2021 US Presidents

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July 2021 SKAGIT PUBLISHING

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Table of Contents GeorgeWashington ................................................................4 John Adams ............................................................................ 5 John Quincy Adams ...............................................................5 Thomas Jefferson ................................................................... 6 James Maddison .................................................................... 6 James Monroe ........................................................................7 Andrew Jackson ................................................................... 8 Martin Van Buren ................................................................. 9 William Henry Harrison ..................................................... 10 John Tyler ............................................................................. 11 James K.Polk .........................................................................12 Zachary Taylor ....................................................................13 Millard Filmore ................................................................... 14 Franklin Pierce .................................................................... 15 James Buchanan .................................................................. 16 Abraham Lincoln ................................................................ 17 Andrew Johnson .................................................................. 18 Ulysses S. Grant ................................................................... 19 Rutherford B. Hayes ............................................................. 20 James Garfield .................................................................... 21 Chester Arthur .................................................................... 22 Grover Cleveland ................................................................ 23 Benjamin Harrison ............................................................. 24 William McKinley ............................................................. 24 Theodore Roosevelt ........................................................... 25 William Howard Taft .......................................................... 26 Woodrow Wilson ............................................................... 27 Warren G. Harding .............................................................. 28 Calvin Coolidge .................................................................. 29 Herbert Hoover .................................................................. 30 Franklin D. Roosevelt ......................................................... 31 Harry S.Truman ...................................................................32 Dwight D. Eisenhower ......................................................... 33 John F. Kennedy .................................................................... 34 Lyndon B.Johnson ................................................................35 Richard Nixon ...................................................................... 36 Gerald Ford ......................................................................... 37 Jimmy Carter ...................................................................... 38 Ronald Reagan ......................................................................29 George H.W. Bush ................................................................ 40 Bill Clinton .......................................................................... 41 George W. Bush .................................................................... 42 Barack Obama ................................................................... 43 Donald Trump ................................................................... 44 Joe Biden .............................................................................. 45 Presidential Trivia .............................................................. 46

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George Washington

The 1st President of the United States Born: 1732 Died: 1799 Served: 1789 to 1797

Before He Was President Arguably as monumental as his presidential legacy, Washington built a reputation as an elite military leader, as well.

He was commissioned a lieutenant colonel in 1754 and fought many of the initial battles of what grew into the French and Indian War. From 1759 to the outbreak of the American Revolution, Washington managed and maintained his personal land. He also married Martha Dandridge Custis and led a simple life.

As time went on, Washington began to feel exploited by British regulations on land management. When the Second Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia in May 1775, Washington was elected commander in chief of the Continental Army.

After a long military and political career, George Washington was looking to retire at the same time the nation was looking for leadership.

His direction during the Constitutional Convention in 1787, however, catapulted him into position as a front runner for the presidency. On the heels of the constitution being ratified, the electoral college unanimously elected Washington as the nation’s first president.

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He led a grueling six-year barrage of battles until finally, in 1781 with the aid of French allies, he forced the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown.

Major Policy

Dealing with war and battles became an expertise of Washington’s, even during his presidency. When the French Revolution led to a major war between France and England, Washington insisted on the U.S. remaining neutral.

Neutrality was important to Washington in many aspects of political leadership, and he urged his countrymen to avoid excessive party spirit or geographical restrictions. Despite his efforts, two parties were developing by the end of his first term.

Washington grew weary of the back and forth by the end of his second term and decided to retire. His rest was shortlived. He enjoyed less than three years of retirement, dying of a throat infection on Dec. 14, 1799.

John Adams

The 2nd President of the United States Born: 1735 Died: 1826 Served: 1797 to 1801

John Quincy Adams

John Adams John Adams was a lawyer who defended British soldiers against murder charges in the Boston Massacre and advocated for the right to counsel and the presumption of innocence.

He helped draft the Declaration of Independence, and, as a Massachusetts delegate to the Continental Congress, pushed for its approval. He went on to help negotiate peace with Great Britain, author the Massachusetts Constitution, and serve two terms as vice president under George Washington.

John Adams served one term as president as a Federalist. He signed the Alien and Sedition Acts and was the first president to live in the White House. He lost a bid for reelection and retired to Massachusetts, where he lived with his wife Abigail.

He died on July 4, 1826, just hours after his former enemy Thomas Jefferson and on the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence.

John Quincy Adams John Quincy Adams spent much of his youth in Europe, as his father was a diplomat before serving as president. In 1794, he became one in his own right when President George Washington appointed him ambassador to the Netherlands.

The 6th President of the United States Born: 1776 Died: 1848 Served: 1825 to 1829

He served in several foreign relations posts until Thomas Jefferson’s presidency; then he was elected to the U.S. Senate representing Massachusetts until 1802, when he broke with the Federalist Party. John Quincy Adams returned to public service in 1809 as ambassador to Russia under President James Madison. In 1817, he became Secretary of State to President James Monroe, where he helped negotiate the annexation of Florida.

He was elected president in 1824 in a contentious election where no candidate won the outright majority, meaning the House of Representatives held a contingent election that John Quincy Adams won. As president, he won approval of national infrastructure projects, like roads, canals and railroads to connect the young nation. He also struck deals and negotiated to expand American trade.

Father-Son Relationship Because John Quincy Adams spent his youth abroad with his father, he was closer to him than his mother Abigail. Like John Adams, he preferred private life. John Quincy Adams also suffered from depression and often blamed it on his parents’ high expectations of him.

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Thomas Jefferson James Maddison

The 3rd President of the United States Born: 1743 Died: 1826 Served: 1801 to 1809

Known as the silent member of the Congress, Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence at the age of 33. In years following, he worked hard to make sure it was instituted across the nation and wrote a bill establishing religious freedom, enacted in 1786.

Major Policy

When Jefferson assumed the presidency, during peacetime, he quickly slashed Army and Navy expenditures, cut the budget and reduced the national debt by a third.

The greatest feat of his presidency — the Louisiana Purchase — occurred in 1803. Although the Constitution made no provision for the acquisition of new land, Jefferson worked out the $15 million deal from Napoleon for one of the largest land deals in history (800,000 square miles).

Jefferson spent the majority of his second term devising ways to keep his nation out of the Napoleonic wars. In trying to remain neutral, Jefferson used economic threats and an embargo upon American shipping that ended up working against his nation’s prosperity.

The embargo was lifted as Jefferson left office. He died on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, just a few hours before the passing of the nation’s second president, John Adams.

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The 4th President of the United States Born: 1751 Died: 1836 Served: 1809 to 1817

A popular president with a knack for leadership in the face of great challenge, Madison’s straightforward personality was said to be balanced by his wife Dolley’s warm and regal charm.

Major Policy

Madison broght major change to America during the first year of his administration. A few of his landmark policies and achievements include: • The United States prohibited trade with both Britain and France during year one of Madison’s presidency; and • Madison declared war in 1812 on the British for a host of reasons, most prominently the British impressment of American seamen and the seizure of cargoes.

As commander-in-chief, Madison claimed a few notable victories during the war that convinced many Americans and scholars to appoint the United States as the war’s victor.

According to the White House Historical Association, this newfound level of nationalism led to the eradication of the war-opposed Federalism party that had once proposed secession prior to the war’s conclusion.

Madison died on June 28, 1836, at his Montpelier estate. In a note titled, “Message to My Country,” that was opened after his death in 1836, Madison stated, “The advice nearest to my heart and deepest in my convictions is that the Union of the States be cherished and perpetuated.

James Monroe The 5th President of the United States Born: 1758 Died: 1831 Served: 1817 to 1825

Monroe joined the anti-Federalists in the Virginia Convention, which ratified the Constitution. He later was elected a United States Senator as a strong advocate of Jeffersonian policies.

In his role as Minister to France (1794-1796), he gained expertise in French life and governmental policies. This would be key knowledge in later negotiating the Louisiana Purchase.

Major Policy Monroe was the clear Republican choice for the Presidency in 1816. He easily won re-election in 1820, setting the stage for major achievements impacting economics, as well we domestic and foreign policy.

Considered the last President from the Founding Fathers, James Monroe left a remarkable impact on the United States with eight years of presidential service.

The fifth president of the United States was born in Westmoreland County, Va., in 1758. He attended the College of William and Mary and fought with distinction in the Continental Army.

Later, he practiced law in Fredericksburg, Va., polishing his knowledge of domestic and global legal processes.

Before He Was President

Among his Cabinet choices, Monroe selected John C. Calhoun as Secretary of War and John Quincy Adams as Secretary of State.

His major policy accomplishments: • Monroe set the stage for the 1819 Transcontinental Treaty, transferring the Floridas from Spain to the United States for $5 million. The treaty also advanced the U.S. border across Mexico to the Pacific Ocean.

• In 1820, Monroe signed the Missouri Compromise, admitting Maine (then part of northern Massachusetts) as a free state, admitting Missouri as a slave state, and restricting slavery to territories south of a specific latitude.

• In 1823, Monroe formerly announced concepts later hailed the Monroe Doctrine. Monroe’s ideas contained several policies with global ramifications. The doctrine reiterated the traditional U.S. policy of neutrality with regard to European wars and conflicts and defined the Americas’ desire to not be open to future European colonization.

At age 67 in 1824, Monroe decided not to seek re-election in the presidential race. He died in 1831.

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Andrew Jackson The 7th President of the United States Born: 1767 Died: 1845 Served: 1829 to 1837

Jackson built a mansion — the Hermitage – near Nashville — and became the first man from Tennessee to be elected to the House of Representatives. He also briefly served in the Senate.

A major general in the War of 1812, Jackson earned national hero status when he defeated the British at the Battle of New Orleans in 1814-1815.

Major Policy

Hailed as “Old Hickory” for his easygoing, of-the-people demeanor, Andrew Jackson would became a national hero.

He is most known for founding the Democratic party, advocating for individual liberty and earning a reputation as the people’s president.

Before He Was President

Jackson became an expert lawyer at a young age, overcoming a modest upbringing in the Carolinas with sporadic educational opportunities.

Even though he was refined in his understanding of the law, he also was known as hot tempered and quick to fight, even reportedly killing a man in a duel after his wife, Rachel, was disrespected.

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As Jackson took over the presidency, major differences were forming in the conversation of neutrality in national politics. Two parties grew out of the old Republican Party, one of which was the Jackson-led Democrats. The National Republicans (or Whigs) opposed his policy, ideas and stance on how to effectively run a government.

Jackson was depicted as King Andrew I in cartoons and proclaimed an unfit leader by his opposition. Their claims centered on accusations of Jackson using his power of the veto and party leadership to make unilateral decisions without obeying checks and balances.

One of those actions came in 1833 when Jackson announced that the government would no longer use the Second Bank for the United States — the country’s national bank. He used his executive power to remove all federal funds from the bank. His actions and dissension thereafter became known as the Bank War. “Old Hickory” retired to the Hermitage, where he died in June 1845.

Martin Van Buren

The 8th President of the United States Born: 1782 Died: 1862 Served: 1837 to 1841

The “Little Magician” was elected Vice President on the Jacksonian ticket in 1832, and won the Presidency in 1836.

Van Buren devoted his Inaugural Address to a discourse upon the American experiment as an example to the rest of the world. The country was prosperous, but less than three months later the panic of 1837 punctured the prosperity.

Basically, the trouble was the 19th-century cyclical economy of “boom and bust,” which was following its regular pattern, but Jackson’s financial measures contributed to the crash.

In 1837 the panic began. Hundreds of banks and businesses failed. Thousands lost their lands. For about five years the United States was wracked by the worst depression thus far in its history.

His impeccable appearance belied his amiability–and his humble background.

Of Dutch descent, he was born in 1782, the son of a tavernkeeper and farmer, in Kinderhook, New York.

As a young lawyer he became involved in New York politics.

As leader of the “Albany Regency,” an effective New York political organization, he shrewdly dispensed public offices and bounty in a fashion calculated to bring votes. Yet he faithfully fulfilled official duties, and in 1821 was elected to the United States Senate.

By 1827 he had emerged as the principal northern leader for Andrew Jackson. President Jackson rewarded Van Buren by appointing him Secretary of State. As the Cabinet Members appointed at John C. Calhoun’s recommendation began to demonstrate only secondary loyalty to Jackson, Van Buren emerged as the President’s most trusted adviser. Jackson referred to him as, “a true man with no guile.”

