A Complete List of US Presidents in Order

The President of the United States is widely considered to be the most powerful person in the world. Since the ratification of the Constitution of the United States and the election of George Washington in 1789, 45 men have served as US President, including two who were elected to non-consecutive terms. Read on to find out how each of these presidents impacted the history of the United States and the rest of the world over more than two centuries.

Presidents of the United States (in Chronological Order)

1. George Washington, Independent, 1789-1797

A wealthy landowner from Virginia, George Washington served as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. After the ratification of the US Constitution in 1789, Washington was unanimously elected the first President of the United States.

While Washington rejected party labels as divisive, his administration favored the Federalists, who wanted to strengthen the federal government. The driving force behind Washington’s administration was Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, who steered the country through its financial challenges by establishing the US national debt and founding the First Bank of the United States.

Washington was inaugurated in New York but moved the seat of the federal government to Philadelphia in 1790. Construction work began on a new permanent capital on the banks of the Potomac River named Washington DC in his honor.

In April 1793, Washington responded to the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars in Europe by issuing the Neutrality Proclamation. In 1796, Washington announced his intention to step down from the presidency after two terms, setting a precedent for over a century and a half.

2. John Adams, Federalist, 1797-1801

Massachusetts lawyer John Adams was one of the most eloquent champions of American independence during the American Revolution. After serving as Washington’s vice president, Adams defeated Thomas Jefferson in the 1796 election to become the second President of the United States.

Having been close friends and associates during the Revolution, Adams and Jefferson became bitter rivals in the 1790s. As a Federalist, Adams sought to strengthen federal institutions and favored closer relations with Britain, while Jefferson defended states’ rights and was sympathetic to France.

The major event of Adams’ presidency was the undeclared Quasi-War with France between 1798 and 1800. Adams created the Department of the Navy and raised an army under the nominal command of George Washington to face a potential French invasion. Adams’ controversial Alien and Sedition Acts were criticized by Jeffersonians as an attack on free speech.

In November 1800, Adams became the first president to live in the White House in Washington DC, then known as the Executive Mansion.

3. Thomas Jefferson, Democratic-Republican, 1801-1809

The author of the US Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson served as Secretary of State under George Washington and Vice President under John Adams. He was elected president by the House of Representatives after receiving the same number of votes as his running mate Aaron Burr of New York in the Electoral College.

Jefferson’s greatest achievement as president was the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, in which the United States acquired the Louisiana Territory from France for $15 million, effectively doubling the size of the country. After the purchase, Jefferson commissioned the Lewis and Clark Expedition to explore the newly acquired territory.

With Europe embroiled in the Napoleonic Wars, the British Navy was known to kidnap American sailors and force them into British service. In response, Jefferson placed an embargo on European trade in 1807 in an effort to assert American neutrality. However, the policy harmed the American economy, and Jefferson was forced to repeal the embargo in 1809 shortly before leaving office.

4. James Madison, Democratic-Republican, 1809-1817

A protégé of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison worked with Alexander Hamilton to promote the US Constitution in the Federalist Papers but became an anti-Federalist in the early 1790s. After championing Jeffersonian causes in the House of Representatives, Madison went on to serve as Jefferson’s Secretary of State.

The major challenge of Madison’s presidency was the War of 1812 against Britain, caused by territorial disputes in Canada and the continued impressment of American sailors into the British Navy. Although American forces saw success in Canada and sacked York (present-day Toronto) in April 1813, Madison was forced to flee from Washington DC on August 24, 1814 as British troops briefly occupied the American capital and sacked the city, including the White House.

Madison allowed the charter of the First Bank of the United States to expire in 1811, but financial difficulties during the War of 1812 led him to recognize the importance of greater federal control of the economy. In 1816, he chartered the Second Bank of the United States.

5. James Monroe, Democratic-Republican, 1817-1825

James Monroe played a key role in Madison’s administration as Secretary of State and Secretary of War. After becoming president in 1817, he presided over the “Era of Good Feelings,” a period of political consensus that saw the demise of the Federalist Party at the national level. Monroe championed infrastructure projects to promote interstate commerce, and his presidency witnessed the construction of the Erie Canal between the Hudson River and Lake Erie, linking the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean.

Although Monroe won re-election unopposed in 1820, tensions between Northern and Southern states over westward expansion and the status of slavery flared up over the inclusion of Missouri as a slave state. The Missouri Compromise temporarily diffused tensions by restricting further expansion of slavery to the south of Missouri’s southern border.

In his State of the Union Address in 1823, Monroe articulated the Monroe Doctrine, a foreign policy statement warning European powers against interfering in the American continent. He supported an initiative to establish the colony of Liberia in West Africa for formerly enslaved people and gave his name to the Liberian capital of Monrovia.

