Volume 4 Number 035

First Ladies: Lucy

Lead: Lucy Webb Hayes was the first presidential wife to graduate from college but in both attitude and action she was a traditionalist.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: Rutherford B. Hayes met his wife at college. He was a young attorney, just starting out, and would attend Friday afternoon receptions at Wesleyan Female College. Lucy was sixteen when they first met and after a courtship of five years they married in 1852. From the

beginning the Hayes gained the reputation as deeply religious people of Methodist orientation. The future President was a Civil War hero, having been wounded at the Battle of South Mountain. He served as a Republican Congressman from , but it was his balance and reasonable approach to rule during his term as Governor of Ohio that made him a compromise candidate in the bitterly disputed election of 1876. Southern whites had grown weary of Reconstruction, and when the Presidential election ended in deadlock and had to be decided in the House of Representatives, the Deep South led by Wade Hampton of South Carolina voted for Hayes against the Democrat Sam Tilden, who had won a majority

of popular votes, because Hayes promised to pull federal troops from the four remaining Southern states under garrison and spend federal money to help the South rebuild its war-shattered economy.

The Hayes introduced overt religious practices to the routine: daily Bible reading and prayer and Sunday night hymn singing and a no-liquor policy. Critics attributed the abstinence to "Lemonade Lucy," but it was the President who cut out the booze, hoping that it would help the Republicans with the temperance vote. If feminist suffrage and temperance groups had hoped that the would be a model activist, Lucy Hayes

disappointed them. In most matters she followed the traditional role as dutiful wife.

At the University of Richmond, this is Dan Roberts.

Resources

Boller, Paul F., Jr. Presidential Wives. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Geer, Emily Apt. First Lady: the Life of Lucy Webb Hayes. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1984.

Copyright by Dan Roberts Enterprises, Inc.