Learn more about the Presidents of the United States. Throughout most of its history, American politics has been dominated by political parties. If you’re looking to learn more about the past Presidents who have led our country, you’re in the right place.
The president of the United States is both the head of state and the head of government. He or she is chosen by the Electoral College for a four-year term. The person in this job is in charge of the executive branch of the federal government and is the head of the US Armed Forces. Since the job was made official in 1789, 45 men have held it 46 times. The Electoral College voted unanimously for George Washington to be the first president. Grover Cleveland, who served two non-consecutive terms, is counted as both the 22nd and 24th president of the United States. This is why the number of presidencies is different from the number of people who have been president.
William Henry Harrison’s presidency was the shortest in American history. He died just 31 days after taking office in 1841. Franklin D. Roosevelt was in office the longest, for more than twelve years, until he died in 1945, near the beginning of his fourth term. He is the only president of the United States to have held more than two terms. Since the Twenty-second Amendment was added to the United States Constitution in 1951, no one can be elected president more than twice. Also, no one can be elected more than once if they served more than two years of a term that someone else won.
So if you are looking for List of presidents of the United States in Order for FIRST TO LAST then read the full post every detailed overview of US PRESIDENTS IN ORDER.
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LIST OF US PRESIDENTS IN ORDER with Years
1. George Washington (1789–97)
George Washington was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797.
Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of the Continental Army, Washington led the Patriot forces to victory in the American Revolutionary War and served as the president of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which created the Constitution of the United States and the American federal government. Washington has been called the “Father of his Country” for his manifold leadership in the formative days of the country.
From 1749 to 1750, Washington was the official surveyor of Culpeper County, Virginia. This was his first job in the public sector. During the French and Indian War, he got his first training as a soldier and his first command with the Virginia Regiment. He was later elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses and sent as a delegate to the Continental Congress, where he was made Commanding General of the Continental Army. During the American Revolutionary War, he used this title to lead American and French forces against the British at the Siege of Yorktown. The British were defeated and gave up. After the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783, he quit his job.
2. John Adams (1797-1801)
John Adams was an American statesman, attorney, diplomat, writer, and Founding Father who served as the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801.
Before his presidency, he was a leader of the American Revolution that achieved independence from Great Britain, and during the war served as a diplomat in Europe. He was twice elected vice president, serving from 1789 to 1797 in a prestigious role with little power. Adams was a dedicated diarist and regularly corresponded with many important contemporaries, including his wife and adviser Abigail Adams as well as his friend and rival Thomas Jefferson.
A lawyer and political activist prior to the Revolution, Adams was devoted to the right to counsel and presumption of innocence. He defied anti-British sentiment and successfully defended British soldiers against murder charges arising from the Boston Massacre. Adams was a Massachusetts delegate to the Continental Congress and became a leader of the revolution. He assisted Jefferson in drafting the Declaration of Independence in 1776. As a diplomat in Europe, he helped negotiate a peace treaty with Great Britain and secured vital governmental loans. Adams was the primary author of the Massachusetts Constitution in 1780, which influenced the United States constitution, as did his essay Thoughts on Government.
3. Thomas Jefferson (1801-09)
Thomas Jefferson was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809.
He was previously the nation’s second vice president under John Adams and the first United States secretary of state under George Washington. The principal author of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson was a proponent of democracy, republicanism, and individual rights, motivating American colonists to break from the Kingdom of Great Britain and form a new nation. He produced formative documents and decisions at state, national, and international levels.
During the American Revolution, Jefferson was a member of the Continental Congress, which was responsible for making the Declaration of Independence. As a lawmaker in Virginia, he wrote a law for religious freedom in the state. During the Revolutionary War, he was the second Governor of Virginia from 1779 to 1781. In 1785, Jefferson was chosen to be the United States Minister to France. From 1790 to 1793, he was President George Washington’s first secretary of state. During the First Party System, Jefferson and James Madison set up the Democratic-Republican Party to fight against the Federalist Party. Together with James Madison, he wrote the controversial Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions in 1798 and 1799. These resolutions were meant to strengthen states’ rights by getting rid of the Alien and Sedition Acts, which were passed by the federal government.
4. James Madison (1809-17)
James Madison Jr. was an American statesman, diplomat, and Founding Father. He served as the fourth president of the United States from 1809 to 1817. Madison is hailed as the “Father of the Constitution” for his pivotal role in drafting and promoting the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights.
Madison was born into a prominent planter family in Virginia. He served as a member of the Virginia House of Delegates and the Continental Congress during and after the American Revolutionary War. Unsatisfied with the weak national government established by the Articles of Confederation, he helped organize the Constitutional Convention, which produced a new constitution. Madison’s Virginia Plan was the basis for the Convention’s deliberations, and he was an influential voice at the convention. He became one of the leaders in the movement to ratify the Constitution, and joined Alexander Hamilton and John Jay in writing The Federalist Papers, a series of pro-ratification essays which remains prominent among works of political science in American history. Madison emerged as an important leader in the House of Representatives and was a close adviser to President George Washington.
5. James Monroe (1817-25)
James Monroe was an American statesman, lawyer, diplomat, and Founding Father who served as the fifth president of the United States from 1817 to 1825.
