How to Fight Presidents: Defending Yourself Against the Badasses Who Ran This Country (17 page)

Rutherford B. Hayes is one of the lesser-known presidents, but he’s also the most likely to kick your ass as soon as you count him out. He’s one of the last in a long run of truly badass presidents, old-school men who chomped cigars and fought in wars. Hayes served in over fifty engagements in the Civil War and was shot several times, but nothing seemed to slow him down.

In 1862, as lieutenant colonel, Hayes was severely injured in a battle. He was shot in the left arm, the bullet splintering one of his forearm bones and tearing a blood vessel. He lost a ton of blood, but instead of bleeding to death like a normal person or fear-pissing himself to death like, let’s face it,
you
, he “
continued to give direction to his troops and succeeded in scattering the rebels.
” He collapsed to the ground and, in between vomits, would call out orders and even yell at his men if they seemed to be behaving cowardly. He did this all from
a very exposed position, bleeding on the ground with vomit chunks in his magnificent beard.

In another battle, Hayes had his horse shot out from under him and was launched several feet while a bullet grazed his skull, and most of his men assumed he was dead. Instead, he was knocked out, and as soon as he regained consciousness, he shook off the fall (and bullet wound to the head), found a new horse, and just started fighting again.

That battle was in 1864, by the way, two years
after
Hayes got his arm shot up and doctors almost amputated it. Most soldiers would have just left the army honorably after an injury like Hayes’s, but he recovered quickly and got right back to kicking ass. Two years might seem like an impossibly short amount of time, but it was par for the course for Hayes. He was born a weak and sickly child, so sick that his mother was afraid to show him any love; she assumed she’d lose him, and she didn’t want to get attached. As a result, Hayes (whose father died before he was born) drove himself to excellence. He wouldn’t be held back by his sickness or by the fact that his father was dead and his mother resented him; he was going to be big and strong and
president
. He started a daily fitness regime, involving hunting and running, that lasted until the week he died; even as president, he would wake up with the roosters and start exercising. Historians have said that, as a child, he developed “an unusual strength and muscular coordination,” and it was this unusual strength that helped him in battle and allowed him to survive despite being shot
five times
in the Civil War. Even though he was sick, Hayes was going to grow up to be superhumanly strong, and even though he was shot, he was still going to command his troops.

Hayes wasn’t just supposed to lose battles and his life; he was also supposed to lose the presidential election, by just about any conceivable metric. 1876 saw the end of the Grant administration, and while Grant himself was an honest and decent (albeit weirdly testicled) man, his administration was one of the more devious in American history, loaded with patronage and corruption. This was a time when reform was important, so the Democrats nominated
Samuel Tilden, a successful reformer who fought corruption as the governor of New York. And the Republicans picked Rutherford Hayes, who wasn’t so much a “successful reformer” as he was “some fucking guy.”

If Hayes had any opinions, he kept them to himself. He was chosen not for his policies or his ability to speak or his track record, but because, up to that point, he hadn’t stolen anything or pissed anyone off. Hayes’s history of being a strong soldier was just a bonus; really it was the “not doing anything wrong” thing that made him attractive to his party. The Republicans just wanted someone who had never stolen (prompting Joseph Pulitzer to yell, “Good God! Has it come to this?”). Hayes had a clean record and was generously inoffensive. Generally inoffensive? What more can we ask for? Let’s make him president.

When Election Day rolled around and the votes started coming in, it was clear to just about everybody that Tilden had won; Hayes lost the popular vote and even wrote a concession speech. America would never hear it. Once the Republicans realized there were four states left to count (and that Hayes could win if he carried those states), they sent people armed with hundreds of thousands of dollars (and weapons) to make sure everyone voted correctly (in this case, “correctly” means “Republican”). Republicans were calling on vote-counters in South Carolina, offering anywhere between $30,000 and $200,000 for a Republican victory. An entire box of votes favoring Tilden in Key West, Florida, was
straight-up thrown out
.

The threats and bribery and back-alley dealing went on for weeks, until a special committee was chosen to decide the election. The committee had eight Republicans and seven Democrats, so the Republicans won and ol’ Rutherford “At Least I Never Stole Anything” Hayes stole the shit out of the presidency. (This earned him the nickname “Rutherfraud,” which, admittedly, is a more succinct nickname.) Hayes ended up being a decent president, seeing America through the end of Reconstruction and making great strides for Civil Rights, but he didn’t make any friends in office and didn’t do anything as president that was either scandalous enough to give him
villain status or exciting and progressive enough to give him hero status in the history books. Tired of the life of a politician, he chose not to seek reelection.

