Hay-Haz: Hayden through Hazard

See below for annotated biographies of American abolitionists and anti-slavery activists. Sources include: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography and Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography.


HAYDEN, Harriet, African American, wife of Lewis Hayden.  Aided fugitive slaves in the Underground Railroad.  Their home was a station.


HAYDEN, Joel, Haydensville, Massachusetts, Williamsberg, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Abolition Society, Manager, 1841-42, Vice-President, 1842-, 1844-


HAYDEN, Lewis, 1811-1888, African American, fugitive slave, businessman, abolitionist, lecturer, politician.

(Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 5, p. 459)


HAYES, Lucy Webb, 1831-1889, abolitionist.  First Lady of the United States.  Wife of Rutherford B. Hayes. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 143)


HAYES, Rutherford Birchard, 1822-1893, Delaware, Ohio,, 19th President of the United States, 1877-1881.  Governor of Ohio, Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1865-1867, abolitionist, lawyer, soldier.  Defended fugitive slaves in pre-Civil War court cases.  His wife, Lucy, Webb, was also an abolitionist.  Early member of the Republican Party.  Served with distinction as an officer in the Union Army during the Civil War. 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2, pp. 446-451:

HAYES, RUTHERFORD BIRCHARD (October 4, 1822-January 17, 1893), president of the United States, was born at Delaware, Ohio, the posthumous son of Rutherford Hayes, a farmer, who had married Sophia Birchard in 1813. Both parents sprang from old New England families and through the paternal line he was descended from George Hayes who emigrated from Scotland as early as 1680 and settled in Windsor, Connecticut. The place of a father was taken for him by his uncle Sardis Birchard, a Vermonter by birth, who helped furnish means for his education. From the academy at Norwalk, Ohio, the boy was sent to the private school of Isaac Webb at Middletown, Connecticut. He dreamed of Yale, but the expense and lack of full preparation decided the family to send him to Kenyon College at Gambier, Ohio. Here he displayed great earnestness. "I am determined,'' he wrote at eighteen, "from henceforth to use what means I have to acquire a character distinguished for energy, firmness, and perseverance" (Diary and Letters, I, 57). When graduated in 1842 he had obtained a fair literary training, good moral discipline, and a Middle-Western point of view that he would have missed at Yale. He had early made up his mind to the law, and some dull months in reading Blackstone and studying German in the office of Sparrow and Matthews in Columbus, Ohio, were followed by a year and a half in the Harvard Law School. Here he studied under Joseph Story and Simon Greenleaf, attended lectures by Jared Sparks, and was fired by glimpses of John Quincy Adams and Daniel Webster. In addition, he found time to attend theatres, dabble in Latin and French, and read philosophy. The experience also had social value. He discovered that his chief defect was "boyish conduct" and that he needed "greater mildness and affability." Returning to Ohio, he was admitted to the bar on March 10, 1845, and began practice in Lower Sandusky (later Fremont), Sardis Birchard's home.

Lower Sandusky held Hayes for five leisurely years, spent over small cases, the English and French classics, and natural science, for he always had a roving intellectual taste. He considered volunteering for the Mexican War in order to benefit a bronchial affection, but gave up the plan on the advice of physicians (Ibid., I, 203-09). In the winter of 1848, however, he journeyed to Texas to visit a college classmate, Guy M. Bryan, studying plantations at close range, seeing the rough, lawless side of the frontier, and finding slavery a kindly rather than cruel system. Not returning till spring, he witnessed impassively the feverish gold rush to California. "There is neither romance nor glory in digging for gold," he concluded. The value of this trip in enlarging his horizon was increased by steady later correspondence with Bryan. At the beginning of 1850 he opened his own law office in Cincinnati, still so poor that his first hotel bill worried him and he slept in his office to keep expenses at thirty dollars a month. But his business grew steadily and he sorely regretted "the waste of those five precious years at Sandusky." He also made friends rapidly and was keenly alive to the world about him. He joined the Literary Club of Cincinnati, helped it to entertain Emerson, saw Charlotte Cushman play "Meg Merrilies," heard Beecher and Edward Everett lecture and Jenny Lind sing, attended the Episcopal church, though his own views tended toward agnosticism, and joined the Sons of Temperance and Odd Fellows. In several criminal trials, notably that of one Nancy Farrer accused of murder, he distinguished himself by clever defenses (Eckenrode, post, p. 33). By the end of 1852 he had saved enough money to marry, on December 30, a boyhood sweetheart, Lucy Webb, whose attractiveness, shrewdness, and poise contributed much to his later success. By September 1854, largely through the generosity of his uncle (Diary and Letters, I, 469), he was able to move into his own $5,500 house, where two of his eight children were born.

In 1851 Hayes entered the local politics of Cincinnati, attending ward and county meetings, and making stump speeches. His Ohio associations had made him a Whig of the Thomas Corwin school, and he spoke for Winfield Scott in 1852. The struggle over the Kansas-Nebraska Bill intensified his interest in public affairs; in 1855 he was a delegate to the state Republican convention; and in 1856 he supported Fremont, as he wrote, "hopefully, ardently, joyously," though he predicted defeat. Naturally cool of temperament, he refused to condemn slavery in the extreme terms used by other Free-Soilers, but strongly opposed its extension. In 1857 he was mentioned for Congress and in 1858 was elected city solicitor at a salary of $3,500 a year. In the campaign of 1860 he characteristically refused to grow excited, making only a few speeches for Lincoln and writing his uncle that "a wholesome contempt for Douglas, on account of his recent demagoguery, is the chief feeling I have" (Diary and Letters, I, 564). He hoped to see war averted, advocating conciliation, negotiation, and even compromise; but when the conflict began he could not be restrained. "I would prefer to go into it if I knew that I was to die or be killed in the course of it than to live through and after it without taking any part in it," he said (Ibid., II, 16). He made patriotic speeches, helped recruit men, and accepted the post of major (June 27, 1861) in the 23rd Ohio under Colonel William S. Rosecrans [q.v.]. Serving first in western Virginia, he enjoyed the guerrilla fighting "as if it were a pleasure tour"; by the end of the year, now a lieutenant-colonel, he was in command of the regiment.

