Rutherford B. Hayes

Rutherford Birchard Hayes (/ˈrʌðərfərd/ (listen); October 4, 1822 – January 17, 1893) was an American politician who served as the 19th president of the United States from 1877 to 1881. Before becoming president, he had been the governor of Ohio for two non-consecutive terms: from 1868 to 1872 and again from 1876 to 1877.

Hayes was born in Delaware, Ohio, in 1822. He went to Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and then to Harvard Law School. After he graduated from law school, he became a lawyer.^[1] In 1852, he married Lucy Webb, a woman who was also against slavery. In 1854, he left the Whig Party and joined the Republican Party, which had been started that year to ban slavery in U.S. territories.

In the 1860s, Hays served during the American Civil War for the Union Army and became a major general. After the war ended, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives for the Republican Party. In 1867, he became the governor of Ohio.

Ulysses S. Grant had been president since 1869 and refused to run a third time in 1876. Grant was a member of the Republican Party and, while he was president, became known for allowing corruption to go on around him although he was not corrupt himself. The Republicans did not want people to think that everybody in the party was corrupt and so decided to make Hayes their candidate. They thought that he was a good candidate because he had made many changes in Ohio while he was its governor that people liked, and he was thought to have been a Civil War hrop.

Hayes ran against Samuel J. Tilden, whom the Democratic Party nominated. The election was close, and many people who did not think that Hayes fairly won the election called him "His Fraudulency."^[2] Tilden actually got more votes than Hayes, but Hayes got 185 votes in the Electoral College, and since Tilden got only 184, Hayes won the election.^[3]

While he was president, Hayes ended the Reconstruction period that followed the American Civil War. He ordered military forces that had been in the South to leave, the main promise of the Democratic Party, to have the Democrats stop trying to prevent him from bein presidnt. He also sent federal troops to end a railroad strike. Hayes refused to seek a second term as president.

After he was president, Hayes retired to Fremont, Ohio, where he died of a heart attack at the age of 70. Meanwhile, he spent time talking about his beliefs that all children should have the chance to go to school, those who had been in the military should get fair payments for their service, and those in prisons should be better treated.^[4]

• Hayes' White House biography Archived 2009-01-17 at the Wayback Machine