Rutherford B. Hayes

Rutherford Birchard Hayes was an American congressman, governor of Ohio, and the 19th President of the United States from 1877 to 1881. Hayes was a lawyer and staunch abolitionist who defended runaway slaves in court proceedings. He was seriously wounded fighting in the Union Army during the American Civil War. He assumed the presidency at the end of the Reconstruction Era through the Compromise of 1877. In office he ended Army support for Republican state governments in the South, promoted civil service reform, and attempted to reconcile the divisions left over from the Civil War and Reconstruction.