# 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.

*By YPB Team · Published August 12, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/the-16-greatest-us-presidents-of-all-time*

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## Current results (0 votes)

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.

Tags: historical-figures, usa, all-time, presidents