The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896 (Oxford History of the United States)

by Richard White

To make their requests credible, the governors needed to demonstrate that the police and militia could no longer protect life and property. Since this was often not the case, railroad officials suggested other arguments. Scott claimed the free movement of trains was the equivalent of freedom of the seas and designated the strikers as pirates. Charles Francis Adams, Jr., of the Massachusetts Railroad Commission, equated a striking worker with a “public enemy” of the Commonwealth.55 President Hayes, having refused to deploy troops in the South, was hardly eager to use them to settle civil disputes in the North, but as would be his pattern during the first part of his presidency, he objected in principle only to yield in practice.