Executive Order—Death of Rutherford B. Hayes

To the People of the United States:

The death of Rutherford B. Hayes, who was President of the United States from March 4, 1877, to March 4, 1881, at his home in Fremont, Ohio, at 11 p.m. yesterday, is an event the announcement of which will be received with very general and very sincere sorrow. His public service extended over many years and over a wide range of official duty. He was a patriotic citizen, a lover of the flag and of our free institutions, an industrious and conscientious civil officer, a soldier of dauntless courage, a loyal comrade and friend, a sympathetic and helpful neighbor, and the honored head of a happy Christian home. He has steadily grown in the public esteem, and the impartial historian will not fail to recognize the conscientiousness, the manliness, and the courage that so strongly characterized his whole public career.

As an expression of the public sorrow it is ordered that the Executive Mansion and the several Executive Departments at Washington be draped in mourning and the flags thereon placed at half-staff for a period of thirty days, and that on the day of the funeral all public business in the Departments be suspended, and that suitable military and naval honors, under the orders of the Secretaries of War and of the Navy, be rendered on that day.

Done at the city of Washington, this 18th day of January, A. D. 1893, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and seventeenth.

BENJ. HARRISON

By the President.

JOHN W. FOSTER,

Secretary of State.