Of all the monikers applied to Americans from the dawn of the Republic, none resonates as well as the very first, the Father of His Country. … Many [of the Founders] had critical skills that were essential to the success of that national founding, but none had the kind of impact that the “indispensable man” had on so many of the foundational events without which the attempt at independence and nationhood may have been aborted before it could even begin. There were many fathers, but only one Father, and that was George Washington. …

John Adams was a troubled soul his entire life. He was regularly anxious, jealous, self-righteous, outraged, and often downright angry that he was never given his just due for a lifetime of selfless devotion to his community and his nation. Much of this angst was self-inflicted, living under a code that he inherited from his Puritan father, one that he adhered to with a religious fervor that overrode all other behavioral instincts. …

Thomas Jefferson is one of the most revered Founding Fathers. The phrases that emanated from his pen embody the spirit of the American Revolution, defining not only for his generation but for all posterity the essence of liberty that has forever been encapsulated in the American psyche. … But this is only one side of a man who often failed to live up to his own highbrow rhetoric. ...

James Madison may have been small in stature, almost frail, and physically the least imposing person in the room throughout most of his life, but he was also an intellectual giant who was instrumental in enabling the founding of the United States of America. For a nation recently born through revolution out of the depths of tyrannical rule, Madison’s leadership was intrinsic to the creation of a sustainable governmental structure in which individual liberty was the most treasured asset and minority rights were protected. …

James Monroe was the last in the line of the Virginia Dynasty, the group of leaders who helped shepherd the United States through most of its formative years. … Yet unlike his predecessors, who are renowned as among the elite of the nation’s Founding Fathers, virtually nothing is known about the 5th President of the United States. … Make no mistake, Monroe was ever-present throughout many of these early trials, and he emerged from many of these challenging affairs to lead his nation as it transitioned from its earliest period of simply trying to find its way, to the subsequent era of dynamic growth and prominence as an emerging power amongst the nations of the world. …

John Quincy Adams was a chip off the old block. … Like his father, he was personally ambitious, but he consistently resisted the temptation to place his own desires at the forefront of his motivation or as the basis for his decisions. His independent streak was notorious. … This was one of the main reasons he attracted far more enemies than friends in his chosen profession. …

Andrew Jackson’s life was full of battles – not just struggles, but actual battles. The strong-willed frontiersman ruled his life based on a set of beliefs that led to confrontations with anyone deemed to be a threat to one of his core principles. … His indomitable will often carried the day, fixing his gaze on a target, regardless of how difficult, and willing himself and his colleagues to the successful outcome through an unforgiving grit and determination. Jackson was feared, and rightfully so, in part because he was fearless. There was no challenge he wouldn’t accept, with the confidence that he would always prevail, in part because he had no doubts about the righteousness of his desires. …

Among the nicknames most famously ascribed to Martin Van Buren was the “Great Magician,” which later became the “Little Magician” due to his diminutive stature. The moniker was not meant as praise. It was an epithet offered by political rivals for Van Buren’s behind-the-scenes machinations that somehow managed to magically achieve the politically impossible. This was, in many ways, the life mission of Martin Van Buren, such that he would undoubtedly have taken the phrase as a compliment. … Looking at the results, the magic clearly wore off for the “Little Magician.” His administration oversaw a troubled time, full of economic and political strife, and the electorate failed to return him to the White House. …

On March 4, 1841, William Henry Harrison was inaugurated as the President of the United States. Thirty-one days later he was dead. So sums up the common historical refrain of the 9th person elected as the nation’s President. It is true that such a short tenure denied Harrison the opportunity to make his mark on the nation he was selected to lead, but it would be a disservice to limit his story to his one month in the White House. Harrison spent nearly his entire life in service to the public. …

John Tyler was among the strictest of the strict constructionists and would bow to no one or no party when required to make political decisions. … Within just a few months of his presidency, his fellow Whigs kicked him out of the party out of frustration over Tyler’s persistent objections to the Congressional majority that helped bring him to power. … The staunch supporter of states’ rights, always with a sense of allegiance to Southern principles, concluded his career as not only a stout supporter of Southern secession but also an elected member of the Congress of the Confederacy. This “Accidental President,” as he was often called, was true to himself to the very end, even when those decisions cast him in the worst possible light in the eyes of many of his contemporaries, as well as most of posterity. …

In terms of accomplishments, James’s Polk one-term record is hard to beat. His first three feats alone – the adjustment to the tariff, the establishment of the Constitutional Treasury, and the resolution of the Oregon boundary dispute with Britain – each resolved decades of conflict, some of which were in the realm of the most intense in the nation’s history. If Polk is known for anything, however, it was the decisive victory in the war with Mexico and the vast expanse of land that devolved to the United States via the Mexican Cession. Polk gave life to the concept of Manifest Destiny, embracing the expansionist vision, putting the strategy into place, and overseeing its successful, albeit bloody, conclusion. ...