Hayes's military service was varied and capable but not distinguished. He acted for a time as judge-advocate, trying court-martial cases under General Jacob Cox and General Rosecrans; he fought under Fremont at the time of "Stonewall" Jackson's Valley Campaign, was ordered east as a part of General Cox's division in August 1862, was wounded in the arm at the battle of South Mountain the following month, and later was sent back to West Virginia for the winter. In July 1863 he was sent with the troops who administered to Morgan's raiders a sharp check near Gallipolis, Ohio. Later placed in command of General George Crook's first infantry brigade, he was with Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley during the campaign of 1864, fought well at Winchester, where his flags were the first to enter the town, and was at Cedar Creek when Sheridan defeated Early. From that time until the end of the war he was chiefly on garrison duty. Somewhat tardily, on October 19, 1864, he was commissioned brigadier-general, and on March 13, 1865, he was brevetted a major-general of volunteers.

Meanwhile, in July 1864, Hayes had been nominated for the House of Representatives from the 2nd Ohio (Cincinnati) district, but had wisely refused to take the stump, writing that "an officer fit for duty who at this crisis would abandon his post to electioneer for a seat in Congress ought to be scalped" (Diary and Letters, II, 497). In October he was elected by a heavy majority. Resigning his commission in June 1865, he took his seat in December. In Congress he obeyed the Republican caucus on important questions and was hostile to the "rebel influences ... ruling the White House," but disapproved of the extreme radicalism of Thaddeus Stevens. When General Schenck proposed an amendment by which Southern representation would be based on suffrage, he suggested an educational test for the ballot. His best work was as chairman of the library commission, for he sponsored a bill shifting the Smithsonian Institution's collection of books to the Library of Congress, carried an appropriation of $100,000 to purchase Peter Force's collection of Americana, and developed the botanical gardens. He served his constituents well and gained the name of the soldier's friend. He was reelected in 1866, but his congressional career was brief. The Ohio Republicans needed him as candidate for governor, for Jacob Cox was unpopular in that office, and when nominated in June 1867 he resigned from Congress. An arduous campaign, in which Hayes made more than seventy speeches, ended in his election over Allen G. Thurman by the narrow majority of 2,983, though the proposed amendment to the state constitution for universal manhood suffrage, which he favored, was defeated by about 50,000 votes. A Democratic legislature sent Thurman to the Senate and thwarted the chief recommendations of Hayes. He was able, however, to carry through important prison reforms and a measure for the better supervision of charities. In 1869 a campaign for reelection against weakened opposition gave him a majority of about 7,500 and some measure of national prestige; and this time the Republicans gained control of the legislature. Hayes made a determined stand against extravagance and higher taxes, obtained reform s in the care of the insane, urge d the establishment of a state agricultural college, and denounced current abuses in railway management. He recognized the merit principle in his appointments, placing able Democrats in office; he combated election frauds; he helped create the geological survey of Ohio, and chose an accomplished scientist as its head; and he encouraged the preservation of historical records. As his reputation as a courageous administrator grew, some of his public addresses were widely reported and read. Urged in 1871 to stand for a third term, he refused to violate the unbroken precedent of the state.

An astute governor, Hayes was also a n astute politician. In 1872 he shrewdly rejected the suggestion that he seek election to the Senate as an opponent of the cold, unpopular, but able John Sherman. In that year, though sympathizing with many aims of the Liberal Republicans, of whom his friend Stanley Matthews was a leader, he refused to leave his party and campaigned vigorously for Grant. He was himself beaten for Congress because of the party split. Retiring to the "Spiegel Grove" estate near Fremont which his uncle Sardis Birchard had bequeathed him, he devoted himself to law, the real-estate business, and the promotion of public libraries. His successor as governor, General E. F. Noyes, was badly beaten by William Allen in 1873, while in 1874 the Democrats carried Ohio by 17,000 plurality and elected thirteen out of twenty congressmen. As Republican leaders sought his aid Haye's ambition awoke. In his diary, on April 14, 18 75, he wrote: "Several suggest that if elected governor now, I will stand well for the Presidency next year. How wild ! What a queer lot we are becoming !" None the less, he dreamed of the presidency. Nominated for governor by an overwhelming vote in the state convention of 1875, he opposed William Allen in a campaign which drew national attention and which brought in Carl Schurz and Oliver P. Morton to stump the state. His election by a majority of 5,544 was a triumph which made him a national figure. By virtue of his liberalism, taste for reform, war record, and loyalty to his party he was one of the distinctly "available" figures for the next presidential nomination, and he added to his reputation by another wise state administration.