Programs applied decades later to alleviate economic crisis eluded both Van Buren and his opponents. Van Buren’s remedy–continuing Jackson’s deflationary policies–only deepened and prolonged the depression.

Declaring that the panic was due to recklessness in business and overexpansion of credit, Van Buren devoted himself to maintaining the solvency of the national Government. He opposed not only the creation of a new Bank of the United States but also the placing of Government funds in state banks. He fought for the establishment of an independent treasury system to handle Government transactions. As for Federal aid to internal improvements, he cut off expenditures so completely that the Government even sold the tools it had used on public works.

Inclined more and more to oppose the expansion of slavery, Van Buren blocked the annexation of Texas because it assuredly would add to slave territory–and it might bring war with Mexico.

Defeated by the Whigs in 1840 for reelection, he was an unsuccessful candidate for President on the Free Soil ticket in 1848. He died in 1862.

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William Henry Harrison

The 9th President of the United States Born: 1773 Died: 1862 Served: 1841 to 1841

settlement. After resigning from the Army in 1798, he became Secretary of the Northwest Territory, was its first delegate to Congress, and helped obtain legislation dividing the Territory into the Northwest and Indiana Territories. In 1801 he became Governor of the Indiana Territory, serving 12 years.

His prime task as governor was to obtain title to Indian lands so settlers could press forward into the wilderness.

When the Indians retaliated, Harrison was responsible for defending the settlements.

The Battle of Tippecanoe, upon which Harrison’s fame was to rest, disrupted Tecumseh’s confederacy but failed to diminish Indian raids. By the spring of 1812, they were again terrorizing the frontier.

The oldest President to be elected at the time, on his 32nd day, he became the first to die in office, serving the shortest tenure in U.S. Presidential history.

He was born at Berkeley in 1773. He studied classics and history at Hampden-Sydney College, then began the study of medicine in Richmond.

Suddenly, that same year, 1791, Harrison switched interests.

He obtained a commission as ensign in the First Infantry of the Regular Army, and headed to the Northwest, where he spent much of his life.

In the campaign against the Indians, Harrison served as aide-de-camp to General “Mad Anthony” Wayne at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, which opened most of the Ohio area to 10 Presidents of the United States

In the War of 1812 Harrison won more military laurels when he was given the command of the Army in the Northwest with the rank of brigadier general. At the Battle of the Thames, north of Lake Erie, on October 5, 1813, he defeated the combined British and Indian forces, and killed Tecumseh.

The Indians scattered, never again to offer serious resistance in what was then called the Northwest.

Thereafter Harrison returned to civilian life; the Whigs, in need of a national hero, nominated him for President in 1840.

He won by a majority of less than 150,000, but swept the Electoral College, 234 to 60.

When he arrived in Washington in February 1841, Harrison let Daniel Webster edit his Inaugural Address, ornate with classical allusions. Webster obtained some deletions, boasting in a jolly fashion that he had killed “seventeen Roman proconsuls as dead as smelts, every one of them.”

Before he had been in office a month, he caught a cold that developed into pneumonia. On April 4, 1841, he died — the first President to die in office — and with him died the Whig program.

John Tyler

The 10th President of the United States Born: 1790 Died: 1862 Served: 1841 to 1845

The first Vice President to succeed to the Presidency after the death of his predecessor.

Dubbed “His Accidency” by his detractors, John Tyler was the first Vice President to be elevated to the office of President by the death of his predecessor.

Born in Virginia in 1790, he was raised believing that the Constitution must be strictly construed. He never wavered from this conviction. He attended the College of William and Mary and studied law.

Serving in the House of Representatives from 1816 to 1821, Tyler voted against most nationalist legislation and opposed the Missouri Compromise. After leaving the House he served as Governor of Virginia. As a Senator he reluctantly supported Jackson for President as a choice of evils. Tyler soon joined the states’ rights Southerners in Congress who banded with Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and their newly formed Whig party opposing President Jackson.

The Whigs nominated Tyler for Vice President in 1840, hoping for support from southern states’-righters who could not stomach Jacksonian Democracy. The slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too” implied flag waving nationalism plus a dash of southern sectionalism.

Suddenly President Harrison was dead, and “Tyler too” was in the White House. At first the Whigs were not too disturbed, although Tyler insisted upon assuming the full powers of a duly elected President.

Tyler was ready to compromise on the banking question, but Clay would not budge. He would not accept Tyler’s “exchequer system,” and Tyler vetoed Clay’s bill to establish a National Bank with branches in several states. A similar bank bill was passed by Congress. But again, on states’ rights grounds, Tyler vetoed it.

In retaliation, the Whigs expelled Tyler from their party. All the Cabinet resigned but Secretary of State Webster. A year later when Tyler vetoed a tariff bill, the first impeachment resolution against a President was introduced in the House of Representatives. A committee headed by Representative John Quincy Adams reported that the President had misused the veto power, but the resolution failed.

Despite their differences, President Tyler and the Whig Congress enacted much positive legislation. The “Log-Cabin” bill enabled a settler to claim 160 acres of land before it was offered publicly for sale, and later pay $1.25 an acre for it.

In 1842 Tyler did sign a tariff bill protecting northern manufacturers. The Webster-Ashburton treaty ended a Canadian boundary dispute; in 1845 Texas was annexed.

The administration of this states’-righter strengthened the Presidency. But it also increased sectional cleavage that led toward civil war. By the end of his term, Tyler had replaced the original Whig Cabinet with southern conservatives. In 1844 Calhoun became Secretary of State. Later these men returned to the Democratic Party, committed to the preservation of states’ rights, planter interests, and the institution of slavery.

Whigs became more representative of northern business and farming interests.

When the first southern states seceded in 1861, Tyler led a compromise movement; failing, he worked to create the Southern Confederacy. He died in 1862, a member of the Confederate House of Representatives.

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James K. Polk The 11th President of the United States Born: 1795 Died: 1849 Served: 1845 to 1849

instead.

Both Martin Van Buren (Democrat) and Henry Clay (Whig nominee) were strongly opposed to the annexation of Texas — one of the hot-button issues at this point in history.

Polk took the alternate route, publicly asserting that Texas should be “re-annexed” and all of Oregon “re-occupied.”

Polk was nominated for president on the ninth ballot at the Democratic Convention.

Major Policy

Born in Mecklenburg County, N.C., in 1795, James K. Polk served as a chief lieutenant of Andrew Jackson and is often referred to as the last of the Jacksonians in the White House.

He graduated with honors in 1818 from the University of North Carolina and succeeded as a young lawyer prior to his entry into politics, serving in the Tennessee legislature.

Before He Was President Polk served as Speaker between 1835 and 1839 before leaving to become governor of Tennessee.

He was a leading contender for the Democratic nomination for vice president in 1844 but decided to run for president 12 Presidents of the United States

Before his first day in office, Polk’s presidency was impacted

by Congress passing a joint resolution offering annexation to Texas. This led to the possibility of war with Mexico, leaving Polk with plenty of diplomatic relations challenges to overcome.

Polk’s main achievements during his time in office: • Offered to settle the Oregon debate by extending the Canadian boundary. The British agreed and the treaty was signed in 1846.

• Acquisition of California proved far more difficult.

• Sent an envoy to offer Mexico up to $20 million plus settlement of damage claims owed to Americans, in return for California and the New Mexico country. The offer was refused, leading Polk to send Gen. Zachary Taylor to the disputed area on the Rio Grande.

• Upon Mexican troops attacking Taylor’s forces, Congress declared war. American forces won repeated victories and occupied Mexico City. In 1848, Mexico ceded New Mexico and California in return for $15 million and American assumption of the damage claims.

Polk left office with various health conditions, eventually dying in 1849.

Zachary Taylor

The 12th President of the United States Born: 1784 Died: 1850 Served: 1849 to 1850

A career officer in the U.S. Army, Taylor rode his victories in the Mexican-American War and subsequent popularity to the White House. He took office as simmering tensions over slavery threatened to explode into the Civil War, but with just 16 months in office before he died, Taylor didn’t have much time to resolve the issue.

Early Life Taylor was born into a family of slave-holding planters that trekked west from his birthplace of Virginia to Louisville, Kentucky. His education was spotty, as Kentucky was the frontier, but he did receive the basics of reading and writing.

In 1810, Taylor married Margaret Mackall Smith. The couple had six children, Ann Mackall Taylor, Sara Knox Taylor, Octavia Pannell Taylor, Margaret Smith Taylor, Mary Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Scott Taylor.

Military Career Taylor joined the Army in 1808 as a first lieutenant following the Chesapeake-Leopard Affair, which inflamed tensions

between the U.S. and Britain, and also served in the Territory of Orleans. He went on to serve in the War of 1812, and moved his family to Louisiana before serving in the Black Hawk War and the Second Seminole War, where he earned the nickname “Old Rough and Ready.” Taylor was made commander of the Second Department of the Army’s Western Division in May 1841, overseeing territory west of the Mississippi and south of the 37th parallel north.

Taylor was ordered to a prize post in 1844 — defending the newly annexed Texas territory from attack. When hostilities commenced in 1846, Taylor defeated the Mexican army at the Battle of Palo Alto and the Battle of Resaca de la Palma. He was promoted to major general, then marched out in captured the Mexican city of Monterrey. He then won the Battle of Buena Vista in 1847, despite being enormously outnumbered by Mexican forces.

Election and Presidency Despite some wavering and an independent streak, Taylor eventually declared himself a Whig candidate in the 1848 election. Broadly, he was a nationalist who favored a strong banking system and low tariffs and, of course, he owned slaves.

After his election, Taylor appointed his cabinet geographically, intending to reflect the diverse views of the country, but he avoided choosing any Democrats or any prominent Whigs. He was immediately faced with the question of how to divide up the immense Western territory won in the Mexican-American War, and whether to admit it was states or territories, and, most importantly, whether slavery would be allowed there. Tensions flared as Henry Clay and Daniel Webster proposed the Compromise of 1850, which would allow California to join the Union as a state to decide slavery for itself while other territories would remain under federal control. Slave trade would be banned in the District of Columbia though slavery would still be legal there, and a strict fugitive slave law would be enacted.

Death Before the compromise reached Taylor’s desk, however, he died on July 9, 1850, from an unknown intestinal ailment. On July 4, the president had eaten lots of raw fruit and iced milk, which many believed contributed to his death at age 65. He was buried in Louisville, Kentucky.

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Millard Filmore The 13th President of the United States Born: 1800 Died: 1874 Served: 1850 to 1853

Millard Fillmore was born into poverty to a family living in a log cabin, in 1800. He would later be thrust into the presidency after the sudden death of his predecessor. During his time in office, he was responsible for one of the largest treaties in American history.

As a young man, Fillmore became obsessed with learning, sometimes stealing books to increase his knowledge. He lacked much formal education until the age of 18 yet managed to secure a position in a law office. By the year 1823, he was fully admitted to the New York bar.

Before He Was President Fillmore’s first step in his political career began in 1828, when he served on the New York state assembly. One of his major focal points at this time was eliminating the issue of 14 Presidents of the United States

debtor imprisonment.

He was familiar with the hardships of poverty and worked to pass laws to eliminate such harsh punishments.

His passion for the citizens in his district was quickly recognized and acknowledged when he was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1832. He would serve four terms in Congress but declined another election in 1843 to begin a campaign for governor of New York.

While he ultimately lost this election, he found himself serving as comptroller of New York, when he was handpicked for the vice presidency position under Zachary Taylor.

The duo was tasked with sectional tensions over slavery and its growth in western territories, becoming a major issue in America. Legislation considered included a series of resolutions to reach a compromise and avoid a crisis between the North and South.

Before Taylor could reach an agreement, he suddenly passed away after an Independence Day celebration in Washington, pushing Fillmore into the presidential position.

Major Policy Millard Fillmore was appointed president in 1850. Taylor’s cabinet would soon resign, allowing the new leader to appoint his own staff. He publicly spoke of his approval of a solution to healing sectional differences, and the Compromise of 1850 was adopted. This gave states the choice to act as free states when joining the Union.

President Fillmore’s greatest accomplishment was organizing a trade mission with Japan, which had been an isolated nation for the previous three centuries. While the Treaty of Kanagawa wasn’t officially drafted until Fillmore was out of office, his persistence and strategy helped finalize Japan’s first treaty with a Western nation.

