Sold – Ex-President Rutherford B. Hayes’ Articles the Jeffersonian Vision of the Enlightened Electorate and Sees Education As a Civil Right

“Citizenship and the right to vote were conferred on the colored people by the Government and People of the United States. It is, therefore, the sacred duty, as it is in the highest interest, of the United States to see that these new citizens and voters are fitted by education for the grave responsibility which has been cast upon them.”

During and following his single term as president, Hayes became an outspoken advocate for education for both whites and blacks. As President, Hayes urged the “desirability and propriety of national aid to popular education,” without which, he felt, the root causes of the Civil War could not be fully removed. The very success of our institutions, he argued, depended on “the virtue and intelligence of the people.” In 1880, he delivered an address that made national education a focal point, saying “I would deal with the question of education by the aid of the National Government. Wherever in the United States the local systems of popular education are inadequate, they should be supplemented by the General Government, by devoting to the purpose, by suitable legislation and with proper safeguards, the public lands, or if necessary, appropriations from the Treasury of the United States.” He also advocated national aid to education in State of the Union messages to Congress. After he left office, in 1883, he wrote the Kentucky Educational Association: “I earnestly hope that one of the important results of the convention will be to strengthen the sentiment in favor of national aid to popular education in the several States in proportion to the necessity for such aid.”

Edward Bok was a noted journalist, who from 1884 until 1887 started his career as editor of The Brooklyn Magazine. In 1886 he founded The Bok Syndicate Press, to syndicate more widely articles he felt were of significance. Under his stewardship, many distinguished personalities contributed to the magazine. However, the public was astonished when the May 1886 issue came out to find that the front page article was written by ex-President Hayes, and contained his argument for national aid to education, since up to that time the unwritten rule was that former presidents did not take public stands advocating issues of the day that their successors would have to decide upon.

Preparing for the article Hayes submitted a manuscript to Bok, and Bok sent Hayes in return a printed proof for him to review. Hayes marked up and signed the proof with his handwritten corrections, then returned that to Bok for publication in the magazine. This is that proof, retained by Bok over the years, and eventually reaching the market when Bok’s papers were sold.

Rutherford B. Hayes Manuscript Signed of his first post-presidential article for publication, a proof with corrections in his hand, four pages, Fremont, Ohio, circa April 1886. He considers first the needs of blacks freed from slavery and the poor whites in the South, then the Indians, and then the influx of foreign immigrants. "I am firmly convinced that…it is the duty of the General Government to complete the work of reconstruction by affording aid, wherever it is needed, for the education of the illiterate white and colored people in the late slaveholding States…The magnitude of the evil to be eradicated is not, I apprehend, generally and fully understood…In the late slaveholding States, under the system of slavery, education was denied to the colored people, and the education of the non-slaveholding white people was greatly neglected….four millions of people in the South…are unable to read and write, and more than a million of voters are too illiterate to prepare or even to read their own ballots…Citizenship and the right to vote were conferred on the colored people by the Government and People of the United States. It is, therefore, the sacred duty, as it is in the highest interest, of the United States to see that these new citizens and voters are fitted by education for the grave responsibility which has been cast upon them.

"In the Territories of the United States it is estimated that there are over two hundred thousand Indians, almost all of whom are uncivilized…no one who observes the rapid progress of railroads and settlements in the West can fail to see that the game and fish, on which the Indians have hitherto subsisted, are about to disappear. The solution of the Indian question will speedily be either the extinction of the Indians or their absorption into American citizenship by means of the civilizing influences of education…The time is not distant when he should be chiefly cared for by the civilizing department of the Government, the Bureau of Education.

“The number of immigrants arriving in the United States is very great. It is not improbable, from present indications, that from this source alone there will be added during the current decade, to the population of our country, five millions of people…It may be reasonably estimated that at least from twenty to twenty five percent of the immigrants are illiterate. In the current decade we will probably receive from abroad more than a million of people of school age and upwards who are unable to read and write…

In his quest for equal education, he invokes the names of two Founding Fathers: "Thomas Jefferson, with his almost marvelous sagacity and foresight, declared nearly a hundred years ago, that free schools were an essential part – one of the columns, as he expressed it – of the republican edifice, and that, 'without instruction free to all, the sacred flame of liberty could not be kept burning in the hearts of Americans'…James Madison said, almost sixty years ago, 'A popular government, without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps to both.

He ends with a call for the national government to directly aid education: “The unvarying testimony of history is that the nations which win the most renowned victories in peace and war are those which provide ample means for popular education. Without free schools there is no such thing as affording to every man an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life. In the present condition of our country, universal education requires the aid of the general government. The authority to grant such aid is established by a long line of precedents, beginning with the origin of the Republic running down through almost every administration to the present time. Let this aid be granted wherever it is essential to the enjoyment of a free popular instruction…Whatever the government can freely do towards these objects, in my opinion, but to be done.”