William Wheeler
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- Vice President to:
General Rutherford B. Hayes - Republican,
from Ohio.
- Rutherford B. Hayes served 1876 - 1879. He died in 1893, at the age of 71.
- Dates Served: Wheeler served as Vice President from 1877 - 1881.
- Political Party: Wheeler was a Republican, from New York.
- Born: 1819.
- Died: 1887, at the age of 68.
- The presidential opponent during the 1876 campaign was:
- Campaign issues in 1876:
- The issue this year was the same as 4 years ago, scandals and the return of
clean, honest government. The Democrats ran Tilden as a candidate of change,
and emphasised his record of having cleaned up dirty politics in New York. The
Republicans, however, still portrayed the Democrats as the party of treason,
wasting no opportunity to remind voters that every Confederate soldier that
ever shot a Union soldier was a Democrat. The vote was a close one, and the
winner wouldn't be known for a tense 3 months after the election.
- Notable Facts about William Wheeler:
- Religious affiliation: William was a loyal Presbyterian.
- Wheeler was a lawyer and a banker. He began his political career by serving
as District Attorney of Franklin County, New York from 1846 - 1849. He went
on to serve in the State Assembly, the State Senate.
- He was elected to the US House of Representatives, representing New York from
1861 - 1863, and again from 1866 - 1877.
- Willy developed a reputation as a squeaky-clean politician, displayed during the
so-called Salary Grab Act by Congress in 1873 where salaries were raised across
the board. Wheeler used the extra money he got to purchase government bonds which
he then turned around and cancelled, thereby putting the money back into government.
- He was nominated Vice President to run with Rutherford B Hayes due to his lack of any
scandals and his honest boyscout image, which was important in the shadow of all
of the Grant scandals over the previous 8 years.
- His term was relatively uneventful, except for the beginning during the
presidential election fiasco.
- Wheeler's favorite past-time while he was Veep was spending his Sunday evenings in
the White House Library singing hymns. He was definitely a wild partyer.
- After his term as VP, Wheeler left public service and spent six years as a
businessman in the railroads and banking industry, before passing away.
Notable events during his Vice Presidency:
- Hayes lost the Popular Vote in the election, but the Electoral Votes were in question.
It took 3 months to figure out just who had won the election in Louisiana, South
Carolina, and (of course) Florida. Tilden needed only one of their Electoral votes to win,
whereas Hayes needed all of them. Months of
intrigue followed in which charges of voter-fraud were thrown around and state militias
threatened to arm themselves and march on Washington. In the end a bargain was reached in
which the Southern states would "discover" that the Republican candidate had won, in exchange
for all Northern military troops being withdrawn from the entire South. The deal was sealed,
Hayes was declared the winner, and all troops were sent home.
- Civil Service Reform, in 1877, which prohibits federal employees from taking
part in political activities.
- Vaseline is invented, on May 14, 1878, by Robert Chesebrough.
- Chinese Immigration Act of 1880, which placed severe restrictions on future
Chinese immigration.
- President Hayes had the first telephone installed in the White
House. The installation technician was none other than Alexander
Graham Bell himself.
- Panama Canal policy in 1880, which was in reaction to French efforts at the
time to build a canal across Central America. The policy stated that it was
America's goal to build a canal across Panama that was under American control,
and not under any European control. The canal would not be built until 30 years
later, under Teddy Roosevelt.