Fillmore retired from politics after a failed campaign for presidency in 1856. He would die after suffering from a stroke in 1874.

Franklin Pierce The 14th President of the United States Born: 1804 Died: 1869 Served: 1853 to 1857

Franklin Pierce became 14th President of the United States at a time of apparent tranquility. By pursuing the recommendations of southern advisers, Pierce — a New Englander — hoped to ease the divisions that led eventually to Civil War. Born in Hillsborough, New Hampshire, in 1804, Pierce attended Bowdoin College. After graduation he studied law, then entered politics. At 24 he was elected to the New Hampshire legislature; two years later he became its Speaker. During the 1830’s he went to Washington, first as a Representative, then as a Senator.

Pierce, after serving in the Mexican War, was proposed by New Hampshire friends for the Presidential nomination in 1852. At the Democratic Convention, the delegates agreed easily enough upon a platform pledging undeviating support of the Compromise of 1850 and hostility to any efforts to agitate the slavery question. But they balloted 48 times and

eliminated all the well-known candidates before nominating Pierce, a true “dark horse.”

Two months before he took office, he and his wife saw their eleven-year-old son killed when their train was wrecked.

Grief-stricken, Pierce entered the Presidency nervously exhausted.

In his Inaugural he proclaimed an era of peace and prosperity at home, and vigor in relations with other nations. The United States might have to acquire additional possessions for the sake of its own security, he pointed out, and would not be deterred by “any timid forebodings of evil.”

Pierce had only to make gestures toward expansion to excite the wrath of northerners, who accused him of acting as a cat’s-paw of Southerners eager to extend slavery into other areas. Therefore he aroused apprehension when he pressured Great Britain to relinquish its special interests along part of the Central American coast, and even more when he tried to persuade Spain to sell Cuba.

But the most violent renewal of the storm stemmed from the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise and reopened the question of slavery in the West.

This measure, the handiwork of Senator Stephen A. Douglas, grew in part out of his desire to promote a railroad from Chicago to California through Nebraska. Already Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, advocate of a southern transcontinental route, had persuaded Pierce to send James Gadsden to Mexico to buy land for a southern railroad. He purchased the area now comprising southern Arizona and part of southern New Mexico for $10,000,000.

Douglas’s proposal, to organize western territories through which a railroad might run, caused extreme trouble. Douglas provided in his bills that the residents of the new territories could decide the slavery question for themselves. The result was a rush into Kansas, as southerners and northerners vied for control of the territory. Shooting broke out, and “bleeding Kansas” became a prelude to the Civil War. By the end of his administration, Pierce could claim “a peaceful condition of things in Kansas.” But, to his disappointment, the Democrats refused to renominate him, turning to the less controversial Buchanan. Pierce returned to New Hampshire, leaving his successor to face the rising fury of the sectional whirlwind. He died in 1869.

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James Buchanan

The 15th President of the United States Born: 1791 Died: 1868 Served: 1857 to 1861

James Buchanan served immediately prior to the American Civil War. He remains the only President to be elected from Pennsylvania and to remain a lifelong bachelor.

Tall, stately, stiffly formal in the high stock he wore around his jowls, James Buchanan was the only President who never married.

Born into a well-to-do Pennsylvania family in 1791, Buchanan, a graduate of Dickinson College, was gifted as a debater and learned in the law.

He was elected five times to the House of Representatives; then, after an interlude as Minister to Russia, served for a decade in the Senate. He became Polk’s Secretary of State and Pierce’s Minister to Great Britain. Service abroad helped to bring him the Democratic nomination in 1856 because it had exempted him from involvement in bitter domestic controversies.

As President-elect, Buchanan thought the crisis would disappear if he maintained a sectional balance in his appoint-

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ments and could persuade the people to accept constitutional law as the Supreme Court interpreted it. The Court was considering the legality of restricting slavery in the territories, and two justices hinted to Buchanan what the decision would be.

Thus, in his Inaugural the President referred to the territorial question as “happily, a matter of but little practical importance” since the Supreme Court was about to settle it “speedily and finally.”

Two days later Chief Justice Roger B. Taney delivered the Dred Scott decision, asserting that Congress had no constitutional power to deprive persons of their property rights in slaves in the territories. Southerners were delighted, but the decision created a furor in the North.

When Republicans won a plurality in the House in 1858, every significant bill they passed fell before southern votes in the Senate or a Presidential veto. The Federal Government reached a stalemate.

Sectional strife rose to such a pitch in 1860 that the Democratic Party split into northern and southern wings, each nominating its own candidate for the Presidency. Consequently, when the Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln, it was a foregone conclusion that he would be elected even though his name appeared on no southern ballot. Rather than accept a Republican administration, the southern “fire-eaters” advocated secession.

President Buchanan, dismayed and hesitant, denied the legal right of states to secede but held that the Federal Government legally could not prevent them. He hoped for compromise, but secessionist leaders did not want compromise.

Then Buchanan took a more militant tack. As several Cabinet members resigned, he appointed northerners, and sent the Star of the West to carry reinforcements to Fort Sumter. On January 9, 1861, the vessel was far away.

Buchanan reverted to a policy of inactivity that continued until he left office. In March 1861 he retired to his Pennsylvania home Wheatland–where he died seven years later–leaving his successor to resolve the frightful issue facing the Nation.

Abraham Lincoln

The 16th President of the United States Born: 1809 Died: 1865 Served: 1861 to 1865

Before He Was President Lincoln made money in his early years by working on a farm and splitting rails for fences. He progressed into a captain role in the Black Hawk War and spent eight years in the Illinois legislature.

He married Mary Todd and fathered four boys, only one of whom lived to maturity. In 1858 Lincoln lost to Stephen A. Douglas for Senator but in debating with him gained a national reputation that catapulted him into the Republican nomination for President in 1860.

Major Policy Just two years into his presidency, Abraham Lincoln in 1863 issued the influential Emancipation Proclamation that declared freedom for slaves within the Confederacy. It was a bold move that defined Lincoln’s legacy — both as a person and a president.

For Lincoln to be in such a position of power was surprising in itself, especially considering his humble upbringing.

The son of a Kentucky frontiersman, Lincoln’s childhood and teenage years were full of hard work and struggles.

From his writings published by the White House Historical Association, Lincoln wrote: “My mother, who died in my 10th year, was of a family of the name of Hanks. ... My father … removed from Kentucky to … Indiana, in my eighth year. … It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up.”

Upon his presidential victory, Lincoln made clear his policy toward secession, calling it illegal and letting the South know that he was willing to use force to defend federal law.

As president, he built the Republican party into a strong national organization while rallying most northern Democrats to the Union cause. On Jan. 1, 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

Lincoln achieved a great deal during his presidency, winning re-election in 1864. But it was his ability to transcend major challenges while still resonating with the American people that set him apart.

The message of his second inaugural address is now inscribed on one wall of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C. It reads: “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds.”

Lincoln was assassinated at Ford’s Theatre in Washington by John Wilkes Booth on Good Friday, April 14, 1865 — a tragic end for a tremendously respected president.

Presidents of the United States 17

Andrew Johnson

The 17th President of the United States Born: 1808 Died: 1875 Served: 1865 to 1869

With the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson became the 17th President of the United States, an old-fashioned southern Jacksonian Democrat of pronounced states’ rights views.

Born in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1808, Johnson grew up in poverty. He was apprenticed to a tailor as a boy, but ran away. He opened a tailor shop in Greeneville, Tennessee, married Eliza McCardle, and participated in debates at the local academy.

Entering politics, he became an adept stump speaker, championing the common man and vilifying the plantation aristocracy. As a Member of the House of Representatives and the Senate in the 1840’s and ’50’s, he advocated a homestead bill to provide a free farm for the poor man.

During the secession crisis, Johnson remained in the Senate even when Tennessee seceded, which made him a hero in the North and a traitor in the eyes of most Southerners. In 1862 President Lincoln appointed him Military Governor of Tennessee, and Johnson used the state as a laboratory for reconstruction. In 1864 the Republicans, contending that their

18 Presidents of the United States

National Union Party was for all loyal men, nominated Johnson, a Southerner and a Democrat, for Vice President.

After Lincoln’s death, President Johnson proceeded to reconstruct the former Confederate States while Congress was not in session in 1865. He pardoned all who would take an oath of allegiance, but required leaders and men of wealth to obtain special Presidential pardons.

By the time Congress met in December 1865, most southern states were reconstructed, slavery was being abolished, but “black codes” to regulate the freed men were beginning to appear.

Radical Republicans in Congress moved vigorously to change Johnson’s program. They gained the support of northerners who were dismayed to see Southerners keeping many prewar leaders and imposing many prewar restrictions upon Negroes.

The Radicals’ first step was to refuse to seat any Senator or Representative from the old Confederacy. Next they passed measures dealing with the former slaves. Johnson vetoed the legislation. The Radicals mustered enough votes in Congress to pass legislation over his veto–the first time that Congress had overridden a President on an important bill. They passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which established Negroes as American citizens and forbade discrimination against them.

A few months later Congress submitted to the states the Fourteenth Amendment, which specified that no state should “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

In March 1867, the Radicals effected their own plan of Reconstruction, again placing southern states under military rule. They passed laws placing restrictions upon the President.

When Johnson allegedly violated one of these, the Tenure of Office Act, by dismissing Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, the House voted eleven articles of impeachment against him.

He was tried by the Senate in the spring of 1868 and acquitted by one vote.

In 1875, Tennessee returned Johnson to the Senate. He died a few months later.

Ulysses S. Grant

The 18th President of the United States Born: 1822 Died: 1885 Served: 1869 to 1877

Before He Was President At the onset of the Civil War, Grant worked in his father’s leather store in Galena, Ill. He transformed an underperforming volunteer regiment and was promoted to the rank of brigadier general of volunteers.

Upon taking over Fort Henry and attacking Fort Donelson in February 1862, Grant was promoted by President Abraham Lincoln to major general.

Other key wins during the war included Vicksburg, a key city on the Mississippi, and the breaking of the Confederate hold on Chattanooga.

On April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House, the Confederacy surrendered — a key win for Grant and his war strategies.

Ulysses S. Grant is the classic case of war hero turned president. In 1865, he led the Union armies to victory over the Confederacy in the Civil War as commanding general. Just a few years later, he was leading American policy as the commander-in-chief.

Whether in the military or the White House, Grant made it his mission to support the implementation of anti-slavery action and policy at every level.

Born in 1822, Grant was the son of an Ohio tanner and attended West Point — famously against his will. In the Mexican War he fought under Gen. Zachary Taylor. His diverse training and military experience enabled him to build relationships with some of the most prominent generals of his time.

Major Policy Grant’s administration was marked by many social and governmental landmarks. He was also forced into taking on many scandals, including the Black Friday financial panic in 1869.

Some of his most important achievements included: • Under Grant’s leadership, the first transcontinental railroad was completed at Promontory Point, Utah.

• On Sept. 24, 1869, Grant ordered a large sale of $4 million in gold in response to a financial panic set off by two railroad entrepreneurs, Jay Gould and James Fisk, Jr., cornering the gold market.

• The Fifteenth Amendment was adopted under Grant’s leadership, stipulating that no state shall deprive any citizen of the right to vote because of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

After retiring from the Presidency, Grant became a partner in a financial firm and produced a memoir to pay off his debts. He died soon after completing the last page in 1885.

Presidents of the United States 19

Rutherford B. Hayes

The 19th President of the United States Born: 1822 Died: 1893 Served: 1877 to 1881

busier area in Cincinnati. This move linked him with important Republicans due to his antislavery sentiments and incredible work ethic.

Before He Was President

The future 19th president was born to a single mother in 1822. Rutherford Birchard Hayes’ father passed away a mere two months before his birth. With the lessons he learned from being raised by his mother, he would serve distinguished legal and military careers before winning one of the most contested elections in American history.

After graduating as valedictorian from Kenyon College in 1842, Hayes would pursue a law degree from Harvard Law School. He achieved his goals three years later and eventually began his own practice in Lower Sandusky, Ohio.

He saw the need to build his business and moved to a much

20 Presidents of the United States

Hayes put aside his law career to fight during the Civil War, where he would rise to the rank of major general. Republicans soon approached him to run for a seat in the House of Representatives while still in the army.