A member of the Democratic-Republican Party, Monroe was the last president of the Virginia dynasty and the Republican Generation; his presidency coincided with the Era of Good Feelings, concluding the First Party System era of American politics. He is perhaps best known for issuing the Monroe Doctrine, a policy of opposing European colonialism in the Americas while effectively asserting U.S. dominance, empire, and hegemony in the hemisphere. He also served as governor of Virginia, a member of the United States Senate, U.S. ambassador to France and Britain, the seventh Secretary of State, and the eighth Secretary of War.
Monroe was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, to a family of planters who owned slaves. During the American Revolutionary War, he served in the Continental Army. From 1780 to 1783, he studied law with Thomas Jefferson. After that, he was a delegate in the Continental Congress. As a delegate to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, Monroe fought against putting the US Constitution into effect. In 1790, he became the leader of the Democratic-Republican Party after being elected to the Senate. In 1794, he quit the Senate to become President George Washington’s ambassador to France. In 1796, however, Washington called him back. Monroe was elected Governor of Virginia in 1799, and he strongly backed Jefferson in the presidential election of 1800.
6. John Quincy Adams (1825-29)
John Quincy Adams was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, and diarist who served as the sixth president of the United States, from 1825 to 1829. He previously served as the eighth United States Secretary of State from 1817 to 1825.
During his long diplomatic and political career, Adams also served as an ambassador, and as a member of the United States Congress representing Massachusetts in both chambers. He was the eldest son of John Adams, who served as the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801, and First Lady Abigail Adams. Initially a Federalist like his father, he won election to the presidency as a member of the Democratic-Republican Party, and in the mid-1830s became affiliated with the Whig Party.
Adams was born in Braintree, Massachusetts, but he spent most of his childhood in Europe, where his diplomat father worked. Adams opened a successful law office in Boston after he got back to the United States. Adams was named the U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands by President George Washington in 1794. He would hold other high-level diplomatic positions until 1801 when Thomas Jefferson became president. In 1802, Adams was elected to the U.S. Senate by Federalist leaders in Massachusetts. However, Adams broke with the Federalist Party over foreign policy and was not able to run again. Adams was named the U.S. ambassador to Russia by Democratic-Republican President James Madison in 1809. Adams was bilingual and worked as a diplomat while James Madison was president. He was also part of the American team that helped end the War of 1812. Adams was chosen as Secretary of State by President James Monroe in 1817. In this position, Adams was in charge of negotiating the Adams–Ons Treaty, which gave the United States the right to take over Florida. He also helped come up with the Monroe Doctrine, which became a key part of U.S. foreign policy. In 1818, the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia chose Adams to be a member.
7. Andrew Jackson (1829-37)
Andrew Jackson was an American lawyer, planter, general, and statesman who served as the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. Before being elected to the presidency, he gained fame as a general in the United States Army and served in both houses of the U.S. Congress. Although often praised as an advocate for ordinary Americans and for his work in preserving the union of states, Jackson has also been criticized for his racial policies, particularly his treatment of Native Americans.
Before the American Revolutionary War, Jackson was born in the Carolina colony. He went to law school and got married to Rachel Donelson Robards. He was a representative for Tennessee in the US House of Representatives and US Senate for a short time. After he quit, he worked from 1798 to 1804 as a judge on the Tennessee Supreme Court. Jackson bought a piece of land that became known as the Hermitage. He was a wealthy planter who owned a lot of slaves who were African Americans. In 1801, he was made colonel of the Tennessee militia, and the next year, he was chosen to lead it. During the Red Stick War in 1813 and 1814, he was in charge of troops. He won the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. In the Treaty of Fort Jackson that followed, the Creek had to give up large parts of what is now Alabama and Georgia. Jackson became a national hero when he won the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. This was part of the war against the British that was going on at the same time. Later, he was in charge of U.S. troops in the First Seminole War, which led to Spain giving up Florida. Jackson was Florida’s first territorial governor for a short time before he went back to the Senate. In 1824, he ran for president and won a majority of the popular vote but not a majority of the electoral vote. With the help of Henry Clay, the House of Representatives chose John Quincy Adams in a contingent election. Jackson’s supporters said that Adams and Clay had made a “corrupt deal,” so they started making their own political group, which would become the Democratic Party.
8. Martin Van Buren (1837-41)
Martin Van Buren was an American lawyer and statesman who served as the eighth president of the United States from 1837 to 1841.
A primary founder of the Democratic Party, he served as New York’s attorney general, U.S. senator, then briefly as the ninth governor of New York before joining Andrew Jackson’s administration as the tenth United States secretary of state, minister to the United Kingdom, and ultimately the eighth vice president of the United States when named Jackson’s running mate for the 1832 election. Van Buren won the presidency in 1836, lost re-election in 1840, and failed to win the Democratic nomination in 1844. Later in his life, Van Buren emerged as an elder statesman and an important anti-slavery leader who led the Free Soil Party ticket in the 1848 presidential election.
Van Buren was born in Kinderhook, New York. Most of the people who lived there were Dutch and spoke Dutch as their main language. He was the first president to be born after the American Revolution, in which his father fought as a patriot. He is also the only president to have learned English as a second language. After becoming a lawyer, he joined the Democratic-Republican Party, ran for office, and won a seat in the New York State Senate. In 1821, he was elected to the U.S. Senate. In the 1820s, Van Buren was the most powerful politician from New York because he was the leader of the Bucktails faction. He also set up a political machine called the Albany Regency.
