E K RUTHERFORD BIRCHARD HAYES Class .^ l'l The Grbivt Commoner of Ohio. DISCOURSE // IN MEMORY OK m "A' n HAY "S DELIVERED IN THE First Congregational Church, COLUMBUS, OHIO, JANUARY 22, 1808, BY / Rkv. Washington Gladden, D. D. Ti 8 '00 RUTHERFORD BIRCHARD HAYES. OCTOBER 4, 1822. JANUARY U, 1893. TT7E have studied here, more tlian once, the lesson of some great life. In no other form does Truth present herself with so much quickening for the intellect, with so much invigoration of the will. For this reason chiefly Avas the AVord made flesh. All highest revelation to men must come through the form of a man. The storv of a life worthily lived is more convincing than logic, more instructive than phil- osophy ; it carries an element which transcends all the formularies of science ; it contains within itself all that gives the moving thrill to music, and immor- tality to verse. Thrice, already, since the summer rest, have we been invited to such a sympathetic study of great lives that had suddenly ceased from among us ; the Editor and Essayist, Curtis; our Quaker Poet, Whit- tier; the Laureate of England, Tennyson. To-night we are called together to reflect for an hour upon tlie meatiinp: of" a liH' whose siuMrMi foniiinaiion lias brought to this commonwealth and this nation a great hereavement. To the people of Ohio and especial ly to the people of Columbus, the death of President Hayes comes a great deal closer than tliat of either of the notable men wluun I have named. To them our debt was large, but it was mainly intellectual. For the enriching of our minds, for the quickening of our better purposes we owed them much. But Presi- dent Haves has been our neighbor and our friend; he has walked with iis l)y the way; he has talked with us at our firesides; in our public assemblies he was a not unwonted, and always welcome presence; in a great manv of the concerns in which our hearts were most engaged, he was our wise counsellor and stanch helj>er: the abrupt and unexpected cessation of a torce like this is a real shock to our community; and the absence of such a comrade from our toil, of sudi a friend from our familiar circles, brings a sense of ])er- sonal loss and loneliness. I have named him the (Treat Commoner. This title was given lirst to William Pitt, in the days before he was Earl of Chatham; it wa> the ])opular tribute to a lofty spirit who was "the lirst to discern." as one of \\\< liioirrapher's ])hra>('s il. ''that public oiiinou. tliouirh 7 generally slow to form and slow to act, is in the end the paramount power in the state ; and the first to use it. not in an emergency merely, but throughout a long political career." William Pitt was the Great Commoner so long as he kept in touch with the peo- ple ; no man ever had greater power in England ; he was put at the head ol" the greatest ministry that ever ruled England, not because King or Parliament wished it, but because the people would have it. Years after- ward, when he suffered himself to be elevated to the peerage, he came down from his throne. The title has descended to the man who is now Prime Minister of England, and who has won it very much as Pitt first won it, by identifying himself with the people. Warned by the fate of Pitt, it is not at all probable that Glad- stone will ever be tempted to exchange for the bauble of a peerage that place which he holds in the hearts of his countrj^men. Our own Great Commoner has won the title by the same qualities. He, too, was essentially and pre-em- inently a man of the people. From the common people he rose, and he never rose above them. That persistent determination of his to walk in the ranks in the Grand Army parades has been censured by some as afiectation. But to President Hayes it was 8 the siiiii)le exi)ivssi()n of a lact wliidi ho \voulrivate citizenship. The relations of President Hayes to the Common- wealth of Ohio are. as I have said, peculiarly intimate. He was born upon iier soil; most of his education was gained in her schools; all his professional life was spent in tliis State; the troops that he led in the war of the rebellion were nearly all Ohio soldiers; Ohio sent him to represent her in the National Congress, and thrice made him her (lovernor; it was from the Capital of Ohio that he was translated to the White House at Washington ; and since he laid aside the arduous burdens of government, this State has been his constant home. To multitudes in other States his great services have endeared him ; but Ohio has the largest share in his renown. I think it must be allowed that he was iier greatest citizen — the linest product, on the whole, of lu-r century of history. Tiiat is a large claim, but I advance it with some contidence. When the future historian comes to lest bv the stau- d dards of impartial criticism, the characters and the services of the men of Ohio who have been at the front in the nineteenth century, I tliink that the name of Rutherford Birchard Hayes will lead all the rest. Grant and Sherman and Sheridan were greater gen- erals; Garfield was a greater genius; and there have been greater orators and greater jurists and greater educators; but take him all in all, for an all-round man — citizen, soldier, statesman, scholar, man of books, man of brains, man of affairs, husband, father, philanthropist, neighbor, friend, there is not another who will measure quite as large as the good man who has just gone. I have named Garfield; there is a somewhat strik- ing parallel between the origin of these two Ohio Presidents. Abram Garfield came, with a little family, from Central New York to Cuyahoga County in 1830; made a fairly prosperous beginning of a home there, and suddenly died leaving a widow with four young children, the youngest of whom, then but two years old, was to be the future President. Rutherford Hayes, a thrifty farmer and trader of Vermont, came to Ohio in 1817, and settled in Dela- ware, where, after five years of successful industry, he died, leaving a wife and two children. Three months 10 alter }ii< latlior*? initim-ly baiid"s .k-ath, the eldest son of .Mrs. Hayes was drownetl; and there were left to the widow oidy two of her children. Willi the sister who was only a viar or two his senior, Ivutherford Haves 11 grew u\) in a most dear and lender adection. The lamily lived in a plain brick house in the village of Delaware, but there was a farm in the vicinity from which they drew many of their supplies, and to which the children were always fond of resorting. Mr. Howells's sketch of these early years will bear reciting: " The greatest joys of a happy childhood were the visits the brother and sister made to the farm in the sugar season, in cherry time and when the walnuts and hickory nuts were ripe ; and its greatest cross was the want of children's books, with which the village lawyer's family was supplied. When the uncle Birchard began in business he satislied their heart's desire for this kind of literature, and books of a grave and mature sort seem to have always abounded with them. They read Hume's and Smollett's English history together; the sister of twelve years interpreted Shakespeare to the brother of ten ; they read the poetry of Mr. Thomas Moore, (then so much finer and grander than now) and they paid Sir Walter Scott the tribute of drama- tizing together his 'Lady of the Lake,' and were duly astonished and dismayed to learn afterwards that they were not the sole inventors of the dramatization of poems — that even their admired ' Lady of the Lake ' had long been upon the stage. The intluence of an ii okler sister upon a generous an