The 16 Greatest U.S. Presidents of All Time

Two centuries of the job, from the men who invented it to the ones who inherited a crisis. Historians have their order; yours may differ.

1

Abraham Lincoln

The 16th president, who held the Union together through the Civil War and signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

2

George Washington

The first president, who set nearly every precedent the office still runs on and walked away after two terms.

3

Franklin D. Roosevelt

The only president elected four times, who built the New Deal and led the country through most of the Second World War.

4

Theodore Roosevelt

The 26th president, a trust-busting conservationist who protected some 230 million acres of public land.

5

Thomas Jefferson

Author of the Declaration of Independence and the president who doubled the country's size with the Louisiana Purchase.

6

Dwight D. Eisenhower

The general who commanded D-Day and then presided over the interstate highway system and a decade of expansion.

7

Harry S. Truman

The vice president thrown into the job in 1945, who oversaw the end of the war, the Marshall Plan and NATO.

8

John F. Kennedy

The youngest elected president, remembered for the space program, the Cuban Missile Crisis and an unfinished term.

9

James Madison

The principal architect of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights before he ever reached the presidency.

10

Lyndon B. Johnson

The legislative operator behind the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act and Medicare.

11

Woodrow Wilson

The wartime president who took the country into 1917 and proposed the League of Nations.

12

Ronald Reagan

The former actor whose two terms reshaped tax policy and coincided with the end of the Cold War.

13

John Adams

The second president, a Revolutionary lawyer who kept the young country out of a war with France.

14

Ulysses S. Grant

The Union general turned president who used federal power against the Klan during Reconstruction.

15

James Monroe

The fifth president, whose doctrine set American foreign policy toward the hemisphere for a century.

16

Andrew Jackson

The populist seventh president, admired for expanding the vote and condemned for Indian removal.