ill with what the doctor thought was tuberculosis, and he beat it. He thought a change in climate was helping considered enlisting in the Mexican-American War. For his health. Boy. But his doctor's advice, he visited New England. Returning from there, Hayes and his Enforce Artists made a long journey to Texas. Where Hayes visited with Guy M. Bryan, a Kenyan classmate and distant relative and business remained meager for a while, and he decided to move to Cincinnati, Ohio, a larger city. He moved there in 1850 and opened a law office with John W. Heron, a lawyer from Chilcoth. Heron later formed a more established firm, and Hayes formed a new partnership with William K. Rogers and Richard M. Corwine. people were arguing and fighting and crooking each other, I guess. He joined the Cincinnati Literary Society and the Odd Fellows Club. He also attended the Episcopal Church in Cincinnati, but never became a member of it. He was a very devout and religious man. He courted his future wife, Lucy, during his time in that area. His mother, much earlier in his life, had tried to get him to court Lucy, but she was too young, he said. Four years later, Hayes began to spend more time with Lucy and they became engaged in 1851 and married in December 30, 1852 at Lucy's mother's house. Over the next five years, Lucy gave birth to three sons, Birchard, Austin, 1853, Webb, Cook, in 1853, and Rutherford, Platt, in 1858. Lucy was a Methodist, and she did not believe in drinking at all. And she tried to influence her husband to that effect. He never joined the Methodist Church at all, but he was a Christian in practice. He began his new law practice and was basically a criminal defense lawyer, defending several people accused of murder, in one case a form of insanity defense that saved the accused from the gallows. He also defended slaves. He was on a border state there. And just across the Ohio River was Kentucky, which was a slave state. And Ohio was a destination for many slaves that were running away. And he defended them. And you have to remember now that the Republican Party, the Radical Republican Party, is like the Radical Democratic Party today. You may not understand that, but just, that's the way it was. The Radical Republicans were like the Radical Democrats today. Now, he was not a Radical Republican. He would be what we would call a moderate. He was a middle of the road all the way down the line. He wasn't extreme here and he wasn't extreme there. And he tried to make peace wherever he went. Because of what he did to help the slaves and defend their cause, the Republicans tried to court him for their nominations. As a judgeship in 1856, two years later, the Republicans proposed to have Hayes fill a vacancy on the bench. But he refused that also and became the city solicitor. The city council elected Hayes as the city solicitor to fill the vacancies. The voters elected him to two full terms in 1859 with a larger majority than any other Republican ever at that time. The Democrats could tolerate him and the Republicans could tolerate him. You understand that? Because he wasn't this way and he wasn't that way all the way. When Abraham Lincoln was elected President, immediately states began to cede from the Union because they thought that they could do that. The Union was a voluntary effort, according to the Constitution. at that time until Lincoln changed the Constitution and the idea that the Union was a god-like deity and that no individual state could overrule what the Union wanted to do. Now, Lincoln was very radical. He was a radical Republican. A radical Republican which would be a radical Democrat today. He believed in forming America just like Alexander Hamilton did. Big government. Big government. Centralized power. They wanted to make America another Great Britain but without it being Great Britain. They wanted to put the educated men in charge. They didn't even want people to actually have to vote in elections because they didn't think it was a technocracy. They didn't think the average man had enough sense to vote and take care of himself. The electoral college was very powerful. Any newspaper that spoke against Lincoln was immediately shut down. Anybody, I'm talking about in the North now, I'm not talking about in the South. The First Amendment right of speech was completely nullified. Habeas corpus was laid aside. He would arrest people without even charges. He would confiscate their property, confiscate their firearm. And all those that would speak for him, he would pad their pocketbooks. Hayes was really lukewarm about the Civil War. He didn't think it needed to be fought. He wanted to restore the states to the Union without causing a lot of trouble. The Civil War did not start over slavery. The Civil War did not start over slavery. That was an excuse Lincoln used later when he made a war measure called Emancipation Proclamation. He had to make some excuse for what he was doing. It was causing tremendous conflict. States were just seceding from the Union right and left. They called him the gentle and the malevolent dictator. Now we come down from Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, and now we're coming down to a man, Hayes. And Hayes is a peacemaker. But he finally considered that the two sides were irreconcilable and he suggested that the