1. Abraham
Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th
President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination
in April 1865. Lincoln led the United States through its Civil War—its bloodiest
war and its greatest moral, constitutional, and political crisis. In doing so,
he preserved the Union, abolished slavery, strengthened the federal government,
and modernized the economy.
Born in Hodgenville, Kentucky, Lincoln grew up on the western
frontier in Kentucky and Indiana. Largely self-educated, he became a lawyer
in Illinois, a Whig Party leader, and a member of the Illinois House of
Representatives, in which he served for twelve years. Elected to the United
States House of Representatives in 1846, Lincoln promoted rapid modernization of
the economy through banks, tariffs, and railroads. Because he had originally
agreed not to run for a second term in Congress, and because his opposition to
the Mexican–American War was unpopular among Illinois voters, Lincoln returned
to Springfield and resumed his successful law practice. Reentering politics in
1854, he became a leader in building the new Republican Party, which had a
statewide majority in Illinois. In 1858, while taking part in a series of highly
publicized debates with his opponent and rival, Democrat Stephen A. Douglas,
Lincoln spoke out against the expansion of slavery, but lost the U.S. Senate
race to Douglas.
2. George
Washington
George
Washington (February
22, 1732 [O.S. February
11, 1731]– December
14,
1799) was the first President of the United States
(1789–97),
the Commander-in-Chief
of
the Continental Army
during
the American Revolutionary War
,
and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States
.
He presided over the convention that drafted the current United States
Constitution
and
during his lifetime was called the "father of his country
".
Widely
admired for his strong leadership qualities, Washington was unanimously elected
president in the first two national elections. He oversaw the creation of a
strong, well-financed national government that maintained neutrality in
the French Revolutionary Wars,
suppressed the Whiskey Rebellion,
and won acceptance among Americans of all types. Washington's
incumbency established many precedents, still in use today, such as
the cabinet system,
the inaugural address,
and the title Mr. President.
3.
Ronald Reagan
Ronald
Wilson Reagan (February
6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was an American politician and actor who served as
the 40th President
of the United States from
1981 to 1989. Prior to his presidency, he was the 33rd Governor
of California from
1967 to 1975, following a career as a Hollywood actor
and union leader.
Raised
in a poor family in small towns of northern Illinois, Ronald Reagan graduated
from Eureka College in
1932 and worked as a sports announcer on several regional radio stations. After
moving to Hollywood in
1937, he became an actor and starred in a few major productions. Reagan was
twice elected as President of the Screen Actors Guild,
the labor union for actors, where he worked to root out Communist
influence.
In the 1950s, he moved into television and was a motivational speaker
at General Electric factories.
4. Thomas
Jefferson
Thomas
Jefferson (April
13 [O.S. April
2] 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American Founding Father who
was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776). He
was elected the
second Vice President of the United States (1797–1801), serving
under John Adams and
in 1800 was elected the third President (1801–09).
Jefferson was a proponent of democracy, republicanism,
and individual rights, which motivated American colonists to break from Great
Britain and form a new nation. He produced formative documents and decisions at
both the state and national level.
Primarily
of English ancestry, Jefferson was born and educated in Virginia.
He graduated from the College of William & Mary and
briefly practiced law, at times defending slaves seeking their freedom. During
the American Revolution,
he represented Virginia in the Continental Congress that
adopted the Declaration, drafted the law for religious freedom as a Virginia
legislator, and served as a wartime governor (1779–1781). He became the United
States Minister to France in May 1785, and subsequently the nation's
first Secretary of State in
1790–1793 under President George Washington.
5. Franklin D.
Roosevelt
Franklin
Delano Roosevelt (his
own pronunciation, January
30, 1882 – April 12, 1945), commonly known as FDR,
was an American statesman and political leader who served as
the President of the United States from
1933 to 1945. A Democrat,
he won a record four presidential elections and
dominated his party after 1932 as a central figure in world events during the
mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide
economic depression and total
war.
His program for relief, recovery and reform, known as the New Deal,
involved a great expansion of the role of the federal government in the economy.
As a dominant leader of the Democratic Party, he built the New Deal
Coalition that
brought together and united labor unions, big city machines, white ethnics,
African Americans, and rural white Southerners in support of the party. The
Coalition significantly realigned American politics after 1932, creating
the Fifth Party System and
defining American liberalism throughout
the middle third of the 20th century.