He was easily victorious in his campaign and entered Congress in 1865, where he would serve for two years before resigning and accepting the role as governor in Ohio, which lasted three years.

In 1876, Hayes was selected to run for the presidency against Democrat opponent, Samuel Tilden. Initially, the vote showed Rutherford Hayes lost by a mere 250,000 votes. However, controversy soon arose with contested electoral-college votes from Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina.

In 1877, Congress held a commission and put the election in the hands of eight Republicans and seven Democrats.

Hayes emerged the victor and quietly took the oath of office in March 1877 in the Red Room of the White House.

Major Policy

With the victory, came the Compromise of 1877. It gave Southern Democrats at least one Cabinet post and a withdrawal of federal troops who oversaw the Reconstruction era in Louisiana and South Carolina.

While this was considered a step back in the strides for equal rights, Hayes remained vigilant in creating laws to protect black Americans.

Another challenge he faced was the Railroad Strike of 1877.

Workers were walking from their posts to protest pay cuts.

Riots ensued, and Hayes was tasked with deploying federal troops to calm the situation.

After his presidency, he advocated for children’s literacy, equal rights and prison reform until his death in 1893.

James Garfield The 20th President of the United States Born: 1831 Died: 1881 Served: 1881 to 1881

James Garfield was elected as the United States’ 20th President in 1881, after nine terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. His Presidency was impactful, but cut short after 200 days when he was assassinated.

He was born in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, in 1831. Fatherless at two, he later drove canal boat teams, somehow earning enough money for an education. He was graduated from Williams College in Massachusetts in 1856, and he returned to the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute in Ohio as a classics professor. Within a year he was made its president.

Garfield was elected to the Ohio Senate in 1859 as a Republican. During the secession crisis, he advocated coercing the seceding states back into the Union.

In 1862, when Union military victories had been few, he successfully led a brigade at Middle Creek, Kentucky, against Confederate troops. At 31, Garfield became a brigadier general, two years later a major general of volunteers.

Meanwhile, in 1862, Ohioans elected him to Congress. President Lincoln persuaded him to resign his commission. Garfield repeatedly won re-election for 18 years, and became the leading Republican in the House.

By a margin of only 10,000 popular votes, Garfield defeated the Democratic nominee, Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock.

As President, Garfield strengthened Federal authority over the New York Customs House, stronghold of Senator Roscoe Conkling, who was leader of the Stalwart Republicans and dispenser of patronage in New York. When Garfield submitted to the Senate a list of appointments including many of Conkling’s friends, he named Conkling’s arch-rival William H. Robertson to run the Customs House. Conkling contested the nomination, tried to persuade the Senate to block it, and appealed to the Republican caucus to compel its withdrawal.

But Garfield would not submit: “This…will settle the question whether the President is registering clerk of the Senate or the Executive of the United States…. shall the principal port of entry … be under the control of the administration or under the local control of a factional senator.”

Conkling maneuvered to have the Senate confirm Garfield’s uncontested nominations and adjourn without acting on Robertson. Garfield countered by withdrawing all nominations except Robertson’s; the Senators would have to confirm him or sacrifice all the appointments of Conkling’s friends.

In a final desperate move, Conkling and his fellow-Senator from New York resigned, confident that their legislature would vindicate their stand and re-elect them. Instead, the legislature elected two other men; the Senate confirmed Robertson. Garfield’s victory was complete.

In foreign affairs, Garfield’s Secretary of State invited all American republics to a conference to meet in Washington in 1882. But the conference never took place. On July 2, 1881, in a Washington railroad station, an embittered attorney who had sought a consular post shot the President.

Mortally wounded, Garfield lay in the White House for weeks. Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, tried unsuccessfully to find the bullet with an induction-balance electrical device which he had designed. On September 6, Garfield was taken to the New Jersey seaside. For a few days he seemed to be recuperating, but on September 19, 1881, he died from an infection and internal hemorrhage

Presidents of the United States 21

Chester Arthur The 21st President of the United States Born: 1829 Died: 1886 Served: 1881 to 1885

The son of a Baptist preacher who had emigrated from northern Ireland, succeeded President James Garfield upon his assassination.

Dignified, tall, and handsome, with clean-shaven chin and side-whiskers, Chester A. Arthur “looked like a President.”

The son of a Baptist preacher who had emigrated from northern Ireland, Arthur was born in Fairfield, Vermont, in 1829. He was graduated from Union College in 1848, taught school, was admitted to the bar, and practiced law in New York City. Early in the Civil War he served as Quartermaster General of the State of New York.

President Grant in 1871 appointed him Collector of the Port of New York. Arthur effectively marshalled the thousand Customs House employees under his supervision on behalf of Roscoe Conkling’s Stalwart Republican machine.

Honorable in his personal life and his public career, Arthur nevertheless was a firm believer in the spoils system when it was coming under vehement attack from reformers. He insisted upon honest administration of the Customs House, but 22 Presidents of the United States

staffed it with more employees than it needed, retaining them for their merit as party workers rather than as Government officials.

In 1878 President Hayes ousted Arthur. Conkling and his followers tried to win redress by fighting for the renomination of Grant at the 1880 Republican Convention. Failing, they reluctantly accepted the nomination of Arthur for the Vice Presidency.

During his brief tenure as Vice President, Arthur stood firmly beside Conkling in his patronage struggle against President Garfield. But when Arthur succeeded to the Presidency, he was eager to prove himself above machine politics.

Avoiding old political friends, he became a man of fashion in his garb and associates, and often was seen with the elite of Washington, New York, and Newport. To the indignation of the Stalwart Republicans, the onetime Collector of the Port of New York became, as President, a champion of civil service reform.

In 1883 Congress passed the Pendleton Act, which established a bipartisan Civil Service Commission, forbade levying political assessments against officeholders, and provided for a “classified system” that made certain Government positions obtainable only through competitive written examinations.

Acting independently of party dogma, Arthur also tried to lower tariff rates so the Government would not be embarrassed by annual surpluses of revenue. Congress raised about as many rates as it trimmed, but Arthur signed the Tariff Act of 1883.

The Arthur Administration enacted the first general Federal immigration law. Arthur approved a measure in 1882 excluding paupers, criminals, and lunatics. Congress suspended Chinese immigration for ten years, later making the restriction permanent.

Arthur demonstrated as President that he was above factions within the Republican Party, if indeed not above the party itself. Perhaps in part his reason was the well-kept secret he had known since a year after he succeeded to the Presidency, that he was suffering from a fatal kidney disease. He kept himself in the running for the Presidential nomination in 1884 in order not to appear that he feared defeat, but was not renominated, and died in 1886.

Grover Cleveland The 22nd and 24th President of the United States Born: 1837 Died: 1908 Served: 1885 to 1889 1893 to 1897

county sheriff from 1870 to 1873. His familiarity and reputation as a fair and honest man influenced his victory as mayor of Buffalo in 1881.

The very next year, he was elected governor of New York.

Much like his time as mayor, he used his veto power frequently. This was a welcome action to the public as many were tired of the constant scandals involved in American politics.

His solid reputation was again acknowledged by Democrats seeking a candidate for the 1884 election. Cleveland won his push for presidency and became the 22nd chief executive.

Major Policy

Nicknamed the “guardian president,” Grover Cleveland was known for using his veto power to strengthen the executive branch, protecting the integrity of offices he served. He is the only American President to serve two non-consecutive terms.

Cleveland was born in 1837 in Caldwell, N.J. His father was a Presbyterian minister, which kept them on the move to different posts throughout New York State. At the young age of 16, Grover Cleveland had to give up his education to support his family, after his father died. The knowledge he gained from working as a clerk and part-time law student would help him pass the bar exam in 1858.

Before He Was President

During Grover Cleveland’s first term, he was praised for nullifying fraudulent grants to be used in Western public lands and using the funds to protect the country’s best interests.

He also was involved in developing the first regulatory agency in the country’s history, the Interstate Commerce Commission. Another important movement he established was the Dawes General Allotment Act, which distributed Native American reservation land to tribe members.

During his bid for another term, Cleveland won in popular votes but ultimately lost the election due to the electoral college. It is thought that this was due to his opposition of a protective tariff that would cause an increase in taxes for American consumers.

In 1893, Grover Cleveland would retake the office and the country would endure the most severe depression the United States had experienced at the time. Another hurdle was the Pullman Strike, which was a widespread railroad strike and boycott. It led to the creation of Labor Day as a national holiday to honor the American labor movement.

After the presidency, Cleveland remained involved in politics until a heart attack took his life in 1908.

Cleveland became the assistant district attorney of Erie County, N.Y. in 1863. He would eventually change roles as the Presidents of the United States 23

Benjamin Harrison William McKinley The 23rd President of the United States Born: 1833 Died: 1901 Served: 1889 to 1893

Politics ran in his family, as his grandfather William Henry Harrison was the country’s ninth president.

Major Policy

Harrison lost the popular vote in the presidential election but carried the electoral college by a 233-168 count. One of his main focuses during his four-year term was shoring up the United States’ foreign policy.

Here are a few key strategies and policies from Harrison’s tenure: • Harrison was a key leader of the first Pan American Congress, which met in Washington in 1889.

• At the end of his administration, Harrison submitted to the Senate a treaty to annex Hawaii. The incoming president, Grover Cleveland, later withdrew the treaty.

• Harrison signed substantial appropriations bills for internal improvements, naval expansion and subsidies for steamship lines.

• Under Harrison, Congress appropriated a billion dollars for the first time except when in war.

• Harrison also signed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act “to protect trade and commerce against unlawful restraints and monopolies.”

After he left office, Harrison returned to Indianapolis and married the widowed Mrs. Mary Dimmick. He died five years later in 1901.

24 Presidents of the United States

The 25th President of the United States Born: 1843 Died: 1901 Served: 1897 to 1901

Imagine a presidential campaign won by a candidate utilizing a low-key approach comprised mostly of speeches from his own front porch. That’s exactly how William McKinley won the 1896 election against William Jennings Bryan.

Major Policy

For all his expertise on tariffs and economics, McKinley’s administration became focused on foreign policy.

Some examples of his most impactful work: • Declaration of neutral intervention in Cuba in April 1898.

According to WhiteHouse.gov, Congress voted three resolutions tantamount to a declaration of war for the liberation and independence of Cuba.

• The 100-day war, during which the U.S. destroyed the Spanish fleet outside Santiago harbor in Cuba, captured Manila in the Philippines and occupied Puerto Rico.

• Spearheaded strategic planning and coordination of annexation of Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico.

McKinley’s second term ended tragically in September 1901 when he was shot twice by a deranged anarchist. He died eight days later.

Theodore Roosevelt The 26th President of the United States Born: 1858 Died: 1919 Served: 1901 to 1909

Roosevelt won as the Republican candidate for Governor in 1898, eventually becoming the vice president behind McKinley. When the president was assassinated, Roosevelt became the youngest leader in the nation’s history at age 42.

Major Policy Roosevelt leveraged his age advantage to challenge Congress and the American public to take on progressive, strengthened reforms. One of his major impacts was ensuring the construction of the Panama Canal, driving the creation of a strategic shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific.

Much like his distant relative, Franklin, who would later serve in the same position, Theodore Roosevelt was a passionate leader.

Due to his affluent upbringing in New York City, Roosevelt’s youth differed greatly from those of the log cabin presidents who served before him. He was born in 1858 into a wealthy family but, like FDR, would battle much tragedy and major illness throughout his life.

His policies were not only celebrated by the American population and business leaders but also by the international community. He won the Nobel Peace Prize for mediating the Russo-Japanese War and reached a gentleman’s agreement on immigration with Japan.

Roosevelt was a conservationist, adding to the national forests in the West, reserving lands for public use and spearheading expansive irrigation projects.

Leaving the presidency in 1909, Roosevelt would eventually jump back into politics when he ran for president in 1912 on the Progressive ticket. While campaigning in Milwaukee, he was shot in the chest by a fanatic. He soon recovered. He died in 1919.

Before He Was President In 1884, Roosevelt’s first wife, Alice Lee Roosevelt, and his mother died on the same day. Overcome with great sadness, he spent the next chapter of his life driving cattle and hunting big game on his ranch in the Badlands of the Dakota territory.