Union let them go. That was his idea. He suggested that the Union let the state succeed. Let them alone. Just do our way. He said, you don't pay your taxes, I will invade you. They offered to pay for all the property in the southern area, the naval bases, the army bases, whatever, the forts, like Fort Sumter. He said no. So basically where they were finally forced to file on Fort Sumter to make their actions Bill alludated that they were not going to go for this. If they thought that if they would attack this fort that the North would leave them alone and let them secede. And all the time they're trying to make peace with Lincoln and Lincoln won't hear it. Now you're not going to hear that in very many places, but that's what happened. Lincoln was not the hero that you think he was. Though Ohio voted for Lincoln, the Cincinnati voters turned against Lincoln because his ravishness, savage idea of starting a civil war in this country. The Democrats voted for the Know-Nothings who combined a sweep of the city elections in April 1861, ejecting Hayes from the city solicitor's office. There was a lot of objection to the Civil War in the North. And that's where Abraham Lincoln nullified the freedom of speech. Hayes returned to his brief law partnership with Leopold Markbrate, lasting only three days before the war began. But when the war began, he said, I must fight for my country and for my state. Ohio is a free state. And he feels like he's absolutely obligated to go join the Army, and he did. laid aside his lawyer business, his office, and went and joined the Confederate, or not the Confederate, but the Union Army. By June of that year, Governor William Dennison appointed several of the officers of the Voluntary Company to position the 23rd Regiment of the Ohio Infantry, and Hayes was promoted to Major and his classmate Stanley Matthews was appointed lieutenant colonel. Joining the regiment at that time was another future president, William McKinley. After about a month of training, Hayes and the 23rd Ohio sent out for the western Virginia in July 1861 as part of the Kanawha Division. They finally met the enemy in September at Conifex Ferry in the present-day West Virginia, and drove them back. In November, Hayes was promoted to lieutenant colonel, and Matthews, his friend, was promoted to colonel of another regiment. And he led his troops deeper into western Virginia where they entered winter quarters. They advanced in the following frame and Hayes led several raids against the Confederate forces. In one of them he sustained a major injury to his knee. September, the Battle of Bull Run, Hayes and his troops did not arrive in time for the battle, but joined the Army at the Potomac. And they hurried north to cut off Robert E. Lee's Army in Northern Virginia, which was advancing into Maryland, which is where the Capitol was, basically. The Union Capitol. He led his regiment encountering the Confederates at the Battle of South Mountain on September the 4th. Hayes led a charge against an entrenched position and was shot through his left arm, fracturing the bone. Most times when that happens, they cut your arm off. He had his entire handkerchief above the wound to keep from bleeding to death. and continued to lead his men into battle. He was a brave man. While he was resting, he ordered his men to meet a flanking attachment and set his entire command move backwards, leaving Hayes lying between the lines in enemy lines. They didn't follow his order. Eventually his men came back behind the lines and he was taken to the hospital. His regiment continued on to Antietam, but Hayes was out of action for a while. In October, he was promoted to colonel and assigned to a command of the 1st Brigade of Kiowatha Division of Brevet General. He spent the winter near Charleston, Virginia, out of contact with the enemy altogether. And he saw little action until July 1863, when there's skirmish with John Hunt Morgan's cavalry at the Battle of Buffington Island. Returning to Charleston for the rest of the summer, Hayes spent the fall encouraging men of the 23rd Ohio to reenlist, and many of them did. He was one out to try to encourage the men to build them up. We've got to finish this war. In 1864, his regiment in West Virginia was reorganized and the Hayes Division was assigned to George Crook's Army of the West Virginia, and George Crook was a good friend of his. They destroyed the Confederate salt and lead mines there. They engaged in Confederate troops at Cloydes Mountain. Now they're beginning to wage war on the civilians. Okay? They're waging war on the civilians' society in the South. Hazen and men charged men and men and entrenchments and drove the rebels from the field, or the Confederates from the field. Following the route, the Union forces destroyed Confederate supplies again. Waging war on the civilians. He went into the Shenandoah Valley. Now in the Shenandoah Valley, every farm, every fence, every barn, every animal was killed. If a man, if they set his home on, these are civilians now, if an old man, if they set his home on fire and he tried to put it out, they shot him. They shot his dog, they shot his goats, his cattle, everything. They completely waged war on all the civilians in the Shenandoah Valley. He captured Lexington, Virginia on June 11th. They continued south