6. John Quincy Adams, Democratic-Republican, 1825-1829

The son of second president John Adams, John Quincy Adams became president in 1825 after a fiercely contested four-way election in 1824. Despite coming second to Andrew Jackson in the popular and electoral votes, support from Speaker Henry Clay was enough to deliver him the presidency in the House of Representatives.

Adams had an ambitious program to strengthen federal power over public infrastructure projects and proposed the creation of a Department of the Interior. He also planned to establish a national university, a national observatory, and a naval academy, but his agenda was mostly shut down by his opponents in Congress.

After his defeat to Jackson in the 1828 election, Adams co-founded the Whig Party alongside Henry Clay and became a vocal champion for the abolition of slavery in the House of Representatives until his death in 1848.

7. Andrew Jackson, Democrat, 1829-1837

Andrew Jackson came to prominence in 1815 after winning the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812. After losing the 1824 election to John Quincy Adams, Jackson led a political movement that would become the Democratic Party and won the rematch in 1828.

A populist leader who presented himself as the champion of the common man, Jackson supported Western expansionism. He was responsible for the Indian Removal Act, which forced Native Americans to leave their ancestral lands and move west of the Mississippi in the harrowing Trail of Tears.

While Jackson sympathized with states’ rights, he faced down opposition from John C. Calhoun, who resigned as vice president to lead South Carolina’s campaign to strike down Jackson’s Tariff of 1832. Jackson threatened to use military force during the Nullification Crisis, and Calhoun backed down.

Jackson was suspicious of financial interests in New England and vetoed the recharter of the Second Bank of the United States, which he blamed for fueling land speculation by issuing paper money. However, the state banks championed by Jackson printed even more paper money and created a bubble.

8. Martin Van Buren, Democrat, 1837-1841

A political organizer from New York who helped Andrew Jackson found the Democratic Party, Martin Van Buren served as Vice President during Jackson’s second term and succeeded him in the presidency in 1837.

Van Buren’s tenure in office was marred by the Panic of 1837, a prolonged economic depression caused by Jackson’s efforts to put an end to the credit boom by issuing the Specie Circular to require payments for government land in gold and silver. The policy caused many state banks to fail as credit dried up.

A supporter of limited government, Van Buren did little to respond to the crisis at the federal level, though he recognized that the federal government had to manage its own funds rather than commercial banks. Before he could implement his independent treasury system, Van Buren was soundly defeated by General William Henry Harrison in the 1840 election.

9. William Henry Harrison, Whig, 1841

A hero of the War of 1812 who defeated Tecumseh’s Confederacy at the Battle of Tippecanoe and the Battle of the Thames, General William Henry Harrison ran an energetic campaign alongside his running mate John Tyler to lead the Whig Party to victory over Van Buren in the 1840 election.

After delivering a lengthy address at his inauguration on March 4, 1841 on a cold and windy day, Harrison fell ill in late March and died on April 4 after a month in office. His tenure remains the shortest of any American president.

10. John Tyler, Whig/Independent, 1841-1845

A supporter of Southern states’ rights, John Tyler had been a Democrat before falling out with Andrew Jackson during the Nullification Crisis. After being elevated to the presidency following Harrison’s death, Tyler clashed with congressional Whigs and was expelled from the party after vetoing Henry Clay’s national bank bill. Most of his cabinet resigned, and he was nicknamed “His Accidency.”

During his final days in office in March 1845, Tyler signed the Texas annexation bill offering to admit the Republic of Texas into the United States.

11. James K. Polk, Democrat, 1845-1849

A Tennessee Democrat and protégé of Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk was the original “dark horse candidate,” emerging victorious at the Democratic Convention of 1844 after former President Van Buren failed to secure the party’s nomination.

Polk was a champion of Manifest Destiny and completed the process Tyler initiated by admitting Texas as the 28th state of the Union in 1846. The Mexican-American War of 1846-1848 broke out after Mexico asserted its claim over Texas.

American forces won a crushing victory and captured Mexico City in September 1847. Under the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo signed in February 1848, Mexico recognized American sovereignty over Texas and was compelled to cede a vast amount of territory, including the present-day states of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico.

12. Zachary Taylor, Whig, 1849-1850

Zachary Taylor served with distinction as a general in the Mexican-American War before winning the presidency in 1848 as the Whig Party candidate. A Southern slaveholder himself, Taylor was keen to preserve national unity at a time of great tension about the expansion of slavery into the territories recently annexed from Mexico.

Taylor died unexpectedly of stomach disease on July 9, 1850, supposedly after having consumed cold milk and cherries during the Fourth of July celebrations. While he encouraged settlers in California to seek statehood in the wake of the California Gold Rush of 1849, he accomplished little during his 16 months in office.

13. Millard Fillmore, Whig, 1850-1853

Millard Fillmore succeeded Taylor as president and inherited a political crisis around the status of slavery while California sought admission to the Union. Fillmore used his influence as president to promote the 1850 Compromise, which led to California’s entry into the Union as a free state in exchange for a more punitive Fugitive Slave Act that appalled the Northern states.