He remarried in 1886 and became a lieutenant colonel of the Rough Rider Regiment during the Spanish-American War. Presidents of the United States 25

William Howard Taft

The 27th President of the United States Born: 1857 Died: 1930 Served: 1909 to 1913

William Howard Taft was elected the 27th President of the United States and later became the tenth Chief Justice of the United States, the only person to have served in both of these offices.

Born in 1857, the son of a distinguished judge, he graduated from Yale, and returned to Cincinnati to study and practice law. He rose in politics through Republican judiciary appointments, through his own competence and availability, and because, as he once wrote facetiously, he always had his “plate the right side up when offices were falling.”

But Taft much preferred law to politics. He was appointed a Federal circuit judge at 34. He aspired to be a member of the Supreme Court, but his wife, Helen Herron Taft, held other ambitions for him.

His route to the White House was via administrative posts.

President McKinley sent him to the Philippines in 1900 as chief civil administrator.

President Roosevelt made him Secretary of War, and by 26 Presidents of the United States

1907 had decided that Taft should be his successor. The Republican Convention nominated him the next year.

Taft disliked the campaign–“one of the most uncomfortable four months of my life.” But he pledged his loyalty to the Roosevelt program, popular in the West, while his brother Charles reassured eastern Republicans. William Jennings Bryan, running on the Democratic ticket for a third time, complained that he was having to oppose two candidates, a western progressive Taft and an eastern conservative Taft.

Progressives were pleased with Taft’s election. “Roosevelt has cut enough hay,” they said; “Taft is the man to put it into the barn.” Conservatives were delighted to be rid of Roosevelt– the “mad messiah.”

Taft recognized that his techniques would differ from those of his predecessor. Unlike Roosevelt, Taft did not believe in the stretching of Presidential powers. He once commented that Roosevelt “ought more often to have admitted the legal way of reaching the same ends.”

Taft alienated many liberal Republicans who later formed the Progressive Party, by defending the Payne-Aldrich Act which unexpectedly continued high tariff rates. A trade agreement with Canada, which Taft pushed through Congress, would have pleased eastern advocates of a low tariff, but the Canadians rejected it. He further antagonized Progressives by upholding his Secretary of the Interior, accused of failing to carry out Roosevelt’s conservation policies.

In the angry Progressive onslaught against him, little attention was paid to the fact that his administration initiated 80 antitrust suits and that Congress submitted to the states amendments for a Federal income tax and the direct election of Senators. A postal savings system was established, and the Interstate Commerce Commission was directed to set railroad rates.

In 1912, when the Republicans renominated Taft, Roosevelt bolted the party to lead the Progressives, thus guaranteeing the election of Woodrow Wilson.

Taft, free of the Presidency, served as Professor of Law at Yale until President Harding made him Chief Justice of the United States, a position he held until just before his death in 1930. To Taft, the appointment was his greatest honor; he wrote: “I don’t remember that I ever was President.”

Woodrow Wilson

The 28th President of the United States Born: 1856 Died: 1924 Served: 1913 to 1921

Wilson was a professor of political science and became president of Princeton in 1902. A group of conservative Democrats noticed Wilson and persuaded him to run for Governor of New Jersey in 1910.

He endorsed and carried out a progressive platform as governor — offering some foreshadowing on his presidential policies.

Major Policy Near the middle of Wilson’s presidency, he made the biggest decision of his tenure. On April 2,1917, he asked Congress for a declaration of war on Germany.

The son of a Presbyterian minister, Woodrow Wilson was born in Virginia in 1856. He would later ascend into a leader of the Progressive Movement, following the mantra, “Make the world safe for democracy,” as he directed the American entrance into World War I. Wilson was a highly educated president, graduating from Princeton (then the College of New Jersey) and the University of Virginia Law School.

He then earned his doctorate at Johns Hopkins University and entered a career in academia before marrying Ellen Louise Axson in 1885.

Before He Was President

His other major efforts included: • Guiding three major pieces of legislation through Congress: the Underwood Act (a lower tariff), the Federal Reserve Act and the establishment of the Federal Trade Commission to prohibit unfair business practices; • Law prohibiting child labor; and • Law limiting railroad workers to an eight-hour day.

Along with his major policies, Wilson also suffered a dramatic defeat in 1918. After the Germans signed the Armistice, Wilson presented to the Senate the Versailles Treaty, containing the Covenant of the League of Nations.

But the treaty failed by seven votes in the Senate, dealing Wilson a major blow in his efforts to mobilize Americans for peace and unity.

The treaty was so important to Wilson that he nearly died for it, organizing a national tour to capture public sentiment for it, even against the orders of his doctors. He became so overcome with exhaustion that he suffered a stroke and nearly died.

Wilson would recover but eventually passed away in 1924.

Presidents of the United States 27

Warren G. Harding

The 29th President of the United States Born: 1865 Died: 1923 Served: 1921 to 1923

Warren G. Harding was the 29th President of the United States. Though his term in office was fraught with scandal, including Teapot Dome, Harding embraced technology and was sensitive to the plights of minorities and women.

Before his nomination, Warren G. Harding declared, “America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality….”

A Democratic leader, William Gibbs McAdoo, called Harding’s speeches “an army of pompous phrases moving across the landscape in search of an idea.” Their very murkiness was effective, since Harding’s pronouncements remained unclear on the League of Nations.

Thirty-one distinguished Republicans had signed a manifesto assuring voters that a vote for Harding was a vote for the League. But Harding interpreted his election as a mandate to 28 Presidents of the United States

stay out of the League of Nations.

Harding, born near Marion, Ohio, in 1865, became the publisher of a newspaper. He married a divorcee, Mrs. Florence Kling De Wolfe. He was a trustee of the Trinity Baptist Church, a director of almost every important business, and a leader in fraternal organizations and charitable enterprises.

Harding’s undeviating Republicanism and vibrant speaking voice, plus his willingness to let the machine bosses set policies, led him far in Ohio politics. He served in the state Senate and as Lieutenant Governor, and unsuccessfully ran for Governor. In 1914 he was elected to the Senate, which he found “a very pleasant place.”

An Ohio admirer, Harry Daugherty, began to promote Harding for the 1920 Republican nomination because, he later explained, “He looked like a President.”

Thus a group of Senators turned to Harding. He won the Presidential election by an unprecedented landslide of 60 percent of the popular vote.

Republicans in Congress easily got the President’s signature on their bills. They eliminated wartime controls and slashed taxes, established a Federal budget system, restored the high protective tariff, and imposed tight limitations upon immigration.

By 1923 the postwar depression seemed to be giving way to a new surge of prosperity, and newspapers hailed Harding as a wise statesman carrying out his campaign promise–“Less government in business and more business in government.”

Behind the facade, not all of Harding’s Administration was so impressive. Word began to reach the President that some of his friends were using their official positions for their own enrichment.

Looking wan and depressed, Harding journeyed westward in the summer of 1923, taking with him his upright Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover. “If you knew of a great scandal in our administration,” he asked Hoover, “would you for the good of the country and the party expose it publicly or would you bury it?” Hoover urged publishing it, but Harding feared the political repercussions.

He did not live to find out how the public would react to the scandals of his administration. In August of 1923, he died in San Francisco of a heart attack.

Calvin Coolidge

The 30th President of the United States Born: 1872 Died: 1933 Served: 1923 to 1929

Before He Was President

Calvin Coolidge stepped into the presidency during a time of rapid economic growth and American prosperity in the 1920s. Maybe he foresaw the possibility of the upcoming Great Depression, as his focus was said to have been centered on the preservation of morals and stingy spending.

Coolidge was America’s 30th president. His swearing-in ceremony was modest and conveyed what kind of president he hoped to be.

According to the White House Historical Association, Coolidge received word at 2:30 a.m. on Aug. 3, 1923 that he would be the next commander-in-chief. By the light of a kerosene lamp, the association reports, his father, who was a notary public, administered the oath of office as Coolidge placed his hand on the family Bible.

Coolidge was born in Plymouth, Vt., on July 4, 1872. The son of a popular village storekeeper, he graduated from Amherst College with honors and entered law and politics in Northampton, Mass.

His career in politics was methodical and progressive, as he climbed the ladder from councilman in Northampton to governor of Massachusetts as a Republican. During his political ascent, he came to represent a staunchly conservative voice in American politics.

Coolidge married Grace Goodhue Coolidge, who often recounted one of the most telling tales of her husband’s dry personality and status quo presidency. According to the White House Historical Association, Grace recalled a young woman sitting next to Coolidge at a dinner party proclaiming she could get at least three words of conversation from him. “You lose,” he quietly replied.

Major Policy Coolidge held tight to his conservative values from the oval office. Here are some landmark moments and policies from his presidency: • He refused to apply federal economic power to check the growing economic boom.

• He often called for isolation in foreign policy and for tax cuts.

• In 1924, as the beneficiary of what was becoming known as “Coolidge prosperity,” he polled more than 54 percent of the popular vote.

• On Feb. 22, 1924, Coolidge became the first president to make a public radio address to the American people and later helped create the Federal Radio Commission (now the Federal Communications Commission).

Coolidge died suddenly from coronary thrombosis at his retirement home in 1933 and is buried in Plymouth Notch, Vt. Presidents of the United States 29

Herbert Hoover

The 31st President of the United States Born: 1874 Died: 1964 Served: 1929 to 1933

Before serving as America’s 31st President, Herbert Hoover had achieved international success as a mining engineer and worldwide gratitude as “The Great Humanitarian” who fed war-torn Europe during and after World War I. Born in an Iowa village in 1874, he grew up in Oregon. He enrolled at Stanford University when it opened in 1891, graduating as a mining engineer.

He married his Stanford sweetheart, Lou Henry, and they went to China, where he worked for a private corporation as China’s leading engineer. In June 1900 the Boxer Rebellion caught the Hoovers in Tientsin. For almost a month the settlement was under heavy fire. While his wife worked in the hospitals, Hoover directed the building of barricades, and once risked his life rescuing Chinese children.

One week before Hoover celebrated his 40th birthday in London, Germany declared war on France, and the American Consul General asked his help in getting stranded tourists home. Next Hoover turned to a far more difficult task, to feed Belgium, which had been overrun by the German army.

30 Presidents of the United States

After the United States entered the war, President Wilson appointed Hoover head of the Food Administration. He succeeded in cutting consumption of foods needed overseas and avoided rationing at home, yet kept the Allies fed.

After the Armistice, Hoover, a member of the Supreme Economic Council and head of the American Relief Administration, organized shipments of food for starving millions in central Europe. He extended aid to famine-stricken Soviet Russia in 1921. When a critic inquired if he was not thus helping Bolshevism, Hoover retorted, “Twenty million people are starving. Whatever their politics, they shall be fed!”

After capably serving as Secretary of Commerce under Presidents Harding and Coolidge, Hoover became the Republican Presidential nominee in 1928. His election seemed to ensure prosperity. Yet within months the stock market crashed, and the Nation spiraled downward into depression.

After the crash Hoover announced that while he would keep the Federal budget balanced, he would cut taxes and expand public works spending.

In 1931 repercussions from Europe deepened the crisis, even though the President presented to Congress a program asking for creation of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to aid business, additional help for farmers facing mortgage foreclosures, banking reform, a loan to states for feeding the unemployed, expansion of public works, and drastic governmental economy.

At the same time he reiterated his view that while people must not suffer from hunger and cold, caring for them must be primarily a local and voluntary responsibility.

His opponents in Congress, who he felt were sabotaging his program for their own political gain, unfairly painted him as a callous and cruel President. Hoover became the scapegoat for the Depression and was badly defeated in 1932. In the 1930’s he became a powerful critic of the New Deal, warning against tendencies toward statism.

In 1947 President Truman appointed Hoover to a commission, to reorganize the Executive Departments. He was appointed chairman of a similar commission by President Eisenhower in 1953. Many economies resulted from both commissions’ recommendations. Over the years, Hoover wrote many articles and books, one of which he was working on when he died at 90 in New York City on October 20, 1964.

Franklin D. Roosevelt The 32nd President of the United States Born: 1882 Died: 1945 Served: 1933 to 1945

for vice president.

His rapid ascension up the political ladder came to a screeching halt when, in the summer of 1921, he was stricken with poliomyelitis. The condition required a long, hard fight to regain the use of his legs. Seven years later, Roosevelt became governor of New York.

