Post-war Years
In 1849 Hays was appointed by the United States government as the US Indian agent for the Gila River country in New Mexico and Arizona.
The next year the Hayses joined the migration to California. Hays was elected sheriff of San Francisco County in 1850, and later became active in politics. In 1853, he was appointed US surveyor general for California.
Hays was one of the founders of the city of Oakland. In the following years, he amassed a considerable fortune through real estate and ranching enterprises. In 1860, while in Virginia City, Nevada, on business, he heard the news of the First Battle of Pyramid Lake. He commanded a force of volunteer soldiers at the Second Battle of Pyramid Lake.
During the Civil War, Hayes retired from any further political or military activity. His antecedents as a Southerner and a Jacksonian Democrat made him suspect in the Republican Party-dominated California political scene. Hounded and surveilled, but unwilling to take up arms against the Union, Hayes kept a mostly low profile until the end of Reconstruction.
In 1876, Hays was elected as a delegate to the Democratic Party national convention, which nominated Samuel J. Tilden for the presidency of the United States. He played a role in convincing the Democratic Party and President-elect Tilden to acquiesce in forfeiting the Presidency in return for ending Reconstruction.
Hays died in California on April 21, 1883. He was buried in Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland.
Read more about this topic: John Coffee Hays
Famous quotes containing the words post-war and/or years:
“Much of what Mr. Wallace calls his global thinking is, no matter how you slice it, still “globaloney.” Mr. Wallace’s warp of sense and his woof of nonsense is very tricky cloth out of which to cut the pattern of a post-war world.”
—Clare Boothe Luce (1903–1987)
“It takes twenty years or more of peace to make a man; it takes only twenty seconds of war to destroy him.”
—Baudouin I (b. 1930)