toward Lynchburg, Virginia, tearing up the railroad tracks and everything in their pathway, burning every home, every business, every church house, every courthouse in their way. Hayes and his brigade returned to West Virginia. Hayes thought Hunter lacked aggression and writing a letter home that General Cook would have taken Lynchburg if the man could have pushed further, forward. Hayes was again wounded by a bullet in the shoulder. He also had a horse shot out for money and the Army was defeated. Retreating to Maryland, he reorganized again under General Philip Sheridan. By August, early, he was retreating up the valley where Sheridan pursued Hayes troops, defended off Confederate assault on Berryville, and advanced into Opequan Creek, where they broke the hill in the enemy lines on September 22nd. He had another battle at Cedar Creek on October 19th. Hayes sprained his ankle after being thrown from a horse and was struck in the head by a bullet. It didn't cause serious injury to his head, but it hit him. His bravery and leadership drew everyone's attention around him. Ulysses S. Grant later wrote of him that this man's conduct in the field was full of gallantry, as well a display of qualities of higher order than that of mere personal daring. Hayes was promoted to Brigadier General in October 1864 and breveted Major General. About this time he learned of the birth of his fourth son, George Crook Hayes. He named him after George Crook. The Army went into winter quarters once again in the spring of 1865. The war was quickly come to a close with Lee's surrender to Grant Appomattox. Hayes visited Washington, D.C. and witnessed a grand review of the armies. He returned to his home state. Because of his great honor and his outstanding bravery and leadership, They thought that he would be ready for a political career. In the 39th Congress assembled in December 1865, Hayes was sworn in as part of the large Republican majority. Hayes identified with the party's moderate wing He didn't want to destroy the South after the South had won. But remember, the Radical Republicans went in there and devastated everything. And the people lined their pockets with gold. They took over property. They took lands. And by the way, the Confederate soldiers, most of them were not allowed to vote, but the blacks could vote. And there was where we had this great divide and division in the nation. If they had done what Andrew Johnson had said, and gone in and welcomed the South back in, curbing a lot of the hatred that had become between the blacks and the whites at that time because of the abuse of power. The reconstruction issues under Grant were horrible. Johnson tried to moderate. They didn't know what to do with the blacks. Grant had tried to get the Dominican Republic, he tried to get that area and bring it into the United States and export the blacks there and let them go under as a state of the United States and let them form their own government and take care of themselves. They would have been along, and also, Andrew Johnson believed that, and so did Hayes. He said, this is the only thing we're going to cause so much contention in the South now, setting the blacks against the whites, because they were in power, that he said it's never going to get over with. We need to move these people out. We need to give them a place of their own, and let them rule themselves. Andrew Johnson tried to grant pardons for many of the leading former Confederates. Hayes disagreed with some of this. He tried to reject Johnson's vision of Reconstruction to pass the Civil Rights Act. Now remember Hayes really was for the black. Hayes and President Grant did more for the black people than Abraham Lincoln ever did. Abraham Lincoln never thought they were equal, never thought that they should be turned loose in white society or ever given the right to vote. Grant pushed for the right to vote, and Hayes defended them. But he wanted to make peace between the blacks and the whites in the South. Hayes was considered in the Ohio Republicans as the standard bearer in the 1867 election campaign as governor of Ohio. They tried to impeach Johnson. Johnson was absolutely, he was the only Democrat that stayed with the Union. And he tried to make peace between the Democrats and the Republicans and the Republicans wouldn't have any part of it. They wanted their way or no way at that time. Remember now, the Republicans were the radical Democrats of their day at that time. He fought for Ohio's ratification of the 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution guaranteeing black male suffrage. Not female. Not white female either. He believed that people ought to be trained in college for their ability to do manual labor and trained as mechanics, farmers, engineers, whatever. Along with a, what we might call a classical education also. He wanted to retire. He found a mechanical college, later to become the Ohio State University. He wanted to go back to his law practice. He wanted to go back with his family. He wanted to go home, but the Republicans urged him to run for the United States Senate against the incumbent Republican John Sherman. Hayes declined. He wanted to be with his wife and children. He wanted to become U.S. Treasurer in Cincinnati, Ohio. He wanted a cabinet appointment. He finally agreed to be nominated for his old house seat. the House of Representatives in 1872. But he lost and he wasn't disappointed. He didn't want to do it. In 1873, Lucy had another son, Manning Forrest Hayes. Then we have a financial breakdown of the nation in 1873. which devastated prospects, financial prospects across the United States. Hayes' uncle, Sardis Bachar, died that year and Hayes moved his family to the Spiegel Grove, a grand house that Burchard had built with them in line. Hayes announced His uncle's request of $50,000 in assets to endow a public library for Fremont. His family were citizens, people. It called the Burchard Library. It opened in 1874 on Front Street and a new building was completed and opened in 1878. You know, $50,000 was a lot of money back then. Hayes served as chairman of the library board of trustees until his death. He wanted to stay out of politics and pay off his debts. When he was in the war, he wasn't making enough money like he was as a lawyer. They nominated him for governor in 1875 and he accepted. He had a real problem with state-run Catholic schools. And he did not want to support state-run Catholic schools because Catholics teach kids to be Catholics. And he was against the funding for the state-run Catholic schools. He was not personally anti-Catholic, but he didn't believe that they should have a foothold in power. Because wherever they can, they do that. They always did. And October the 12th, 1875, Hayes was returned to the governorship with a 5,444 vote majority. The people loved him. He was an honest man. It's good to be able to elect somebody that you can trust. Joe Biden ran his whole campaign as a moderate Democrat. And as soon as he was somewhat elected, he began to be a radical Democrat. And even his own people were aghast at what he was doing. He was the first person to earn a third term as governor of Ohio. He reduced the state debt. He reestablished the Board of Charities. and repealed the Gagnon Bill which allowed for the appointment of Catholic priests to schools and penitentiaries. He knew the power that they wielded. Because of his successes and his honesty and straightforwardness and integrity, the Republican politicians began to keep an eye on him for the presidency of 1876. John Sherman did all that he could in his power to get Hayes the nomination. James Blaine of Maine was a favorite, but James Blaine was a crook. A crooked, crooked, crooked man, as most politicians are. And he started out with a lead. But then all of this stuff began uncovered of what he had done. A criminal family. We've had several criminal families in America, the Clintons, the Bushes, the Bidens. The Democratic nominee was Samuel J. Tilden, governor of New York. Tilden was a very formal adversary. And Tilden won the popular vote. He won the election. But then they began to fight over the Electoral College. And finally, we just about have another civil war going on here. They said Tilden or blood. Because Tilden had won the election. that Republicans emphasize the danger of letting the Democrats run the government because we have a civil war already. Finally, in backroom dealing, by one electoral vote, Rutherford B. Hayes promised that he would run for only, take a presidency for one, for one term. and that he would get the carpetbaggers out of the South and let the South rule itself again. The South had been put in an absolute turmoil now because of the carpetbaggers. We have Jesse James and the Youngers and the Daltons all, well not the Youngers because the Youngers weren't robbing banks, in spite of what you think. The Daltons and the James Gang were going in and robbing banks and trains because they could not be citizens again. There was a warrant out for their hanging all the time ever since the Civil War. They were not going to be forgiven. They were not going to be turned back in society as civilians. There were warrants out for their arrest and basically tried as war criminals. If anybody wanted to be tried as a war criminal it should have been Sherman or Grant. They finally tallied and they finally elected Hayes as President of the United States in the backroom deal. Hayes was elected. Reconstruction was finished. A lot of the Republicans say he turned his back on the blacks, but I'm going to tell you something. Grant really turned all of the vicious criminals on the South and the carpetbaggers set a war there that would not be over for over 100 years. He set the blacks against the whites in the South. Instead of doing what they wanted to do and moving off into a colony that would become a state where they could rule themselves. Grant said, and also Hayes, he says, if you take the blacks from the South and off the farm, they won't compete with white labor. That was a problem. The North didn't want them either. They didn't want them competing with white labor. You put them in their own colony, and those that stay in the South will be very much wanted as laborers. Well, when you turn all of these hundreds of thousands of They knew there would be problems. What are you going to do with them? They gave them Indian land. Put them on the Indian roads. Everything that was wrong, they did in the South. March the 4th, 1877 was Sunday, so Hayes took oath of office on Saturday on March the 3rd in the Red Room of the White House. Mrs. Hayes was called