Biden, Ohio’s Hayes share common bond
President Joe Biden’s public announcement of his decision to withdraw from Afghanistan has direct historical connection to the ending of Reconstruction.
A couple of factors might keep us from noticing.
First, Reconstruction in the United States was a domestic affair. And second, many think that Reconstruction ended because of a corrupt bargain to seat Rutherford B. Hayes in exchange for withdrawing troops from the South.
While the former is mostly true, historians have disproved the latter narrative.
Instead, Hayes had already determined that military Reconstruction was no longer tenable. His predecessor, Ulysses S. Grant, initially defended civil rights but eventually his attempts resulted in massive white public resistance against what they determined to be federal overreach. Hayes’ decision was borne out of this reality.
Instead, Hayes called for a new phase in Reconstruction. One in which he naively hoped that other political issues would transcend racial concerns.
Hayes, nonetheless, hoped to mitigate immediate problems by extracting promises from Southern governments to uphold civil rights. But, Southern whites had little interest in the federal government or Northern ideals.
Biden, who inherited the Afghan occupation, experienced a similar situation. While recent polling shows Americans did not support American presence in Afghanistan, the Afghan people (according to Biden) were also lackadaisical about the occupation. Biden commented, “American troops … should not be fighting in a war … that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves.”
This was a reality that (just as Grant discovered about Reconstruction before Hayes) President Donald Trump understood when he “reduced our military presences to less than 2,000 troops from … 16,000.”
And, in April 2021, Trump stated, “Getting out of Afghanistan is a wonderful and positive thing to do.”
Just like Hayes, Biden largely continued a policy already started by his predecessor.
While both Hayes and Biden were handed a situation not of their making, they both, nonetheless, oversaw outcomes counter the initial military campaigns (or at least objectives generated during or immediately after active hostilities).
The Taliban appears to have won the nation-building campaign in Afghanistan by waiting out America’s will to remain in the nation, just as Southern whites outlasted Northern whites’ desire to uphold Constitutional guarantees for civil rights.
Hayes and Biden both understood that without the will of the individuals whom the federal government was attempting to reconstruct, the only answer was military presence. And so, both presidents were saddled with decisions that had no immediate positive outcomes. Which leads to our ultimate parallel: Both Biden and Hayes knew the risk these decisions held for their reputations.
Later in his presidency Hayes remarked, “the colored people, if active in politics, were … treated as the public enemy. My task was to wipe out the color line, to … bring peace … I was ready … to risk my own … reputation with my party and the country.”
It seems Biden, like Hayes, is also hoping to mitigate the worst tendencies of the opposing side through economic repercussions and a call for protection of women.
We will continue to speak out for the basic rights for the Afghan people, women and girls … But, Biden surmised, “the way to do it is not through endless military deployments …” As with Hayes, these actions will probably have limited effect.
Yet, like Hayes, Biden is willing to risk his reputation: “I would rather take all that criticism than pass this decision … it’s the right one for America.”
Whether it is the right one for Afghanistan is another topic.
But as we learned from the Hayes era, only through the will of those who are being reconstructed can there be any lasting change.
Dustin Mclochlin is the historian at the Hayes Presidential Library & Museum at Spiegel Grove in Fremont. In office from 1877 to 1881, Rutherford B. Hayes was the 19th U.S. president.