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Rutherford B. Hayes made many lifelong friends at Kenyon who challenged his developing social and political outlook. Perhaps none provided as thorough of a counterpoint to his ideals as his Texan, Democratic, Nu Pi Kappa buddy, Guy Bryan. Most notable within their early correspondence is a letter from Bryan that begs Hayes for his opinions on the annexation of Texas into the United States. Bryan supported Texas’s inclusion and implored his friend to agree with his conclusion. According to Bryan this topic was, seemingly without any indication of sarcasm, “the most important subject ever arisen since the Declaration of American Independence.”
In some ways, Bryan’s hyperbolic declaration has some level of merit. It probably wasn’t the “most important subject” since the Declaration, but it certainly occupied the minds of many Americans throughout the 1840s. It was unquestionably the most important subject of the 1844 election. James K. Polk became the Democratic nominee and ran on a manifest destiny platform of reoccupying Oregon and annexing Texas. Running against him was the Whig candidate, and the object of Hayes’s hero worship, Henry Clay. Image: Guy Bryan
While Texas was at the heart of the debate, it was merely the medium upon which to discuss the extension of slavery. Focusing on extension is important to emphasize here since it was not a straight-forward fight between pro-slavery and anti-slavery advocates. It was more a fight over the balance of power in Washington between slave states and free states. And Polk won. Thus, extension of slavery won.
But not by much.
Polk only received 38,000 more votes than Clay (out of 2.5 million), and if it were not for third party candidate James G. Birney, who was running with the anti-slavery Liberty Party, garnering 62,000 votes, Clay most likely would have become president instead.
The outgoing president, John Tyler, saw it differently (or at least was more than happy to create his own narrative). He thought Polk’s victory signaled that Americans desired to annex Texas and extend the nation’s boundaries, and slavery, westward. In the last day of his presidency, he moved to annex Texas before Polk could be inaugurated. A war with Mexico eventually ensued that resulted in U.S. annexation of the landmass that now includes Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming.
This expression of U.S. military power over its southern neighbor was something that brought substantial excitement to Rutherford’s southern Democratic friend. Bryan had shown enthusiasm for this policy in his correspondence with Rud as early as December 1843. Bryan, not one to shy away from melodrama, asked Hayes, “Texas looks first to the U S for [prosperity]. She is the native country of four-fifths of her inhabitants. She feels for her mother (U S) gratitude & affection. She asks her mother to receive her. Will that mother reject?”
Bryan argued that slavery cannot be the reason for the “mother” to reject her and withhold her “affection.” “Three-fourths of Texas will admit of free labor, one-half require it,” Bryan implored, “the admission of Texas would make Maryland, K[entuck]y & V[irgini]a free states (the importation of slavers from any other country but the U S is declared piracy by the Con[stitution] of Texas.)”
He ends his declaration with a threat. If the United States rejects the annexation of Texas, the state will have no alternative but to look to England. “Propositions have been made to England to admit her manufactures free of duty into our ports & she will admit Texas staples free into English ports,” Bryan explained. He followed with the aggressive warning, “What will be the consequence to the U S? Texas will become the depot of English goods for America.” “Let the opportunity slip,” he warned, “& the trident of this important sea passes into the hands of England.” What a fateful warning to a young Harvard student like Rutherford B. Hayes.
We no longer have access to Hayes’s response to Bryan, but Bryan provides a synopsis in his subsequent letter. “Your most warlike, threatening & anti Texas letter you have ever written or I read came to hand yesterday,” he began. “In it I do not recognize the friend of my heart, the companion of my school days and why? [B]ecause he has turned Bully:”
“Listen to what he [Hayes] says,” Bryan continues, 'If you treat with her (England) on fair terms, conclude a treaty not unfairly prejudicial to our rights, why God bless the little Republic. I hope she will do it. But, if on the other hand the arrangement with England is hostile to our interests and rights, why we shall show you the difference between fighting Mexicans and fighting Yankees, and if Britain interferes, with the help of France, I think we would send the lion limping back to his haunts and as for ‘the lone Star’ it will either veil its face or in future only ‘ray out darkness.' ”
Rutherford showed here a rare moment of not being gentle with his Southern friend. In fact, this might give us some indication of how Hayes’s sojourn into New England impacted his political outlook. He shows here an uncommon political resolve on an important national topic, perhaps, indeed, playing the part of “bully.”
Bryan hit the nail on the head, in regards to where the disagreement lied, when he responded, “How constant you Whigs are.” Yet, he also noticed that this was an issue that divided the nation not just politically, but also sectionally. And these two were in different sections… Bryan returning to the South while Hayes moved to the bastion of progressive Northern politics in Massachusetts.
It’s too early to declare Hayes anti-slavery at this point, but he is clearly showing his strong adherence to his partisan, sectional allies in the Whig North. And while we should probably forgive Hayes for one of his rare, non-conciliatory outbursts towards his friend, since he was defining his beliefs as a confident law student, Bryan had sardonically defined the moment when he wrote, “Ye winds blow it and hills echo it, that Hayes, Rud Hayes, the plain strait forward Hayes has forgot the old paths and in the plenitude of legal success (for I understand he is reputed ‘to be the smartest young man in the law school;) and in the culmination of his genius has become a threatener, a bully.”
But Hayes was moving to the correct side of this argument, even if he lost his tact at this moment.
In the next installment, we will learn about the man who would help edge Hayes’s needle a little further towards anti-slavery: Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story.