9. William Henry Harrison (1841)
William Henry Harrison was an American military officer and politician who served as the ninth president of the United States. Harrison died just 31 days after his inauguration in 1841, and had the shortest presidency in United States history.
He was also the first United States president to die in office, and a brief constitutional crisis resulted as presidential succession was not then fully defined in the United States Constitution. Harrison was the last president born as a British subject in the Thirteen Colonies and was the paternal grandfather of Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd president of the United States.
He was born into the Harrison family of Virginia at their homestead, Berkeley Plantation in Charles City County, Virginia. His father, Benjamin Harrison V, was a Founding Father of the United States. Harrison was a young soldier when he took part in the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794. This was an American military victory that put an end to the Northwest Indian War. Later, he led a military force against Tecumseh’s group at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811. This is how he got the nickname “Old Tippecanoe.” During the War of 1812, he was made a major general in the Army and led the Americans to victory at the Battle of the Thames in Upper Canada.
10. John Tyler (1841-45)
John Tyler was the tenth president of the United States, serving from 1841 to 1845, after briefly holding office as the tenth vice president in 1841. He was elected vice president on the 1840 Whig ticket with President William Henry Harrison, succeeding to the presidency following Harrison’s death 31 days after assuming office. Tyler was a stalwart supporter and advocate of states’ rights, including regarding slavery, and he adopted nationalistic policies as president only when they did not infringe on the states’ powers. His unexpected rise to the presidency posed a threat to the presidential ambitions of Henry Clay and other Whig politicians and left Tyler estranged from both of the nation’s major political parties at the time.
Tyler was born into a wealthy Virginia family that owned slaves. During a time of political change, he became well-known across the country. In the 1820s, the Democratic-Republican Party was the only political party in the country, and it was split into different groups. Tyler was a Democrat at first, but he fought against President Andrew Jackson during the Nullification Crisis because he thought Jackson’s actions violated the rights of the states. He also didn’t like how Jackson gave himself more power during the Bank War. Because of this, Tyler joined the Whig Party. He was a state lawmaker and governor of Virginia. He was also a U.S. representative and U.S. senator. Tyler ran for vice president on the Whig ticket, which lost the election for president in 1836. He was William Henry Harrison’s only choice for running mate on the Whig ticket for president in 1840. Under the slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too,” Harrison and Tyler beat Martin Van Buren, who was the president at the time.
11. James K. Polk (1845-49)
James Knox Polk was the 11th president of the United States, serving from 1845 to 1849. He previously was the 13th speaker of the House of Representatives and ninth governor of Tennessee. A protégé of Andrew Jackson, he was a member of the Democratic Party and an advocate of Jacksonian democracy.
Polk is chiefly known for extending the territory of the United States through the Mexican–American War; during his presidency, the United States expanded significantly with the annexation of the Republic of Texas, the Oregon Territory, and the Mexican Cession following American victory in the Mexican–American War.
Polk became a successful lawyer in Tennessee. In 1823, he was elected to the state legislature, and in 1825, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he became a strong supporter of Andrew Jackson. After being chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, he became Speaker of the House in 1835. He is the only person who has been both Speaker of the House and president of the United States. Polk left Congress to run for governor of Tennessee. He won in 1839 but lost in 1841 and 1843. As the Democratic Party’s candidate for president in 1844, he was a dark horse. He went into his party’s convention as a possible candidate for vice president, but he ended up at the top of the ticket as a compromise when no presidential candidate could get the two-thirds majority needed. Polk beat Henry Clay, who was running for the rival Whig Party, in the general election.
12. Zachary Taylor (1849-50)
Zachary Taylor was an American military leader who served as the 12th president of the United States from 1849 until his death in 1850. Taylor was a career officer in the United States Army, rising to the rank of major general and becoming a national hero for his victories in the Mexican–American War
As a result, he won election to the White House despite his vague political beliefs. His top priority as president was to preserve the Union. He died 16 months into his term, having made no progress on the most divisive issue in Congress and the nation: slavery.
Taylor was born into a wealthy family of plantation owners in Virginia. When he was young, his family moved west to Louisville, Kentucky. He was the last president born before the Constitution was written. He became an officer in the U.S. Army in 1808, and as a captain in the War of 1812, he made a name for himself. He moved up in the military, building forts along the Mississippi River. In 1832, as a colonel, he joined the Black Hawk War. Because of his success in the Second Seminole War, he was called “Old Rough and Ready” by people all over the country.
13. Millard Fillmore (1850-53)
Millard Fillmore was the 13th president of the United States, serving from 1850 to 1853, the last to be a member of the Whig Party while in the White House. A former member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Upstate New York, Fillmore was elected as the 12th vice president of the United States in 1848, and succeeded to the presidency in July 1850 upon the death of U.S. President Zachary Taylor. Fillmore was instrumental in the passing of the Compromise of 1850, a bargain that led to a brief truce in the battle over the expansion of slavery. He failed to win the Whig nomination for president in 1852 but gained the endorsement of the nativist Know Nothing Party four years later and finished third in the 1856 presidential election.
