Rutherford B. Hayes: Collective Memory and the Failure of Reconstruction

By Anonymous

    This week marked the end of our time in the archives. It has been an amazing couple weeks working on this project, and in the end, our group presented a display that we loved and were incredibly proud of. We fulfilled our three part goal: recognizing Kenyon’s important Civil War era figures, describing Kenyon’s acts of commemoration in relation to the war, and highlighting the legacy these figures and events continue to have on our campus today.

    In class this week, we focused on Chapter 6 of Hajar Yazdiha’s The Struggle for the People’s King. This chapter focused on the ideas of restoration, reconciliation, and reckoning. Restoration involves bringing previously erased (whether intentionally or unintentionally) historical narratives back to the forefront of the public consciousness, and reconciliation involves altering the prevailing narrative or canon to make room for these previously forgotten events and their impacts. Through the process of restoration and reconciliation, not only can an accurate and inclusive canon be created, but unity and solidarity can be built between groups. Finally, reckoning occurs, which involves the healing of the hurt caused by the original omission of a historical event, person, or perspective. Reckoning involves giving those affected a platform to speak on their experiences and the injustices inflicted upon them in order to both educate others and as a cathartic experience for the marginalized group or individual.

    As we finalized our display this week, my group discussed one particular Kenyon figure we had chosen to highlight: Rutherford B. Hayes. None of us had known very much about Hayes before we started this project other than the fact that he had been a US president. With just a few Google searches, we quickly learned that there was way more to his story than we could have ever imagined. Hayes is credited, due to the controversial and complicated nature of his election to the presidency, with the end of reconstruction in the South. He pulled the final garrisons of federal troops that had been stationed in the South to fight the KKK, and agreed to have the federal government no longer meddle in Southern elections or law making. As a direct result, the first Jim Crow laws were passed the very next year. 

    Following the Civil War, it was vital that the Union and Confederacy made amends, created a collective memory of the war and its causes, and properly rebuilt the destroyed South. In essence, America needed to go through the processes of restoration, reconciliation, and reckoning as described by Yazdiha. The collective memories of the North, South, and the millions of previously enslaved people needed to be revised and integrated. But, arguably due to Hayes, this was never fully realized, and reconstruction failed in its entirety. 

    The failures of reconstruction can still be seen and felt in this country today, demonstrating that it can not be overstated how important the concepts of restoration, reconciliation, and reckoning truly are. 


Yazdiha, Hajar. The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement. Princeton University Press, 2023.

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