This listing is for a pair of rare signatures of United States President Rutherford B Hayes (1822-1893). One signature is on an official card from the Executive Mansion and is dated 1828. It measures about 2 1/2" x 4 1/4" inches. The other signature is on a cut piece of paper that measures 1 3/4" x 5" inches. It has been glued to another piece of paper and the adhesive has caused discoloration. We are also including two First Day Covers from 1938, five 19 cent stamps, one 11 cent stamp, and a photo of Hayes clipped from a magazine. Please see the photographs below, and feel free to contact us with any questions. We are contracted to sell to the highest bidder and cannot end the listing early. These autographs are from the collection of an award winning Vermont stamp collector and historian. The winning bidder will have 14 days in which to have them inspected. We will accept a return for a full refund during this time, provided that the items are returned in the same condition as which they were received. After 14 days we will no longer be able to take any returns. We have a low opening bid price, so don't miss your chance to add this to your collection.
Rutherford Birchard Hayes (October 4, 1822 ??? January 17, 1893) was the 19th President of the United States (1877???1881). As president, he oversaw the end of Reconstruction, began the efforts that led to civil service reform, and attempted to reconcile the divisions left over from the Civil War and Reconstruction.
Hayes, an attorney in Ohio, became city solicitor of Cincinnati from 1858 to 1861. When the Civil War began, he left a fledgling political career to join the Union Army as an officer. Hayes was wounded five times, most seriously at the Battle of South Mountain; he earned a reputation for bravery in combat and was promoted to the rank of major general. After the war, he served in the U.S. Congress from 1865 to 1867 as a Republican. Hayes left Congress to run for Governor of Ohio and was elected to two consecutive terms, from 1868 to 1872, and then to a third term, from 1876 to 1877.
In 1876, Hayes was elected president in one of the most contentious and confused elections in national history. He lost the popular vote to Democrat Samuel J. Tilden but he won an intensely disputed electoral college vote after a Congressional commission awarded him twenty contested electoral votes. The result was the Compromise of 1877, in which the Democrats acquiesced to Hayes's election and Hayes ended all federal army intervention in Southern politics. That caused the collapse of Republican state governments and led to a solidly Democratic South.
Hayes believed in meritocratic government, equal treatment without regard to race, and improvement through education. He ordered federal troops to quell the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. He implemented modest civil service reforms that laid the groundwork for further reform in the 1880s and 1890s. He vetoed the Bland-Allison Act that would have put silver money into circulation and raised prices, insisting that maintenance of the gold standard was essential to economic recovery. His policy toward Western Indians anticipated the assimilationist program of the Dawes Act of 1887.
Hayes kept his pledge not to run for re-election, retired to his home in Ohio and became an advocate of social and educational reform. His biographer Ari Hoogenboom says his greatest achievement was to restore popular faith in the presidency and to reverse the deterioration of executive power that had set in after Lincoln's death.
Please see our other listings for more rare, historical autographs including a number of U.S. Presidents.