The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes | Page 8

was elected city solicitor last night by the city council to fill the vacancy occasioned by the death of Judge Hart. It would have been very difficult to have made any other selection of a solicitor equally excellent and as generally satisfactory."
The Cincinnati Enquirer, of the same date, said: "Mr. Hayes, the city solicitor elect, is a lawyer of good acquirements and reputation, and is well qualified for the position."
Charles Reemelin, in a letter to the New York Evening Post, wrote: "I know of no young man in our city of higher promise than Mr. Hayes, and we hope for him a bright future."
The estimate of the people seemed to correspond with that of the press, for in the following spring he was elected to the office to which he had been appointed by a majority of two thousand five hundred and thirty-six on the popular vote. His Democratic opponent was W. T. Forrest.
He filled the office of corporation counsel for three years, during which time, as legal adviser of the municipal government of a great city, he passed judgment upon questions involving large interests, and discharged with high fidelity the duties of an important trust. As city solicitor, the opinion which perhaps aroused the most general attention and interest, was one delivered in February, 1859, denying the right of the city council to contract debts for waterworks purposes, without additional authority from the General Assembly. He was opposed to the increase of taxation and creation of new debts, on principle. In April, 1861, in common with the entire Republican ticket, he was defeated for re-election as city solicitor. His vote, however, was larger than that of any candidate on his ticket. He had suffered a similar defeat in the fall of 1856, when a candidate for Common Pleas Judge, his party being in a decided minority in Hamilton county. Had the election of 1861 occurred two weeks later, when the great uprising came with the fall of Sumter, the Republican war ticket, not the Democratic compromise ticket, would have carried the day.
CHAPTER IV.
IN THE FIELD.
Appointed Major--Judge Advocate--Lieutenant-Colonel--South Mountain--Wounded--Fighting while Down--After Morgan--Battle of Cloyd Mountain--Charge up the Mountain--Enemy's Works Carried by Storm--First Battle of Winchester--Berryville.
That a loyal citizen of the antecedents, ardent patriotism, and impulsive nature of Rutherford B. Hayes would enter the army in the war for the Union, was to be looked for as a thing of course. He had been in the habit of obeying every call of duty, and could not therefore disobey when duty called loudest. He regarded the war waged for the supremacy of the constitution and the laws as a just and necessary war, and preferred to go into it if he knew he "was to die or be killed in the course of it." He had been a most earnest advocate of the election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency, and had been an anti-slavery man of established convictions long before the candidacy of Fremont for the Presidency. He did not think the Union should be destroyed to make slavery perpetual. He desired to mitigate and finally eradicate that evil. He had prayed for the election of General Harrison for the sake of the country; he had cast his first vote for Henry Clay, his second for General Taylor, and his third for General Scott. But the old Whig party having ceased to be a living organization, he gave his whole heart to the Republican party and its cause, and by political speeches, and in other ways, helped forward the movement in favor of equality of rights and laws. The insult to the flag at Fort Sumter aroused to the intensest pitch the patriotic indignation of a united North. At a great mass-meeting held in Cincinnati, R. B. Hayes was selected to give expression to the loyal voice, by being made chairman of the public committee on resolutions. It is not needful to add that these resolutions had all the fire and intensity of the popular feeling. The knowledge that it was his purpose to enter the Union army having reached Governor Dennison, that officer appointed Hayes major of the Twenty-third Ohio Volunteer Infantry, June 7, 1861. With this appointment was coupled the appointments of W. S. Rosecrans as colonel, and Stanley Matthews as lieutenant-colonel of the same regiment. Colonel Rosecrans, with the other field-officers, had just set to work organizing the new regiment, when Rosecrans was appointed brigadier-general, and ordered to take command of the Ohio troops moving in the direction of Western Virginia. Upon the promotion of Rosecrans, Colonel E. P. Scammon, an officer of military education, was placed in command of the Twenty-third.
After a brief period of discipline at Camp Chase the regiment was ordered, on the 25th of July, to Clarksburgh, West Virginia, and on the 29th went