A New Yorker, Fillmore supported the development of national infrastructure projects and rode on the newly completed Erie Railroad, which connected New York City and Lake Erie by rail. His major achievement in foreign policy, realized after the end of his term, was to open Japanese markets to international trade after dispatching Commodore Matthew Perry to sail to Japan.

14. Franklin Pierce, Democrat, 1853-1857

Slavery continued to dominate American politics during the presidency of Franklin Pierce, who defeated General Winfield Scott in the 1852 election to win the White House for the Democrats. The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in May 1854 repealed the Missouri Compromise and included provisions for the status of slavery to be decided by “popular sovereignty” in the proposed states. This encouraged a civil war between pro- and anti-slavery factions in Kansas known as Bleeding Kansas.

In 1854, Pierce completed the Gadsden Purchase, the acquisition of a narrow strip of territory from Mexico for $10 million to enable the construction of a transcontinental railroad. The relatively high price tag went some way to compensate Mexico for its extensive territorial losses in the recent war.

Pierce sought renomination for the 1856 presidential election but was denied by fellow Democrats for his poor handling of the Bleeding Kansas affair.

15. James Buchanan, Democrat, 1857-1861

James Buchanan is remembered as the president who failed to prevent the outbreak of the American Civil War. Buchanan came to office shortly before the Supreme Court ruled in Dred Scott v. Sandford that not only were enslaved people non-citizens and could not bring cases to federal courts, Congress could not restrict slavery in federal territories.

The Dred Scott Case appalled anti-slavery Northerners and strengthened the Republican Party, founded in 1854 in opposition to the further expansion of slavery. In October 1859, radical abolitionist John Brown led a raid on a federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, in an attempt to trigger a slave uprising. Although Brown was quickly captured and executed, his memory served as an inspiration for anti-slavery campaigners.

Buchanan did not seek renomination in the 1860 election as his Democratic Party split into Northern and Southern factions, enabling Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln to win the presidency. When South Carolina seceded from the Union in December 1860 motivated by fears that Lincoln sought to abolish slavery, Buchanan asserted the federal government’s authority by supplying US forces at Fort Sumter.

16. Abraham Lincoln, Republican, 1861-1865

Abraham Lincoln’s victory in the 1860 presidential election led to the secession of several southern states. Although keen to prevent the outbreak of the Civil War, Lincoln proved an able war leader after the outbreak of hostilities at Fort Sumter in April 1861.

After a shaky start to the war, Union victory at the Battle of Antietam in September 1862 gave Lincoln the opportunity to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing enslaved people in the Confederate states. Although Union forces could not yet enforce the Emancipation Proclamation, it encouraged enslaved people to flee to Union lines, while Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in early July 1863 proved the decisive turning point in the Civil War. In November 1863, Lincoln visited the Gettysburg battlefield and delivered his famous Gettysburg Address at the opening of the Gettysburg National Cemetery.

After Union forces forced the Confederate government to evacuate from Richmond, Virginia, Lincoln visited the abandoned Confederate capital on April 4, 1865. Five days later, the American Civil War effectively came to an end with General Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House. On April 14, 1865, Lincoln was assassinated at Ford’s Theater in Washington DC.

17. Andrew Johnson, Democrat, 1865-1869

Tennessee Democrat Andrew Johnson served as Lincoln’s running mate on a National Unity ticket in the 1864 election. After becoming president following Lincoln’s assassination, Johnson favored the readmission of former Confederate states into the Union on lenient terms, provoking a hostile response from Republicans in Congress.

While ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865 officially abolished slavery, radical Republican leaders Senator Charles Sumner and Representative Thaddeus Stevens seized control of the Reconstruction agenda from Johnson after the 1866 midterm elections and championed the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment to protect citizenship rights of newly liberated slaves.

Johnson’s Secretary of State, William Seward, negotiated the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867. Initially derided as “Seward’s Folly,” the deal was seen more positively after the Klondike Gold Rush of 1896.

In February 1868, House Republicans impeached Johnson for violating the 1867 Tenure of Office Act by dismissing Secretary of War Edwin Stanton without consulting the Senate. Johnson survived impeachment in the Senate by a single vote and served out the remainder of his term.

18. Ulysses S. Grant, Republican, 1869-1877

After leading Union forces to victory over the Confederacy as commander-in-chief in 1864 and 1865, General Ulysses S. Grant became president in 1869. He supported congressional Republicans’ efforts to enact the Fifteenth Amendment to protect the political rights of formerly enslaved people. In response to the lynching of freedmen in the South by the Ku Klux Klan, Grant created the Department of Justice and deployed federal troops to crush the Klan.

