If ever an American president stepped out of the frying pan and into the fire, it was Rutherford B. Hayes. Other elections had been closely contested, but none since the election of 1824 had threatened to tear apart the constitutional fabric as did the election of 1876. Lincoln’s election had rent the Union, but no one doubted that Lincoln had been elected president. Many Democrats, and some Republicans, doubted Hayes’s legitimacy even as he took office. Conkling, who hated Hayes, referred to him as “His Fraudulency” and “Rutherfraud B. Hayes.”
