Details
HAYES, Rutherford B. (1822-1893), President. Autograph letter signed ("R. B. Hayes"), as Presidential candidate, to Hamilton Fish, Columbus, Ohio, 20 June 1876. 1 page, 8vo, with small closed tear at top of vertical crease.
A RESPECTFUL JEST TO A GOP ELDER STATESMAN ABOUT A CARTOON'S "ENDORSEMENT" "I value...very highly your kind note of the 17th," Hayes writes to Grant's Secretary of State Hamilton Fish. "You will excuse me if I tell you what I said to my wife and friends--that if I was to be on the ticket at all, the slate of Nast was decidedly the best!" The famed political cartoonist for Harper's magazine had recently drawn a caricature of the ideal GOP ticket, which had Fish as the Presidential contender and Hayes as his running mate. The Republican Party convention in Cincinnati was just underway when Hayes writes this, and he had not yet emerged as the front-runner. In fact he was a distant fourth in the earlier balloting among the delegates, behind party titans James G. Blaine, Roscoe Conkling, and trailed even lesser lights like Oliver P. Morton and Benjamin Bristow. But Blaine's enemies rallied to Hayes and pushed him to the top on the seventh ballot. In the general election, Hayes ran a "wave the bloody shirt" campaign, denouncing the Democrats' pro-secessionist legacy. But when the Electoral count between Hayes and Samuel Tilden became deadlocked, Hayes struck bargains with Southern pols in the key states of Florida, South Carolina and Louisiana. He agreed to withdraw Federal troops from the region and permit the old Democratic ruling class to return to power.
A RESPECTFUL JEST TO A GOP ELDER STATESMAN ABOUT A CARTOON'S "ENDORSEMENT" "I value...very highly your kind note of the 17th," Hayes writes to Grant's Secretary of State Hamilton Fish. "You will excuse me if I tell you what I said to my wife and friends--that if I was to be on the ticket at all, the slate of Nast was decidedly the best!" The famed political cartoonist for Harper's magazine had recently drawn a caricature of the ideal GOP ticket, which had Fish as the Presidential contender and Hayes as his running mate. The Republican Party convention in Cincinnati was just underway when Hayes writes this, and he had not yet emerged as the front-runner. In fact he was a distant fourth in the earlier balloting among the delegates, behind party titans James G. Blaine, Roscoe Conkling, and trailed even lesser lights like Oliver P. Morton and Benjamin Bristow. But Blaine's enemies rallied to Hayes and pushed him to the top on the seventh ballot. In the general election, Hayes ran a "wave the bloody shirt" campaign, denouncing the Democrats' pro-secessionist legacy. But when the Electoral count between Hayes and Samuel Tilden became deadlocked, Hayes struck bargains with Southern pols in the key states of Florida, South Carolina and Louisiana. He agreed to withdraw Federal troops from the region and permit the old Democratic ruling class to return to power.