Zachary Taylor was the least likely person ever elected to the office of President of the United States. … He spent the vast majority of his career in anonymity, serving one military role after another. … That all changed when Taylor led his troops to successful outcomes in the initial battles of the Mexican War in 1846, prompting President-makers in the East to try to turn the country’s latest military hero into the man to beat in the upcoming national canvass. This phenomenon occurred even though Taylor had never once spoken publicly on political matters, had openly denied interest in the presidency, had only recently proclaimed a party affiliation, and, in fact, had never voted in an election in his life. ...

In those rare moments when historians bother to remember Millard Fillmore, the 13th President of the United States, it is usually with words of derision. Fillmore is blamed for his rigid enforcement of the odious Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, as well as scorned for having such a lust for power that he was willing to seek to regain the presidency as the standard-bearer of the discriminatory “Know-Nothing” political party which embraced anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic tenets at its core. … Others can’t get past poking fun of his odd first name. The Millard Fillmore story, however, is far more nuanced than these simplistic references. …

In many ways, Franklin Pierce’s strict adherence to the Constitution was his undoing as President. He remained committed to a nation where local decisions, in states and territories, reflecting the will of the citizenry, were the hallmark of the American Republic, not subject to the dictates of the national executive. But the United States in the 1850s was fracturing at the seams over the nation’s Original Sin (slavery) that was sanctioned in the Constitution itself. Abolitionism was on the rise in the North, and secessionism was increasingly advocated in the South. ...

The American republic was teetering on the brink of dismemberment as the presidential election of 1856 was presented to the voting population. … Compromises had come and gone, leaving the future of a unified nation at high risk. To lead the country through this perilous period was one of the most experienced statesmen ever to answer the call for the highest office in the land. … But despite James Buchanan’s illustrious pedigree and the full weight of the electorate and national legislature seemingly at his command, he proved to be a colossal failure in his singular goal of trying to preserve the American Union. …

Abraham Lincoln preserved the Union and freed the slaves. For most Americans, little more is needed to be known to place Lincoln amongst the greatest Americans of all time – some say the greatest of them all. He rose from nothing, a poverty-stricken backwoods farm boy with virtually no formal education who became the most powerful figure in the nation at the time of its greatest peril. When seven states seceded from the Union, Lincoln did not hesitate to consider that action void...

When John Wilkes Booth fired the bullet from his .44-caliber Deringer into the back of Abraham Lincoln’s head, he not only ended the life of the 16th President of the United States, he also denied his country Lincoln’s adept leadership that was sorely needed in the aftermath of the nation’s Civil War. Instead, that responsibility fell on Andrew Johnson, the man who had risen...

For a period in the second half of the 19th Century, Ulysses Grant was consistently hailed as not only one of the heroes of his generation but also as one of the greatest Americans of all time. His portrait shared banners with the likes of Washington and Lincoln, standing together as the most revered individuals the United States had yet produced. After all, Grant was the general Abraham Lincoln had long been searching for to lead the Union to victory, the one man who fought relentlessly, no matter the odds, to defeat the secessionists and ultimately win the Civil War...

Rutherford Hayes was a good man, a decent man. He was a loving husband and father, a loyal and respected battlefield commander, and a rare politician who engendered few personal enemies. Hayes’s well-intentioned approach to life and politics, however, did have one unmistakable black mark that casts an everlasting shadow over his legacy. The 19th President of the United States cannot be solely blamed for the controversial manner in which he captured the election of 1876. The Republican political class fought that battle on his behalf. That said, while he wasn’t present in the room at the Wormley Hotel where the Compromise of 1877 was ironed out, he made it clear that the Ohioans who were there accurately represented his views and interests...

Horatio Alger’s “rags-to-riches, only in America” novels of the late 19th Century were so popular, and so iconic, that they were bestowed an entrant into the American vernacular – the so-called “Horatio Alger Myth.” Alger entertained America’s youth with dozens of tales about poverty-stricken boys who persevered through earnest hard work and a touch of good fortune to turn their lives into the envy of every American boy, rising up the social and economic ladder in a way that could only be possible in the free enterprise system of the United States of America. For the first 15 years of his writing career Alger stuck to fiction, mostly along this same theme. But, in 1881, he made an exception...