It’s fitting that Hayes’s death was more badass than the
lives
of most people. He was still strong and physically active in retirement, but life caught up with him in 1893, when he was seventy-one. On January 14, Hayes suffered some minor heart issue while riding a train to Cleveland. According to his travel companion, he briefly complained of the pain, then shook it off and casually sipped brandy.
The “minor heart issue”? It was a heart attack; he just hadn’t realized it. No one did, in fact; doctors didn’t even find out until years later when they examined his body and medical history. He had a heart attack and self-prescribed brandy and only died at his home
three days later
, on January 17.

Hayes was a well-built and tough man, and beginning with the start of the Civil War, he never shaved, so he’s certainly got you beat in terms of beardiness. Hayes was known to say that “fighting battles is like courting girls: those who make the most pretensions and boldest moves usually win,” so expect him to come swinging right out of the gate. Still, this was a man who, his whole life,
should
have lost, but didn’t. He
should
have died as a sick, fatherless child. He
should
have died from his wounds in the Civil War. He
should
have lost the election, because he literally did lose the election. Yet still, Hayes came out on top.

Rutherford B. Hayes is
due
for a loss. He’s had it too good for too long. The man doesn’t know how to lose;
why don’t you teach him?

James Garfield’s presidency was cut so short (he was assassinated just four months into his first term), that most historians don’t even include Garfield when they’re ranking the best and worst presidents; there’s simply not enough information to figure out his legacy. Luckily for us, there’s ample information about his tenure as a badass.

Garfield grew up poor and fatherless in Ohio, the last president born in a log cabin (unless they somehow swing back into vogue). His schoolmates relentlessly mocked him for his fatherless status, because children are literally the worst people in the world (Garfield claimed he was “made the ridicule and sport of boys that had fathers and enjoyed the luxuries of life”). The only thing he knew about his father was that he was an accomplished wrestler, so Garfield learned early on how to defend himself, earning the nickname the “Fighting Kid.”

Garfield never grew out of fighting, either. Years later, when he ran into a guy who “refused to obey” him, Garfield reportedly “flogged him severely,” and the guy attacked him with a plank of wood for what Garfield described as “a merry time.” Garfield retaliated with glee, after which the guy “vamoosed.” I keep calling his attacker a “guy,” but that should probably be amended to “boy,” because the person in question was one of Garfield’s students when he briefly worked as a teacher. Just remember that, the next time you want to complain about school. If Garfield was your teacher, he would beat the shit out of you and laugh about it.

Laughing and punching jerks weren’t the only things Garfield could multitask; he was our only ambidextrous president, and if you asked him a question, he could write the answer down in Greek with one hand and Latin with the other, simultaneously, all while kicking you, if need be. That multitasking extended to everything; before he met his wife, Garfield dated three women. Simultaneously.

As a workout, James A. Garfield would juggle Indian clubs. That sounds whimsical until you learn that Indian clubs are large, wooden, bowling-pin-shaped pieces of wood that weigh fifty pounds. Lifting weights wasn’t enough; Garfield would only be satisfied if his workout included the constant threat of having fifty-pound hunks of wood crash down onto his head. His strength and experience served him well in the Civil War, where he was a major general (the youngest man ever to earn that title) and received praise from his superiors for his bravery.

Garfield wasn’t
just
a fighter; he was also one of the smartest and most well-read presidents we’ve ever had. He loved to meet with writers, engineers, and intellectuals and just sit quietly and learn from them. A senator from Massachusetts who knew Garfield in his twenties believed he could easily be a great success in either science, math, English, public speaking, or the presidency. Most presidents follow a specific path; they start as either lawyer or war hero, move on to become a politician, and then become president. Garfield was both soldier
and
lawyer
and
politician
and
math and science whiz. This is mentioned only in case it’s humbling for you to know exactly how many things at which Garfield is better than you.

Garfield made it to the presidency after serving nine straight terms in the House of Representatives. While his presidency was brief, he did manage to make a dent in the corrupt spoils system (whereby people got government jobs based on either paying for them or being friends with the “right guy”), which was still dominating politics. As soon as he was elected, he was hit by a storm of office seekers, corrupt jerks who wanted cushy government jobs and power. Garfield, perhaps remembering the bullies who tried to push him around when he was a kid, would not be moved, and pioneered the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, making it law that all government jobs be granted on the basis of merit and merit alone. This made Congress very angry, because they weren’t used to dealing with a president who was quite this pushy. Garfield politely reminded them that he was the
goddamn president
, not them, and that they were totally welcome to suck it. Worried that any objection would prompt the president to sign a mandatory “sucking it” bill into law, Congress piped down.