How Long is Their Presidency? Trivia Quiz

Answer: Less than one full term

John Tyler became the first vice president to become president following his predecessor's death and held the office from 1841 to 1845. This caused great controversy with many Americans and many congressmen believing that if a vice president ascended to the presidency mid-term, then he would only become acting president. It was because of this incident that Tyler gained the nickname "His Accidency". Tyler insisted that the Constitution allowed him to become president with all the powers and duties associated with it. So adamant was he about this, that he didn't even open mail addressed to "Acting President" John Tyler but rather returned the mail to its sender.

This would be the start of many problems President Tyler experienced. He vetoed bills based on if Congress had overstepped its authority rather than strictly on constitutional grounds. This angered his enemies so much, that they drew up impeachment charges for Tyler (although it never passed the House of Representatives). His own political party, the Whigs, even expelled him from their party, and Tyler would finish his presidency as an independent. Once Tyler's partial term came to an end, he did not try to run for a full term. When the Civil War broke out, he sided with the Confederacy which seceded from the Union and even won election to the Confederate House of Representatives although he would die before he could take his seat.

Answer: Less than one full term

Andrew Johnson assumed the presidency after Lincoln's assassination in 1865 until 1869. However, Johnson became unpopular with the Republicans due to his sympathies with the South. Violating the Tenure of Office Act (a short-lived law which prohibited the president from dismissing officers of the executive branch without the advice and consent of the Senate) didn't help him any either. The Republican convention decided that, for the next presidential election, the Republican candidate would be Civil War General Ulysses S. Grant.

Johnson did briefly try to become the Democratic nominee for president in the 1868 elections but that failed and the Democratic convention ended up nominating Horatio Seymour, the chairman of the convention.

Answer: Less than one full term

James Garfield served for only six months in 1881 as president. During his brief tenure, he supported civil rights for African-Americans and a reform of the post office, which at this point, had been corrupted due to criminal profiteering activity. In 1881, Charles Guiteau shot Garfield for what Guiteau believed to be retaliation for not giving him a position in the Garfield administration even though Guiteau supported him; Guiteau believed it was because he was a stalwart (a faction of the Republican Party that opposed civil service reform). Despite being shot, Garfield survived for a couple of months.

The cause of death had more to do with doctors using non-sterile equipment to search for the bullet, which they never did find. Alexander Graham Bell tried to use a metal detector to locate the bullet but it kept malfunctioning, despite working fine with other people. This was due to the operating table Garfield was laying on being metal. When Guiteau stood trial for the assassination attempt, he even tried to claim the doctors, not he, were the ones who should be blamed for the death of Garfield. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this argument fell on deaf ears.

Answer: One full term

James K. Polk (president from 1845 to 1849) was considered a dark horse candidate, because at the time, all the presidents had been a general or a member of the president's cabinet. As a candidate, he promised to serve only one term as president, which he did. During his time as president, he had four main goals 1) reestablish an independent treasury system, 2) reduce tariffs, 3) acquire Oregon, and 4) acquire California and New Mexico. Polk was successful in all four of them.

Unfortunately, Polk was something of a micromanager, which ended up affecting his health.

He died about on June 15, 1849, a few months after leaving the presidency and was succeeded by Milliard Fillmore.

Answer: One full term

Following a close presidential election, Rutherford B. Hayes won the presidency over Samuel J. Tilden with the electoral vote being 185-184. With 20 disputed votes that would determine who would be president and months of debate, a commission decided that Hayes would win those 20 votes (and therefore the presidency) and in return he would withdraw troops from the South, which would result in the Democratic Party taking over the South, instituting racist policies, and dominating politics for decades. Hayes's win would result in those who believed his win had been illegitimate giving him the nickname "Rutherfraud".

Like Polk before him, Hayes promised that he would only serve one term, and indeed, his only term would be from 1877-1881. Also, like his predecessor Ulysses S. Grant, Hayes worked on civil service reform, which based presidential appointments on merit rather than political supporters, as well as laws protecting African-Americans.