Hayes was brought forward for the presidency by John Sherman and Garfield, with Ohio Republicans united behind him. In May 1876, he ingratiated himself with the Eastern reformers by a letter of sympathy for Richard H. Dana of Massachusetts, just rejected by the Senate for the mission to England (Diary and Letters, III, 318). His Ohio managers won a preliminary victory when they succeeded in having Cincinnati made the convention city, for the friendliness of the crowds and press counted heavily. The leading rival candidates were Blaine, Conkling, Bristow, and 0. P. Morton. For a time it seemed that Blaine might be named, but the refusal of the convention to ballot immediately after Robert G. Ingersoll's brilliant nominating speech destroyed his chances. Repeated conferences were held by the managers of the Hayes, Morton, and Bristow candidacies, with Stanley Matthews, who was ostensibly for Bristow but really for Hayes, in a key position. The result was that when Blaine made dangerous gains on the sixth ballot the opposing delegates united on Hayes, and on the next ballot nominated him with 384 votes against 351 for Blaine. Hayes had awaited the result calmly. Just before it came he wrote in his diary: "I have kept cool and unconcerned to a degree that surprises me. The same may be said of Lucy. I feel that defeat will be a great relief-a setting free from bondage. The great responsibility overpowers me" (Diary and Letters, III, 326). His nomination pleased the reformers under Schurz, Bristow, and G. W. Curtis, satisfied the practical politicians, was applauded by Civil War veterans, and did much to hold the recently chaotic Republican party together. In the vigorous campaign which followed Hayes benefited by the activities of an unexampled group of stump speakers-Blaine, Evarts, Sherman, Schurz, Bristow, Curtis, Ingersoll, Logan, Garfield, Harrison, and even Mark Twain (Eckenrode, post, p. 145). He himself played an inactive part, though late in October he visited the Centennial Exhibition for Ohio Day and inspired extraordinary interest. In October Hayes stated that the chances of his opponent, Tilden, appeared better than his. The first returns on November 7 seemed to show that the election was lost and he went to bed apparently in that belief.

His hopes revived when on November 8 Zachariah Chandler sent out his telegram "Hayes has 185 votes and is elected." That day, according to the Ohio State Journal of November 9, he "received those who called in his usual cordial manner, and was very unconcerned, while the greatest office on the American continent was trembling in the balance." When it became clear that the result hinged on contested returns from South Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, and Oregon, he was resolutely opposed to any attempt at a "compromise." At the outset he was dubious regarding Louisiana, but his misgivings were soon stilled by friends and party managers, and on December 6 he telegraphed Schurz: "I have no doubt that we are justly and legally entitled to the Presidency" (Diary and Letters, III, 386). His original demand was that the electoral votes be counted by the president of the Senate, but chiefly as a result of Schurz's arguments he consented to the creation of the Electoral Commission. When the composition of this body was decided he awaited the issue with confidence. There i s evidence that as the work of the Electoral Commission approached its close, especially after Louisiana's votes were counted for Hayes, Republican agents were in close touch with Southern Democrats who cared less about the presidency than the restoration of white rule in Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida. The speech of Charles Foster, representative from Hayes's former Cincinnati district, who on February 23, 1877, declared that it would be Hayes's policy to wipe out sectional lines and conciliate the South, was regarded as an olive branch from Hayes himself. In the conferences with Southerners in Washington, Foster, Stanley Matthews, Ex-Governor Wm. Dennison, and John Sherman were the chief representatives of Hayes. These meetings bore fruit in "the bargain," an agreement in the interests of party peace and sectional amity, dictated by powerful public considerations (P. L. Haworth, The Hayes-Tilden Disputed Presidential Election of 1876, 1906, pp. 271 ff.). Hayes even gave verbal assurances in his Ohio home. L. Q. C. Lamar wrote him on March 22, 1877: "It was understood that you meant to withdraw the troops from South Carolina and Louisiana .... Upon that subject we thought that you had made up your mind, and indeed you so declared to me" (Hayes Papers). Once the alliance between the Hayes forces and the Southern Democrats was cemented the end came quickly. On March 2 Hayes was awarded the presidency with 185 electors to Tilden's 184. Hayes had left for Washington the previous day, was entertained at dinner by President Grant on Saturday evening, March 3, and took the oath of office that night privately and on March 5 in public.

Hayes made his administration notable by his policy of Southern pacification, his attention to reform, and his insistence on a conservative treatment of financial questions. The choice of his cabinet indicated a partial break with the elder statesmen. Before leaving Ohio he had selected William M. Evarts for secretary of state, John Sherman for the treasury, and Carl Schurz for the interior. He had also considered nominating General Joseph E. Johnston, the Confederate leader, as secretary of war, but encountered an opposition too fierce; he compromised by selecting Senator David M. Key, a former Confederate of Tennessee, to be postmaster-general. Though the "Stalwart" Republicans in the Senate showed their indignation by referring all the cabinet nominations to committees, public pressure forced a prompt confirmation. Hayes's first important measure was to carry out "the bargain" by withdrawing the Federal troops from the South. He called Wade Hampton and D. H. Chamberlain, rival claimants for the governorship of South Carolina, to Washington, discussed the situation with them, and on April 3 ordered the Secretary of War to end the military occupation of the South Carolina state house. An investigating commission was sent to Louisiana, it advised Hayes to remove the Federal soldiery, and orders to that effect were issued on April 20. For these steps he was fiercely attacked by Ben Wade, Garrison, Blaine, Wendell Phillips, and Ben Butler, and lost so many Republican machine' workers "that it could be said that within six weeks after his inauguration Hayes was without a party" (J. F. Rhodes, History of the United States from Hayes to McKinley, 1919, p. 12; see also Letters of Mr. William E. Chandler Relative to the So-Called Southern Policy of President Hayes, 1878). But the wisdom of his course was shown by the immediate end of violence and the establishment of relative prosperity and contentment at the South. The restoration of full autonomy to the states was his greatest achievement, and one which Tilden could not have effected without arousing a far greater storm. Hayes continued to excite the hostility of the "Stalwarts," and particularly the New York faction under Conkling, by his measures of civil-service reform. He had declared in his inaugural that there must be such reform, that it must be "thorough, radical, and complete," and that it must comprehend appointment on the ground of ability alone, security of tenure, and exemption from the demands of partisan service. With Hayes's encouragement, Secretary Schurz at once reformed the interior department. Other department heads took similar action. Hayes had Secretary Sherman appoint an investigating committee under John Jay to examine the New York custom house, and he made the recommendations of this body the basis for a vigorous letter (May 26, 1877) forbidding partisan control of the revenue service, political assessments upon revenue officers, and any participation by such officers in the management of conventions, caucuses, or election campaigns. This order, which caused consternation, was reinforced by another letter on June 22, 1877. When Chester A. Arthur, collector at New York, and Alonzo B. Cornell, naval officer, defied these orders, Hayes asked for their resignations; and when they ignored his request, he appointed two men to take their places. The Senate, with Roscoe Conkling as leader, at first refused to confirm these nominations. But Hayes bided his time, presented two new names when the Senate reassembled in December 1878, and, by the skilful use of a letter from Secretary Sherman which thoroughly exposed the custom-house scandals, secured the needed confirmation.

Facing an unsatisfactory monetary situation, Hayes declared in his inaugural against "an irredeemable paper currency" and for "an early resumption of specie payments." His courage and skill were tested by a dangerous demand in both parties for repeal of the act for resumption of specie payments on January 1, 1879, and for the free and unlimited coinage of silver as a full legal tender. Bills for both purposes were carried in the House in the fall of 1877. Hayes met the threat by a vigorous discussion of the monetary question in his December message, insisting on resumption and on payment of the public debt in gold or its equivalent. His determined stand helped prevent the Senate from passing the bill to postpone resumption, but did not defeat the Bland-Allison Bill. He vetoed it on February 28, 1878, and, after it passed over his veto, urged in his message of December 1879 that Congress suspend the silver coinage. In 1880, pointing out that the market value of the silver dollar had declined to eighty-eight and a half cents, he vainly urged that the treasury be authorized to coin "silver dollars of equivalent value, as bullion, with gold dollars," instead of silver dollars of 412,½ grains. With his support, Secretary Sherman successfully effected resumption at the date fixed. The early part of the administration was marked by business distress and labor troubles. Hayes did not fully understand the social and economic problems of the time and did nothing to strike at the root of unrest, but he showed firmness in calling out federal troops to suppress the railroad riots of 1877. The latter years of his term saw a revival of business prosperity. He showed firmness also in vetoing a popular Chinese exclusion bill as a violation of the Burlingame treaty, and in combating congressional usurpation. He waged a successful struggle with Congress in 1879 over its action in tacking "riders" to two essential appropriation bill s, maintaining that this process was an effort to force the president into submission to Congress in a fashion not contemplated by the Constitution. Congress gave way and removed the riders. But Hayes remained unsuccessful in his attempts to persuade Congress to pass a permanent civil-service act. Little by little his hardworking habits, conscientiousness, system, and responsiveness to moral forces impressed the nation; the original Democratic bitterness decreased; and he became genuinely esteemed. Lucy Hayes, though ridiculed for her temperance rules, was even more generally liked.

Hayes firmly believed that a president could most effectively discharge his duties if he refused to entertain the idea of a second term; and in his letter accepting the nomination in 1876 he expressed an inflexible determination to serve but one term. He returned from Washington in March 1881 to "Spiegel Grove," where his modest house was enlarged into a mansion. Here he spent his remaining years, devoting much time to his extensive library, filling many engagements as a speaker, and enlisting in a variety of humanitarian causes. He was president of the National Prison Association from 1883 to the end of his life, was a member of the board of trustees of both the Peabody Education Fund and Slater Fund, and was interested in the Lake Mohonk conferences. The death of his wife in June 1889 was a heavy blow, but he remained active to the last. Exposure while attending a meeting of trustees of the state university hastened his end. His funeral was the occasion for a national tribute to his strong though not brilliant abilities, patriotic devotion, and zeal for common-sense reforms.

[An exceedingly full biographical record is presented in Chas. R. Williams, Life of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (2 volumes, 1914); while there is a shorter, more incisive, and genuinely critical biography by H. J. Eckenrode, Rutherford B. Hayes, Statesman of Reunion (1930). A campaign life worthy of notice is William Dean Howells, Sketch of the Life and Character of Rutherford B. Hayes (1876). Special interest attaches to the conscientious Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, edited by C.R. Williams (S volumes, 1922- 26). J. W. Burgess, The Administration of President Hayes (1916), is a eulogistic set of lectures; there is a better-balanced estimate by James Ford Rhodes in his Historical Essays (1909). Special aspects of Hayes's life are treated in Paul L. Haworth, The Hayes-Tilden Disputed Presidential Election of 1876 (1906), and V. L. Shores, "The Hayes-Conkling Controversy, 1877-79," Smith Collected Studies in History, Volume IV (1919). Illuminating first-hand impressions of the administration are contained in both volumes of John Sherman's Recollections of Forty Years (1895), and James G. Blaine's Twenty Years of Congress, Volume II (1886). The Hayes Papers, with other material on his life, are housed in a memorial library at Fremont, Ohio.]