Major Policy Roosevelt was elected president in November 1932 to the first of four terms. By March there were 13 million unemployed Americans and banks were closing at an alarming rate. His New Deal proposition was enacted by Congress as a sweeping program to bring recovery to business and agriculture.

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Those 10 words uttered at his inaugural address in a way defined Franklin D. Roosevelt’s entire presidency.

The nation’s 32nd president assumed power in the deepest valley of the Great Depression, and his message of hope and perseverance permeated the spirit of the American people.

Before He Was President Born in 1882 at Hyde Park, N.Y., Roosevelt attended Harvard University and Columbia Law School and married Eleanor Roosevelt in 1905.

As the nation slowly emerged from the Depression, Roosevelt was re-elected by a large margin. His collection of terms was punctuated when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and he spearheaded the organization of the nation’s resources for a global war.

With the foresight of the need for stronger relations between international powers, Roosevelt also laid the groundwork for the creation of the United Nations. He coined the organization’s name, which was first used in the Declaration

by United Nations on Jan. 1, 1942, during the Second World War. As the war drew to a close, Roosevelt’s health deteriorated.

On April 12, 1945, he died of a cerebral hemorrhage, leaving behind a long history of service to his country and a reputation for swift, resolute action.

Roosevelt won election to the New York Senate in 1910 and was appointed assistant secretary of the Navy by President Woodrow Wilson. By 1920, he was the Democratic nominee Presidents of the United States 31

Harry S. Truman

The 33rd President of the United States Born: 1884 Died: 1972 Served: 1945 to 1953

He traveled to France during World War I as a captain in the Field Artillery and became active in the Democratic party upon his return. He was elected a judge of the Jackson County Court in 1922 and became a Senator in 1934.

Major Policy As president, Truman made arguably some of the most crucial decisions in history. After a plea to Japan to surrender, Truman ordered atomic bombs dropped on cities devoted to war work, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Japanese surrender quickly followed, and in June 1945, Truman witnessed the signing of the charter of the United Nations. The president carried out many of his predecessor’s policies, but also became noted for conceptualizing some of his own.

Perhaps no president either before or after Harry Truman had more conflict hit his desk when he took over the oval office.

During his few weeks as vice president to Franklin Roosevelt, Truman reportedly scarcely saw the president and received no briefing on the development of the atomic bomb or the emerging dangers of Soviet Russia.

When he took over on April 12, 1945, he soon realized how much work had to be done to protect the American people and their pursuit of democracy.

Before He Was President Truman was born in Lamar, Mo., in 1884, and grew up in Independence to eventually prosper as a farmer.

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Early in his presidency, he presented to Congress a 21-point program, proposing the expansion of Social Security, a full-employment program, a permanent Fair Employment Practices Act, and public housing and slum clearance. It became known as the Fair Deal.

As the Soviet Union pressured Turkey and threatened to take over Greece in 1947, Truman asked Congress to aid the two countries through a program called the Truman Doctrine. The adjacent Marshall Plan, named for his secretary of state, stimulated a comprehensive economic recovery in wartorn western Europe.

Deciding not to run again, Truman retired to Independence, where he died in 1972.

Dwight D. Eisenhower The 34th President of the United States Born: 1890 Died: 1969 Served: 1953 to 1961

Pershing, Douglas MacArthur and Walter Krueger. After Pearl Harbor, General George C. Marshall commissioned Eisenhower to Washington for a war plans assignment.

He commanded the Allied Forces, landing in North Africa in November 1942, and served as Supreme Commander of the troops invading France on D-Day, 1944.

After the war, Eisenhower transitioned into the academic sector, being named president of Columbia University.

Major Policy

One of the most reputable commanding generals of the victorious forces in Europe during World War II, Dwight D. Eisenhower utilized his expertise to garner major global achievements and partnerships during his presidential tenure from 1953 to 1961.

Raised in Abilene, Kan., Eisenhower was the third of seven sons and thrived as a student-athlete in high school. He received an appointment to West Point and was stationed in Texas as a second lieutenant when he met his future wife, Mamie Geneva Doud.

Before He Was President In his early Army career, Eisenhower served under some of the most prominent generals of the time, including John J.

Republicans persuaded Eisenhower to run for President in 1952. He was up to the challenge, riding the slogan “I like Ike” to a sweeping victory. Near the end of his first term, Eisenhower suddenly suffered a heart attack in Denver. He was cleared after seven weeks in the hospital and later that year was elected for his second term.

Here are a few of his most impressive presidential achievements as he pursued the moderate policies of “Modern Republicanism:” • Obtained a truce in Korea through tactful, strategic negotiations.

• Successfully eased tensions of the Cold War. • Met with leaders of the British, French and Russian governments in Geneva in July 1955, proposing that the U.S. and Russia exchange blueprints of each other’s military establishments and “provide within our countries facilities for aerial photography to the other country.”

• Sent troops into Little Rock, Ark., to assure compliance with the orders of a Federal court upon the desegregation of schools.

• Ordered the complete desegregation of the Armed Forces.

Eisenhower died after a long illness, on March 28, 1969.

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John F. Kennedy

The 35th President of the United States Born: 1917 Died: 1963 Served: 1961 to 1963

In 1956, Kennedy almost gained the Democratic nomination for vice president and four years later was a first-ballot nominee for president. He beat out Republican candidate Richard Nixon to win the popular vote by a narrow margin, becoming the first Roman Catholic president.

Major Policy “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” This became one of the most memorable phrases uttered by Kennedy when he spoke it at his inaugural address.

He would excite many Americans through his policies, specifically ones focused on battling privation, poverty and the challenge of Communism.

Nov. 22, 1963 is still a date that rings loudly in the ears of many Americans who were alive to experience it.

It was the day that John Fitzgerald Kennedy was killed by an assassin’s bullets as his motorcade wound through Dallas, hardly 1,000 days into his presidency. Kennedy was the youngest man elected president. He was also the youngest to die.

Before He Was President Kennedy was born in Brookline, Mass., on May 29, 1917.

He graduated from Harvard in 1940 and served in the Navy before becoming a charismatic Democratic congressman and senator.

He married Jacqueline Bouvier in 1953 and wrote “Profiles in Courage” two years later while recuperating from a back operation. The publication won the Pulitzer Prize in history.

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Shortly after his inauguration, Kennedy ordered a band of Cuban exiles to invade their homeland in an attempt to overthrow the regime of Fidel Castro. The plan failed and worsened the already fractured relations between the U.S. and Cuba.

Kennedy also set his sights on another communist power: the Soviet Union. When the country renewed its campaign against West Berlin, Kennedy replied by increasing the nation’s military strength.

The Russians later sought to install nuclear missiles in Cuba, an effort that influenced Kennedy to impose a quarantine on all offensive weapons in Cuba. While nuclear war seemed possible, the Russians eventually agreed to remove the missiles.

Kennedy was successful in contending that both sides had a vital interest in stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and slowing the arms race. These efforts led to the test ban treaty of 1963.

Lyndon B. Johnson

The 36th President of the United States Born: 1908 Died: 1973 Served: 1963 to 1969

Johnson later won a commission in the U.S. Naval Reserve as a lieutenant commander and was elected as a Texas senator in 1948.

Named the youngest minority leader in Senate history in 1953, Johnson was eventually elected majority leader.

Major Policy Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency got off to a precarious start as he took over in 1963 upon President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

While challenged with replacing a true global icon, Johnson made a positive impression on the American people, as well as his partners in Congress – enough to eventually earn a second term.

Johnson’s White House achievements spanned both his role as vice president and president.

• As VP to Kennedy, Johnson headed the space program, oversaw negotiations on the nuclear test ban treaty and pushed through equal opportunity legislation for minorities.

• During his administration, Johnson initiated the “Great Society” social service programs and signed the Civil Rights Act into law. These were major wins for a nation in a period of great transition, and Johnson was lauded for his efforts.

• He also took much criticism for his role in vastly expanding America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. Johnson died of an apparent heart attack at his ranch in Johnson City, Texas in 1973.

Before He Was President Johnson grew up in Stonewall, Texas, and graduated from what is now Texas State University in 1930. His political career immediately took off as he won an appointment as legislative secretary to a Texas Democratic congressman.

Upon his relocation to Washington, D.C., Johnson quickly became a trusted advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

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Richard Nixon

The 37th President of the United States Born: 1913 Died: 1994 Served: 1969 to 1974

Richard Nixon was elected the 37th President of the United States.After successfully ending American fighting in Vietnam and improving international relations with the U.S.S.R. and China, he became the only President to ever resign the office, as a result of the Watergate scandal.

Born in California in 1913, Nixon had a brilliant record at Whittier College and Duke University Law School before beginning the practice of law. In 1940, he married Patricia Ryan; they had two daughters, Patricia (Tricia) and Julie. During World War II, Nixon served as a Navy lieutenant commander in the Pacific.

On leaving the service, he was elected to Congress from his California district. In 1950, he won a Senate seat. Two years later, General Eisenhower selected Nixon, age 39, to be his 36 Presidents of the United States

running mate.

As Vice President, Nixon took on major duties in the Eisenhower Administration. Nominated for President by acclamation in 1960, he lost by a narrow margin to John F. Kennedy.

In 1968, he again won his party’s nomination, and went on to defeat Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey and third-party candidate George C. Wallace.

His accomplishments while in office included revenue sharing, the end of the draft, new anticrime laws, and a broad environmental program. As he had promised, he appointed Justices of conservative philosophy to the Supreme Court.

One of the most dramatic events of his first term occurred in 1969, when American astronauts made the first moon landing.

Some of his most acclaimed achievements came in his quest for world stability. During visits in 1972 to Beijing and Moscow, he reduced tensions with China and the U.S.S.R. His summit meetings with Russian leader Leonid I. Brezhnev produced a treaty to limit strategic nuclear weapons. In January 1973, he announced an accord with North Vietnam to end American involvement in Indochina. In 1974, his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, negotiated disengagement agreements between Israel and its opponents, Egypt and Syria.

In his 1972 bid for office, Nixon defeated Democratic candidate George McGovern by one of the widest margins on record.

Within a few months, his administration was embattled over the so-called “Watergate” scandal, stemming from a break-in at the offices of the Democratic National Committee during the 1972 campaign. The break-in was traced to officials of the Committee to Re-elect the President. Nixon denied any personal involvement, but the courts forced him to yield tape recordings which indicated that he had, in fact, tried to divert the investigation.

Faced with what seemed almost certain impeachment, Nixon announced on August 8, 1974, that he would resign the next day to begin “that process of healing which is so desperately needed in America.”

In his last years, Nixon gained praise as an elder statesman.

He died on April 22, 1994.

Gerald Ford

The 38th President of the United States Born: 1913 Died: 2006 Served: 1974 to 1977

Vice Presidency

In 1973, President Richard Nixon’s vice president, Spiro Agnew, resigned amidst a corruption investigation in Baltimore.

Nixon then named Ford vice president under the terms of the 25th Amendment. He was sworn in Dec. 6, 1973, after Senate confirmation of the appointment and amidst the unfolding Watergate scandal.

Presidency

First to Serve as President and Vice President Without Being Elected by the Electoral College Traditionally in the United States, presidents are elected when citizens cast their vote, then electors to the Electoral College from their states vote for the president. This is how a president can win the popular vote, but still not be president.

Gerald Ford, who is the only man to have served as vice president and president without first winning the Electoral College.

Early Career

Ford was born in Nebraska but raised in Michigan and, after a stint in the U.S. Naval Reserves and graduation from Yale Law School, returned there to serve as U.S. representative from Michigan’s 5th congressional district for 25 years. He eventually rose to House minority leader.

He married Elizabeth Bloomer, and the couple had four children: Michael Gerald, John Gardner, Steven Meigs and Susan Elizabeth.

Nixon resigned Aug. 9, 1974, and Ford assumed the presidency, taking the oath of office in the East Room of the White House and addressing the nation. “I am acutely aware that you have not elected me as your president by your ballots, and so I ask you to confirm me as your president with your prayers,” he said. Ford pardoned Nixon on Sept. 8, saying it was the best option to move the country forward.

