First Lady: The Life of Lucy Webb Hayes

The only biography of the wife of President Rutherford B. Hayes. Lucy Hayes was First Lady from 1877-1881. The book covers her early life, the Civil War, and emphasizes her influence in expanding the role of presidential wives.

From Part Three - The Civil War:

A few days after the Battle of South Mountain, Lucy, visiting near Chillicothe, received the following message from her husband: "I am here, come to me. I shall not lose my arm." Marks on the telegram indicated it had originated in Washington. Leaving the children with relatives and entrusting her mother to find a wet nurse for the baby, Lucy caught the morning stage to Columbus. William Platt met her at the stage office and insisted upon accompanying her to Washington. Lucy forgot the passes that would permit them to enter the military area, but, by pretending to be with another party, they evaded sentries at the Harrisburg railroad station. Finally they arrived in Washington, a week after Hayes had been wounded.

Surprised when she did not find Rutherford at the Kirkwood House where he said he would be in case of accident, Lucy began a round of the hospitals. There she encountered the bureaucratic red-tape and inefficiency that vexed wartime Washington. Personnel at the Patent Office, which had been turned into a military hospital, repulsed Lucy in what she described as a very "cruel and unfeeling manner." Nor did she have any success in efforts to secure information from the surgeon general's office in the Capitol Building. After considerable difficulty, Platt located the original draft of the telegram on which Middletown had been marked out and Washington substituted. The telegraph operator had no explanation for this.

At Lucy's insistence, they returned to the Patent Office, hoping for more information about Rutherford. Among the wounded soldiers on the steps, Lucy noticed several with "23" on their caps and called out "Twenty-third Ohio." Immediately several shouted, "Why, this is Mrs. Hayes." Much to her relief, they knew their colonel had been taken to a house on the main street of Middletown to recuperate from his wound. Hayes." Much to her relief, they knew their colonel had been taken to a house on the main street of Middletown to recuperate from his wound.

By noon, Lucy and William Platt were on their way to Frederick, Maryland, as close as the railroad could take them to Middletown. As the train lurched over a roadbed damaged by the recent fighting, Lucy, standing in the aisle, tried to balance herself in a corner by the water tank. When they finally reached Frederick after a hot and dusty three-hour ride, Lucy and Platt found her brother Joe waiting for them. Every night for a week he had ridden over from Middletown.

While the men hitched Joe's horse to a rented carriage, Lucy sat on the steps of the station. "With my bundle in my hand," she said, "looking very forlorn, when a rather rough looking man said to me, 'Haven't you any place to stay tonight.' I said, "'Yes, I am going on."' Fortunately the buggy pulled up at that moment and Lucy, Platt, and Joe crowded into the single seat.

En route to Middletown, Lucy noticed the horse shying frequently and the doctor constantly turning the buggy from one side of the road to the other. In answer to her question, he explained that their steed wanted to avoid being near dead horses lying along the road. When they finally reached the Rudy house in Middletown, Rutherford greeted his wife with the jest, "Well you thought you would visit Washington and Baltimore." For once, Lucy had lost her sense of humor and merely answered that she was glad to see him.

Lucy spent her time looking after her husband and visiting wounded soldiers in local homes and makeshift hospitals. While still in Middletown, Rutherford received information from Joe Webb, who had rejoined the regiment, that the Twenty-third had been ordered to return to West Virginia. Webb added that he knew Hayes would want to recommend a promotion for their efficient commissary sergeant, William McKinley, whose "rise from the ranks" to the White House was only beginning. It struck Joe that McKinley was "about the brightest chap spoken of for the place."

Two weeks after Lucy's arrival, Rutherford and Lucy with six or seven disabled soldiers from the Twenty-third began the tiresome journey to Ohio. On one occasion when they had to change trains, Lucy, finding no seats in the coaches, led the way into the Pullman car, occupied by a fashionable crowd returning from the health spa in Saratoga, New York. Oblivious to resentful glances, Lucy helped her "boys" into empty seats. When a telegraph messenger came through the car paging Colonel Hayes, the "society folk" became interested in the group and offered them grapes and other delicacies. Lucy disdainfully declined them. As a cousin recalled, "Even reminiscently, years afterward, as she told the story, she declined them." This attitude and actions associated with her "search" indicate that Lucy's experiences as a soldier's wife helped develop her native ingenuity and partially hidden self reliance.