Rutherford Birchard Hayes (October 4, 1822 – January 17, 1893) is the 19th President of the United States (1877–1881).

As president, he oversees the end of Reconstruction and the United States' entry into the Second Industrial Revolution.

Hayes is a reformer who begins the efforts that lead to civil service reform and attempts, unsuccessfully, to reconcile the divisions that had led to the American Civil War fifteen years earlier.

Born in Delaware, Ohio, Hayes practices law in Lower Sandusky (now Fremont) and is city solicitor of Cincinnati from 1858 to 1861.

When the Civil War begins, Hayes leaves a successful political career to join the Union Army.

Wounded five times, most seriously at the Battle of South Mountain, he earns a reputation for bravery in combat and is promoted to the rank of major general.

After the war, he serves in the U.S. Congress from 1865 to 1867 as a Republican.

Hayes leaves Congress to run for Governor of Ohio and is elected to two consecutive terms, serving from 1868 to 1872.

After his second term ends, he resumes the practice of law for a time, but returns to politics in 1876 to serve a third term as governor.

In 1876, Hayes is elected president in one of the most contentious and hotly disputed elections in American history.

Although he loses the popular vote to Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, Hayes wins the presidency by the narrowest of margins after a Congressional commission awards him twenty disputed electoral votes.

The result is the Compromise of 1877, in which the Democrats acquiesce to Hayes's election and Hayes accepts the end of military occupation of the South.

Hayes believes in meritocratic government, equal treatment without regard to race, and improvement through education.

He orders federal troops to quell the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 and orders them out of Southern capitals as Reconstruction ends.

He implements modest civil service reforms that lay the groundwork for further reform in the 1880s and 1890s.

Hayes keeps his pledge not to run for reelection.

He retires to his home in Ohio and becomes an advocate of social and educational reform.