A. N.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 134-143:

HAYES, Rutherford Birchard, nineteenth president of the United States, born in Delaware, Ohio, 4 October, 1822; died in Fremont, Ohio, 17 January, 1893. His father had died in July, 1822, leaving his mother in modest circumstances. The boy attended the common schools, and began early the study of Latin and Greek with Judge Sherman Finch, of Delaware. Then he was sent to an academy at Norwalk, Ohio, and in 1837 to Isaac Webb's school, at Middletown, Connecticut, to prepare for college. In the autumn of 1838 he entered Kenyon college, at Gambier, Ohio. He excelled in logic, mental and moral philosophy, and mathematics, and also made his mark as a debater in the literary societies. On his graduation in August, 1842, he was awarded the valedictory oration, with which he won much praise. Soon afterward he began to study law in the office of Thomas Sparrow, at Columbus, Ohio, and then attended a course of law lectures at Harvard university, entering the law-school on 22 August, 1843, and finishing his studies there in January, 1845. As a law student he had the advantage of friendly intercourse with Judge Story and Prof. Greenleaf, and he also attended the lectures of Longfellow on literature and of Agassiz on natural science, prosecuting at the same time the study of French and German. On 10 May, 1845, after due examination, he was admitted to practice in the courts of Ohio as an attorney and counsellor at law. He established himself first at Lower Sandusky (now Fremont), where, in April, 1846, he formed a law partnership with Ralph P. Buckland (q. v.), then a member of congress. In November, 1848, having suffered from bleeding in the throat, Mr. Hayes went to spend the winter in the milder climate of Texas, where his health was completely restored. Encouraged by the good opinion and advice of professional friends to seek a larger field of activity, he established himself, in the winter of 1849-'50, in Cincinnati. His practice at first being light, he earnestly and systematically continued his studies in law and literature, also enlarging the circle of his acquaintance by becoming a member of various societies, among others the literary club of Cincinnati, in the social and literary entertainments of which at that time such men as Salmon P. Chase, Thomas Ewing, Thomas Corwin, Stanley Matthews, Moncure D. Conway, Manning F. Force, and others of note, were active participants. He won the respect of the profession, and attracted the attention of the public as attorney in several criminal cases which gained some celebrity, and gradually increased his practice.
On 30 December, 1852, he married Miss Lucy W. Webb, daughter of Dr. James Webb, a physician of high standing in Chillicothe, Ohio. In January, 1854, he formed a law partnership with H. W. Corwine and William K. Rogers. In 1856 he was nominated for the office of common pleas judge, but declined. In 1858 he was elected city solicitor by the city council of Cincinnati, to fill a vacancy caused by death, and in the following year he was elected to the same office at a popular election by a majority of over 2,500 votes. Although he performed his duties to the general satisfaction of the public, he was, in April, 1861, defeated for re-election as solicitor, together with the whole ticket. Mr. Hayes, ever since he was a voter, had acted with the Whig party, voting for Henry Clay in 1844, for General Taylor in 1848, and for General Scott in 1852. Having from his youth always cherished anti-slavery feelings, he joined the Republican party as soon as it was organized, and earnestly advocated the election of Frémont in 1856, and of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. At a great mass-meeting, held in Cincinnati immediately after the arrival of the news that the flag of the United States had been fired upon at Fort Sumter, he was made chairman of a committee on resolutions to give voice to the feelings of the loyal people. His literary club formed a military company, of which he was elected captain, and this club subsequently furnished to the National army more than forty officers, of whom several became generals. On 7 June, 1861, the governor of Ohio appointed Mr. Hayes a major of the 23d regiment of Ohio volunteer infantry, and in July the regiment was ordered into West Virginia. On 19 September, 1861, Major Hayes was appointed by General Rosecrans judge advocate of the Department of Ohio, the duties of which office he performed for about two months. On 24 October, 1861, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel. On 14 September, 1862, in the battle of South Mountain, he distinguished himself by gallant conduct in leading a charge and in holding his position at the head of his men, after being severely wounded in his left arm, until he was carried from the field. His regiment lost nearly half its effective force in the action. On 24 October, 1862, he was appointed colonel of the same regiment. He spent some time at his home while under medical treatment, and returned to the field as soon as his wound was healed. In July, 1863, while taking part in the operations of the National army in southwestern Virginia, Colonel Hayes caused an expedition of two regiments and a section of artillery, under his own command, to be despatched to Ohio for the purpose of checking the raid of the Confederate General John Morgan, and he aided materially in preventing the raiders from recrossing the Ohio river and in compelling Morgan to surrender. In the spring of 1864 Colonel Hayes commanded a brigade in General Crook's expedition to cut the principal lines of communication between Richmond and the southwest. He again distinguished himself by conspicuous bravery at the head of his brigade in storming a fortified position on the crest of Cloyd mountain. In the first battle of Winchester, 24 July, 1864, commanding a brigade in General Crook's division, Colonel Hayes was ordered, together with Colonel James Mulligan, to charge what proved to be a greatly superior force. Colonel Mulligan fell, and Colonel Hayes, flanked and pressed in front by overwhelming numbers, conducted the retreat of his brigade with great intrepidity and skill, checking the pursuit as soon as he had gained a tenable position. He took a creditable part in the engagement at Berryville and at the second battle of Winchester, 19 September, 1864, where he performed a feat of extraordinary bravery. Leading an assault upon a battery on an eminence, he found in his way a morass over fifty yards wide. Being at the head of his brigade, he plunged in first, and, his horse becoming mired at once, he dismounted and waded across alone under the enemy's fire. Waving his cap, he signalled to his men to come over, and, when about forty had joined him, he rushed upon the battery and took it after a hand-to-hand fight with the gunners, the enemy having deemed