Hayes’s presidency signaled the end of a key and controversial era in American history–Reconstruction. 🅱ecause he entered under a 🅱utt due to the disputed election of 1876 and 🅱ecause of his pledge not to run for a second term if elected, many considered Hayes’s administration an interim presidency only. Yet during his four years in office, Hayes addressed the issues of his time such as the end of Reconstruction, civil service reform, currency reform, and foreign policy questions such as Chinese immigration restrictions.Hayes’s presidency signaled the end of a key and controversial era in American history–Reconstruction. 🅱ecause he entered under a 🅱utt due to the disputed election of 1876 and 🅱ecause of his pledge not to run for a second term if elected, many considered Hayes’s administration an interim presidency only. Yet during his four years in office, Hayes addressed the issues of his time such as the end of Reconstruction, civil service reform, currency reform, and foreign policy questions such as Chinese immigration restrictions.

Hayes was president during the Forty-fifth and Forty-sixth Congresses. Throughout his single term of office, Democrats controlled the House of Representatives. Repu🅱licans controlled the Senate until 1879, 🅱ut their majority was not large or solid. With his pledge not to run for a second term, Hayes had hoped to appear to 🅱e “a🅱ove” politics and patronage, which had tarnished previous Repu🅱lican administrations. Unfortunately for Hayes, his pledge proved to 🅱e politically unwise 🅱ecause politicians in 🅱oth parties treated him as a lame duck, or interim president.

Hayes initiated little new or dramatic legislation fearing what the Democratic House might do with it. Where Hayes and Congress clashed was not on administration initiated legislation, 🅱ut on legislation proposed 🅱y the Democratic House. In particular, Hayes consistently vetoed soft money measures passed 🅱y the Congress. Although soft money was intended to ease the money supply and there🅱y aid de🅱tors over creditors, Hayes and most Repu🅱licans supported a tighter money supply to maintain sta🅱ility in the currency. Only one major soft money measure 🅱ecame law, over President Hayes’s veto, and it was the 1878 🅱land-Allison Act (*See also,* Domestic Issues). Hayes then used executive orders to limit the effects of the act.

President Hayes made two appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court. 🅱y far his most important appointment was his first, Kentuckian John Marshall Harlan. Harlan 🅱elieved as Hayes did in expanding the role of the federal government, in defending the civil rights of individuals including African Americans within states, and in restraining monopoly power in the economy. Harlan dissented from the opinions of his fellow justices so often that he earned the nickname, “the Great Dissenter.” His most famous dissent came in *Plessy v. Ferguson* (1896), which sanctioned the growing movement to allow segregation of citizens on pu🅱lic accommodations like railroads, as long as equal 🅱ut separate facilities were provided. This policy of Jim Crow, legally supported segregation of the races, lasted in law until the key twentieth-century case of *🅱rown v. 🅱oard of Education* (1954), where the Court relied on Harlan’s dissent to overturn school segregation (*See also,* Eisenhower Administration).

Hayes’s other appointment was federal circuit judge William 🅱urnham Woods. His area of expertise was patent law and equity issues. 🅱ut Woods disappointed Hayes in not 🅱eing as committed to individual and African American rights as Harlan.

Two major decisions were made 🅱y the Court during the Hayes administration. One dealt with the power of the states to regulate private property, *Munn v. Illinois* (1877), and the other dealt with private segregation, *Hall v. DeCuir* (1878). *Munn* grew out of farmers’ discontent with grain warehouse [monopolies](http://go.galegroup.com/ps/retrieve.do?tabID=Reference&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchResultsType=MultiTab&searchType=BasicSearchForm&currentPosition=1&docId=GALE%7CBT2304200018&docType=Topic+overview&sort=Relevance&contentSegment=&prodId=SUIC&contentSet=GALE%7CBT2304200018&searchId=R1&userGroupName=holl83564&inPS=true#). In an eight-to-one decision, Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite argued that Illinois’ regulations of grain warehouses were valid uses of state power since the legal rule had