Despite winning re-election in 1872, Grant’s administration was plagued by corruption. He spent his second term dealing with the economic fallout from the Panic of 1873. The administration’s focus on economic issues allowed Democrats to reassert political control in the South and continue discriminating against the Black population.

19. Rutherford B. Hayes, Republican, 1877-1881

Rutherford B. Hayes came to the presidency in 1877 after a closely contested 1876 election campaign, defeating his Democratic opponent Samuel J. Tilden by a single Electoral College vote. As part of the Compromise of 1877, the Democrats dropped their challenge to the election results in return for the withdrawal of federal troops from Southern states. As president, Hayes promoted reconciliation with the former Confederate states, who failed to honor promises to enforce civil and voting rights for the Black population.

In 1880, Hayes was gifted a desk by Queen Victoria made from the timbers of HMS Resolute. With some exceptions, the Resolute desk has been used by American presidents from Hayes to the present day and currently sits in the Oval Office.

20. James A. Garfield, Republican, 1881

Ohio Republican James Garfield served as a general during the American Civil War, seeing action during the Union victory at Shiloh in April 1862. Garfield entered the House of Representatives in 1863 and served eight terms before becoming the first and, to date, only sitting member of the House to be elected president.

Although an ally of President Hayes, Garfield pursued a more proactive policy in favor of African Americans and called for universal education of formerly enslaved people to overcome the literacy requirements that Southern states had adopted to limit the franchise.

On July 2, 1881, Garfield was shot by disgruntled office-seeker Charles Guiteau. Although he survived more than two months, his doctors did not sterilize their fingers and instruments as they sought to locate the bullet, infecting the wound in the process. Garfield finally succumbed to his injuries on September 19.

21. Chester A. Arthur, Republican, 1881-1885

Garfield’s vice president, Chester Arthur, succeeded him as president in September 1881. Garfield’s assassination strengthened calls to reform government appointments. Despite having previously been an opponent of civil service reform, Arthur signed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act into law in 1883, which led to the creation of a Civil Service Commission that ruled that large numbers of posts in the Post Office and Customs Service should be awarded by merit.

Immigration was a key issue of Arthur’s presidency in the wake of an influx of Chinese workers into California during the 1870s and 1880s. In May 1882, Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act into law, banning immigration from China for ten years after vetoing an earlier version of the legislation, which envisaged a 20-year ban.

Arthur continued his predecessor Garfield’s efforts to strengthen the US Navy and pursued a naval construction program that saw the construction of four new steel ships for the American fleet.

22. Grover Cleveland, Democrat, 1885-1889

In 1884, Grover Cleveland became the first Democrat to win a presidential election after the Civil War.

Cleveland was a fiscal conservative who resisted calls by Western Republicans and Southern Democrats in the Free Silver Movement to adopt a bimetallic gold and silver standard to stimulate a deflating economy by issuing silver coinage.

In response to concerns about monopolistic practices in the railroad industry during the Industrial Revolution, Congress passed the Interstate Commerce Act, which Cleveland signed into law in April 1887. The legislation established the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate railroads and later cars, barges, and airlines.

23. Benjamin Harrison, Republican, 1889-1893

A grandson of ninth president William Henry Harrison, Benjamin Harrison defeated Cleveland in the 1888 election despite having a lower popular vote share. Harrison was sympathetic to Congress’s efforts to take action against trusts such as John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company, which monopolized the oil industry. In 1890, Harrison signed the Sherman Antitrust Act into law, though it took time for the federal government to proactively enforce the legislation against the “robber barons” who enriched themselves during the Gilded Age.

Harrison was more enthusiastic about silver than his predecessor Cleveland, and signed the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890 to inflate the economy. The same year, he supported the McKinley Tariff to protect American corporations and increase consumer prices.

In October 1889 the first Pan-American Conference took place in Washington as Harrison’s administration sought to replace Great Britain as the dominant trading partner in Latin America, but the meeting adjourned in April 1890 without any major progress.

24. Grover Cleveland, Democrat, 1893-1897

In 1892, Grover Cleveland defeated Harrison in the rematch of the 1888 election to become the first president in American history to serve non-consecutive terms. According to convention, he is considered the 22nd and 24th president of the United States.

Cleveland spent his second term addressing the Panic of 1893, a sharp economic downturn that drained US gold reserves. Cleveland responded to the crisis by persuading Congress to repeal the Silver Purchase Act. While this stabilized the US Treasury, it did little to address the impact of the crisis on ordinary Americans.

In May 1894, Eugene Debs of the American Railway Union led a strike against the Pullman Company. Although Cleveland conciliated the labor movement by designating Labor Day as a national holiday, he sent federal troops to break the strike in July. A unanimous Supreme Court decision in May 1895 ruled that the federal government had the authority to intervene to protect interstate commerce and the transportation of mail.

