Lucy hayes is so much more. As was her husband. Everything she accomplished in the white house was in spite of the fact her husbands legitimacy to be president was questioned. She was a charming person very delightful. Innovative. One of the more controversial collections is the white house china. An article says the art was absurd. Who would want to eat a lovely meal and see a duck at the bottom of their plate . She took an interest in Public Affairs from an early age. Two causes that were important to her were veterans soldiers and or friends, children who were made orphans as a result of the civil war. She was a very devout mother. She does not neglect her children. She embraces the life. Womens minds are as strong as man. Equal in all things and superior in some. In 1831, born, in ohio, she was the first first lady lady to have a college degree. That tells us much about the time she lived in. The civil war and into a time where technological innovation and significant social forces usher in an era of the norm is change for the United States. Good evening and welcome to cspans continuing series on americas first ladies. Tonight, you will learn about lucy webb hayes. The wife of rutherford the hayes. Here to start us off is a first ladies historian and author of a collection of biographies. Welcome. In 1876, the country is joyously celebrating the 100th centennial of the declaration of independence and it is an election year. The election is greatly contested with no clear victor. Tell us about the atmosphere with which it was at the white house. What was it like . Susan, it is pretty schizophrenic, to tell you the truth. We had just come out of the centennial celebration. They were coming to the white house, but they do not know if they will move into the white house. The election is not yet decided. What happened is samuel and rutherford b. Hayes were in one of the closest elections in the United States at that point. There are three states that are so tight, the parties are tackling each other. The republicans said, we won. The democrats said, no, we won. Hayes goes to bed thinking he has lost. They woke up the next morning and find out the republicans are challenging the vote. If they actually win the three states, he gets the number of electoral votes he needs to become president. They go through all the negotiations back and forth. There is congress involved trying to cut these deals. Literally, it is not decided until he arrives in washington when the deal is finally set. We can only imagine the schizophrenia, the fear, the disappointment, everything you feel. As you are on this train coming to washington. So worried were they about the possibility of a democratic coup that the inaugural day was a sunday. There was a private swearingin at the white house. Absolutely. And then he gave his inaugural address the next day. Absolutely. The country itself is still very unsettled. The civil war, even though it as been over for 12 years, it is very much in peoples minds. It was such an intensely personal war. Everybody had been affected by it. Now you are trying to figure out how you will have construction for the hayes and try to stay true to your principles. For the democrats, how can we hold the feet to the fire to give us back our land and customs. Plus, we have got all of these technological revolutions, the telephones just premiered. You have the typewriter. You have all of the new kinds of engines being done. You have a recession. It is sort of the first major depression we have had. The country is trying to figure out what is going on just as much as the hayes are. So they come to the white house with a great deal of government experience. A three term governor in ohio. Had served in congress. A very popular governor of ohio. What did they do to establish their credibility when they get to washington . Their personalities take over. They begin to try to acknowledge the fact that the election is really controversial. He knows he has been called rutherford fraud hayes. What he does with his inaugural address is really set the tone for this. He makes overtures to the democrats. He opened the white house up. They began to try to engage in a public conversation and tackle the issues that tarnished the Republican Party. The corruption of the Grant Administration when he said there would be civilservice reform. When he really pledges to pull the remaining troops out of the south. Assuming that the governors, the government in new orleans and columbia will honor their commitment. He is trying to extend an olive branch to people, saying, i hear you. And im only going to serve one term so lets figure out how to make the most of this together. How did lucy help in this she understood how politics work and how to entertain. She understood how to facilitate conversation between people that were difficult. She understood how to really bring people at the table in a way that would advance her husband. She was charming and everybody loved her, despite the no alcohol. She was able to do things in a way that made him seem approachable and ethical and blunt. She was the first first lady to have have a college degree, and this was a time of change for women. At the philadelphia bicentennial fair, all kinds of new devices being introduced to the home. The hoover vacuum cleaner. Early washing machines. Women were beginning to take advantage of this by beginning to move into the workforce. Is lucy hayes seen as a symbol for this . I do not think so. I think it is very easy to overstate the importance of the new labour saving devices and how many when it went into the workforce. Women in workforce already have to work. The women who really entered the workforce by their own volition and interest really are the generation after her. When she comes to the white house, only five percent of women who work are working in what we would consider today whitecollar jobs like stenographers and secretaries and professors and educators. She is on the cusp of that. To me, the thing that is really interesting about her is how she is stuck in the middle in a way that does not make her stuck. I know that sounds weird. The Suffrage Movement is totally divided