Rutherford B. Hayes became president of the United States after the disputed election of 1876. But for Hayes the "golden years" were not the four he spent in the White House but the four he served as a unit commander in the Civil War. "It was as though he had encountered in the war a largeness of the human spirit, courage, generosity, sacrifice, that disappeared in the peace. . . . No matter how high he went, he would always be Colonel Hayes of the Twenty-third Ohio Volunteer Regiment from 1861 to 1865. This is the exciting story of his part in the western Virginia campaign, chasing the Confederate John Morgan up and down the Ohio, and fighting under Phil Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley.