This place was to him notable for its hunting and fishing on Brady's Island, at the lower falls of the Sandusky, historically noted by Washington during the Revolutionary War.

From the Norwalk Academy, he entered in 1837 Isaac Webb's school at Middletown, Connecticut, a preparatory school for Yale, whither his mother had taken him in connection with a famous trip to the New England relatives. Owing to Yale's great distance from home, however, he was sent later to Kenyon College, founded by the famous Bishop Philander Chase, which in the short space of almost its first decade had as students Salmon P. Chase, Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury and Chief Justice; David Davis and Stanley Matthews, Associate Justices of the Supreme Court, Davis appointed by Lincoln and Matthews appointed by Hayes, his collegemate and fellow officer in the 23d Ohio; Edwin M. Stanton, Lincoln's Secretary of War; and Henry Winter Davis, a distinguished Representative in Congress.

Hayes entered in 1838 and graduated valedictorian in the class of 1842. On leaving college he read law for a year in the office of Sparrow & Matthews of Columbus, before entering the Harvard Law School.

An active Whig partisan, even before he was a qualified voter, he enthusiastically supported General Harrison in 1840, and while a law student at Cambridge, Henry Clay. It has been related that on the occasion of a great Clay rally in Boston, noticing the absence of any banner indicating the support by Ohio men of Henry Clay, Hayes secured a rudely prepared placard bearing the inscription OHIO, and with his uncle joined in the

procession which before the end of the parade had increased from two to some thirty odd Ohio Clay men, who were the recipients of enthusiastic applause.

Soon after opening his law office in Lower Sandusky, in 1845 Hayes formed a legal partnership with Ralph P. Buckland, with whom he maintained a warm lifelong regard, the intimacy being strengthened by their joint service in the army during the War for the Union and in the House of Representatives, so that in the plans made in contemplation of receiving the White House gates for the Memorial Gateways of the Spiegel Grove State Park, provision has been made for a Buckland Gateway which, with the Cleveland Gateway, each as a single gate, would be made from one-half of one of the large double gates.

The place now known as Spiegel Grove was purchased by Sardis Birchard in 1845 for the future home of his nephew and ward, but the construction of the house was not begun until fourteen years later, anticipating the return of Hayes from Cincinnati to take up his permanent home in it. This however was deferred, owing first to the War and then to the two terms to which Hayes was elected as a member of Congress, from which he resigned to enter the campaign for governor of Ohio, to which he was re-elected, so that it was not until 1873 that he returned permanently to his home in Spiegel Grove where, on the Knoll, the mortal remains of his wife and himself are enclosed in the granite block, quarried from the farm in Dummerston, Vermont, whence his father migrated to Ohio in 1817.

Hayes was a loyal Whig who opposed the Mexican War for the extension of slavery. Nevertheless after conferring with numerous friends, it was arranged that

he should go into the army with the company from Lower Sandusky, and be appointed its 2d lieutenant, provided that certain distinguished physicians of Cincinnati thought his physical condition satisfactory, for he had broken down in health. He accordingly secured a substitute, none other than the Hon. Benjamin Inman, later a representative in the legislature, to accompany him to Cincinnati, where his hopes for military service were blasted by the decision of the physicians, and he was ordered to the extreme north, while the late Lewis Leppelman was commissioned in his place as 2d lieutenant of the company from Lower Sandusky. On recovering his health he made a trip to Texas, and on his return arranged to remove to Cincinnati to continue the practice of his profession.

His last appearance at the local bar of Lower Sandusky was as a commissioner appointed by the Court to report on a petition requesting the change of name of the village of Lower Sandusky. This was on account of the multiplicity of towns called Sandusky, within the less than one hundred miles from its source to Lake Erie, where the old fishing village, known during the War of 1812 as Ogontz Place, and later as Portland, had on account of the association of the name Portland on Lake Erie with the cholera ravages of those days, dropped that name for "Sandusky City." The U. S. mails, carried by sailing craft on Lake Erie, were landed at the post office in the recently rechristened town of Sandusky City, with the inevitable result that the forwarding of the mail of the four older Sanduskies, further up the Sandusky River, had to wait the convenience of the postmaster at Sandusky City. Mr.

Hayes reported to the Court that there was but one remonstrance against changing the name from Lower Sandusky which was in the form of a poem by the noted character, Thomas L. Hawkins. Mr. Hayes further reported in favor of the adoption of the name of Fremont in honor of the explorer who had further endeared himself to this democratic community by eloping with the beautiful Jessie Benton, daughter of the influential Senator Thomas H. Benton. The name Fremont was confirmed by the Court on this last appearance before Hayes's departure for Cincinnati in 1849.

He was elected City Solicitor of Cincinnati, in 1857, by the City Council to fill a vacancy, was re-elected in 1859, but was swept down in the Democratic tidal wave in Cincinnati in April, 1861, following the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln and the threatened war to preserve the Union which would naturally cut off all the Southern trade from Cincinnati. His last entry in his Diary before entering the Union army was as follows:

"May 15, 1861. Judge Matthews and I have agreed to go into the service for the war, if possible into the same regiment. I spoke my feelings to him which he said were his also, viz.: that this was a just and necessary war and that it demanded the whole power of the country; that I would prefer to go into it if I knew I was to die or be killed in the course of it than to live through and after it without taking any part in it.”

Both Judge Matthews and himself, who were active supporters of Salmon P. Chase, were tendered Colonelcies through the latter's influence in Washington, but each declined, preferring to go in a subordinate capacity under a trained West Point officer

until they could learn the rudiments of military life, and finally on the 6th of June, 1861, they were appointed by Governor William Dennison of Ohio, Judge Matthews as Lieutenant Colonel, and Hayes as Major of the 23d Regiment of Ohio Volunteer Infantry, which was the first regiment recruited in Ohio "for three years or the war".

It was also the first regiment in Ohio in which the field officers had not been elected, after log rolling, by the members of the regiment, but were appointed directly by the Governor of Ohio. Colonel Wm. S. Rosecrans, a distinguished graduate of the U. S. Military Academy, was appointed colonel of the regiment, but his services were within a week demanded as a general officer, and again Matthews and Hayes declined the promotions tendered them to fill the vacancies, and secured the appointment of another distinguished graduate of the Military Academy in the person of Colonel E. P. Scammon.

Hayes's first service was in western Virginia, but in August, 1862, as a member of General Jacob D. Cox's division, he joined the Army of the Potomac, covering the retreat of General Pope's army after the second battle of Bull Run, and as a part of the Army of the Potomac when General McClellan was restored to its command, and marched against Lee's army in Maryland in the Antietam campaign. He was severely wounded at South Mountain, September 14, 1862. Here his wife, Lucy Webb Hayes, joined him and served in the field hospital established after the battle of Antietam, the bloodiest one-day battle of the war. He was in all the battles of Sheridan's Shenandoah Valley campaign, Winchester, Cedar Creek and Opequan, in which he