Ford replaced almost all of the members of Nixon’s cabinet during his 895 days in office. He also pardoned military deserters and Vietnam War draft dodgers and took steps to rein in inflation. Domestically, he signed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, establishing special education in the U.S., and was a vocal supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment.

Ford visited China in 1975 and continued a policy of detente with the Soviet Union and China both. He attended the inaugural meeting of the G7, or Group of Seven, industrialized nations. But the biggest challenge he faced was in Vietnam, presiding over the evacuation of Americans and others from the fall of Saigon and allowing more than 100,000 Vietnamese refugees into the U.S. Ford was the target of two assassination attempts, one by Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a follower of Charles Manson, and a second by Sara Jane Moore. Both women wielded guns and both were foiled. He reluctantly agreed to run for re-election in 1976, but lost to Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter.

Post-Presidency

The Fords moved to Colorado, where the former president invested in oil and continued to make appearances. Ford published a biography, “A Time to Heal,” and served on boards and lent his voice to various causes. He died in 2006 at 93.

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Jimmy Carter The 39th President of the United States Born: 1924 Served: 1977 to 1981

Jimmy Carter was awarded the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize for work to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.

Carter, who has rarely used his full name–James Earl Carter, Jr.–was born October 1, 1924, in Plains, Georgia. Peanut farming, talk of politics, and devotion to the Baptist faith were mainstays of his upbringing. Upon graduation in 1946 from the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, Carter married Rosalynn Smith. The Carters have three sons, John William (Jack), James Earl III (Chip), Donnel Jeffrey (Jeff), and a daughter, Amy Lynn.

After seven years’ service as a naval officer, Carter returned to Plains. In 1962 he entered state politics, and eight years later he was elected Governor of Georgia.

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Carter announced his candidacy for President in December 1974 and began a two-year campaign that gradually gained momentum. At the Democratic Convention, he was nominated on the first ballot. Carter campaigned hard against President Gerald R. Ford, debating with him three times. Carter won by 297 electoral votes to 241 for Ford.

Carter worked hard to combat the continuing economic woes of inflation and unemployment. By the end of his administration, he could claim an increase of nearly eight million jobs and a decrease in the budget deficit, measured in percentage of the gross national product.

Carter could point to a number of achievements in domestic affairs. He dealt with the energy shortage by establishing a national energy policy and by decontrolling domestic petroleum prices to stimulate production. He prompted Government efficiency through civil service reform and proceeded with deregulation of the trucking and airline industries. He sought to improve the environment. His expansion of the national park system included protection of 103 million acres of Alaskan lands. To increase human and social services, he created the Department of Education, bolstered the Social Security system, and appointed record numbers of women, blacks, and Hispanics to Government jobs.

In foreign affairs, Carter set his own style. In the Middle East, through the Camp David agreement of 1978, he helped bring amity between Egypt and Israel. He succeeded in obtaining ratification of the Panama Canal treaties. Building upon the work of predecessors, he established full diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China and completed negotiation of the SALT II nuclear limitation treaty with the Soviet Union.

There were serious setbacks, however. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan caused the suspension of plans for ratification of the SALT II pact. The seizure as hostages of the U. S. embassy staff in Iran dominated the news during the last 14 months of the administration. The consequences of Iran’s holding Americans captive, together with continuing inflation at home, contributed to Carter’s defeat in 1980. Even then, he continued the difficult negotiations over the hostages. Iran finally released the 52 Americans the same day Carter left office.

Ronald Reagan The 40th President of the United States Born: 1911 Died: 2004 Served: 1981 to 1989

Reagan eventually served as president of the Screen Actors Guild and toured the United States as a television host. While taking advantage of his Hollywood platform, Reagan was able to take several important political stances that helped shape the country’s thinking on key topics, most notably Communism.

Reagan was elected governor of California in 1966 by a margin of 1 million votes and was re-elected in 1970. His unique background and image as a popular celebrity helped pave his path into the White House.

Major Policy

With many of his core political tenets reverberating today, Ronald Reagan is regarded as one of the most highly respected presidents in American history.

This was in part due to his tough stance on American prosperity and security but also due to his unique background prior to taking over the White House. Reagan earned great fame and fortune in Hollywood before translating his talents into Washington success. The legacy he built during his two terms ending in 1989 lives on today, as he serves as a model of influence for many Republicans and Democrats alike.

Before He Was President Upon graduating from Eureka College, Reagan became a radio sports announcer and later earned an acting contract in Hollywood. He appeared in 53 films during the next two decades.

Reagan’s core principle was defined as a pledge to restore “the great, confident roar of American progress and growth and optimism.”

Reagan was seen as an across-the-aisle ally of the American people focused on negotiating with Congress to get bills passed. He kept a public focus on national defense, stimulating economic growth, curbing inflation and increasing employment — all major points of emphasis for American voters, as well.

Among his major policies, Reagan: • Led an overhaul of the income tax code, which eliminated many deductions and exempted millions of people with low incomes.

• Increased defense spending by 35 percent.

• Spearheaded dramatic meetings with Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev to negotiate a treaty that would eliminate intermediate-range nuclear missiles.

• Sent American bombers to Libya after evidence came out that Libya was involved in an attack on American soldiers in a nightclub.

These efforts were in line with the Reagan Doctrine, containing what some hail as the most influential policies in American history. The beloved president died in 2004 after having suffered from Alzheimer’s disease for nearly 10 years.

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George H.W. Bush The 41st President of the United States Born: 1924 Died: 2018 Served: 1989 to 1993

Before He Was President

On November 30, 2018, America somberly said goodbye to a national hero.

George H.W. Bush was a World War II veteran, both vice president, president and activist after leaving office. While he only served one term, he strove to handle foreign affairs during a trying time in our country’s history.

George Herbert Walker Bush served in the Navy during World War II from 1942 to September 1945. It was 1943 when he earned the illustrious role as the youngest pilot in that branch of military. His heroism garnered him the Distinguished Flying Cross after his plane was shot down by Japanese military.

After an honorable discharge from the military, Bush attended Yale University, where he completed an undergraduate degree in economics.

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Bush didn’t rush into politics after graduation. In fact, he moved his family to reside in Odessa, Texas, where he became a clerk for an oil company. His experience with petroleum propelled him to begin an oil development company with a friend.

The operation was such a success that it quickly merged with another group that developed offshore-drilling equipment. He would later be the acting president of the subsidiary.

His connections to the oil industry eventually led to Bush becoming the Republican Party chairman in Harris County, Texas, and his political career began. After an unsuccessful campaign for a U.S. Senate seat in 1964, he secured a seat as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1966.

In 1970, after falling short for a Senate seat for the second time, he was nominated the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. This experience in foreign affairs would be highlighted throughout his presidency.

In 1980, Bush lost the Republican presidential nomination to Ronald Reagan but was chosen as his running mate and served as vice president for two terms.

Major Policy Bush became the United States President after winning the 1988 election. He was the first vice president to win the top seat since 1837.

Bush was heralded as a worldwide hero after responding to countries under attack or despair from unruly dictators. Only months into his presidency, he oversaw the U.S. military’s attempt to remove Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega.

Many consider his coalition against Iraqi President Saddam Hussain’s invasion of the oil-rich country of Kuwait as his greatest accomplishment.

Bill Clinton The 42nd President of the United States Born: 1946 Served: 1993 to 2001

Bill Clinton is an American politician from Arkansas who served as the 42nd President of the United States. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first baby-boomer generation President.

During the administration of William Jefferson Clinton, the U.S. enjoyed more peace and economic well being than at any time in its history. He was the first Democratic president since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win a second term. He could point to the lowest unemployment rate in modern times, the lowest inflation in 30 years, the highest home ownership in the country’s history, dropping crime rates in many places, and reduced welfare rolls. He proposed the first balanced budget in decades and achieved a budget surplus. As part of a plan to celebrate the millennium in 2000, Clinton called for a great national initiative to end racial discrimination.

President Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe III on

August 19, 1946, in Hope, Arkansas, three months after his father died in a traffic accident. When he was four years old, his mother wed Roger Clinton, of Hot Springs, Arkansas. In high school, he took the family name.

He excelled as a student and as a saxophone player and once considered becoming a professional musician. As a delegate to Boys Nation while in high school, he met President John Kennedy in the White House Rose Garden. The encounter led him to enter a life of public service.

Clinton graduated from Georgetown University and in 1968 won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University. He received a law degree from Yale University in 1973, and entered politics in Arkansas.

He was defeated in his campaign for Congress in Arkansas’s Third District in 1974. The next year he married Hillary Rodham, a graduate of Wellesley College and Yale Law School.

In 1980, Chelsea, their only child, was born.

Clinton was elected Arkansas Attorney General in 1976, and won the governorship in 1978. After losing a bid for a second term, he regained the office four years later, and served until he defeated incumbent George Bush and third party candidate Ross Perot in the 1992 presidential race.

Clinton and his running mate, Tennessee’s Senator Albert Gore Jr., then 44, represented a new generation in American political leadership. For the first time in 12 years both the White House and Congress were held by the same party. But that political edge was brief; the Republicans won both houses of Congress in 1994.

In 1998, as a result of issues surrounding personal indiscretions with a young woman White House intern, Clinton was the second U.S. president to be impeached by the House of Representatives. He was tried in the Senate and found not guilty of the charges brought against him. He apologized to the nation for his actions and continued to have unprecedented popular approval ratings for his job as president.

In the world, he successfully dispatched peace keeping forces to war-torn Bosnia and bombed Iraq when Saddam Hussein stopped United Nations inspections for evidence of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. He became a global proponent for an expanded NATO, more open international trade, and a worldwide campaign against drug trafficking.

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George W. Bush The 43rd President of the United States Born: 1946 Served: 2001 to 2009

George W. Bush, America’s 43rd President, was transformed into a wartime President in the aftermath of the airborne terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, facing the “greatest challenge of any President since Abraham Lincoln.”

The airborne terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the thwarted flight against the White House or Capitol on September 11, 2001, in which nearly 3,000 Americans were killed, transformed George W. Bush into a wartime president. The attacks put on hold many of Bush’s hopes and plans, In response, Bush formed a new cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security, sent American forces into Afghanistan to break up the Taliban, a movement under Osama bin Laden that trained financed and exported terrorist teams. The Taliban was successfully disrupted but Bin Laden was not captured and was still on the loose as Bush began his second term. Following the attacks, the president also recast the nation’s intelligence gathering and analysis services, and ordered reform of the military forces to meet the new enemy. At the same time he delivered major tax cuts which had been a campaign pledge. His most controversial act was the invasion of Iraq on the belief that Iraqi President Saddam 42 Presidents of the United States

Hussein posed a grave threat to the United States. Saddam was captured, but the disruption of Iraq and the killing of American servicemen and friendly Iraqis by insurgents became the challenge of Bush’s government as he began his second term. President Bush pledged during his 2005 State of the Union Address that the United States would help the Iraqi people establish a fully democratic government because the victory of freedom in Iraq would strengthen a new ally in the war on terror, bring hope to a troubled region, and lift a threat from the lives of future generations.

Bush was born in New Haven, Connecticut.The family moved to Midland, Texas, where the senior Bush entered the oil exploration business. The son spent formative years there, attended Midland public schools, and formed friendships that stayed with him into the White House. Bush graduated from Yale, received a business degree from Harvard, and then returned to Midland where he too got into the oil business. In Midland he met and married Laura Welch, a teacher and librarian. They had twin daughters, Jenna and Barbara.

When George W. Bush, at the age of 54, became the 43rd president of the United States, it was only the second time in American history that a president’s son went on to the White House.

During the early part of the 2000 campaign for the White House, Bush enjoyed a double-digit lead in the polls over his opponent Vice President Al Gore Jr. But the gap closed as the election approached and though Gore finally won the popular vote, victory or loss of the presidency hinged on Florida’s electoral votes. That struggle through recounts and lawsuits worked its way to the Supreme Court. In the end Bush won the electoral count 271 to 266.

Bush was challenged in his re-election bid in 2004 by Massachusetts Democratic Senator John Kerry. The election was a good contest, but Bush’s contention that the invasion of Iraq had made the world more secure against terrorism won the national political debate.

On the inaugural stand, George W. Bush set the theme for his second term: “At this second gathering, our duties are defined not by the words I use, but by the history we have seen together. For half a century, America defended our own freedom by standing watch on distant borders. After the shipwreck of communism came years of relative quiet- and then there came a day of fire.

