Wikipedia:Today's featured article/March 4, 2012



Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) was the 19th President of the United States (1877–1881). Taking office as president on March 4, 1877, he oversaw the end of Reconstruction and the United States' entry into the Second Industrial Revolution. Hayes was a reformer who began the efforts that would lead to civil service reform and attempted, unsuccessfully, to reconcile the divisions that had led to the American Civil War fifteen years earlier. When the Civil War began, Hayes left a successful political career to join the Union Army. Wounded five times, most seriously at the Battle of South Mountain, he earned a reputation for bravery in combat and was promoted to the rank of major general. After the war, he served in the U.S. Congress from 1865 to 1867 as a Republican. Hayes left Congress to run for Governor of Ohio and was elected to three terms, serving from 1867 to 1871 and 1876 to 1877. In 1876, Hayes was elected president in one of the most contentious elections in American history. Losing the popular vote to Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, Hayes narrowly won the presidency after the Compromise of 1877, in which a Congressional commission awarded him twenty disputed electoral votes. (more...)

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