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Know your
PRESIDENTS
You can test your knowledge of the
presidents of the United States by studying this
grid,
then cut on the grid lines and use the separate
squares as "flash cards" to reinforce your skills.
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|
President |
Name |
Birth/Death |
Years Served |
Facts |
Flash Cards |
 |
George Washington |
Born 1732
Died 1799 |
First president
1732 |
Commander in
chief of the Continental army during the American
Revolution. He symbolized qualities of discipline,
aristocratic duty, military orthodoxy, and
persistence in adversity that his contemporaries
particularly valued as marks of mature political
leadership. |
 |
 |
John Adams |
Born 1735
Died 1826 |
First vice-president 1789–1797
Second president
1797–1801 |
Leader
in the movement for independence. His presidency
was marked by rivalry with fellow-Federalist
Alexander Hamilton, controversy over government
measures taken to curb political opposition, and a
crisis in U.S. relations with France |
 |
 |
Thomas Jefferson |
Born 1743
Died 1826 |
Third president
1801–1809 |
American revolutionary leader and political
philosopher, author of the Declaration of
Independence. |
 |
 |
James Madison |
Born 1751
Died 1836
|
Fourth president
1809–1817 |
Known as the
"Father of the Constitution," because of his central
role in the Constitutional Convention, he was one
of the founders of the Jeffersonian Republican
party in the 1790s, and he served as secretary of
state (1801–1809) under Thomas Jefferson. |
 |
 |
James Monroe |
Born 1758
Died 1831 |
Fifth president
1817–1825 |
One of the
founders of the Jeffersonian Republican party,
he served as minister to France and to Great
Britain and as secretary of state under President
James Madison. He was co-negotiator of the
Louisiana Purchase and author of the Monroe
Doctrine. |
 |
 |
John Qunicy-Adams |
Born 1767
Died 1848 |
Sixth president
1825–1829 |
Combined
brilliant statesmanship with skillful diplomacy.
As secretary of state (1817–1825) he ranks among
the ablest holders of the office, and he played a
major role in formulating American foreign policy.
As an eight-term member of the House of
Representatives (1831–1848) he was a leading
defender of freedom of speech and a spokesman for
the antislavery cause. |
 |
 |
Andrew Jackson |
Born 1767
Died 1845 |
Seventh president
1829–1837 |
The first
president of humble origins. His election to the
highest office in 1828 was long regarded as a
great victory for the common people, and the
political movement he led was known as Jacksonian
Democracy. |
 |
 |
Martin Van-Buren |
Born 1782
Died 1862 |
Eighth president
1837–1841 |
Nicknamed the
“Fox” and the “Little Magician” for his shrewdly
opportunistic political leadership, he was
responsible for forming the coalition that became
the modern Democratic party. |
 |
 |
William H. Harrison |
Born 1773
Died 1841 |
Ninth president
1841 |
His claim to
fame rests not on his administration—for he died
of pneumonia one month after his inauguration—but
on the strange campaign by which in 1840 he
attained the high office. |
 |
 |
John Tyler |
Born 1790
Died 1862 |
Tenth president
1841–1845 |
He was
the first vice-president to succeed to the office
on the death of a president. He was an independent
who refused to compromise on principles to please
political allies. |
 |
 |
James Polk |
Born 1795
Died 1849 |
11th president
1845–1849 |
Under
whose leadership the country fought a victorious
war with Mexico and greatly increased its
territory by annexing Texas and all the land west
of the Rocky Mountains. |
 |
 |
Zachary Taylor |
Born 1784
Died 1850 |
12th president
1849–1850 |
U.S.
general in the Mexican War. |
 |
 |
Millard Fillmore |
Born 1800
Died 1874 |
13th
president
1850–1853 |
In
foreign relations, he promoted America’s developing
trade with the Orient; during his administration a
U.S. naval expedition under Commodore Matthew C.
Perry forced the Japanese to open their ports to
Western commerce. |
 |
 |
Franklin Pierce |
Born 1804
Died 1869 |
14th president
1853–1857 |
His
participation as a general in the Mexican War
under Winfield Scott. Nominated on the 49th ballot
after a deadlock between his principal rivals, he
decisively defeated Gen. Scott, his Whig opponent
in the presidential election. |
 |
 |
James Buchanan |
Born 1791
Died 1868 |
15th president
1857–1861 |
Tried
unsuccessfully to hold off the crisis that led to
the American Civil War. |
 |
 |
Abraham Lincoln |
Born 1809
Died 1865 |
16th president
1861–1865 |
Steered the
Union to victory in the American Civil War and
abolished slavery. |
 |
 |
Andrew Johnson |
Born 1808
Died 1875 |
16th vice-president
1865
and
17th president
1865– 1869 |
He held conventional Southern
views on slavery and in 1860 supported John C.
Breckinridge, the presidential candidate of the
Southern Democrats. Despite this, he opposed
Tennessee’s secession from the Union. Even after
the beginning of the American Civil War, he alone
among Southern senators remained loyal to the U.S. |
 |
 |
Ulysses Simpson Grant |
Born 1822
Died 1885 |
18th president
1869–1877 |
American
general |
 |
 |
Rutherford Birchard Hayes |
Born 1822
Died 1893 |
19th president
1877–1881 |
His
administration marked a shift in national issues
from those growing out of the American Civil War
to such concerns as civil service reform,
currency, and labor relations. |
 |
 |
James A. Garfield |
Born 1831
Died 1881 |
20th president
1881 |
During
his brief term asserted presidential prerogatives
against the demands of congressional leaders. |
 |
 |
Chester Alan Arthur |
Born 1830
Died 1886
|
21st
president
1881–1885
|
Rose
above a background of political corruption to head
a reform-oriented administration that enacted the
first comprehensive U.S. civil service
legislation. |
 |
 |
Grover Cleveland |
Born
1837
Died 1908 |
22nd
president
1885–1889
and
24th president
1893–1897 |
The
only chief executive to be reelected after defeat.
