President Rutherford B. Hayes’ ascension to the presidency was a compromise to end an electoral quagmire. With that in mind Southern Democrats and their allies utilized that moment to kill Reconstruction. With the late President Lincoln’s intent for re-integration as dead as Lincoln, the rise of the Jim Crow era of subjugation began in the South. President Garfield’s term seemed uneventful in comparison to his electoral process—he pledged to only serve one term and kept that promise. Despite the one term he celebrated the advances and proliferation in the field of technology, becoming the first President to have a telephone installed in the White House.

Rutherford B. Hayes was raised Presbyterian, yet he was a renaissance man when it came to denominationalism. He celebrated a variety of traditions and regularly attended services in the Methodist, Unitarian, and Presbyterian traditions. That said his wife, Lucy Hayes was a devout Unitarian.