One of Rutherford’s professors at Harvard was Simon Greenleaf, whom Hayes praised for his teaching ability—even preferring him to Joseph Story. Upon Hayes’s departure, he provided Rud with some advice: “the young man who goes into a large place, unless under circumstances peculiarly favorable, commits a great error. If he settled in an obscure place where he is sure of some business he is much more likely to reach the ultimate object of his desires.”
Thus, Hayes moved to Lower Sandusky. Image: Professor Simon Greenleaf
It seemed like a decent idea. Sardis could send the young lawyer some business, and, as it turned out, he didn’t have much competition. “I have but little competition,” he wrote, “taking industry and honesty as among many qualifications, for with one exception (R. P. Buckland) those of our lawyers who are responsible or honest are not industrious, and vice versa.”[1] But Lower Sandusky (later renamed Fremont) provided little else for an educated, single man in his 20s. He lamented, “there is no one here of my own age who is fit for a ‘trusted cronie.’”[2] When a cousin visited, who expected something quite different after hearing Sardis’s description of the village, she was left disappointed. Hayes described her dissatisfaction:
“Expecting … something better than ordinary in Lower Sandusky, it was quite natural she should be surprised to find a town in which the houses, fences, etc., …were built not merely without any good taste, but with apparent disregard of all taste and comfort.”
In correspondence, Hayes let his opinion of the town seep out as well, calling it a “little Shanty town.”[3] Later in life he even advised young men to do the opposite of what Greenleaf convinced him to do. He wrote to one, “go to a large city or a town that is rapidly growing to importance … A large city like St. Louis, Memphis &c &c is more discouraging than a small town at first, but success is just as certain, and far more remunerative.”[4] Upon moving to Cincinnati in the winter of 1849, he quickly wrote, “Oh, the waste of those five precious years in Sandusky!”[5]
Yet, in these “five precious years” we see some development for the nation on the question of slavery, and in Hayes’s response to these developments. Within this half decade, the nation went to war with Mexico despite massive protest against the war’s potential to extend slavery. This war was playing out against the backdrop of an increasing northern and southern sectional divide.
As we move into the next phase in Hayes’s life, his time in Lower Sandusky provides a lens into looking at how quickly the nation’s sections were calcifying their opinions on slavery, leading up to the tumultuous 1850s. Hayes was not immune to this moment, and he would find himself growing deeper into the anti-slavery North.
[1] RBH to FAP, April 20, 1845, Vol I, pg. 165.
[2] Ibid.
[3] RBH to William Lane, October 10, 1846, HPLM.
[4] RBH to R.L. Nye, August 9, 1865, HPLM – found in Hoogenboom, 550.
[5] Hoogenboom, 73.