the First Lady for the first time in history. He was a great, honest man with extreme integrity. In spite of what he wanted, he would always look at what was best for the whole instead of what was best for him or his party. He said, he who serves his party best is he who serves his country best. He who serves his party best is he who serves his country best. He pledged to support wise, honest, and peaceful local self-government in the South, as well as to reform the civil service. Now here was a real problem. When the spoils system Every time a Republican came in, or a Democratic came in, or whoever came in, they started padding their buddies' pocketbooks with real fancy jobs. That was called the spoils system. Just like you go in and win a war, then you set up all your men. And the others were defeated, so you set your men in so they can reap the spoils of war. That's what happened in the South with the carpetbaggers. He fought to keep a hard money standard, the gold standard and the silver. Hard money in America. Greenbacks had been printed all during the Civil War and there were hundreds of thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars out there in greenbacks which were not worth a dime. The Republicans at that time wanted to control the elections and he fought hard for that not to happen. He fought hard to suppress the Ku Klux Klan in the South, but Grant had basically fed the Ku Klux Klan by the carpetbaggers that were there. The freedmen of the South were suppressed, which he did not want. Even after he left office, the president, he still supported black education and everything that he could do for the blacks in America. And education for all men and all people. He said they ought to be educated in working ability in a mechanical college along with the higher education. My task was to wipe out the color line and to abolish sectionalism and to end the war and bring peace to this country." To this day, he said, I was ready to resort to any unusual measures to risk my own standing and reputation within my party and the country to get this done. Civil service reform. was one of the greatest things he did in his time. If you got a civil service job, you had to be able to work for the job. Number one. You had to be qualified to do the job. And I mean, in New York there was a spoiled system there, in Tammany Hall, it was horrible. And he fought it, tooth and He said the pro-spoiled branches of the Republican Party senators of both sides were accustomed to seeing consulted about political appointments and they turned against Hayes. His own party turned against him. Foremost among his enemies in the spoiled system was Senator Roscoe Compton who fought Hayes' reform efforts in every turn of the road. Hayes appointed one of the best known advocates of reform in Carl Scherz to the Secretary of the Interior and asked Scherz and Secretary of State William H. Everts to lead a special cabinet committee charged with drawing up new rules for federal appointments. This isn't a Medina Republic, he said, where you take over and you take over all the positions. People that are in positions, if they're doing their job, leave them alone. The Treasury Secretary, John Sherman, ordered John Jay to investigate the New York Customs House, which was stacked with conkling spoilsmen. His report suggested that New York Customs House was overstaffed with political appointees and that 20% of the employees were expendable. In other words, they could fire 20% of them, because all they are is political appointees anyway. He tried his best to convince Congress to prohibit the spoils system. He issued an executive order that forbade federal office holders from being required to make campaign contributions or otherwise taking part in any party politics. And then there was a man there, a very important man in the future, Chester A. Arthur, the future President of the United States and collector of the of New York and his supporters, Alonzo B. Cornell and George H. Sharp, all Conklin supporters refused to obey the order. In September 1877, he submitted appointments of Theodore Roosevelt, Sr. This is Theodore Roosevelt's father. And I, Bradford Trentz, and Edward Merritt, all supporters of Everett's Conklin, New York rival, to the Senate for confirmation in their replacements. The Senate voted unanimously to reject the nominees. They rejected Roosevelt and Prince by a vote of 31 to 25 and conferred merit only because Sharp's term had expired. Hayes was forced to wait until July 1875 8 when he fired Arthur and Connell during a congressional recess and replaced them with recess appointments of Merritt and Silas Burt, respectively. Merritt was approved to 31 to 25 and Burt by 31 to 19, giving Hayes his most significant civil service reform victory. For the rest of his term, he tried to get Congress to enact permanent reform legislation and fund the United States Civil Service Commission, even using his last annual address to Congress in 1882 to appeal for reform. He said, this is a must, honesty, integrity. But it did not pass during his presidency. But his appeal for reform went on. It got a lot of people's attention. The Pendleton Act of 1883, which is signed into law by President Chester Arthur, that was his old opponent, the one he fired, remember? Arthur knew he was right. He might