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

in the city
council on the first ballot was: Mr. Smith, 13; Mr. Disney, 12; Mr.
Hayes, 3. On the seventh ballot, Mr. Hayes had 17; Mr. Ware, 12; and
Mr. Disney, 3. On the thirteenth ballot, Mr. Hayes was declared elected,
having received 18 votes to Mr. Ware's 14. His election was due to the
vote of Mr. Toohey, a Democratic councilman of the Thirteenth Ward.
The election of Hayes to his first office was most favorably received.

The Cincinnati Commercial, of December 9, 1858, said: "R. B. Hayes,
Esq., one of the most honest and capable young lawyers of the city, 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