along the lines of race. And whether women can vote or not. Lucy hayes is the First College educated first lady. She stood with surgeons during the civil war. She has seen more battles, more scars, more amputees, more suffering, than probably any first lady other than Mary Todd Lincoln. She is not an avant gardeperformer. She is trying to find her own voice. It is hard to put her in a pigeonhole. On twitter, how did washington look upon lucy especially after julia grants . That is tricky. They look at her as lovely vivacious, happy, genuine, and then she does a gorgeous china and the press goes insane over it, writing about how difficult it is to eat food with a quail in the middle of your plate. You mentioned the press. They are independently covering the first ladys. They become an object of national interest. Yes. The press really is taken with her. They use the title, first lady more for her than they had for anybody. Even though it was in reference to Mary Todd Lincoln. They like her. They see her as vivacious. They see her as somebody who is different. They really do follow her in her own light. Throughout our program tonight, we will take you to the hayes home. You see a picture of it on your screen. This is the home where lucy and her family lived before the white house years. This library museum, they are all there to show what the first lady and family were all about. We are taken inside the home to learn about lucy hayes as a political partner and about some of the causes that were important to her throughout her life. Lets watch. This painting shows lucy tending to a wounded soldier during the civil war. Two causes important to her were veterans and soldiers and orphans, children who had been made or friends as a result of the civil war. The painting was created to hang in an orphanage in ohio. It reflects the issues important to her. When People Associated with the causes come here to visit, they would sit here in this parlor. This was host to a number of civil war veterans. The unit rutherford served in, the future president mckinley was a member of the 23rd, so his family was frequent guests here. When they would gather here on the ground, when they would come in, they would sit in this parlor. Lucy was a wonderful hostess. She wanted people to feel welcome. This is where they would discuss the issues of the day. She hosted a number of political figures here for dinner, including future president s taft and mckinley. Also william shermer was a guest. As well as other local and National Political figures. She is a partner with her husband. Entertaining and serving at the role of hostess. That would have been incredibly important. Joining us on our set, the director of the rutherford b. Hayes president ial center, also open to the public. 24 years of his professional life was spent helping america preserve the history of the hayes presidency. We heard from allida black. Your comments about the skills she brought to this job as she entered the white house. She was a partner to rutherford, a sounding board to him. She was able to engage people oneonone and to make anybody she talked with think they were the only person in the room and the only person she wanted to talk with. The election did not end after they were sworn in. There was a congressional inquiry. Here is one quote where he said, sometimes i feel a little worried. This press and annoyance going on, i keep myself outwardly very calm what do we learn of her . She is defensive and has a bit of anger in her. She sounds like a good politician in her own right, able to mask the inner. One of my favorite things about that is it shows her passion to hold it in. At the end of the civil war, she was furious and everyone started talking about a reconciliation and forgiveness. She was saying, mercy is one thing but we have to have justice in mercy, which just shows her. I like to invite each week the participants in the program. We will go to phone calls. You can go to our facebook page. There is already discussion about lucy hayes. You can join that by asking questions or posting comments. We will mix many of those in. To illustrate what kind of a person she is, she had lifelong interest after helping her husband on the civil war front. Tell us about old veterans in the white house. Yes. An old 1812 soldier came to the white house to receive an honor. He is supposed to have his picture taken. When he arrives, his uniform came separately. He was distraught the sergeants stripes were not on the uniform. Lucy went and grabbed her sewing kit, sat down on the floor sewed it on and the british minister came in, saw the first lady of the United States sitting on the floor at the white house, sewing on this gentlemans rank. Which is how we learned the story. He told it. It is important to us to move on for a bit. First of all, today, we often see the expression or the nickname lemonade lucy. Was she known as that at the time . Not at all. We cannot find where it appeared. It is one thing that has become about her. One of the things that is interesting about lucy is that she supports temperance, but never really affiliates with the womens christian temperance union, which was founded in ohio, her home state, by people that lived within 2 hours drive from her. They always try to coopt her. She comes to this from her mothers father, her maternal grandfather, who is a member of the state legislator, who made her sign a pledge when she was young not to drink alcohol. That carried over with her. She was never really a follower of the temperance movement. What caused her to ban alcohol from the white house . Was it religious in nature . Did she ban alcohol from the white house . Actually, no. Her husband made the decision. It was a decision partly political. He wanted to keep the republicans within the party who were defecting to the Prohibition Party. He also wanted to set the moral tone. Alcohol was the drug of choice in those days. There were many families ruined. You heard about the sons of president s who managed to ruin their lives with alcohol. Hayes was never a prohibitionist and never thought you should outlaw alcohol. He thought the people running the Prohibition