25. William McKinley, Republican, 1897-1901

A pro-business Republican from Ohio, William McKinley defeated populist Democrat William Jennings Bryan in the 1896 election. His first term was dominated by the Spanish-American War of 1898, triggered by the explosion of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor in February.

A decisive American victory in the war led Spain to recognize the independence of Cuba and cede Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines to the United States. Theodore Roosevelt, who had served as McKinley’s Assistant Secretary of the Navy, resigned from his post to lead his “Rough Riders” to victory at San Juan Hill in July.

After the death of Vice President Garret Hobart in 1899, McKinley picked Theodore Roosevelt as his running mate in his successful 1900 re-election campaign. Six months into his second term, he was assassinated by the anarchist Leon Czolgosz and died on September 14, 1901.

26. Theodore Roosevelt, Republican, 1901-1909

At the age of 42, Theodore Roosevelt became the youngest president in American history upon succeeding McKinley. A progressive Republican, Roosevelt challenged monopolistic business practices by setting up the Federal Bureau of Investigation within the Department of Justice to investigate breaches of the Sherman Antitrust Act. He hoped to balance the interests of capital and labor and ran for re-election in 1904, promising a “Square Deal” for the American people.

A lover of the natural world, Roosevelt championed conservation and designated five national parks, established the first 18 national monuments, and created the US Forest Service in 1905.

Roosevelt pursued a proactive foreign policy, which saw the United States become a major player on the global stage. In 1903, he dispatched gunboats to Panama to support Panamanian independence and facilitate the construction of the Panama Canal. His mediation of the 1905 Treaty of Portsmouth to end the Russo-Japanese War won him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906.

27. William Howard Taft, Republican, 1909-1913

Although more moderate than his predecessor, William Howard Taft continued Roosevelt’s policy of cracking down on trusts and brought 70 antitrust cases in four years. Most notably, the Standard Oil Trust was broken up into 34 separate entities in 1911 after a Supreme Court ruling.

Taft alienated the progressive wing of the Republican Party. While his control of the party apparatus allowed him to defeat Theodore Roosevelt to the Republican Party nomination in 1912, the latter ran as a candidate for the Progressive Party. Taft was beaten into third place and won only two states, registering the worst performance of an incumbent president running for re-election.

In 1921, Taft was appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, becoming the only person in American history to date to have served as President of the United States and Chief Justice.

28. Woodrow Wilson, Democrat, 1913-1921

A political scientist who served as President of Princeton University between 1902 and 1910, Woodrow Wilson proved an energetic progressive reformer as governor of New Jersey in 1911-1913. After becoming president, Wilson created the Federal Reserve system in 1913 and strengthened antitrust laws with the Clayton Antitrust Act and the creation of the Federal Trade Commission in 1914.

Born in South Carolina in 1856, Wilson was the first president from the South since Zachary Taylor and the only president to have been a subject of the Confederate States of America. While the number of Black officeholders in federal positions had already been falling under Roosevelt and Taft, Wilson was responsible for segregating the federal bureaucracy.

In April 1917, the United States entered World War I. Wilson favored a just peace, as communicated in his Fourteen Points in January 1918. He attended the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and was instrumental in founding the League of Nations, although his failure to secure ratification of the Versailles Treaty in the Senate meant that the United States never joined the organization.

29. Warren G. Harding, Republican, 1921-1923

After winning a landslide in the 1920 election, Warren G. Harding worked with Republicans to eliminate wartime controls, slash taxes, and impose high protectionist tariffs. He also sided with business interests in crushing the Great Railroad Strike of July-September 1922.

While Harding may have laid the foundations for the economic boom of the 1920s, his administration was mired in scandal. In 1922, Harding’s Interior Secretary Albert Fall leased oil production rights at the Teapot Dome Oil Field in Wyoming to Harry F. Sinclair on very generous terms. Fall had received generous bribes in the process and was compelled to resign from office in March 1923.

During an extensive Western tour, Harding died of heart failure in San Francisco on August 2, 1923. The Teapot Dome Scandal had not yet become public knowledge at the time of Harding’s death, but the affair tarnished the legacy of his administration.

30. Calvin Coolidge, Republican, 1923-1929

Calvin Coolidge’s reputation for honesty and fair dealing served him well as he came to office looking to restore the reputation of the American presidency after the Teapot Dome Scandal. His presidency coincided with the strong economy of the Roaring Twenties and he easily won election to a full term in 1924.

Coolidge was known for being a man of few words, and his formula for success appeared to involve doing as little as possible. He championed free markets and rarely intervened in the economy while pursuing an isolationist foreign policy. Nevertheless, he promoted initiatives such as the Dawes Plan of 1924 to diffuse tensions between France and Germany by having American banks provide loans to help the German government pay reparations.

31. Herbert Hoover, Republican, 1929-1933

As Commerce Secretary during the Harding and Coolidge administrations, Herbert Hoover received much of the credit for the economic boom of the 1920s. When boom turned to bust with the Wall Street Crash in November 1929, Hoover struggled to revive the economy as it slumped into the Great Depression.

