During the Civil War it must have seemed as if Rutherford B. Hayes had a bulls-eye on him. The courageous but unlucky Ohio soldier was on the receiving end of five Confederate bullets during the war. His horses didn't fare much better. He had two of them shot out from under him. While not initially a supporter of the war, Hayes quickly came around to the Union cause and backed up his support by putting himself in the line of fire.
As Southern states began to secede following Abraham Lincoln's election as president in November of 1860, Hayes was lukewarm on the idea of a civil war to restore the Union. He realized that the two sides were likely irreconcilable, and his answer for the seceding states was to "let them go." Ohio had voted for Lincoln in 1860, but in Cincinnati where Hayes was practicing law, many voters turned against the Republican party after secession. Kentucky lay across the Ohio river, where slavery was lawful and where many of the people Cincinnati had close friends and relatives. The Democrats and the Know-Nothing party won the city elections in April 1861, shutting out the Republicans and ending Hayes' tenure as the city solicitor.
Hayes returned to private practice and formed a very brief law partnership with Leopold Markbreit. But three days later the war began. When the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, Hayes decided to join a volunteer company composed of his friends from the local Literary Society. In June of 1861, Governor William Dennison appointed some of the officers of the volunteer company to positions in the 23rd Regiment of Ohio Volunteer Infantry. Hayes was promoted to major. A member of the regiment was a young private from Canton, Ohio named William McKinley.
After a month of training, Hayes and the 23rd Ohio set out for western Virginia in July 1861 as a part of the Kanawha Division. They did not face their enemy until September, when the regiment encountered Confederates at Carnifex Ferry in present-day West Virginia and drove them back. In November, Hayes was promoted to lieutenant colonel. He led his troops deeper into western Virginia, where they remained for the winter. The division resumed its advance the following spring, and Hayes led several raids against the rebel forces. On one of which he sustained a minor injury to his knee.
In September of 1862, Hayes's regiment was called east to reinforce General John Pope's Army of Virginia at the Second Battle of Bull Run. Hayes and his troops did not arrive in time for the battle. They joined the Army of the Potomac as it hurried north to cut off Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, which was advancing into Maryland. En route, they faced the Confederates at the Battle of South Mountain on September 14. Hayes led a charge against an entrenched position and was shot through his left arm, fracturing the bone. He had one of his men tie a handkerchief above the wound in an effort to stop the bleeding, and continued to lead his men in the battle. While resting, he ordered his men to meet a flanking attack, but the order was not followed. His entire command moved backward, leaving Hayes lying in between the lines. Fearing he might not survive, Hayes left messages for his wife and friends with a wounded Confederate soldier who was lying near him. Eventually, his men brought Hayes back behind their lines, and he was taken to hospital. The regiment continued on to Antietam, but Hayes was out of action for the rest of the campaign.
In October of 1862, Hayes was promoted to colonel and assigned to command of the first brigade of the Kanawha Division as a brevet brigadier general. (Brevet promotions gave the officer the authority of a higher rank while the army was in the field.) The division spent the following winter and spring near Charleston, Virginia (present-day West Virginia), out of contact with the enemy.
Hayes saw little action until July 1863, when his division skirmished with John Hunt Morgan's cavalry at the Battle of Buffington Island. Hayes remained in Charleston for the rest of the summer. He encouraged the men of the 23rd Ohio to re-enlist, and many did so.
In 1864, the Army command structure in West Virginia was reorganized, and Hayes's division was assigned to George Crook's Army of West Virginia. They advanced into southwestern Virginia, where they destroyed Confederate salt and lead mines. On May 9, 1864, they engaged Confederate troops at Cloyd's Mountain, where Hayes and his men charged the enemy entrenchments and drove the rebels from the field. The Union forces destroyed Confederate supplies and met their enemy in a series of skirmishes. Hayes and his brigade moved to the Shenandoah Valley for the Valley Campaigns of 1864. Crook's corps was attached to Major General David Hunter's Army of the Shenandoah and soon back in contact with Confederate forces, capturing Lexington, Virginia on June 11. They continued south toward Lynchburg, tearing up railroad track as they advanced. Hunter did not advance further because he believed the Confederate army at Lynchburg was too powerful, however, so Hayes and his brigade returned to West Virginia. Hayes believed that Hunter was wrong in not pressing forward. He wrote in a letter to his wife Lucy: "General Crook would have taken Lynchburg."
Before the army could make another attempt, Confederate General Jubal Early's raid into Maryland required Hayes and his men to head north. Early's army surprised them at Kernstown on July 24, where Hayes was wounded yet again, receiving a bullet to the shoulder. Hayes also had a horse shot out from under him, and his army was defeated. Retreating into Maryland, the army was reorganized again, with Major General Philip Sheridan replacing Hunter. By August of 1864, Early was retreating, with Sheridan in pursuit. Hayes's troops fought off a Confederate assault at Berryville and advanced to Opequon Creek, where they broke through enemy lines and pursued the Confederates further south. They followed up that victory with further victories at Fisher's Hill on September 22, and at Cedar Creek on October 19. At Cedar Creek, Hayes sprained his ankle after being thrown from a horse and was struck in the head by a spent round. The head wound did not result in serious damage.
Cedar Creek marked the end of the campaign. Hayes was promoted to brigadier general in October 1864 and brevetted major general. The army went into winter quarters and in the spring of 1865 the war quickly came to a close with Robert E. Lee's surrender to Ulysses Grant at Appomattox. Hayes was present in Washington, D.C. that May and observed the Grand Review of the Armies, after which he and the 23rd Ohio returned to their home state to be mustered out of the service.
Ulysses S. Grant later wrote of Hayes that "his conduct on the field was marked by conspicuous gallantry as well as the display of qualities of a higher order than that of mere personal daring."