Party were political pranks who also outlawed dancing and cardplaying. He just wanted people to learn by education. How popular was the movement in the United States . It really takes off at the end of the century. They come in right at the beginning of it. The reason it begins to take off is when it merges with the womens Suffrage Movement. At the time of hayess First Movement into the white house, only 23 states could control their own property. One of the big problems with alcohol was, if women work their wages legally belonged to their sons, husband, and they could not cash their own wages. They would take that and go in saloons. And spend their money on alcohol. The saloons gave you cheap beer. It is a complicated issue. It is easy to say they are turning everybody into alcoholics. What they are doing is organizing people, giving them a place to party, encouraging them to drink, and not having womens recourse over their own money. That is why it really takes off. It leads to prostitution, bankruptcy, and venereal disease. Lucy was lobbied by the movement to become the publics advocate to the cause. Did she agree . She did not agree. She spoke to her husband and did not feel women should be allowed to vote. She was not an advocate of womens suffrage. Womens suffrage people came to the white house and shed show them around, gave them a tour of the conservatory and the rooms. But did not buy in. Here is a quote that helps to illustrate that. She said it is a great mistake to suppose i desire to dictate my views to others. I do not use them myself but i have no thought of shunning those who think and act differently. What do we learn from her . She is a fabulous politician. And she is not an absolutist or a moralist. What she has got its she has made her decision. She believes moderation is good and bad like her husband, she is in no way interested in outlawing everything and that she is sticking to her own beliefs. And trying to be respectful for others. They wanted to memorialize the decision to serve alcohol in the white house. Lucy was not pleased by that decision. The first thing they wanted to do was build a fountain. She said, i do not want my memorial to be a water fountain. I want to be in the hearts of people rather than on a piece of canvas and particularly the irony of it being a water fountain was certainly be galling. She was certainly not happy they were trying to raise the money to do this one dime at a time. She said, i think i am worth more than a dime. It became the official white house portrait. We are showing it to you on screen so you can see how we have preserved lucy hayes. How different is that view of her from the woman you came to know through your research . Very different. The woman is an enigma. She is trying to figure out how to be her own person. She has been stereotyped in a way that Mary Todd Lincoln had been stereotyped. It does not show the courage and incredible guts she had. I just wish america understood. If i could tell them one thing about lucy hayes, it is that i find it stunningly haunting how much violence she saw up close during the war. In surgery and out. Not only in ohio hospitals, but going to her husbands camps where her brother was a surgeon. She was in and out of the operating room. She did post operative care. She saw people without anesthetics suffering in horiffic ways. When four soldiers, two of whom were wounded and two of whom were significantly ill, missed their train to chicago, she opened her back parlor to her house so they could stay. It makes perfect sense to me that she had those stripes on. I would be convinced that is the least she owed that man. For what she knew he went through. On the note about violence there was a report a bullet went through their parlor window in columbus before they came to the white house. There was no secret service. They took it as it came. Their son buried a pistol and he was their only form of security. From springfield, missouri, you are on. Are you there . Go ahead. Hi. I wanted to give a quick birthday shout out to my dad. He is a huge fan of the program. Wonderful. I have a question. Why does lucy become an early supporter of the Republican Party . She was an abolitionist right from the start. The Republican Party was the party of abolition. She was an admirer of john and his wife. She would be a republican right from the beginning. On the womens Suffrage Movement, and the famous name, elizabeth cady, people came to the white house to see the president , and how did hayes react to her personal petition to be involved . They rejected it and they did not support womens suffrage. It had become an exceedingly controversial person in republican circles. She was very much opposed to the 15th amendment. It excluded women. She had really campaigned against the principles the hayes dedicated their lives to, the basic principles of reconstruction. She was not well received at all. Was lucy hayes interested in any womens rights issues . Yes. She was absolutely passionate about womens education and encourage young women to go to college, which was a radical thing to say during her time at the white house. She saw temperance to a certain extent, as a way to help women. If you are asking about womens wages, where women work, womens rights to join a union, womens rights to vote, which were the Major Political issues of the time, she did not associate with that. Different questions about the college degree. I will ask a couple of them all at once. First of all, on facebook, i am not sure if they had majors back then, but what did she study in college . Other people want to know, where did she go to school . In cincinnati, ohio. She got a degree in liberal arts. She studied rhetoric composition, english, all the standard things. I do not think she studied political science. All was applicable to what she ended up being as first lady. She had to deliver speeches, which was probably good preparation for later in life. On facebook, anxious to know whether or not she rubbed her degree in the face of the elite while in the white house . No. She was a good politician and knew how to carry on a conversation without being erudite. She did not give offe