Hoover gave his name to the Hoover Dam in Colorado, built between 1931 and 1936. In 1932, he belatedly took a more proactive approach to managing the crisis by establishing the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to provide loans to US banks and businesses to carry out public works and the Federal Home Loan Bank to make it easier for Americans to buy homes. In July 1932, Hoover expanded public relief with a $2 billion Emergency Relief and Construction Act to create jobs and reduce unemployment.

32. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Democrat, 1933-1945

A fifth cousin of Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt responded energetically to the Great Depression after coming to office in March 1933 by stabilizing the American banking system and enacting his New Deal, creating a number of federal agencies such as the Federal Emergency Relief Administration and the Public Works Administration to stimulate the economy. In 1934, Roosevelt created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to protect Americans’ savings and the Securities and Exchange Commission to regulate securities markets. Some of his more ambitious programs were deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

After being re-elected to an unprecedented third term as president in 1940, Roosevelt took the United States into World War II following the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Roosevelt worked with British prime minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to defeat Japan in Asia and Nazi Germany in Europe, meeting his Big Three counterparts in Tehran in 1943 and Yalta in 1945. He died in April 1945, a few months into his fourth term.

33. Harry S. Truman, Democrat, 1945-1953

The only American president to have served in World War I, Harry S. Truman was chosen as FDR’s running mate in 1944. Truman rarely met Roosevelt before the latter’s death and had limited experience in foreign affairs.

Truman’s decision to authorize the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in September 1945 helped to bring World War II to an end. He supported postwar economic recovery in Western Europe by providing aid through the Marshall Plan. In response to Soviet actions in Eastern Europe, in 1947, Truman announced the Truman Doctrine, intended to limit the expansion of communism around the world during the early stages of the Cold War.

After unexpectedly defeating his Republican opponent Thomas Dewey to win the election to a full term in 1948, Truman signed the North Atlantic Treaty in July 1949 to create the NATO alliance. His opponents criticized him for failing to prevent communist victory in the Chinese Civil War, and in 1950, he sent US forces to Korea to prevent communist North Korea from taking over the whole Korean peninsula.

34. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Republican, 1953-1961

After serving as Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during World War II, General Dwight D. Eisenhower was courted by both the Democrats and Republicans before heading the Republican presidential ticket in 1952 and succeeding Truman in the White House.

Eisenhower pushed for an armistice in Korea with the 1953 Treaty of Panmunjom. He cut defense spending, and his “New Look” defense policy relied heavily on nuclear weapons to deter Soviet aggression.

Domestically, the Eisenhower administration is known for launching the construction of the Interstate Highway System following the passage of the Federal-Aid Highway Act in 1956. The system was completed in 1992, though new interstate highways continue to be built. The infrastructure project displaced more than a million Americans from their homes and had a major impact on American culture by placing private cars at the center of individualist American identity.

The Eisenhower administration witnessed the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling in 1954, which desegregated public schools. While Congress passed a Civil Rights Act in 1957 intended to strengthen federal enforcement of voting rights, the legislation was watered down by Southern Democrats.

35. John F. Kennedy, Democrat, 1961-1963

The 44-year-old Senator John F. Kennedy from Massachusetts became the youngest person elected to the presidency after defeating Richard Nixon in the closely fought 1960 election. Although prone to extramarital affairs, Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, presented the image of a young glamorous family in the White House.

Within months of coming into office, Kennedy authorized the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in April 1961. The event prompted Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to send nuclear missiles to Cuba, leading to the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. Kennedy responded by blockading Cuba and bringing Khrushchev to the negotiating table. In an effort to restore American prestige, Kennedy expanded the American space program and set an ambition to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade.

Kennedy was sympathetic to the civil rights movement but was afraid of alienating the solidly Democrat South, and he struggled to enact his reform agenda due to Republican opposition in Congress. On November 22, 1963, Kennedy was assassinated on a visit to Dallas, Texas.

36. Lyndon B. Johnson, Democrat, 1963-1969

An experienced political manipulator who had dominated the Senate, Lyndon B. Johnson served as Kennedy’s vice president and succeeded him after his assassination. He became an unexpected champion of civil rights legislation and passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with Republican support. Johnson’s support for civil rights changed American political geography overnight. In the 1964 election, he won a landslide but lost the South to his conservative Republican opponent, Barry Goldwater.

Johnson embarked on an extensive social reform program known as the Great Society. The Social Security Act in 1965 created Medicare to provide government-funded healthcare to Americans over 65. The same year, Medicaid was founded to provide healthcare to Americans on lower incomes.

On the foreign policy front, Johnson’s presidency is known for the escalation of American military involvement in the Vietnam War. Johnson’s claims that the Vietnamese communists were on the brink of collapse were refuted by the January 1968 Tet Offensive, and in March, he announced that he would not seek re-election.

