Rutherford B. Hayes Speech Signed as President on the Need for Educating Blacks and Poor Whites in the South, With an Inscription Indicating Rather Emphatically That He Will Not Run Again

On September 1, 1880, Hayes was President, and he spoke to his old comrades in arms. Education was his major focus. He stated in part: “I made some remarks on the duty of the General Government to complete the work of reconstruction by affording aid, wherever it is needed, for the education of illiterate white and colored people in the late slaveholding states. I am firmly convinced that the subject of popular education deserves the earnest attention of people of the whole country, a view to wise and comprehensive action by the Government of the United States. This means at the command of the local and State authorities are in many cases wholly inadequate to deal with the question. The magnitude of the evil to be eradicated is not, I apprehend, generally and fully understood…” The speech was printed.

Autograph Note Signed at the top of the front page of a 4 page printed pamphlet entitled “Remarks of General R.B. Hayes at the Reunion of the 23rd Ohio Veterans, Canton, Ohio Sept. 1, 1880”. At the top Hayes has written “With compliments R.B. Hayes, to Hon. J.McD. No.” Beneath Hayes’s writing appears a pencil note, presumably by Mr. McD., that reads: “I asked him if he would run again.” Since Hayes double underlined the word “No”, he was pretty emphatic about it, and indeed, he never ran for public office again, preferring to devote his time to educational charities.

It is interesting that the Republican Party had already nominated James A. Garfield for President when this was signed, so the query to Hayes about him running again indicates a degree of dissatisfaction with the party’s nominee, and a hope that somehow Hayes might intervene.