have disagreed with him at the time, he might have lost his job, but he knew that Hayes was a good man and he was right in what he did. And he signed it in. The law. In 1880, Hayes quickly forced Secretary of the Navy Richard W. Thompson to resign after Thompson accepted the $25,000 salary for a nominal job. offered by French engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps to promote French canal in Panama. Now we have the Panama Canal. The Panama Canal did not begin with Theodore Roosevelt. It began with Hayes. He believed in the Monroe Doctrine, that we don't need to let any foreign powers get involved in our area of the North, Meso, and South America. And he believed that there was a French engineer that was going to go in there and build a canal. He finally postponed the Cannonball Canal until Teddy Roosevelt could go down there and intercede and make Panama a country of its own. And they voted for the canal to be built and America built a canal with Teddy Roosevelt. There was a railroad strike in 1877. the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and then others joined in. And finally, there was a lot of riots going on because their wages were dropped. People's wages were cut dramatically. Pittsburgh exploded into riots. And other discontented citizens joined the railroad workers in rioting. Finally, he sent General Winfield Scott Hancock to take command of the situation and they tried to peacefully disperse the people. Under Hayes' direction, not one person died. Now under the local areas there, there were injuries and deaths, but not under Hayes'. Hayes was really worried about the greenbacks out there. And he wanted to go back to a gold standard which was laid aside when they made all the greenbacks. They were just pouring money into the economy that didn't have anything to back it at all. It wasn't worth a dollar. It wasn't worth a dime. It was worth nothing. And a lot of people were going broke. with this fiat money, fiat money, fake money. He began to coin silver again, silver dollars. They didn't want the silver standard, but they wanted the gold standard, but they wanted enough. The gold was the standard. Later on, Franklin Roosevelt brought the gold from the gold standard to the silver standard because he said the Jews of of New York City controlled all of the power and the banking with the gold standard, but they could not corner the market on silver. The Panic of 1873 kept growing worse. Debts. Men had debts at the price at this level, where a dollar was a dollar. And then it took two dollars to pay it back, three dollars to pay it back. $10 to pay it back. Farmers and laborers especially clamored for the return of coinage in both metals, believing the increasing money supply would restore wages and property values. Richard Bland, Missouri, proposed a bill to require the United States to coin as much silver as miners could sell to government. We don't have silver money, we don't have gold money, we have nothing today. It's totally fiat, people. This man saved the country for a while. You know that when the Roman Empire was falling to pieces, they went into fiat money, and finally it propped itself back up and went into gold and silver again. Hard money. Not copper money, or lead money, or brass money, but silver and gold. the Senate limiting the coinage to two to four million dollars per month, and resulting Bland-Allison Act passed by both houses in 1878. Hayes feared the act would increase inflation and that it would be ruinous to business effective in pairing contracts that were based on the gold dollar, when now the silver dollar was proposed. The silver had about 90 to 92 percent of the existing value of the gold dollar. So we lost 8 percent to 10 percent. He also believed that inflating the currency was dishonest. Expediency and justice both demand honesty and currency. Expediency and justice both demand an honest currency. He vetoed the bill, but Congress overrode his veto and the only time it was did so during his whole presidency. He put out in all the newspapers that the fiat dollar greenbacks were redeemable in gold. He tried to get them back. Only $130,000 of the outstanding $346 million were ever returned. because the people began to trust him. They believed the greenbacks were real money again. The successful specie resumption effectively a workable compromise between the inflation and hard money. And as the world economy began to improve, agitation for more greenbacks and silver carnage quieted down for the whole rest of Hayes' presidency. His foreign policy. He wanted to keep the Panama Canal out of foreign hands, and he interpreted the Monroe Doctrine firmly. He also drew up a firm Mexican border, and he also wrote a law that any of the lawless man crossing over from Mexico to America and running back and forth that America could pursue and arrest those people on Mexican soil. Now the Mexican didn't like that very much. It was their territory. If the Mexican government would take care of their own military and this illegal outlaws, then America wouldn't have to intercede. And they finally got along in that. Hayes' biggest foreign policy dealt with China. Because China was, there were thousands of Chinese immigrants coming to America and were bringing down the price of free white labor. There were anti-Chinese