37. Richard M. Nixon, Republican, 1969-1974

Richard Nixon had come to office promising to end the Vietnam War and began to withdraw American personnel. However, his aggressive bombing campaigns and US involvement in the 1970 invasion of Cambodia provoked a series of student protests within the United States. After secret negotiations in 1972, the United States withdrew from Vietnam in January 1973. Nixon’s efforts to strengthen South Vietnamese military and political capabilities failed when North Vietnam defeated South Vietnam in 1975.

Although he had made his reputation as a hardline anti-communist, Nixon became the first US president to visit China in February 1972. He met with Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou Enlai, thus paving the way for the normalization of relations with the communist People’s Republic of China.

Despite comfortably winning re-election in 1972, Nixon’s second term was rocked by the Watergate Scandal, after Nixon’s supporters broke into Democratic campaign headquarters in the Watergate Building in Washington DC in June 1972. Despite claiming repeatedly that he had not been involved in wrongdoing, Nixon was forced to resign on August 9, 1974.

38. Gerald R. Ford, Republican, 1974-1977

Congressman Gerald Ford of Michigan was appointed vice president in December 1973 after Nixon’s vice president, Spiro Agnew, was forced to resign on suspicion of tax fraud while governor of Maryland. After Nixon’s resignation in August 1974, Ford became the only person to date to become president without winning a presidential (or vice-presidential) election.

In September 1974, Ford made the controversial decision to pardon his predecessor Nixon for any crimes he may have committed in office. The unpopularity of the Republican Party after the Watergate Scandal led to significant gains for the Democrats in the midterm elections that November.

Ford’s tenure in office witnessed high inflation and high unemployment, and he narrowly lost the 1976 presidential election to Democrat Jimmy Carter.

39. Jimmy Carter, Democrat, 1977-1981

A peanut farmer and World War II veteran from Georgia, Jimmy Carter came to the presidency by placing human rights at the heart of US foreign policy. Although he signed up to several UN international human rights agreements, none were ratified during his presidency.

Carter’s major foreign policy success was the mediation of the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel in September 1978, but US foreign policy suffered a setback with the Iranian Revolution of 1979, which overthrew the Shah of Iran in favor of an Islamic theocracy led by Ayatollah Khomeini.

Carter’s failure to secure the release of over 50 hostages during the Iran hostage crisis of 1979-1981, together with high inflation in the United States, contributed to a slump in his popularity. Despite seeing off a primary challenge from Ted Kennedy, Carter was defeated by Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election.

After leaving the White House, Carter remained active in leading diplomatic and humanitarian missions and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. Carter celebrated his 100th birthday on October 1, 2024, becoming the first US president to do so.

40. Ronald Reagan, Republican, 1981-1989

A former Hollywood actor, Ronald Reagan became president after defeating Jimmy Carter in the 1980 election. He responded to the economy affecting the country by pursuing a package of economic deregulation, inflation control, and reductions in taxation and government spending, known as Reaganomics.

A hardline anti-communist, Reagan labeled the Soviet Union an “evil empire” and escalated the Cold War during his first term by increasing defense spending. Despite aggressive rhetoric towards Iran, in 1984, Reagan secretly sold missiles to Iran in exchange for the release of hostages in Lebanon and used the proceeds to fund the anti-communist Contras in Nicaragua.

After Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary of the Soviet Union in 1985, Reagan welcomed the Soviet leader’s efforts at political and economic reforms and pursued a more conciliatory foreign policy, memorably asking Gorbachev to “tear down this wall” during a 1987 speech in Berlin.

41. George H. W. Bush, Republican, 1989-1993

After serving as Reagan’s Vice President, George H. W. Bush came to the presidency in 1989, a year that marked the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. The end of the Cold War was accompanied by a sense of optimism about the liberal democratic world order led by the United States.

In 1990-1991, American forces led an international coalition to invade Iraq in response to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. Coalition forces were 240 miles from Baghdad when Saddam announced a withdrawal from Kuwait in February, bringing the Gulf War to an end.

In spite of his foreign policy successes, Bush faced a poor economy at home and was forced to break his 1988 campaign promise “Read my lips: no new taxes” in 1990 after agreeing on a budget deal with congressional Democrats to raise taxes.

Bush’s re-election chances in 1992 were hindered by third-party candidate Ross Perot, who split the Republican vote and enabled Democrat Bill Clinton to become president.

42. Bill Clinton, Democrat, 1993-2001

Bill Clinton enjoyed comfortable majorities in Congress after becoming president in 1993. He appointed his wife, First Lady Hillary Clinton, to lead a taskforce on healthcare reform, but the wide-ranging proposals were rejected by the Senate. After Republicans took control of both houses of Congress in the 1994 midterms, Clinton was compelled to moderate his domestic agenda.