Fillmore was born poor in the Finger Lakes area of New York State, and his parents worked as renters on farms while he was growing up. Even though he didn’t go to school much, he worked hard to get out of poverty and become a successful lawyer. He was a well-known lawyer and politician in the Buffalo area. In 1828, he was elected to the New York Assembly, and in 1832, he was elected to the House of Representatives. At first, he was a member of the Anti-Masonic Party, but by the mid-1830s, he had switched to the Whig Party. He ran against the editor Thurlow Weed and Weed’s student, William H. Seward, to be the leader of the state party. Fillmore said that slavery was wrong, but that the federal government couldn’t do anything about it. Seward was very against slavery, and he thought that the federal government should do something to stop it. When the Whigs took over the U.S. House of Representatives in 1841, Fillmore didn’t win the position of Speaker, but he did become the head of the Ways and Means Committee. Fillmore lost his bids for the Whig nomination for vice president in 1844 and for New York governor the same year. In 1847, he became the first person to be directly elected to the position of Comptroller of New York.
14. Franklin Pierce (1853-57)
Franklin Pierce was the 14th president of the United States, serving from 1853 to 1857. He was a northern Democrat who believed that the abolitionist movement was a fundamental threat to the nation’s unity. He alienated anti-slavery groups by signing the Kansas–Nebraska Act and enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act.
He was born in the state of New Hampshire. He was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1833 until 1837, when he was elected to the Senate. He stayed in the Senate until 1842, when he quit. His private law practise did well, and in 1845, he was named the U.S. Attorney for New Hampshire. As an Army brigadier general, he fought in the Mexican–American War. At the 1852 Democratic National Convention, he was nominated for president on the 49th ballot because Democrats saw him as a candidate who could bring together the interests of the North and the South. In 1852, he and his running mate, William R. King, beat the Whig Party’s Winfield Scott and William A. Graham by a large margin.
15. James Buchanan (1857-61)
James Buchanan Jr. was an American lawyer, diplomat and politician who served as the 15th president of the United States from 1857 to 1861. He previously served as secretary of state from 1845 to 1849 and represented Pennsylvania in both houses of the U.S. Congress.
Buchanan was a well-known lawyer in Pennsylvania, and he was a Federalist when he was first elected to the state House of Representatives. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1820 and served there for five terms. He was part of the Democratic Party, which was led by Andrew Jackson. In 1832, Buchanan was Jackson’s minister to Russia. He was elected as a senator from Pennsylvania in 1834, and he stayed in that job for 11 years. In 1845, President James K. Polk chose him to be his secretary of state. Eight years later, President Franklin Pierce chose him to be his minister to the United Kingdom.
16. Abraham Lincoln (1861-65)
Abraham Lincoln led the nation through its most trying time, the Civil War. A notable statesman and orator, he is one of the most popular presidents in history. He was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. Read more about Abraham Lincoln.
Lincoln was born in a log cabin in Kentucky to poor parents, and he grew up on the frontier, mostly in Indiana. He learned on his own and went on to become a lawyer, the leader of the Whig Party, an Illinois state lawmaker, and a U.S. Congressman from Illinois. In 1849, he went back to his law practise in central Illinois, which was doing well. In 1854, he got angry about the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which made it legal to have slaves in the territory, and he went back into politics. He quickly rose to the top of the new Republican Party. During the 1858 Senate campaign against Stephen A. Douglas, he talked to people all over the country. In 1860, Lincoln ran for president and won by taking the North by storm. People in the South who supported slavery saw his election as a threat to slavery, so Southern states started to leave the Union. During this time, the Confederate States of America, which had just been formed, started taking over federal military bases in the south. The Confederate States attacked a U.S. fort in South Carolina just over a month after Lincoln became president. After the bombardment, Lincoln gathered troops to put an end to the rebellion and bring the Union back together.
17. Andrew Johnson (1865-69)
Andrew Johnson was the 17th president of the United States, serving from 1865 to 1869. He assumed the presidency as he was vice president at the time of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Johnson was a Democrat who ran with Lincoln on the National Union ticket, coming to office as the Civil War concluded. He favored quick restoration of the seceded states to the Union without protection for the newly freed people who were formerly enslaved. This led to conflict with the Republican-dominated Congress, culminating in his impeachment by the House of Representatives in 1868. He was acquitted in the Senate by one vote.
Johnson came from a poor family and never went to school. Before he moved to Greeneville, Tennessee, he worked as a tailor’s apprentice in several frontier towns. Before being elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives in 1835, he was an alderman and the mayor of the town. After a short time in the Tennessee Senate, Johnson was elected to the House of Representatives in 1843, where he served five two-year terms. He was governor of Tennessee for four years, and in 1857, the Tennessee legislature chose him to go to the Senate. During his time in Congress, he worked to get the Homestead Act passed. It became law soon after he left the Senate in 1862. Southern slave states, including Tennessee, broke away to form the Confederate States of America, but Johnson stayed with the Union. He was the only senator from a Confederate state who didn’t quit when he found out that his state was leaving the Union. After most of Tennessee had been taken back, Lincoln made him the Military Governor of Tennessee in 1862. In 1864, Lincoln chose Johnson as his running mate because he wanted to send a message of national unity as he ran for re-election. Johnson became vice president after Lincoln won the election.
