Harry Barnard summed up Rutherford B. Hayes' presidency the best, I think: not in the list of best presidents, nor the worst, but in a sort of no-man's land of forgotten ones. Hayes was a bit of a surprise, at least as Barnard presents him. His upbringing and early life left him unusually close to his sister, and with a high moral sense from his mother. He developed into a consensus-builder with high ambition, but with very little of the ruthlessness usually found in machine politics of the day. He found it difficult to see others as less than the gentleman that he aspired to be, which hurt the country later when he ended Reconstruction without forcing the Southern states to live up to their promises to end white supremacy. He seemed to be a genuinely nice person, yet he made some life-long (at least in his political life) enemies in his own party that prevented him from having an effective Presidency.

Barnard's book was originally written in 1954 - I read the 1994 reprint. At times, Barnard is distinctly an author of the 50's. Some of the discussion of Hayes' relationship with his sister smacks of psychoanalysis. There's a constant thread through the first half of the book worrying about Hayes' "manliness" that seems out of place today. But Barnard's very readable, especially when discussing the 1876 election where Hayes won the Presidency through the manipulation of vote counting in Florida, South Carolina and Louisiana. Reading this with the 2000 election in mind, Barnard sounds oddly up to date, even though he wrote 45 years before Bush v. Gore went to the Supreme Court.

All in all, Rutherford B. Hayes: And His America is a good introduction to an interesting man. It's less about the times than about who he was, and that's what I liked about it. ( )