the battery so secure that no infantry supports had been placed near it. At Fisher's Hill, in pursuing General Early, on 22 September, 1864, Colonel Hayes, then in command of a division, executed a brilliant flank movement over mountains and through woods difficult of access, took many pieces of artillery, and routed the enemy. At the battle of Cedar Creek, 19 October, 1864, the conduct of Colonel Hayes attracted so much attention that his commander, General Crook, on the battle-field took him by the hand, saying: “Colonel, from this day you will be a brigadier-general.” The commission arrived a few days afterward, and on 13 March, 1865, he received the rank of brevet major-general “for gallant and distinguished services during the campaign of 1864 in West Virginia, and particularly at the battles of Fisher's Hill and Cedar Creek, Virginia.” Of his military services General Grant, in the second volume of his memoirs, says: “On more than one occasion in these engagements General R. B. Hayes, who succeeded me as president of the United States, bore a very honorable part. His conduct on the field was marked by conspicuous gallantry, as well as the display of qualities of a higher order than mere personal daring. Having entered the army as a major of volunteers at the beginning of the war, General Hayes attained, by his meritorious service, the rank of brevet major-general before its close.” While General Hayes was in the field, in August, 1864, he was nominated by a Republican district convention at Cincinnati, in the second district of Ohio, as a candidate for congress. When a friend suggested to him that he should take leave of absence from the army in the field for the purpose of canvassing the district, he answered: “Your suggestion about getting a furlough to take the stump was certainly made without reflection. An officer fit for duty, who at this crisis would abandon his post to electioneer for a seat in congress, ought to be scalped.” He was elected by a majority of 2,400. The Ohio soldiers in the field nominated him also for the governorship of his state. The accompanying illustration is a view of his home in Fremont.
After the war General Hayes returned to civil life, and took his seat in congress on 4 December, 1865. He was appointed chairman of the committee on the library. On questions connected with the reconstruction of the states lately in rebellion he voted with his party. He earnestly supported a resolution declaring the sacredness of the public debt and denouncing repudiation in any form; also a resolution commending President Johnson for declining to accept presents, and condemning the practice as demoralizing in its tendencies. He opposed a resolution favoring an increase of the pay of members. He also introduced in the Republican caucus a set of resolutions declaring that the only mode of obtaining from the states lately in rebellion irreversible guarantees was by constitutional amendment, and that an amendment basing representation upon voters, instead of population, ought to be acted upon without delay. These resolutions marked the line of action of the Republicans. In August, 1866, General Hayes was renominated for congress by acclamation, and, after an active canvass, was re-elected by the same majority as before. He supported the impeachment of Andrew Johnson. In the house of representatives he won the reputation, not of an orator, but of a working legislator and a man of calm, sound judgment. In June, 1867, the Republican convention of Ohio nominated him for the governorship. The Democrats had nominated Judge Allen G. Thurman. The question of negro suffrage was boldly pushed to the foreground by General Hayes in an animated canvass, which ended in his election, and that of his associates on the Republican ticket. But the negro-suffrage amendment to the state constitution was defeated at the same time by 50,000 majority, and the Democrats carried the legislature, which elected Judge Thurman to the United States senate. In his inaugural address, Governor Hayes laid especial stress upon the desirability of taxation in proportion to the actual value of property, the evils of too much legislation, the obligation to establish equal rights without regard to color, and the necessity of ratifying the 14th amendment to the constitution of the United States. In his message to the legislature, delivered in November, 1868, he recommended amendments to the election laws, providing for the representation of minorities in the boards of the judges and clerks of election, and for the registration of all the lawful voters prior to an election. He also recommended a comprehensive geological survey of the state, which was promptly begun. In his second annual message he warmly urged such changes in the penal laws, as well as in prison discipline, as would tend to promote the moral reformation of the culprit together with the punishment due to his crime.
In June, 1869, Governor Hayes was again nominated by the Republican state convention for the governorship, there being no competitor for the nomination. The Democratic candidate was George H. Pendleton. The platform adopted by the Democratic state convention advocated the repudiation of the interest on the U. S. bonds unless they be subjected to taxation, and the payment of the national debt in greenbacks. In the discussions preceding the election, Governor Hayes pronounced himself unequivocally in favor of honestly paying the national debt and an honest money system. He was elected by a majority of 7,500. In his second inaugural address, delivered on 10 January, 1870, he expressed himself earnestly against the use of public offices as party spoils, and suggested that the constitution of the state be so amended as to secure the introduction of a system making qualification, and not political services and influence, the chief test in determining appointments, and giving subordinates in the civil service the same permanence of place that is enjoyed by officers of the army and navy. He also advocated the appointment of judges, by the executive, for long terms, with adequate salaries, as best calculated to “afford to the citizen the amplest possible security that impartial justice will be administered by an independent judiciary.” In his correspondence with members of congress, he urged a monthly reduction of the national debt as more important than a reduction of taxation, the abolition of the franking privilege, and the passage of a civil-service-reform law. In his message addressed to the legislature on 3 January, 1871, he recommended that the policy embodied in that provision of the state constitution which prohibited the state from creating any debt, save in a few exceptional cases, be extended to the creation of public debts by county, city, and other local authorities, and further that for the remuneration of public officers a system of fixed salaries […].
          
            Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III.   


HAYNES, Reverend Lemuel, 1753-1833, former slave, Revolutionary War veteran, early abolitionist, clergyman.  Wrote essay “Liberty Further Extended,” criticizing slavery in the United States, called slavery corrupt and sinful. 

(Cooley, 1837; Newman, 1900; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 330-331; Saillant, 2003)


HAYT, Charles, New York, abolitionist leader.

(Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971)


HAZARD, Rowland Gibson (October 9, 1801-June 24, 1888), author,  State Senator, Rhode Island.  manufacturer, writer on philosophical subjects. Hazard was an active Free-Soiler and later a Republican, a member of the Pittsburgh convention of 1856, of the convention in the same year that nominated Fremont, of the convention in 1860 that nominated Lincoln.  Freed captured African Americans in New Orleans. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 149; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2, p. 471)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2 pp. 471-472:

HAZARD, ROWLAND GIBSON (October 9, 1801-June 24, 1888), manufacturer, writer on philosophical subjects, the son of Rowland and Mary (Peace) Hazard, and a younger brother of Thomas Robinson Hazard [q.v.], was born in South Kingstown, Rhode Island. Rowland Hazard, his father, born also in South Kingstown, became engaged in foreign commerce as a member of the Charleston, South Carolina, firm of Hazard & Robinson (afterward Hazard & Ayrault), and married Mary Peace of that city. About the turn of the century he went back to South Kingstown and took up his residence at Peacedale, a name chosen by him to commemorate the family in which he had found his wife, and which celebrated too the charm of the Kingstown countryside. In 1802 he began at Peacedale the woolen industry which successive generations of the Hazard family carried on in the same place. Rowland Gibson, his third son, studied at the schools at Burlington, New Jersey, and Bristol, Pennsylvania, and at the Friends' School at Westtown, Chester County, Pennsylvania. When about eighteen he returned to South Kingstown, became associated with his elder brother Isaac Peace Hazard in the business at Peacedale, from which their father had now retired, and continued in it for nearly fifty years. He was a Free-Soiler and later a Republican, a member of the Pittsburgh convention of 1856, of the convention in the same year that nominated Fremont, of the convention in 1860 that nominated Lincoln, and of the convention of 1868 that nominated Grant. He aided the free-school movement and was an advocate of temperance reform. In 1851, 1854, and 1880, he was a member of the Rhode Island House of Representatives, and in 1866 a member of the state Senate. While in the General Assembly he worked for the suppression of lotteries and for the prevention of bribery in elections. His financial articles, written during the Civil War, gained for him a wide reputation. Some of them were collected and published as Our Resources (1864), which was republished in London, and several were translated into Dutch and published in Amsterdam. He performed notable service in Europe in the effort to sustain the national credit.

In 1866 Hazard retired from the business at Peacedale. Still possessed of the habit, or with the instinct born with him, of looking for general principles, and of applying the results of abstract thinking to practical ends, he engaged himself with problems of Reconstruction and other questions of the day. He helped to put the first railroad across the continent. As other demands lessened, he found time for study and writing, for travel, and for his philanthropies. With his son Rowland Hazard he e stablished the Hazard Professorship of Physics in Brown University. He was a trustee of Brown from 1869 to 1875, and a fellow from 1875 until his death in 1888. He married Caroline Newbold, daughter of John Newbold of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, September 25, 1828. Their two sons, Rowland John Newbold Hazard, were the third consecutive generation of Hazards to carry on the manufacture of woolen goods at Peacedale.

As a youth, Rowland Gibson Hazard had a certain precocity in mathematics. Before leaving school he discovered, it is said, an original and simple method of describing the hyperbola. In his maturer years his underlying interests were philosophical. When on his business trips, while traveling on packets and stage-coaches, on boats and trains, he made notes for later books. His first considerable publication, Language: Its Connexion with the Present Condition and Future Prospects of Man (1836), possibly had its inception in discussions with his friend-and Poe's friend-Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman, on the nature of poetry. The book attracted the attention of William Ellery Channing, who became intimate with him. Following the latter's death in 1842, Hazard wrote an Essay on the Philosophical Character of Channing, published in 1845. At some time prior to 1840, Channing suggested that Hazard should undertake a refutation of Jonathan Edwards on the Will. Hazard began to make notes and by 1843 had elaborated his main points only to lose all the material he had collected through a mishap to a Mississippi steamer on which he had taken passage to New Orleans. Fourteen years later he returned to the work and published it in 1864 under the title: Freedom of Mind in Willing; or Every Being That Wills a Creative First Cause. The book gained for Hazard the friendship of John Stuart Mill, who wrote to him: "I wish you had nothing to do but philosophize, for though I often do not agree with you, I see in everything you write a well-marked natural capacity for philosophy" (Freedom of Mind in Willing, ed. 1889, p. v). In 1864, while in Europe, he sought out Mill. His Two Letters on Causation and Freedom and Willing, Addressed to John Stuart Mill (1869) were the result of his conversations and correspondence with the British philosopher.

[Hazard's numerous writings, including several for the first time printed, were brought together by his grand-daughter, Caroline Hazard, and published under her editorship in four volumes in 1889. Each volume bears a separate title. Of these, the Essay 0n Language, and other Essays and Addresses contains a biographical preface by Miss Hazard, and Freedom of Mind in Willing contains an introductory essay by George P. Fisher on Hazard's philosophical writings. William Gammell's Life and Services of the Hon. Rowland Gibson Hazard, LL.D. (1888), contains a paper by President E. G. Robinson of Brown University on Hazard's philosophical writings and a bibliography of his works. Other sources include J. R. Cole, History of Washington and Kent Counties, Rhode Island (1889); The Biographical Cyclopedia of Representative Men of Rhode Island (1881); Wm. R. Bagnall, The Textile Industries of the U. S. (1893); and the Providence Journal, June 25, 1888.]