leagues all over on railroads and they really were persecuting the Chinese people greatly because the Chinese people were working for nothing. They were used to being slaves. Coming here living on nothing and working for nothing. By the way, the Chinese didn't have much rights at all. just about equal with the American Indian almost. A Chinese could not have a hard rock mine, gold mine. Neither could an American Indian at all. They could not have citizenship. Finally, it was agreed with China that we would stop Chinese immigration into America. Frederick W. Seward suggested that the two countries could work together to reduce immigration. Today, we have a lot of workers in America that are out of work. And they're letting the borders wide open to bring us into the most worst, the worst glut of illegal alien workers working for nothing, just like they did back here in the Chinese. We got problems, people. We don't need any more immigration in our country at all until we can employ every man, woman, and child, so to speak, in this country that are citizens. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was signed into law after Hayes left. Now this is a bad thing. This is a thing that if Hayes could look back on, he would have done differently. Indian policy. They began to confiscate all of the tribal lands in America and nullify every treaty that had ever been made with Indians and they were going to assimilate Indians into white American culture by absolute force. The Indian schools that Ulysses Grant established were nothing more than Indian prisons, reformatories. The Indian people were kidnapped from their families and put into these schools. They had their mouths washed out with soap, lye soap, if they spoke their own language. American Indian language were forbidden. And yet now we've got languages printed in every form. You go into some cities, you can't even see an English word or billboard. They were going to assimilate these Indians into white culture by force. They began the process of the Dawes Act, where they would nullify all and break down every piece of tribal lands into private ownership. And it caused nothing but the death of thousands and thousands and hundreds of thousands of Indians because when the Indians, when the land was put in their own names, then they were killed and their land was taken. He finally gave the Indians a responsibility for policing their own reservations much later. They chased Chief Joseph all over the North and tried to go up here and flee into Canada. They stopped him and arrested him. Chief Joseph surrendered and William Tecumseh Sherman ordered the tribe transported to Indian Territory in Kansas, where they would remain until 1885 when this first war was not the last conflict in the West. The Bannock rose in 1875 in Idaho. The Ute tribe broke out in Colorado. They killed an agent, Nathan Meeker, who had been attempting to convert them into Christianity. It wasn't Christianity, it was basically Mormonism. The White River War entered when the Assurers negotiated peace with the Ute and prevented white settlers from taking revenge on Meeker's death. He became involved in resolving the removal of the Pawtucket Tribe from Alaska to Indian Territory, present-day Oklahoma, of course, because of the misunderstanding in the Grant administration. He dealt with Chief Standing Bear and filed a lawsuit to contend that the man that they stand in the territory overruling the Sheriffs, he sent up a commission in 1880 that rule of Ponca were free to return to their home territory in Nebraska or stay in Indian Territory. Hayes, in his message in Congress in 1881, insisted that he would give to these injured people that measure of redress which was regarded alike by justice and humanity among all races. He embarked in 1880 on a Western, the Western America tour. He met Grant in Utah. And William Tecumseh Sherman helped organize the trip. Hayes began his trip in September 1880 departing from Chicago on the Transcontinental Railroad. And he went all the way finally to California. stopping in Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada, reaching Sacramento and San Francisco by railroad and stagecoach. They went up north to Oregon and into Portland and into Vancouver, Washington. They went by steamship from Seattle, finally returned to Ohio in November, in time to cast his vote in the 1880 presidential election. When Hayes went into the White House, they called his wife Lemonade Susie, Lemonade Lucy. He would not allow, after the first party, and he saw people getting drunk and acting nuts, he decided that alcohol would never be served in the White House for the rest of his administration. and lemonade and other drinks would be served instead, or water. They said that he was pocketing all that money and putting it in personal dispenses, but he took that money and made more lavish parties for other things besides alcohol. Water flowed like wine, they said. Water flowed like what? The prohibition. liked him. The Protestant and Baptists liked him. And he also appointed two assistant judges to the Supreme Court. John Marshall Harlan. And Harlan was confirmed and served the court for 34 years. He also reported, or nominated William Burnham Woods, a carpetbagger Republican circuit court judge from Alabama, which wasn't too