Answer: Between one and two full terms

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States, lasting from 1861 to 1865. He was the first president from the Republican Party (although not the Republican to run for president; that would be John C. Fremont in 1856). Lincoln's election was what prompted several southern states to secede from the Union. Even before Lincoln was inaugurated, the slave-holding southern states realized that Lincoln, with the help of a Republican Congress, would try to pass anti-slavery bills. Nearly the entirety of Lincoln's presidency overlapped with the Civil War. Anti-slavery measures he took included suspending habeas corpus, but only for the self-identified rebels, in accordance with the Constitution. Lincoln would come to realize that slavery would have to be abolished for the country to be reunited, rather than let states decide or let slavery be a secondary issue in the war.

When Lincoln ran for reelection, the Republican convention replaced current vice president Hannibal Hamlin with Andrew Johnson, the then-current military governor of Tennessee. Johnson was a pro-slavery Democrat albeit one who opposed secession, so it was hoped that this would win over other pro-slavery, anti-secession people. It was also intended that Johnson would never become president, because of his pro-slavery views, but that backfired on the convention. Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865, at Ford's Theater by John Wilkes Booth while attending a production of "Our American Cousin" and died the next day. Booth and a few others also intended to assassinate Vice President Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward, but Lincoln's was the only successful assassination. At 42 days, Lincoln's second term was one of the shortest terms in American history.

Answer: Between one and two full terms

From 1923 to 1929, Calvin Coolidge was the 30th president of the United States. His presidency began upon the death of his predecessor, Warren Harding. During Coolidge's time in office, he maintained a mostly hands-off approach believing most problems will sort themselves out. When Coolidge ran for election in 1924, he did so without personally campaigning but rather having his reelection campaign members do it. This was the first time a winning president had not personally campaigned since the practice had started (usually agreed to be with William Henry Harrison).

When Coolidge's first full term ended, his supporters wanted him to run again, but Coolidge declined stating that if he won, then he'd be president for ten years which for him was too long to be president. Interestingly, when he first made the decision, he said "I do not choose to run for President in 1928" which some of his supporters took to mean that while he would not run, he would still allow to be drafted by the Republican Party. Coolidge would later clarify the meaning of his original statement.

Answer: Between one and two full terms

Lyndon Baines Johnson became president on November 22, 1963, after Kennedy's assassination, and continued until January 3, 1969. His time in office (about one and a half full terms) included launching the Great Society, which aimed to fix domestic issues, such as poverty. The success of that program is up for debates. However, Johnson became unpopular due to his handling of the Vietnam War. Although Johnson initially announced he would run for a second full term, he later withdrew from the race and his vice president Hubert Humphrey would be the Democratic candidate for president.

(Note that the 22nd amendment, which established presidential term limits, was in effect at the time. However, the amendment also said that if a president served less than two years in a term in which someone else was elected president, then they could run for two full terms. If a president served more than two years, then they could only run for one full term. Since Johnson had served less than two years in Kennedy's term, then Johnson could constitutionally run for president again.)

Answer: Two full terms

James Monroe was the last of the Founding Fathers to become president. His two terms as president (from 1817 to 1825) was known as the Era of Good Feeling due to the unprecedented unity the country was experiencing. That being said, there still were problems in the country, most notably, slavery. In fact, it was during Monroe's presidency that the Missouri Compromise was signed, the first pro-slavery bill to be passed by Congress. The compromise was that Missouri would be admitted as a slave state, Maine would be a free state, and all other states would be admitted as a free state if it was north of Missouri's southern border or as a slave state if it was south of Missouri's southern border.

Following Washington's example, James Monroe declined to run for a third term and was succeeded by his Secretary of State John Quincy Adams.

Answer: Two full terms

Grover Cleveland not only served non-consecutive terms (1885-1889 and 1893-1897) but was also the first Democrat to win the presidency since the Civil War. He did attempt to run for president in the 1888 elections, but he was defeated by Republican Benjamin Harrison. Cleveland's presidency included tariff reform; Cleveland believed the tariffs had become too large under previous presidents, so he worked with Congress to reduce tariffs.

He ended up vetoing 584 in his two terms. This is significant because it was by far more vetoes than any other president. (The runner-up was Ulysses S Grant who vetoed 93 bills in his two terms and third place went to Andrew Johnson with 29 vetoes.) The reason for so many vetoes was usually a result of one of two reasons. One was that Congress passed private pension bills and Cleveland believed if the Pension Bureau hadn't already issued a pension, Congress shouldn't pass a bill issuing pensions. The second was because he believed Congress shouldn't spend money to assist states who have experienced natural disasters.