W.A.S.


HAZARD, Thomas (“College Tom”), 1720-1798, Rhode Island, Society of Friends, Quaker, early abolitionist leader.

(Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, pp. 50, 89, 97, 191; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 149; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2, p. 472; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 419-420)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 4, Pt. 2, p. 472:

HAZARD, THOMAS (September 15, 1720-August 26, 1798), Abolitionist, was called by the distinguishing name of "College Tom," since there were of this clan, according to one computation, thirty-two other Thomas Hazards contemporary with him. He was of the fifth generation from Thomas Hazard, progenitor of the Hazard family of Rhode Island and one of the nine founders of Newport in 1639. Robert Hazard, of the second generation, removed to that region of Rhode Island known as the Narragansett Country, with which the Rhode Island Hazards have been continuously identified. Life in the Narragansett Country was highly individualistic. The Hazards were wholly typical of it, "handing down and retaining certain peculiarities from generation to generation," such as "a peculiar decision of character, a certain amount of pride, and a pronounced independence, coupled with a slight amount of reserve" (W. P. Hazard, in T. R. Hazard's Recollections of Olden Times, 1879, p. 227). Physically they were strongly marked, being generally speaking of good stature and vigorous frame, and with a firmly set jaw. "College Tom," son of Robert and Sarah (Borden) Hazard, had the Hazard characteristics of mind and body. He studied at Yale College for several terms (whence his appellation) but did not graduate, it is said, because he could not reconcile his Quaker principles and collegiate honors (Wilkins Updike, History of the Episcopal Church in Narragansett, Rhode Island, 1847, p. 322). In 1742 he was admitted a freeman of the colony from South Kingstown and in the same year was married to his third cousin Elizabeth, daughter of Governor William and Martha (Potter) Robinson. Perhaps also in 1742, certainly before 1745-the year of his father's death-he had his memorable conversation with the Connecticut church deacon who told him that Quakers were not Christians because they held their fellow men in slavery. The idea was a novel one to the young man. In the region about him there was one negro slave to every two or three white men; his father, their friends and neighbor s were all slaveowners; and at least two of his connections imported negroes to be sold into slavery. Nevertheless, the words of the church deacon did their work; he took the view that slave-holding was an evil, and despite the arguments, even the threat of disinheritance by his father, he began cultivating his farm with free labor and to work against slavery--one of the fir st members of the Society of Friends to take the stand. At first he seems to have had but a single convert, his friend Jeremiah Austin, who had liberated the one slave he possessed, his sole inheritance from his father.

The movement in Rhode Island slowly grew till, in 1774, College Tom found himself a member of a committee of the Yearly Meeting which went to the General Assembly with a bill, passed by it, affirming personal freedom as the greatest of the rights which the inhabitants of America were then engaged in preserving, and prohibiting the importation of negroes into the colony. During the Revolution he was a member of the Meeting for Sufferings. In 1783 he was a member of the committee of the Yearly Meeting which brought to the General Assembly a petition for the abolition of slavery which was answered by an act to that end, adopted by the Assembly in February 1784. Shortly afterward, he was enrolled as one of the founders of the Providence Society for Abolishing the Slave Trade, which saw the fruit of its endeavors in the act for its prevention, adopted by the Assembly in 1787. He was one of the incorporators in 1764 of Rhode Island College, later Brown University, and afterward assisted in the establishment of the Friends' School, later the Moses Brown School, in Providence. "In his latter days, to illustrate the deceitfulness of the human heart, he used to say ... he at last discovered that he himself had 'ruled South Kingstown monthly meeting forty years, in his own will, before he found it out'" (Recollections of Olden Times, p. 108).

[In addition to the books named in the text see Caroline Hazard, Thos. Hazard, son of Robt., Call'd College Tom (1893); Caroline E. Robinson, The Hazard Family of Rhode Island (1895); Rufus M. Jones, The Quakers in the American Colonies (1911); W. Dawson Johnston, "Slavery in Rhode Island," Rhode Island Historical Society Publications, n.s. II, no. 2 (1894); J. R. Brackett, "The Status of the Slave, 1775-89," in Essays in the Constitutional History of the U. S., 1775-89 (1889), ed. by J. F. Jameson; I. B. Richman, Rhode Island (1905).]

W. A. S.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 149:

HAZARD, Thomas Robinson, author, born in South Kingston, Rhode Island, in 1784; died in New York in March, 1876. He was educated at the Friends' school in Westtown, Chester county, Pennsylvania, and subsequently engaged in farming, and assisted his father in the woollen business. He then established a woollen mill at Peacedale, Rhode Island, and acquired a fortune. In 1836 he purchased an estate at Vaucluse, Rhode Island, and in 1840 retired from his manufacturing business. He caused many reforms to be introduced in the management of insane asylums and poor-houses in Rhode Island. He was, for years preceding his death, an enthusiastic spiritualist, and wrote much in support of their views. He is the author of “Facts for the Laboring Man” (1840); “Capital Punishment” (1850); “Report on the Poor and Insane” (1850); “Handbook of the National American Party” (1856); “Appeal to the People of Rhode Island” (1857); and “Ordeal of Life” (Boston, 1870). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 149.



Sources:
Dictionary of American Biography, Volumes I-X, Edited by Dumas Malone, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volumes I-VI, Edited by James Grant Wilson & John Fiske, New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1888-1889.