Chester Arthur was the least likely person ever to become President of the United States. Arthur’s elevation to the nation’s top political position was barely fathomable for someone who had not only never held elective office prior to his ascension as James Garfield’s Vice President, but also hailed from a segment of the political world that was largely held with disdain by an increasing segment of the American electorate. Arthur was a spoilsman, part of a political contrivance that existed not to promote particular policies or ideology but rather singularly focused on attaining power...

“I have tried so hard to do right.” Those were the last words of Grover Cleveland, the 22nd and 24th President of the United States. Few dying declarations better encapsulated the essence of the man about to pass from the scene. Cleveland was an unusual politician in that he rarely factored political calculus into his decision-making process. A man of incessant work habits, Cleveland adhered to a personal code that led him to pursue causes he believed to be in the best interests of his constituents, whether they be his legal clients or the citizens of Buffalo or the state of New York or the entire United States...

The last quarter of the 19th Century was a period of dramatic change in the United States. Amidst this era of realignment, new political leaders came to the fore. Many were products of the Civil War, with all but one of the occupants of the White House from 1868 to the turn of the century having worn the blue uniform of a Union officer. While there is a common tendency to lump these leaders together as a band of indistinguishable bearded former generals, some were clearly more prominent than others, in both war and peace. One of those war heroes who emerged for his single presidential term may be the most anonymous of all, with one of the only remembrances related to his grandfather who preceded him in the White House nearly half a century before but lasted only a month in office before dying...

William McKinley was both a great and a tragic American story. Shortly after the end of the Spanish-American War, when asked about his potential legacy, McKinley commented to his personal secretary, George Cortelyou: “That’s all a man can hope for during his lifetime – to set an example, and when he’s dead, to be an inspiration for history.” McKinley’s primary inspiration may have been unintended, but he was the first man to hold the office of President of the United States to execute an expansionist foreign policy etched in shades of imperialism. McKinley positioned American expansionism as “benevolent assimilation” – liberators, not oppressors – but the subjects of these invasions, who had little choice in the matter, struggled as the U.S.-controlled “period of liberation” stretched on for decades. In this regard, he was, in fact, an inspiration for history. Het set a precedent, as the war with Spain in 1898 was hardly the last time American might would be used to liberate other lands that were in the midst of various forms of civil war, revolution, or strains of instability...

Theodore Roosevelt’s so-called “Rough Riders” captured the imagination of the nation for their heroics in their charge up the San Juan Heights in Cuba in a climactic moment in the Spanish-American War in 1898. These grizzled citizen-soldiers adopted the tune They’ll be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight as their anthem, and the song stuck to Roosevelt for the rest of his political career. It was a perfect fit, as there was always a “hot time” wherever and whenever Theodore Roosevelt appeared throughout his entire life. As one of his sons remarked, “Father always wanted to be the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral.” Roosevelt lived life to the fullest, earning his rightful place as the center of attention in any crowd...

William Taft had the loftiest goals growing up. He aspired to the highest office his country had to offer. No, not the presidency of the United States. Taft bought into the vision best articulated by his father, who once told him, “To be Chief Justice of the United States is more than to be President in my estimation.” Taft wholeheartedly agreed and charted a path to reach that ultimate plateau...

When Woodrow Wilson arrived in Paris in December 1918 for the post-World War I Peace Conference, he was a man sitting on top of the world. After finally bringing his country into the conflict on the side of the Allies, the American President mobilized the full power of the United States toward defeating the Central Powers and delivered on that promise in a little more than a year. Millions of grateful citizens showed up in France, England, and Italy to cheer at the top of their lungs the man who appeared to save western civilization as they knew it...

Teapot Dome. Those two words seem to represent the lasting legacy of the nation’s 29th President, Warren Harding, and they connote a legacy of scandal. And while there was some malfeasance in and around the Harding administration, there was so much more to this man’s life and political career. Warren Harding won a landslide victory to become his nation’s leader in 1920. The American people widely embraced his “Return to Normalcy” campaign as an antidote to the visionary efforts yet ultimate failures of his predecessor, Woodrow Wilson...

Calvin Coolidge was very much a product of his environment. The boy reared on the farm at the Notch in Plymouth, Vermont, was weaned on the Puritan ethic of selfless hard work. The man known as “Silent Cal” let his work speak for him, keeping conversation at a minimum. He was an unremarkable youth who stayed true to the righteous elements of his upbringing and education to appeal to his fellow citizens in a way that ultimately elevated him from the bottom of the political ladder to its very pinnacle...