6. John
F Kennedy
John
Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy (May
29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), commonly referred to by his initials JFK,
was an American politician who served as the 35th President
of the United States from
January 1961 until his assassination in
November 1963. The Cuban Missile Crisis, The
Bay of Pigs Invasion,
the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty,
the establishment of the Peace Corps,
developments in the Space Race,
the building of the Berlin Wall,
the Trade Expansion Act to
lower tariffs,
the Civil Rights Movement,
the "New Frontier" domestic program, and abolition of the federal death penalty
in the District of Columbia all took place during his presidency. Kennedy also
avoided any significant increase in the American presence in Vietnam, refusing
to commit combat troops and keeping the level of others, mostly military
advisors, to only 16,000, compared to the 536,000 troops committed by his
successor, Lyndon Johnson, by 1968.
7. Theodore
Roosevelt
Theodore
Roosevelt Jr. (October
27, 1858 – January 6, 1919) was an American statesman, author, explorer,
soldier, naturalist, and reformer who served as the 26th President
of the United States from
1901 to 1909. As a leader of the Republican Party during
this time, he became a driving force for the Progressive Era in
the United States in the early 20th century.
Born
a sickly child with debilitating asthma,
Roosevelt successfully overcame his health problems by embracing a strenuous
lifestyle. He integrated his exuberant personality, vast range of interests, and
world-famous achievements into a "cowboy" persona defined by
robust masculinity.
Home-schooled, he became a lifelong naturalist before attending Harvard
College.
His first of many books, The
Naval War of 1812 (1882),
established his reputation as both a learned historian and as a popular
writer.
8. Dwight
D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (October 14, 1890 – March
28, 1969) was an American politician and general who served as
the 34th President of the United States from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star
general in the United States Army during World War II and served as Supreme
Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe. He was responsible for planning and
supervising the invasion of North Africa in Operation Torch in 1942–43 and the
successful invasion of France and Germany in 1944–45 from the Western Front. In
1951, he became the first Supreme Commander of NATO.
Eisenhower was of Pennsylvania Dutch and a lesser amount
of Irish ancestry, and was raised in a large family in Kansas by parents with a
strong religious background. He graduated from West Point in 1915 and later
married Mamie Doud and had two sons. After World War II, Eisenhower served
as Army Chief of Staff under President Harry S. Truman and then accepted the
post of President at Columbia University.
9. William
Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton (born William
Jefferson Blythe III, August 19, 1946) is an American politician who
was 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Clinton was
previously Governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and 1983 to 1992, and
the Arkansas Attorney General from 1977 to 1979. A member of the Democratic
Party, ideologically Clinton was a New Democrat, and many of his policies
reflected a centrist "Third Way" philosophy of governance.
Clinton was born and raised in Arkansas, and is an alumnus of Georgetown
University, where he was a member of Kappa Kappa Psi and Phi Beta Kappa and
earned a Rhodes Scholarship to attend the University of Oxford. Clinton is
married to Hillary Clinton, who served as United States Secretary of State from
2009 to 2013, and who was a Senator from New York from 2001 to 2009, and is the
Democrat nominee for United States presidential election, 2016. Both Clintons
earned law degrees from Yale Law School, where they met and began dating.
As Governor of Arkansas, Clinton overhauled the state's education system, and
served as Chair of the National Governors Association.
10. John
Adams
John
Adams (October 30 [O.S. October 19] 1735 – July 4, 1826) was an American
lawyer, author, statesman, and diplomat. He served as the second President of
the United States (1797–1801), the first Vice President (1789–97), and as
a Founding Father was a leader
of American independence from Great Britain. Adams was a
political theorist in the Age of Enlightenment who
promoted republicanism and a
strong central government. His
innovative ideas were frequently published. He was also a dedicated diarist and
correspondent, particularly with his wife and key advisory Abigail.
He collaborated with his cousin, revolutionary leader Samuel Adams, but he
established his own prominence prior to the American Revolution. After
the Boston Massacre, despite severe local anti-British sentiment, he provided a
successful though unpopular legal defense of the accused British soldiers,
driven by his devotion to the right to counsel and the "protection of
innocence". As a delegate from Massachusetts to the Continental Congress, Adams
played a leading role in persuading Congress to declare independence. He
assisted Thomas Jefferson in drafting the Declaration of Independence in 1776,
and was its foremost advocate in the Congress. As a diplomat in Europe, he
helped negotiate the eventual peace treaty with Great Britain, and acquired
vital governmental loans from Amsterdam bankers. Adams was the primary author of
the Massachusetts Constitution in 1780 which influenced American political
theory, as did his earlier Thoughts on Government (1776).