There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants, and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom – tested but not weary… we are ready for the greatest achievements in the history of freedom.”

Barack Obama The 44th President of the United States Born: 1961 Served: 2009 to 2017 attended Occidental College before transferring and graduating from Columbia University. After a few years in the workforce, where he was a writer, researcher and community organizer, Obama entered Harvard Law School, where he served as editor and then president of the Harvard Law Review. He graduated in 1991 and returned to Chicago, where he taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago.

Personal Life

Obama met Michelle Robinson in 1989 while both were at the law firm of Sidley Austin. The couple married in 1992 and had daughter Malia in 1998 and Sasha in 2001. Obama is an avid sports fan and basketball player.

Political Life

Born in Hawaii in 1961, Barack Obama was elected to his first term in office in 2008. He served eight years in the White House, with his wife and two daughters. As the first black president of the United States, he also won the Nobel Peace Prize and a Profile in Courage Award.

Early Life

Obama is the only U.S. president that was born outside the contiguous 48 states. His mother is Ann Durham, a Kansas native who lived in Hawaii, and his father is Barack Obama Sr., a Kenyan who was attending college in Hawaii when he met Durham. The Obamas divorced in 1964 and Durham remarried an Indonesian man, meaning the younger Obama spent some of his childhood in Indonesia, where he learned to speak the language fluently.

Education

In 1971, Obama returned to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents. There, he attended the Punahou School, a private college prep school, on scholarship. After graduation, he

Obama’s first political office was election to the Illinois state Senate in 1997, where he represented parts of Chicago’s South Side. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004, where he supported transparency in federal spending, relief for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, de-escalation of the Iraq War, and sanctions on Iran. Obama chaired the Senate Subcommittee on European Affairs and held seats on several Senate Committees, including Foreign Relations.

Presidency

Obama became the first black president of the United States in 2009, with Delaware Sen. Joe Biden as his vice president.

Obama and Biden held office for two four-year terms.

During his time in office, he appointed two women as Supreme Court justices; pushed reforms for LGBT rights, such as signing the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act and repealing the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Act military sexual orientation policy; pushed for increased conservation of public lands and more strict regulation of carbon emissions; and advocated for and eventually passed health care reform.

Post Presidency

After the Obama family left the White House in 2017. A survey of historians by the American Political Science Association in 2018 ranked Obama the 8th greatest American president. His presidential library will be built in Chicago’s Jackson Park.

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Donald Trump

The 45th President of the United States Born: 1946 Served: 2017 to 2021

reinvigorate “Buy American and Hire American” policies. He signed a major tax reform bill into law and directed the reduction of federal regulations intended to secure a long-running economic expansion and a historically low unemployment rate. His trade policies encouraged tariffs on foreign aluminum and steel and a series of renegotiations of trade agreements with Mexico, Canada, China, Japan, and South Korea.

Donald John Trump was born in Queens, New York, on June 14, 1946. His father, Fred Trump, was a highly successful real estate developer. The elder Trump was of German heritage, and his wife, Mary McLeod, of Scottish background.

Their son Donald was the second youngest of five children.

He was educated at the New York Military Academy and the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce at the University of Pennsylvania. Even before he graduated he was drawn to real estate and construction, and as a young man he took over his father’s firm, renaming it the Trump Organization.

The Trump Organization soon became involved in a myriad of projects, including hotels, resorts, residential and commercial buildings, casinos, and golf courses, both in the United States and abroad. His first of many books was The Art of the Deal, published in 1987. In 2004 he launched the Apprentice (later The Celebrity Apprentice), a popular television series that aired until 2015. During the 2016 primary season Trump defeated more than a dozen seasoned rivals to win the Republican nomination and went on to win the election over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. His campaign slogan was “Make America Great Again,” and he moved swiftly to 44 Presidents of the United States

Other priorities included Supreme Court and federal judiciary appointments, tackling the opioid crisis, seeking to reduce the cost of prescription drugs, and improving health care for veterans. Trump’s commitment to “America first” abroad shaped not only his trade and tariff policies but his approach to immigration and overseas commitments. At his urging, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member states increased their contributions to the alliance. Trump recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and moved the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, recognizing the ancient city as Israel’s capital.

His approach to the problem of nuclear proliferation included applying maximum economic pressure on both North Korea and Iran. Trump increased the budget for the U.S. military, and during his administration the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS), which had taken territory in Iraq and Syria and was responsible for inciting terrorist attacks, was defeated.

President Trump and his wife, Melania Trump, have one son, Barron. President Trump also has four adult children from previous marriages: Donald Jr., Ivanka, Eric, and Tiffany, as well as nine grandchildren.

Joe Biden

The 46th President of the United States Born: 1942 Served: 2021

Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the first of four children. In 1953, the Biden family moved to Claymont, Delaware. President Biden graduated from the University of Delaware and Syracuse Law School and served on the New Castle County Council.

JOE BIDEN’S FAMILY At age 29, President Biden became one of the youngest people ever elected to the United States Senate. Just weeks after his Senate election, tragedy struck the Biden family when his wife Neilia and daughter Naomi were killed, and sons Hunter and Beau were critically injured, in an auto accident.

Biden was sworn into the U.S. Senate at his sons’ hospital bedsides and began commuting from Wilmington to Washington every day. He would continue to do so throughout his time in the Senate.

Biden married Jill Jacobs in 1977, and in 1980, their family was complete with the birth of Ashley Blazer Biden.

Beau Biden, Attorney General of Delaware and Joe Biden’s eldest son, passed away in 2015 after battling brain cancer.

A LEADER IN THE SENATE As a Senator from Delaware for 36 years, President Biden established himself as a leader in facing some of our nation’s

most important domestic and international challenges. Biden is widely recognized for his work writing and spearheading the Violence Against Women Act Biden played a pivotal role in shaping U.S. foreign policy. He was at the forefront of issues and legislation related to terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, post-Cold War Europe, the Middle East, Southwest Asia, and ending apartheid.

THE 47TH VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES As Vice President, Biden continued his leadership on important issues facing the nation and represented our country abroad. Biden helped President Obama pass and then oversaw the implementation of the Recovery Act. President Obama and Vice President Biden also secured the passage of the Affordable Care Act, which reduced the number of uninsured Americans by 20 million by the time they left office and banned insurance companies from denying coverage due to pre-existing conditions.

He served as the point person for U.S. diplomacy throughout the Western Hemisphere, strengthened relationships with our allies both in Europe and the Asia-Pacific, and led the effort to bring 150,000 troops home from Iraq.

In a ceremony at the White House, President Obama awarded Biden the Presidential Medal of Freedom with Distinction — the nation’s highest civilian honor.

A NEW CHAPTER After leaving the White House, the Bidens continued their efforts to expand opportunity for every American with the creation of the Biden Foundation, the Biden Cancer Initiative, the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, and the Biden Institute at the University of Delaware.

On April 25, 2019, Biden announced his candidacy for President of the United States. Biden’s candidacy was built from the beginning around 3 pillars: the battle for the soul of our nation, the need to rebuild our middle class — the backbone of our country, and a call for unity, to act as One America. It was a message that would only gain more resonance in 2020 as we confront a pandemic, an economic crisis, urgent calls for racial justice, and the existential threat of climate change.

“WE ARE LIVING THROUGH A BATTLE FOR THE SOUL OF THIS NATION.”

JOE BIDEN, APRIL 25, 2019 Presidents of the United States 45

Presidential Trivia

1. Which president banned alcohol at the White House?

A. Lincoln B. Kennedy C. T. Roosevelt D. Hayes

2. Which president was photographed with a newspaper claiming his opponent won the election?

A. Eisenhower B. Truman C. Wilson D. Taft 3. Which president served two non-consecutive terms?

A. Ford B. Lincoln C. Cleveland D. F.D. Roosevelt 4. Which president was born on July 4th?

A. Harrison B. Coolidge C. Washington D. Trump 5. Which president became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court after his presidency?

A. Polk B. Adams C. Taft D. Johnson

9. Which president originally wanted to be a professional saxaphone player?

A. Clinton B. Hayes C. Grant D. Carter 10. Who won the Distinguished Flying Cross in World War II? A. L.B. Johnson B. G.H.W. Bush C. G.W. Bush D. Ford 11. Who was the first vice-president to success a president who died?

A. Buchanan B. L.B. Johnson C. Tyler D. Arthur 12. Which president got stuck in a bathtub?

A. Grant B. Taft C. Cleveland D. Van Buren 13. Which president ended the draft?

A. Nixon B. Kennedy C. Carter D. L.B. Johnson

6. Who is the only president to resign from office?

A. Polk B. Nixon C. Clinton D. Fillmore

14. Who was the first president to die in office?

A. Lincoln B. A. Jackson C. W.H. Harrison D. B. Harrison

7. Who was the first president to campaign using the telephone?

A. Harrison B. Harding C. T. Roosevelt D. McKinely

15. Which president was re-elected by the widest popular vote margin ever?

A. Lincoln B. Clinton C. Obama D. L.B. Johnson

46 Presidents of the United States

ANSWERS: 1. D, 2. B, 3. C, 4. B, 5. C, 6. B, 7. D, 8. B, 9. A, 10. B, 11. C, 12. B, 13. A, 14. C, 15. D

8. Which president was previously a model for Cosmopolitan magazine?

A. Buchanan B. Ford C. Monroe D. Reagan

Presidents of the United States 47

Presidents of the Presidents of the United States United States

Chester Arthur Grover Cleveland Benjamin Harrison Grover Cleveland William McKinley Theodore Roosevelt William Howard Taft Woodrow Wilson Warren G. Harding Calvin Coolidge

Herbert Hoover Franklin D. Roosevelt Harry S. Truman Dwight D. Eisenhower John F. Kennedy Lyndon B. Johnson Richard Nixon Gerald Ford Jimmy Carter Ronald Reagan

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George H. W. Bush Bill Clinton George W. Bush Barack Obama Donald Trump Joe Biden

Presidents of the United States Answer key:

James K. Polk Zachary Taylor Millard Fillmore Franklin Pierce James Buchanan Abraham Lincoln Andrew Johnson Ulysses S. Grant Rutherford B. Hayes James Garfield

Find the names of all 46 Presidents listed below hidden vertically, horizontally & diagonally throughout the puzzle.

GeorgeWashington JohnAdams ThomasJefferson JamesMadison JamesMonroe JohnQuincyAdams AndrewJackson MartinVanBuren WilliamHenryHarrison JohnTyler JamesKPolk ZacharyTaylor MillardFillmore FranklinPierce JamesBuchanan AbrahamLincoln AndrewJohnson UlyssesSGrant RutherfordBHayes JamesGarfield ChesterArthur GroverCleveland BenjaminHarrison GroverCleveland WilliamMcKinley TheodoreRoosevelt WilliamHowardTaft WoodrowWilson WarrenGHarding CalvinCoolidge HerbertHoover FranklinDRoosevelt HarrySTruman DwightDEisenhower JohnFKennedy LyndonBJohnson RichardNixon GeraldFord JimmyCarter RonaldReagan GeorgeHWBush BillClinton GeorgeWBush BarackObama DonaldTrump JoeBiden

George Washington John Adams Thomas Jefferson James Madison James Monroe John Quincy Adams Andrew Jackson Martin Van Buren William Henry Harrison John Tyler

GeorgeWashington JohnAdams ThomasJefferson JamesMadison JamesMonroe JohnQuincyAdams AndrewJackson MartinVanBuren WilliamHenryHarrison JohnTyler JamesKPolk ZacharyTaylor MillardFillmore FranklinPierce JamesBuchanan AbrahamLincoln AndrewJohnson UlyssesSGrant RutherfordBHayes JamesGarfield ChesterArthur GroverCleveland BenjaminHarrison GroverCleveland WilliamMcKinley TheodoreRoosevelt WilliamHowardTaft WoodrowWilson WarrenGHarding CalvinCoolidge HerbertHoover FranklinDRoosevelt HarrySTruman DwightDEisenhower JohnFKennedy LyndonBJohnson RichardNixon GeraldFord JimmyCarter RonaldReagan GeorgeHWBush BillClinton GeorgeWBush BarackObama DonaldTrump JoeBiden

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