Clinton’s foreign policy reflected the optimism of the post-Cold War years. The North American Free Trade Agreement came into force in 1994. The Clinton presidency witnessed a rapid increase in US trade with China, though China did not formally join the World Trade Organization until 2001.

Clinton dispatched special envoy George Mitchell to chair peace talks in Northern Ireland to end The Troubles, resulting in the Good Friday Agreement of April 1998. In 1999, US forces led a NATO bombing campaign in Yugoslavia to stop the ethnic cleansing of Albanians in Kosovo.

In December 1998, Clinton was impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice in relation to personal indiscretions with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. He was acquitted by the Senate, and despite

the personal controversies, Clinton’s presidency coincided with a period of low inflation and low unemployment, and he left office in January 2001 with 65% approval ratings.

43. George W. Bush, Republican, 2001-2009

The son of 41st President George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush defeated his Democratic opponent, Vice President Al Gore, in a tight election race that was determined by a few hundred ballots in Florida.

After coming to office promising to cut back on military spending, Bush launched the War on Terror following the September 11 terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda on the World Trade Center in New York. After invading Afghanistan to topple the Taliban in 2001, Bush was responsible for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Despite a successful military operation that removed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from power, the failure of American forces to maintain order in Iraq caused the war to become unpopular.

During Bush’s second term, the US financial system was hit by the subprime mortgage crisis in 2007, which in turn led to the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, triggering the Great Recession. The Bush administration responded by creating the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) to bail out struggling financial services firms.

44. Barack Obama, Democrat, 2009-2017

Born in Hawaii to a Kenyan father and an American mother, Barack Obama became the first African-American president of the United States after defeating Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries and John McCain in the 2008 general election.

After coming to office during the Great Recession, Obama signed a $800 billion stimulus package in February 2009. The Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 strengthened financial services regulation to address the weaknesses in the financial system that caused the crisis.

Healthcare reform was at the center of Obama’s domestic agenda, and the Affordable Care Act of 2010 expanded the Medicare and Medicaid programs while guaranteeing that Americans with preexisting conditions would have access to health insurance. After Obama announced his support for same-sex marriage in 2012, the Supreme Court ruled in favor in 2015.

Despite withdrawing US forces from Iraq and authorizing the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, Obama has subsequently been criticized for failing to take action against Bashar al-Assad for using chemical weapons in Syria and for a timid response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2015.

45. Donald J. Trump, Republican, 2017-2021

New York businessman Donald Trump unexpectedly defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. After running a populist campaign promising to “Make America Great Again,” Trump took steps to build a border wall on the US-Mexico border to prevent illegal immigration.

With the support of congressional Republicans, Trump appointed three conservative justices to the Supreme Court, strengthening the conservative majority on the body. This led the Supreme Court to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that guaranteed the constitutional right to abortion in a 5-4 vote in June 2022.

After running on an isolationist platform, Trump’s major foreign policy initiatives included putting pressure on NATO allies to contribute 2% to defense spending, meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un in 2018, and negotiating the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan with the Taliban.

In 2020, the Trump administration faced the Covid-19 pandemic, estimated to have killed more than 200,000 Americans. After the 2020 presidential election, Trump claimed that the election had been stolen. On January 6, 2021, Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol Building in an effort to prevent the certification of the election results. This caused Trump to be impeached for a second time after he had been acquitted in an earlier impeachment trial over claims that he put pressure on Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate his political rival Joe Biden by withholding an aid package passed by Congress.

46. Joseph R. Biden, Democrat, 2021-2025

At the age of 78, Joe Biden became the oldest person to take office as President of the United States in January 2021. As the Covid pandemic continued to affect daily life, Biden passed a $1.9 trillion stimulus package in March 2021, building on the $2.2 trillion CARES Act and the $2.3 trillion Consolidated Appropriations Act passed during the Trump administration.

The Biden administration pursued an ambitious program to support the post-Covid economic recovery. In November 2021, it passed a major bipartisan infrastructure law and a landmark climate investment bill that became the Inflation Reduction Act of August 2022.

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Biden administration has provided significant military aid to the Ukrainian government. Biden has been criticized by Democrats on the left for failing to restrain Israel’s aggressive military response to the October 7 attacks carried out by Hamas.

Biden had intended to run for re-election in 2024, but following a poor debate performance against Donald Trump on June 27, 2024, the 82-year-old president withdrew on July 21 in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris.

47. Donald J. Trump, Republican, 2025-

Despite being charged in several criminal cases in 2023 and being found guilty of hush money payments to an adult entertainment actress in 2024, Donald Trump secured the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election. On July 13, 2024, he gained widespread sympathy after surviving an assassination attempt during a campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential election on November 5, 2024, and is set to become the second individual in history after Grover Cleveland to serve non-consecutive terms as President of the United States.