page_title: Rutherford B. Hayes
section_title: Great Western Tour of 1880
hierarchical_section_title: Rutherford B. Hayes / Presidency (1877–1881) / Great Western Tour of 1880
caption_attribution_description: English: Rutherford B. Hayes Artist Eliphalet Frazer Andrews, 11 Jun 1835 - 19 Mar 1915 Sitter Rutherford Birchard Hayes, 4 Oct 1822 - 17 Jan 1893 Date 1881 Type Painting Medium Oil on canvas Dimensions Stretcher: 77.2 × 64.1 × 2.2cm (30 3/8 × 25 1/4 × 7/8") Frame: 99.7 x 87.6 x 12.7cm (39 1/4 x 34 1/2 x 5") Credit Line Current Owner: National Gallery of Art Website: www.nga.gov Current Owner: Corcoran Gallery of Art Website: www.corcoran.org Object number L/NPG.1.92 Exhibition Label Republican presidential hopeful Rutherford B. Hayes went to bed on election night of 1876 thinking that he had lost the contest. But charges of ballot-tampering led to prolonged investigations of the vote count in several states. Out of this inquiry, itself marked by backstairs chicanery, Hayes finally emerged triumphant by a single electoral vote. All of the irregularities surrounding his election led some to view Hayes as "His Fraudulency." But questions about his legitimate right to office did not prevent this former Ohio governor from being an effective chief executive. He was responsible for ending the harsh policies that had been imposed on the South since the Civil War, and he instituted the first significant steps toward curbing rampant corruption in the civil service. Hayes's portraitist, Eliphalet Andrews, was the founding director of Washington, D.C.'s Corcoran School of Art. Data Source Catalog of American Portraits See more items in Catalog of American Portraits Exhibition America's Presidents (Temporary Installation) On View NPG, West Gallery 250
context_page_description: Rutherford Birchard Hayes was the 19th president of the United States from 1877 to 1881, after serving in the U.S. House of Representatives and as governor of Ohio. A lawyer and staunch abolitionist, he had defended refugee slaves in court proceedings during the antebellum years.
  The Republican Party nominated Hayes as its candidate for the presidency in 1876, where he won through the Compromise of 1877 that officially ended Reconstruction by leaving the South to govern itself. In office he withdrew military troops from the South, ending Army support for Republican state governments in the South and for the efforts of African-American freedmen to establish their families as free citizens. Hayes promoted civil-service reform, and attempted to reconcile the divisions left over from the Civil War of 1861–65 and the Reconstruction Era of 1865–77.
  An attorney in Ohio, Hayes served as 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 in 1862.
context_section_description: In 1880, Hayes embarked on a 71-day tour of the American West, becoming the second sitting president to travel west of the Rocky Mountains. (Hayes's immediate predecessor, Ulysses Grant, visited Utah in 1875.) Hayes's traveling party included his wife and William T. Sherman, who helped organize the trip. Hayes began his trip in September 1880, departing from Chicago on the transcontinental railroad. He journeyed across the continent, ultimately arriving in California, stopping first in Wyoming and then Utah and Nevada, reaching Sacramento and San Francisco. By railroad and stagecoach, the party traveled north to Oregon, arriving in Portland, and from there to Vancouver, Washington. Going by steamship, they visited Seattle, and then returned to San Francisco. Hayes then toured several southwestern states before returning to Ohio in November, in time to cast a vote in the 1880 presidential election.
caption: Portrait of Rutherford B. Hayes by Eliphalet Frazer Andrews, 1881
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