good. Because he became a great disappointment to him later. He did not want to seek re-election, he wanted to go back home. His fellow Ohioan, James A. Garfield, was to succeed him. And Hayes and his family moved to Spiegel Grove, where you can go, I believe that's where the presidential library and everything for Hayes is today. Hayes made some mistakes, especially with the American Indians. But he did them honestly. He was not a vicious man. He tried to be a peacemaker all of his life. He preached the gospel of academics and the gospel of work. He emphasized the need for vocational as well as academic education. In other words, taught people how to work with their hands also. I preach the gospel of work, he wrote. I believe that skilled labor is a part of education. He urged Congress unsuccessfully to pass a bill written by Senator Henry W. Blair that would allow federal aid for education for the first time. He encouraged black students to apply for scholarships from the slatter fund. He advocated better prison conditions. In later life, he was absolutely troubled by the disparity between the rich and the poor, the distance, the economic divide. He realized that the Republican Party was was backing all the railroads and big businesses and banking industries and they were becoming very powerful and the people were becoming very poor. He said, free speech, free government cannot long endure if property is largely in the hands of a few and large masses of people are unable to earn homes and education and support for themselves in old age. He said in church, he said it occurred to me, that it is time for the public to hear that the giant evil and danger in this country, the danger which transcends all others is the vast wealth owned and controlled by a few persons. And this is what, until Teddy Kennedy, or Teddy Roosevelt came along, America was saddled with. Big business bought elections. Money is power in Congress, in state legislatures, in city councils, in the court, in the political conventions, in the press, and in the pulpit, in the circles of the educated and the talented. Its influence is growing greater and greater, excessive wealth in the hands of a few means, extreme power, ignorance, and bias, and recklessness. The affluentness of the rich. Throwing money away like water. As a lot of many, it is not time yet to debate about the remedy. The previous question is to the danger of the evil. Let the people be fully informed and convinced as to the evil. Let them earnestly seek the remedy that it will be found fully to know that evil is the first step towards reaching its eradication. Henry George is strong when he portrays the rottenness of the present system. We are, to say the least, not ready for this remedy yet. We may reach and remove the difficulty by changes in the laws regulating corporations, dissents of property, wills, trust, and taxation, and a host of other important interests not omitting lands and other property." When his wife died in 1889, he said, the soul has left Spiegel Grove. Hayes' daughter, Fanny, became his traveling companion and enjoyed visits from his grandchildren. He chaired the Lake Monhock Conference in the Negro Question, a gathering of reformers that met in upstate New York to discuss racial issues. Hayes died of complications of a heart attack, January 17, 1893, at the age of 70. His last words, I know that I'm going where Lucy is. I know that I'm going where Lucy is. President-elect Cleveland, Ohio Governor McKinley led the funeral procession that followed his body until Hayes was entered at Oakwood Cemetery. His legacy. is that he decided to dispute between Argentina and Paraguay in favor of Paraguay, giving Paraguay 60% of its current territory. And they named the region Villa Hayes. Villa Hayes. Villa, the village of Hayes, or the town of Hayes. And an official holiday, Lado Hayes Firm Day, the soccer team of Presidente Hayes, also known as Los Yaquis, based on the national capital. He had a postage stamp in his name. He was an elected member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1890. Rutherford B. Hayes High School, his hometown of Delaware, Ohio, was named in his honor. Hayes Hall, built in 1893, Ohio State University. Ohio's oldest remaining building was placed in the National Register of Historic Places on July 16, 1970. Due to the block which remains virtually untouched from its original appearance, Hayes knew the building would be named in his honor, but never saw what happened in his lifetime. An American hero, Rutherford B. Hayes was an American hero, and he did his best to do what was right for the whole of the nation. May we thank God for such men as this, even though they make mistakes. They make them not viciously, like many presidents have done. And he fought in the lines, in the front lines in the Civil War. He wasn't sitting back pushing pencils and seeing hundreds of thousands of men die. He was wounded five times in battle, which validated that he was a real champion among men. Our Father, we send this message out for your honor and glory of this great Christian gentleman that served this nation as president during his time. Let many in the world today take him as an example. Put your money where your mouth is and put your life where your words are. Father, forgive me where I failed you.