18. Ulysses S. Grant (1869-77)
Ulysses S. Grant was an American military officer and politician who served as the 18th president of the United States from 1869 to 1877. As Commanding General, he led the Union Army to victory in the American Civil War in 1865 and thereafter briefly served as Secretary of War. Later, as president, Grant was an effective civil rights executive who signed the bill that created the Justice Department and worked with Radical Republicans to protect African Americans during Reconstruction.
Grant grew up in Ohio and was very good at working with horses. Grant was accepted to West Point. He graduated 21st in his class in 1843 and did a great job in the Mexican–American War. He married Julia Dent in 1848, and they had four children together. Grant quit the army in 1854 and went back to live with his family, but they were poor. When the American Civil War started in 1861, he joined the Union Army. He became well-known after he led the Union to early victories in the Western Theater. In 1863, he led the Vicksburg campaign, which gave the North control of the Mississippi River and split the Confederacy in two. After his victory at Chattanooga, President Abraham Lincoln gave him the rank of lieutenant general. During the bloody Overland Campaign and at Petersburg, Grant fought against Robert E. Lee for thirteen months. Lee ran away from Petersburg, and at Appomattox, Grant beat him. On April 9, 1865, Lee gave up to Grant in a formal way. Lincoln was killed a week later, and President Andrew Johnson took over. In 1866, Grant was made General of the Army. Later, Grant and Johnson openly disagreed about Reconstruction policies. Grant used the Reconstruction Acts, which were passed over Johnson’s veto, to make sure that newly freed African Americans had their civil rights protected.
19. Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-1881)
Rutherford Birchard Hayes 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. House of Representatives and as governor of Ohio. Before the American Civil War, Hayes was a lawyer and staunch abolitionist who defended refugee slaves in court proceedings. He served in the Union Army and the House of Representatives before assuming the presidency. His presidency represents a turning point in U.S. history, as historians consider it the formal end of Reconstruction. Hayes, a prominent member of the Republican “Half-Breed” faction, placated both Southern Democrats and Whiggish Republican businessmen by ending the federal government’s involvement in attempting to bring racial equality in the South.
20. James Garfield (1881)
James Abram Garfield was the 20th president of the United States, serving from March 4, 1881 until his death six months later—two months after he was shot by an assassin.
A lawyer and Civil War general, he served nine terms in the United States House of Representatives and is to date the only sitting member of the House to be elected president. Before his candidacy for the White House, he had been elected to the U.S. Senate by the Ohio General Assembly—a position he declined when he became president-elect.
Garfield was born in a log cabin in northeastern Ohio into a poor family. He grew up there. After he finished Williams College, he went to law school and became a lawyer. He was involved with his church, the Disciples of Christ. Garfield was elected to the Ohio State Senate as a Republican in 1859 and stayed there until 1861. He was against the Confederacy leaving the Union. During the American Civil War, he was a major general in the Union Army and fought in the battles of Middle Creek, Shiloh, and Chickamauga. In 1862, the people of Ohio’s 19th district chose Garfield to be their representative in Congress. During his time in Congress, he was a strong supporter of the gold standard and was known as a good speaker. At first, he agreed with the Radical Republicans’ ideas about Reconstruction, but later he came to like the way the Moderate Republicans enforced civil rights for freed slaves. In 1876, Garfield published a famous proof of the Pythagorean theorem that showed how good he was at math.
21. Chester Arthur (1881-85)
Chester Alan Arthur was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 21st president of the United States from 1881 to 1885. Previously the 20th U.S. vice president, he succeeded to the presidency upon the death of President James A. Garfield in September 1881, two months after Garfield was shot by an assassin.
Arthur was born in Fairfield, Vermont. He grew up in upstate New York and became a lawyer in New York City. During the American Civil War, he was the quartermaster general of the New York Militia. After the war, he spent more time on politics in New York and quickly moved up in Senator Roscoe Conkling’s political organisation. In 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant made him Collector of the Port of New York. He was a strong backer of Conkling and the Stalwart faction of the Republican Party. In 1878, President Rutherford B. Hayes fired Arthur as part of a plan to change the way the federal government did business in New York. In 1880, Garfield won the Republican nomination for president. As an Eastern Stalwart, Arthur was chosen as Garfield’s running mate to make sure the ticket was balanced. Four months into his term, an assassin shot President Garfield. He died 11 weeks after that, and President Arthur took over.
22. Grover Cleveland (1885-89)
Stephen Grover Cleveland was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 22nd and 24th president of the United States from 1885 to 1889 and from 1893 to 1897. Cleveland is the only president in American history to serve two non-consecutive terms in office.
23. Benjamin Harrison (1889-93)
Benjamin Harrison was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 23rd president of the United States from 1889 to 1893. He was a member of the Harrison family of Virginia–a grandson of the ninth president, William Henry Harrison, and a great-grandson of Benjamin Harrison V, a founding father.
Harrison was born on a farm near the Ohio River. He went to college in Oxford, Ohio, and got his degree from Miami University. After he moved to Indianapolis, he became a well-known lawyer, Presbyterian church leader, and Indiana politician. He was a colonel in the Union Army during the American Civil War. In 1865, the U.S. Senate confirmed him as a brevet brigadier general of volunteers. In 1876, Harrison ran for governor of Indiana but lost. Harrison was chosen by the people of Indiana to serve in the Senate for six years, from 1881 to 1887.