Cleveland adopted the credo “a public office is a
public trust” and in his two nonconsecutive terms
spent much of his energies resisting partisan
influences and the political favoritism
characteristic of that era. |
 |
 |
Benjamin Harrison |
Born 1833
Died 1901 |
23rd president
1889–1893 |
Directed a
reformulation of the Monroe Doctrine that was to
end American isolationism and set the stage for
future territorial and trade expansion. |
 |
 |
William McKinley |
Born
1843
Died 1901
|
25th
president
1897–1901 |
His
administration inaugurated a period of Republican
party dominance, aided business, and made the U.S.
a world power through its victory in the
Spanish-American War. |
 |
 |
Theodore Roosevelt |
Born
1858
Died 1919 |
26th president
1901–1909 |
The first
president to exploit the public dimensions of his
office in an age of mass communications. In his life-time
he became a
personal model, particularly for the country’s
youth, in a way that no public figure has matched.
He was one of the most popular presidents in
American history. |
 |
 |
William Howard Taft |
Born
1857
Died 1930 |
27th president
1909–1913
and
10th chief justice
1921–1930 |
He was
the only person in U.S. history to head two
branches of the federal government. |
 |
 |
Woodrow Thomas Wilson |
Born
1856
Died 1924 |
28th president
1913–1921 |
In domestic
affairs he enacted significant reform legislation
and set the course of 20th-century liberalism. In
foreign affairs he led the U.S. to victory in
World War I, contributing to the movement toward
greater U.S. involvement in world affairs, and he
played a major role in founding the League of
Nations. |
 |
 |
Warren Gamaliel
Harding |
Born
1865
Died 1923 |
29th president
1921–1923 |
He came to
office in the aftermath of World War I and voiced
a national desire to forego further crusades and a
return to “normalcy,” but his administration is
mainly remembered for its corruption, which was
revealed after his death. |
 |
 |
Calvin Coolidge |
Born
1872
Died 1933 |
30th president
1923 -1929 |
In a rapidly
changing society, he expressed traditional
small-town values. |
 |
 |
Herbert Clark Hoover |
Born 1874
Died 1964
|
31st president
1929–1933 |
Held
office during the early part of the Great
Depression and presided over the transition from a
business-managed economy to the government
intervention of the New Deal. |
 |
 |
Franklin Delano
Roosevelt |
Born
1882
Died 1945 |
32nd president
1933–1945 |
Elected
for an un-precedented four terms, he was one of
the 20th century’s most skillful political
leaders. His New Deal program, a response to the
Great Depression, utilized the federal government
as an instrument of social and economic change in
contrast to its traditionally passive role. |
 |
 |
Harry S. Truman |
Born
1884
Died 1972 |
33d president
1945–1953 |
Initiated the cold war foreign policy of
containing communism and continued the modest
welfare state established under President Franklin
D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. |
 |
 |
Dwight David Eisenhower |
Born
1890
Died 1969
|
34th president
1953–1961 |
American military leader, whose great popularity
as Allied supreme commander during World War II
secured him election as the 34th president of the
U.S.
|
 |
 |
John Fitzgerald Kennedy |
Born
1917
Died 1963 |
35th president
1961–1963 |
Inaugural address set a tone of youthful idealism
that raised the nation’s hopes. “Ask not what your
country can do for you; ask what you can do for
your country,” he exhorted. An early executive
order of the New Frontier, he established a Peace
Corps of Americans volunteering for service
abroad. |
 |
 |
Lyndon Baines
Johnson |
Born
1908
Died 1973 |
36th president
1963–1969 |
Retained his predecessor’s cabinet, and he soon
expanded the Kennedy legislative program, which
had been languishing in Congress. |
 |
 |
Richard Milhous
Nixon |
Born 1913
Died 1994 |
37th president
1969–1974 |
The
only one to have resigned from office. |
 |
 |
Gerald Rudolph Ford |
Born 1913 |
38th president
1974–1977 |
The only
president who was elected neither to the
presidency nor to the vice-presidency, he
attempted during his 2 1/2-year term to restore
the nation’s confidence in a government tarnished
by the Watergate scandal. |
 |
 |
James Earl Carter, Jr. |
Born 1924 |
39th president
1977–1981 |
Tthe first from
the Deep South since Andrew
Jackson, and an outsider to traditional
party politics. |
 |
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Ronald Wilson Reagan |
Born 1911
Died 2004 |
40th president
1981–1989
|
Elected on a
conservative Republican platform. |
 |
 |
George Herbert Walker
Bush |
Born 1924
|
41st president
1989–1993 |
He met with
Gorbachevin July 1991 and signed a strategic arms
reduction agreement. |
 |
 |
William Jefferson Clinton |
Born 1946
|
42d president
1993–2001 |
Low
approval rating among U.S. voters contributed to
the Democrats’ election losses in 1994 and left
him facing a Republican-controlled Congress. |
 |
 |
George Walker Bush |
Born 1946 |
43rd
president
1989–1993
|
He is the first
son of a former president to win the White House
since John Quincy Adams in 1824. The eldest son of
George H. W. Bush. |
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