As president, Hayes implemented modest civil-service reforms that laid the groundwork for further reform in the 1880s and 1890s. He vetoed the Bland–Allison Act of 1878, which put silver money into circulation and raised nominal prices; Hayes saw the maintenance of the gold standard as essential to economic recovery. His policy toward western Indians anticipated the assimilationist program of the Dawes Act of 1887.
At the end of his term, Hayes kept his pledge not to run for reelection and retired to his home in Ohio. He became an advocate of social and educational reform. Biographer Ari Hoogenboom has written that Hayes's greatest achievement was to restore popular faith in the presidency and to reverse the deterioration of executive power that had established itself after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865. His supporters have praised his commitment to civil-service reform; his critics have derided his leniency toward former Confederate states as well as his withdrawal of federal support for African Americans' voting and civil rights.[5] Historians and scholars generally rank Hayes as an average to below-average president.