Rutherford Hayes was a good man, a decent man. He was a loving husband and father, a loyal and respected battlefield commander, and a rare politician who engendered few personal enemies. Hayes’s well-intentioned approach to life and politics, however, did have one unmistakable black mark that casts an everlasting shadow over his legacy. The 19th President of the United States cannot be solely blamed for the controversial manner in which he captured the election of 1876. The Republican political class fought that battle on his behalf. That said, while he wasn’t present in the room at the Wormley Hotel where the Compromise of 1877 was ironed out, he made it clear that the Ohioans who were there accurately represented his views and interests. Hayes was content to end Federal Reconstruction by removing the U.S. military and return home rule to the remaining Southern states in return for the Democrats calling a halt to trying to delay the contested election past Inauguration Day. As President, Hayes followed through, and within a couple of months of him taking office, Reconstruction was over.
 
Hayes would never agree that he abandoned Southern Blacks with this decision. The kind-hearted man in the White House did not believe he was creating any setbacks for the Black community because he insisted on several occasions that the White Democratic governments of the South honor the post-war Constitutional Amendments that were designed to protect civil and voting rights regardless of race. But the assurances he received were completely hollow, and Hayes should have expected as such. In this instance, his well-meaning spirit cost the Black citizens of the South nearly a century of depredations, consigned to a class status that was disadvantaged in almost every aspect of life. The fact that the end of Federal Reconstruction was favored by a majority of the American people at the time cannot dismiss the fact that Hayes was the man in the seat, the catalyst who pulled the trigger to remove Federal oversight of Black rights in the South. Rutherford Hayes was a good man. He led a lifetime of good works on behalf of his community and his country. But his exceptionally naive decision to place the defense of liberty for Southern Black citizens directly into the hands of their former masters proved to be a disaster of immense proportions – one with ramifications that persisted for generations.