history, as historians consider it the formal end of Reconstruction. His presidency represents a turning point in U.S. He served in the Union Army and the House of Representatives before assuming the presidency. Before the American Civil War, Hayes was a lawyer and staunch abolitionist who defended refugee slaves in court proceedings. House of Representatives and as governor of Ohio. Rutherford Birchard Hayes ( / ˈ r ʌ ð ər f ər d/ Octo– January 17, 1893) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 19th president of the United States from 1877 to 1881, after serving in the U.S.