24. Grover Cleveland (1893-97)
Stephen Grover Cleveland was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 22nd and 24th president of the United States from 1885 to 1889 and from 1893 to 1897. Cleveland is the only president in American history to serve two non-consecutive terms in office.
He won the popular vote for three presidential elections—in 1884, 1888, and 1892—and was one of two Democrats (followed by Woodrow Wilson in 1912) to be elected president during the era of Republican presidential domination dating from 1861 to 1933.
Cleveland was elected mayor of Buffalo in 1881, and then he became governor of New York. He was the leader of the pro-business Bourbon Democrats, who were against high tariffs, free silver, inflation, imperialism, and giving money to businesses, farmers, or veterans. Because of how hard he worked for political reform and fiscal conservatism, he became a symbol for conservatives in the United States at the time. Cleveland was praised for being honest, able to do things on his own, having integrity, and sticking to the ideas of classical liberalism. He fought against bribery, favouritism, and bossism in politics. As a reformer, Cleveland had so much respect that many “Mugwumps,” who agreed with him, left the Republican Party’s presidential candidate and voted for him in the 1884 election. As his second term as president started, the Panic of 1893 caused a terrible national depression. It destroyed his Democratic Party and made way for a Republican landslide in 1894 and a takeover of the Democratic Party by farmers and silver miners in 1896. The Third Party System came to an end, and the Fourth Party System and the Progressive Era began as a result.
25. William McKinley (1897-1901)
William McKinley was the 25th president of the United States, serving from 1897 until his assassination in 1901. As a politician he led a realignment that made his Republican Party largely dominant in the industrial states and nationwide until the 1930s.
He presided over victory in the Spanish–American War of 1898; gained control of Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Cuba; restored prosperity after a deep depression; rejected the inflationary monetary policy of free silver, keeping the nation on the gold standard; and raised protective tariffs to boost American industry and keep wages high.
McKinley was the last president to have served in the Civil War. He was a Republican, and he was the only president to start as a private and end as a major. He moved to Canton, Ohio, after the war, where he worked as a lawyer and married Ida Saxton. In 1876, McKinley was elected to Congress. There, he became the Republican expert on the protective tariff, which he said would bring about prosperity. His 1890 McKinley Tariff was very controversial, and he lost in a landslide to the Democrats in 1890 because of it and a Democratic plan to change the voting districts to keep him out of office. He was elected governor of Ohio in 1891 and 1893. As governor, he tried to balance the needs of business and workers. In 1896, when the economy was very bad, he got the Republican nomination for president with the help of his close friend Mark Hanna. He beat his Democratic opponent, William Jennings Bryan, after a front porch campaign in which he called for “sound money” (the gold standard, unless changed by an international agreement) and said that high tariffs would bring back prosperity.
26. Theodore Roosevelt (1901-09)
Theodore Roosevelt, often referred to as Teddy or by his initials, T. R., was an American politician, statesman, soldier, conservationist, naturalist, historian, and writer who served as the 26th president of the United States from 1901 to 1909. He previously served as the 25th vice president under President William McKinley from March to September 1901 and as the 33rd governor of New York from 1899 to 1900. Assuming the presidency after McKinley’s assassination, Roosevelt emerged as a leader of the Republican Party and became a driving force for anti-trust and Progressive policies.
As a child, he was sickly and had bad asthma. As he got older, he overcame his health problems by living a hard life. Roosevelt made a “cowboy” persona out of his strong masculinity and the wide range of things he was interested in and accomplished. Before he went to Harvard College, he was homeschooled and started an interest in nature that he kept for the rest of his life. The Naval War of 1812, which he wrote in 1882, made him known as an expert on history and a popular writer. When Roosevelt got into politics, he became the leader of the Republicans who wanted to change things in the New York state legislature. His first wife and his mother both died on the same night, which was very hard on his mind. He got better by buying a cattle ranch in the Dakotas and running it. Roosevelt was President McKinley’s Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and he helped plan the very successful naval war against Spain in 1898. He quit to help start and lead the Rough Riders, who fought the Spanish army in Cuba and got a lot of attention. Roosevelt was elected governor of New York in 1898. He had been a war hero when he came home. The leaders of the New York state party didn’t like his big plans, but they were able to convince McKinley to make him his running mate in the 1900 election. Roosevelt campaigned hard, and the ticket of McKinley and Roosevelt, which promised victory, peace, and prosperity, won by a huge margin.
27. William Howard Taft (1909-13)
William Howard Taft was the only person to have been both president and chief justice of the United States. He was the 27th president of the United States and the 10th chief justice.
In 1908, Theodore Roosevelt chose William Howard Taft to be his successor as president. In 1912, Roosevelt ran as a third-party candidate and split the Republican vote, which helped Woodrow Wilson beat Taft for a second term. In 1921, President Warren G. Harding made Taft the chief justice, a job he held until he died a month later.
