Rutherford’s trip through Texas provides a unique moment for us to understand his direct interaction with slavery. Previous entries to this series argued that he was raised to think negatively of abolitionists, that he slowly developed, politically, to oppose the extension of slavery, yet he did not contend the practice on moral grounds. His remaining time in Texas provides more evidence that he did not morally oppose the enslavement of Blacks in his early years.

On this point, I differ slightly in my interpretation from preeminent Hayes biographer Ari Hoogenboom. In his analysis, he argued that “Hayes became more critical of Texas and Texans,” but his tone throughout making this point seems to focus on Hayes’ interpretations of how Texas culture affected the white population. First, Hoogenboom covered Hayes’ commentary on “white men” being “generally dissolute and intemperate.” He then pointed out one plantation owner for being “haughty and imperious…[and these traits] develop rapidly on … lonely sugar plantations.” He even commented that Guy’s mother had to be “nurse, physician, and spiritual adviser to a whole settlement of careless slaves.” Yet, Hoogenboom leaves out Hayes’ comment that “there is always some little brat [slave] with a scalded foot or a hand cut half off, and ‘Missus’ must always see to it or there is sure to be a whining time of it in the whole camp.” So, yes, Hayes’s views of Texas and Texans may have become more critical, but we find little critique from the future president of how slavery affected black men, women, and children.

Hoogenboom made the point that Hayes was “particularly critical of the inefficiency of slave labor,” but he never really explored what this meant for Hayes’ overall understanding.

In fact, Hayes had plenty of time to explore and experience the life of a Texan. He even took a seven-hundred-mile trek to Austin and San Antonio on horseback. He commented on Austonians: “Costumes of every variety—Indian, Mexican, Christian, civil, military, and mixed. All armed to the teeth. Fierce whiskers, gaming, and drinking very abounding in all quarters.” The description is so well articulated, and since drinking was very “abounding in all quarters,” Austin now sports a distillery named Fierce Whiskers.

Nevertheless, we must also consider what he learned in his time in Texas regarding the Black members of the Lone Star State.

What becomes obvious is that Hayes had no qualms with using the slavery system as it existed. He commented that he could “dispatch a negro to Galveston whenever we are anxious to communicate rapidly.” He enjoyed being waited on by “two little black girls,” who were “never failing to get the right name.” He seemingly even joked about the attempted escape of the enslaved by referencing a slave who initially exhibited, “honor in showing himself next morning according to promise and then running away.” Then joking about the “Swift chocolate-colored current in the Brazos” as the enslaved frequently attempted escape.

We cannot always use our standards today to judge the statements and thoughts of those in the past. My point in bringing up these comments by Hayes is to understand how he was thinking about slavery as he experienced it right before he would move to Cincinnati and end up defending freedom seekers in commissioner’s courts.

In fact, it provides extra meaning and creates more questions when we consider his final analysis of the slave system as he witnessed it:

 

We here find the pleasures of fashionable life without its tyranny. I doubt, however, whether a person of Northern education could so far forget his home-bred notions and feelings as ever to be thoroughly Southern on the subject of slavery. We have seen none of ‘the horrors’ so often described, but on the other hand I have seen nothing to change my Northern opinions.

 

So, while Hoogenboom correctly showed that Hayes had begun to critique some aspects of Texas and Texans, his heart had not been changed on topics of slavery. He likely still objected to the power that Southern states wielded in the national discourse, but as the above quote shows, I argue he had not yet determined slavery to be an evil in-and-of itself.