CHAPTER XV

FROM HAYES TO ROOSEVELT

EXPANSION

1877

HAYES'S ADMINISTRATION

REPUBLICAN: 1877-1881

630. Rutherford Birchard Hayes, the nineteenth president of the United States, was the son of an Ohio farmer. He was educated in the common schools and at Kenyon college, Ohio. After leaving college, he studied law, was admitted to the bar, and soon proved himself an able lawyer. When the civil war began he enlisted in the union army as a captain, and rose to the rank of brevet major-general. In 1864 he was elected to congress; in 1868 he became governor of Ohio, entered upon a second term in 1870 and a third in 1876. The same year he was elected president.

Mr. Hayes was an extremely able president, and as brave and honest as he was able. After his presidency he retired to Fremont, Ohio.

Hayes was born in Delaware, Ohio, October 4, 1822, and died in Fremont, that state, January 17, 1893.

631. The New Nation. The year 1877 closed the era of reconstruction and opened up another epoch in the nation's history. From that year we may say that a new nation has been created and new policies adopted. With the north and the south once more welded together, and the old questions about slavery and state rights settled, the people have turned with astonishing energy to the consideration of other problems. The keynote of this movement is found in the word expansion,-expansion in the sense of growth-of growth in commerce, in population, in education, in the industrial,