In 1857, Taft was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. Alphonso Taft was the attorney general and secretary of war for the United States. Taft went to Yale, where he joined the Skull and Bones, a group that his father had helped start. Taft was only in his twenties when he became a judge. Before that, he had become a lawyer. He kept moving up quickly, becoming solicitor general and then a judge on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. In 1901, President William McKinley put Taft in charge of the Philippines as a civilian governor. In 1904, Roosevelt made him Secretary of War. He was Roosevelt’s choice to take over after him. Even though he wanted to be chief justice, Taft turned down multiple offers to join the Supreme Court of the United States because he thought his political work was more important.
28. Woodrow Wilson (1913-21)
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, Wilson served as the president of Princeton University and as the governor of New Jersey before winning the 1912 presidential election.
Wilson changed the country’s economic policies when he was president, and in 1917 he led the US into World War I. He was the main person who came up with the idea for the League of Nations. His forward-thinking approach to foreign policy became known as Wilsonianism.
29. Warren Harding (1921-23)
Warren Gamaliel Harding was the 29th president of the United States, serving from 1921 until his death in 1923. A member of the Republican Party, he was one of the most popular sitting U.S. presidents. After his death, a number of scandals were exposed, including Teapot Dome, as well as an extramarital affair with Nan Britton, which diminished his reputation.
Harding went to bed early the evening of July 27, 1923, a few hours after giving the speech at the University of Washington. Later that night, he called for his physician Charles E. Sawyer, complaining of pain in the upper abdomen. Sawyer thought that it was a recurrence of stomach upset, but Dr. Joel T. Boone suspected a heart problem.
30. Calvin Coolidge (1923-29)
Calvin Coolidge was the 30th president of the United States from 1923 to 1929. Born in Vermont, Coolidge was a Republican lawyer from New England who climbed up the ladder of Massachusetts state politics, becoming the state’s 48th governor.
Because of how he handled the Boston Police Strike of 1919, he became known across the country as a man who took action. Coolidge was chosen as the country’s 29th vice president the next year. When President Warren G. Harding died suddenly in 1923, Coolidge took over as president. Coolidge was elected president on his own in 1924. He became known as a small-government conservative with a quiet personality and a dry sense of humour, which earned him the nickname “Silent Cal.” Even though he was very popular and could have run for a third term, he decided not to. He said that ten years as president was “longer than any other man has had it—too long!”
31. Herbert Hoover (1929-33)
Herbert Clark Hoover was an American politician who served as the 31st president of the United States from 1929 to 1933 and a member of the Republican Party, holding office during the onset of the Great Depression in the United States.
A self-made man who became rich as a mining engineer, Hoover led the Commission for Relief in Belgium, served as the director of the U.S. Food Administration, and served as the U.S. Secretary of Commerce.
32. Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-45)
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945.
As the leader of the Democratic Party, he won a record four presidential elections and became one of the most important people in the world during the first half of the 20th century. Roosevelt ran the federal government for most of the Great Depression. As a response to the worst economic crisis in U.S. history, he put his New Deal domestic plan into action. He put together the New Deal Coalition, which set the tone for modern liberalism in the United States for about a third of the 20th century. World War II took up most of his third and fourth terms in office. The war ended with a victory not long after he died in office.
33. Harry S. Truman (1945-53)
Harry S. Truman was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. A leader of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 34th vice president from January to April 1945 under Franklin Roosevelt and as a United States senator from Missouri from 1935 to January 1945.
Assuming the presidency after Roosevelt’s death, Truman implemented the Marshall Plan to rebuild the economy of Western Europe and established both the Truman Doctrine and NATO to contain the expansion of Soviet communism. He proposed numerous liberal domestic reforms, but few were enacted by the conservative coalition that dominated the Congress.
34. Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-61)
Dwight David “Ike” Eisenhower was an American military officer and statesman who served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, he served as Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe and achieved the five-star rank of General of the Army. He planned and supervised the invasion of North Africa in Operation Torch in 1942–1943 as well as the invasion of Normandy (D-Day) from the Western Front in 1944–1945.
Eisenhower was born in Denison, Texas, to a big family whose roots were mostly Pennsylvania Dutch. He grew up in Abilene, Kansas. His family was very religious, and his mother joined the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Eisenhower, on the other hand, did not join a church until 1952. After he graduated from West Point in 1915, he married Mamie Doud and had two sons with her. During World War I, he wanted to serve in Europe, but he was turned down. Instead, he was put in charge of a unit that trained tank crews. After the war, he worked for different generals. In 1941, he was given the rank of brigadier general. Eisenhower was in charge of the invasions of North Africa and Sicily after the United States joined World War II. He was also in charge of the invasions of France and Germany. He was the Army Chief of Staff from 1945 to 1948, the president of Columbia University from 1948 to 1953, and the first Supreme Commander of NATO (1951–1952).
35. John F. Kennedy (1961-63)
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination near the end of his third year in office. Kennedy was the youngest person to assume the presidency by election.
At the end of his term, he was also the youngest president ever. Kennedy was president during the height of the Cold War, and most of what he did as president had to do with the USSR and Cuba. Before he became president, he was a Democrat who represented the state of Massachusetts in both houses of the U.S. Congress.
36. Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-69)
Lyndon Baines Johnson, often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. Wikipedia
He was the 37th vice president under President John F. Kennedy from 1961 to 1963. He took office soon after Kennedy was killed. Johnson was a Democrat from Texas. He was also a U.S. representative, a U.S. senator, and the leader of the Senate’s majority. He is one of the few people who have been president and held every other federally elected office.
37. Richard Nixon (1969-74)
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was the 36th vice president from 1953 to 1961 under President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
During his five years as president, the U.S. got out of the Vietnam War, relations with the Soviet Union and China got better, the first people landed on the Moon, and the Environmental Protection Agency and Occupational Safety and Health Administration were created. Nixon’s second term ended early because of the Watergate scandal. He was the only president to ever step down from office.
38. Gerald Ford (1974-77)
Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. was an American politician. From 1974 to 1977, he was the 38th president of the United States. He was the only president who had never been elected president or vice president, and he was also the only one from Michigan.
He was chosen to be the 40th vice president in 1973. Before that, he was the leader of the Republican Party in the House of Representatives. When Richard Nixon resigned as president in 1974, Ford took over, but he lost the election for a full term in 1976.
39. James Carter (1977-81)
James Earl Carter Jr. is an American former politician who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 76th governor of Georgia from 1971 to 1975 and as a Georgia state senator from 1963 to 1967.
Carter was born and raised in Plains, Georgia. He got his Bachelor of Science degree from the United States Naval Academy in 1946 and joined the U.S. Navy, where he served on many submarines. After his father died in 1953, he quit the Navy and went back to Plains, where he took over the peanut-growing business his family had run for generations. He didn’t get much of an inheritance because his father forgave his debts and split the estate between him and his siblings. Still, he reached his goal of making the family peanut farm bigger and better. During this time, people told Carter to fight against racial segregation and back the growing civil rights movement. He joined the Democratic Party and worked for it. Carter was in the Georgia State Senate from 1963 to 1967. In 1970, he beat former Governor Carl Sanders in the Democratic primary to become governor of Georgia. He was in charge of the country until 1975. Even though he was a dark horse and wasn’t well known outside of Georgia, he won the Democratic nomination for president in 1976. Carter ran for president as an outsider in 1976, and he narrowly beat the incumbent Republican president, Gerald Ford.
40. Ronald Reagan (1981-89)
Ronald Wilson Reagan was an American politician who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. A member of the Republican Party from 1962 onward, he also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 to 1975 after having a career as a Hollywood actor and union leader.
After challenging and nearly defeating sitting president Gerald Ford in the 1976 Republican presidential primaries, Reagan easily won the Republican nomination in the 1980 presidential election and went on to defeat incumbent Democratic president Jimmy Carter.
41. George H.W. Bush (1989-93)
George H. W. Bush was the 41st president of the United States and a Republican. During his presidency the Soviet Union dissolved, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and Noriega lost dictatorship of Panama. Read more about George H.W. Bush.
He previously served as the 43rd vice president from 1981 to 1989 under President Ronald Reagan, in the U.S. House of Representatives, as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, and as Director of Central Intelligence.
42. William J. Clinton (1993-2001)
William Jefferson Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and again from 1983 to 1992, and as attorney general of Arkansas from 1977 to 1979.
A member of the Democratic Party, Clinton became known as a New Democrat, as many of his policies reflected a centrist “Third Way” political philosophy. He is the husband of Hillary Clinton, who was a senator from New York from 2001 to 2009, secretary of state from 2009 to 2013 and the Democratic nominee for president in the 2016 presidential election.
43. George W. Bush (2001-09)
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he previously served as the 46th governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000.
Bush was re-elected president in 2004, defeating Democrat John Kerry and winning the popular vote. During his second term, Bush reached multiple free trade agreements. He appointed John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. He sought major changes to Social Security and immigration laws, but both efforts failed in Congress.
At various points in his presidency, Bush was among both the most popular and unpopular presidents in U.S. history. He received the highest recorded approval ratings in the wake of the September 11 attacks, but also one of the lowest such ratings during the 2007–2008 financial crisis. Although public favorability of Bush has improved since he left office, his presidency has generally been rated as below-average by scholars.
44. Barack Obama (2009-2017)
Barack Hussein Obama II is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the United States.
He previously served as a U.S. senator from Illinois from 2005 to 2008 and as an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004, and previously worked as a civil rights lawyer before entering politics. After winning re-election by defeating Republican opponent Mitt Romney, Obama was sworn in for a second term on January 20, 2013. In his second term, Obama took steps to combat climate change, signing a major international climate agreement and an executive order to limit carbon emissions.
During Obama’s terms as president, the United States’ reputation abroad, as well as the American economy, significantly improved. Rankings by scholars and historians place him among the upper tier of American presidents. Since leaving office, Obama has remained active in Democratic politics, including campaigning for candidates in various American elections. Outside of politics, Obama has published three bestselling books: Dreams from My Father (1995), The Audacity of Hope (2006) and A Promised Land (2020).
45. Donald J. Trump (2017-2021)
Donald John Trump is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor’s degree in 1968. In November 2022, he announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination in the 2024 presidential election.
46. Joe Biden (2021–present)
Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. is an American politician who is the 46th and current president of the United States. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 47th vice president from 2009 to 2017 under President Barack Obama, and represented Delaware in the United States Senate from 1973 to 2009.
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