A transformation had to have occurred. Rutherford spent a good portion of his youth not only showing a disregard toward abolitionists, but also accepting the slavery system as it operated while he visited his friend in Texas. Yet, shortly after moving to Cincinnati he decided to put his career on the line by openly defending freedom seekers in the court of law.
Ari Hoogenboom claimed that Hayes “did not seek publicity for these acts, lest his practice suffer in a city bordered on Kentucky and … filled with southern sympathizers.” I do not agree with Hoogenboom that Hayes was afraid of his practice suffering for his actions. First, he never mentions this in his journal or correspondence, so we are left to only speculate. And, second, he took on the high profile case of Rosetta Armstead. This is not something a man would do if he were afraid of word getting out. But, Hoogenboom makes a good point about the location of Cincinnati and its potentially hostile citizenry. I also think he was correct when he wrote, Hayes’s “antislavery views were in advance of those of his community of other family members.”[1]
So, in order for Hayes to defend these freedom seekers, he had to have undergone some sort of transformation.
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Towards the end of his life, Wilbur H. Seibert interviewed the aging president and asked him about his role in this 1850s period. He was writing a book on the Underground Railroad. Hayes informed him “that there came to my knowledge forty cases; but of this number only three or four came to the ears of the public, and during three or four winters this thing was an important part of my life.” He claimed that he “never went to bed without expecting to be called out by Levi Coffin.”[2]
If we take Hayes at his word, we must accept that he was a willing and open supporter of the fight against the Fugitive Slave Act. This, after showing such disinterest in the fate of slaves he witnessed in Texas, or being more a politically motivated Whig adherent than a crusader against the institution of slavery. What could cause such a determined turn around in his outlook?
Biographers of Hayes tend to claim that two things caused the conversion—his marriage to Lucy Webb Hayes and an attack on a prominent anti-slavery activist in Cincinnati.
On the first point, there is little evidence to support the argument that Lucy influenced him. Lucy Hayes biographer Emily Apt Geer argues that Lucy was raised to be anti-slavery, but let her true feelings out by arguing against delegates of an anti-slavery convention as “rank abolitionists.” This statement alone does not prove she supported slavery, but it does provide some evidence that she viewed abolitionism as radical. And nothing in her later correspondence would lead a historian to conclude that Lucy had a definitive influence on Hayes’s evolutio
n of thought on the subject. Instead, the evidence points much closer to Lucy’s deeper interest in her religious beliefs and support for temperance. Any commentary she showed against slavery in her correspondence fits nicely within the tribal Northern fight against Southern expansion. Undoubtedly Lucy and Rutherford would have discussed the topic and probably developed similar conclusions in the 1850s, but it is most likely that they influenced each other rather than it being a one-sided push from the future first lady.[3]
Biographers of Hayes also argue that an attack on John Jolliffe, an abolitionist lawyer, was the dramatic moment when Hayes decided to lend his services to defend freedom seekers in Cincinnati. Yet, despite the chronology of events, there is no evidence to support this conclusion. References of this go back to Harry Barnard’s biography in 1954. He relayed the episode of Jolliffe defending a family of freedom seekers, but Judge Jacob Flinn ruled quickly to send them back into slavery. When many Cincinnati residents protested the rulings, Flinn took his rage out on Jolliffe when he found him walking the city with his small daughter (or wife in other accounts). Flinn caned Joliffe “brutally.”[4] Image:John Jolliffe
There is nothing in the Hayes’s letters or diary entries that proves that this was the ultimate moment that pushed him to take his first case defending a freedom seeker. He mentioned it to Lucy within a list of unfortunate events that he attributed to the “bloody influence of the malignant Comet!” – (there were at least 4 visible comets in 1853). He noted,
“Judge Flinn has got into greater odium than ever by assaulting Mr Joliffe while passing the street in company with his wife.”
Obviously events like this would have impacted his views on the violence surrounding the slavery topic, but nothing in his writing suggests it compelled him towards vigorous activity.[5]
***
The reality is that the Republican party and Northern sectional ideals were changing in the 1850s. Hayes was unquestionably caught up in this larger movement. He became more integrated into the social circles that were opposed to Southern movements on the slavery question. And he was certainly appalled as many in the North, that the Fugitive Slave Act was an example of massive federal overreach.
Regardless if transformation was not a singular brave moment on his part, I still think the transformation is worthy of commendation. He took the proper stand as the nation was solidifying its views on the subject. And he did not simply have those views; he acted. We will never know if he exaggerated when he claimed forty cases came to his attention, but we are certain of two.
The next entry delves into the first of these two cases.
[1] Ari Hoogenboom, Rutherford B. Hayes: Warrior & President (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1995), 95-97.
[2] RBH to W. H. Siebert, August 4, 1892 - HPLM
[3] Emily Apt Geer, First Lady: The Life of Lucy Webb Hayes (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1984), 16.
[4] Harry Barnard, Rutherford B. Hayes and His America (Newton, CT: The Bobbs Merrill Company, Inc., 1954), 189-190.
[5] RBH to LWH, September 4, 1853, HPLM.