Rutherford B. Hayes: Trending quotes (page 2)

“Disunion and civil war are at hand; and yet I fear disunion and war less than compromise.”

Rutherford B. Hayes

Diary (4 January 1861)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Context: Disunion and civil war are at hand; and yet I fear disunion and war less than compromise. We can recover from them. The free States alone, if we must go on alone, will make a glorious nation.

War , Fear

“War is a cruel business and there is brutality in it on all sides”

Rutherford B. Hayes

Letter to Lucy Webb Hayes, whose cousin was a prisoner and died at Andersonville prison (2 July 1864)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Context: You use the phrase “brutal Rebels.” Don’t be cheated in that way. There are enough “brutal Rebels” no doubt, but we have brutal officers and men too. I have had men brutally treated by our own officers on this raid [to Lynchburg, Va. ]. And there are plenty of humane Rebels. I have seen a good deal of it on this trip. War is a cruel business and there is brutality in it on all sides, but it is very idle to get up anxiety on account of any supposed peculiar cruelty on the part of Rebels. Keepers of prisons in Cincinnati, as well as in Danville, are hard-hearted and cruel.

War , Business

“The man who thinks that the perpetuity of slavery is essential to the existence of the Union, is unfit to be trusted. The deadliest enemy the Union has is slavery — in fact, its only enemy.”

Rutherford B. Hayes

Diary (5 June 1862)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Context: These semi-traitors [Union generals who were not hostile to slavery] must be watched. — Let us be careful who become army leaders in the reorganized army at the end of this Rebellion. The man who thinks that the perpetuity of slavery is essential to the existence of the Union, is unfit to be trusted. The deadliest enemy the Union has is slavery — in fact, its only enemy.

Thinking

“There can be no complete and permanent reform of the civil service until public opinion emancipates congressmen from all control and influence over government patronage. Legislation is required to establish the reform. No proper legislation is to be expected as long as members of Congress are engaged in procuring offices for their constituents.”

Rutherford B. Hayes

Diary (14 February 1879)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

“We now talk of our killed and wounded. There is however a very happy feeling. Those who escape regret of course the loss of comrades and friends, but their own escape and safety to some extent modifies their feelings.”

Rutherford B. Hayes

Letter to Lucy Webb Hayes (25 October 1864)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

Feeling , Loss , Happiness

“We have now become pretty well acquainted with the sugar-growing part of Texas. The life of a planter who has a fair start in the world is one of the most independent imaginable. 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.”

Rutherford B. Hayes

Letter to his mother, Sophia Birchard Hayes (27 January 1849)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

Life , Pleasure , World , Education

“All appointments hurt. Five friends are made cold or hostile for every appointment; no new friends are made. All patronage is perilous to men of real ability or merit. It aids only those who lack other claims to public support.”

Rutherford B. Hayes

Letter to William McKinley (27 December 1892)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

Men , Hostility , Support , Hurt

“We can travel longer, night and day, without losing our spirits than almost any persons we ever met.”

Rutherford B. Hayes

Diary (6 June 1879)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

Travel , Personality , Night

“The sacred obligation to the Union soldiers must not — will not be forgotten nor neglected…. But those who fought against the Nation cannot and do not look to it for relief…. Confederate soldiers and their descendants are to share with us and our descendants the destiny of America. Whatever, therefore, we their fellow citizens can do to remove burdens from their shoulders and to brighten their lives is surely in the pathway of humanity and patriotism.”

Rutherford B. Hayes

Letter to Oliver Downing (15 March 1889)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

“I regard the inflation acts as wrong in all ways. Personally I am one of the noble army of debtors, and can stand it if others can. But it is a wretched business.”

Rutherford B. Hayes

Letter to Austin Birchard (21 April 1874), when he was approximately $46,000 in debt.
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

Way , Business , Personality

“Coming in, I was denounced as a fraud by all the extreme men of the opposing party, and as an ingrate and a traitor by the same class of men in my own party. Going out, I have the good will, blessings, and approval of the best people of all parties and sections.”

Rutherford B. Hayes

Diary (23 January 1881)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

Men , People , Fraud

“I am a freeman and jolly as a beggar.”

Rutherford B. Hayes

On retiring as governor of Ohio, in a letter to William Johnston (7 January 1872)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

“Every age has its temptations, its weaknesses, its dangers. Ours is in the line of the snobbish and the sordid.”

Rutherford B. Hayes

Diary (11 May 1875)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

Age

“Youth, however, is a defect that she is fast getting away from and may perhaps be entirely rid of before I shall want her.”

Rutherford B. Hayes

About Lucy Webb, nine years his junior, whom he later married, in a letter to his sister, Fanny Hayes Platt (23 October 1847)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

Youth

“Strikes and boycotting are akin to war, and can be justified only on grounds analogous to those which justify war, viz., intolerable injustice and oppression.”

Rutherford B. Hayes

Diary (6 April 1886)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

War

“Perhaps the happiest moment of my life was then, when I saw that our line didn’t break and that the enemy’s did.”

Rutherford B. Hayes

About the success of the crucial charge he led at Opequon, in a letter to Sardis Birchard (20 December 1864)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

Life

“We all agree that neither the Government nor political parties ought to interfere with religious sects. It is equally true that religious sects ought not to interfere with the Government or with political parties. We believe that the cause of good government and the cause of religion both suffer by all such interference.”

Rutherford B. Hayes

Speech, Marion, Ohio (31 July 1875)

Religion , Suffering

“Fighting battles is like courting girls: those who make the most pretensions and are boldest usually win.”

Rutherford B. Hayes

As quoted in The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents (1991) by William A. DeGregorio, p. 290

Girl , Fight

“I am not liked as a President by the politicians in office, in the press, or in Congress. But I am content to abide the judgment — the sober second thought — of the people.”

Rutherford B. Hayes

Diary (1 March 1878)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)