President of the United States/Worksheets/Worksheet 4.B

Making a List
As you may recall from a previous lesson, we have dicussed ../../Vice Presidential Succession/ and found that there has been a total of nine successions due to the death or resignation of a serving President. Considering that for each succession we want to identify the names of both Presidents, their terms in office, and the date of succession, we have a lot of trivia to commit to rote memory.

However, we can simplify our task by breaking the list of nine into three smaller lists: Presidents who died of natural causes, were assassinated, or resigned.

Again, let's minimize memorization and first eliminate those we already know. From the previous list of Middle Presidents, 16th Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, and 32nd Franklin D. Roosevelt died of natural causes in 1945.

Kennedy and Nixon
Additional names that stand out as familiar are 35th John F. Kennedy who was assassinated in Nov 1963, and 37th Richard Nixon who resigned in August 1974. These two Presidents and their successors also fill in the gap left between 34th Dwight D. Eisenhower and 39th Jimmy Carter. With only four names to remember, this chain is made simple if we realize that Richard Nixon was Vice President under both terms of Dwight D. Eisenhower, and competed with John F. Kennedy in the first televized Presidential debates during the election of 1960. As the 35th President, John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, with then Vice President Lyndon Johnson becoming the 36th President. Lyndon Johnson won the election of 1964 to serve a full second term, then Richard Nixon returned to become the 37th President after the election of 1968. Richard Nixon resigned from office during his second term in 1974, and was replaced by Gerald Ford as the 38th President, the only President to have not been elected to office. The 39th President was Jimmy Carter, which is where we picked up the end of our list in the previous worksheet.

Before the Civil War
There are many ways to categorize the information to make it more memorable, and for this reason, it is interesting to note that two Presidents died of natural causes before Lincoln was assassinated in Apr 1865.

As the 9th President, William Henry Harrison died of pneumonia in Apr 1841, only a month after his inaugeration, which means there were actually three Presidents in 1841: 8th Martin Van Buren, 9th William Henry Harrison, and 10th John Tyler, who completed the one term. For those interested in trivia, this phenomenon of three Presidents in one year repeats in 1881.

Though some may claim otherwise, the death of 12th Zachary Taylor of gastroenteritis in Jul 1850, is generally considered natural causes. Millard Fillmore completed the one term as the 13th President.

After the Civil War
As the Civil War drew to a close, 16th Abraham Lincoln became the first President to be assassinated in Apr 1865, followed in Sep 1881 by 20th James A. Garfield, and 25th William McKinley in Sep 1901. The next President to die of natural causes was Warren G. Harding of heart attack in Aug 1923. The final three are already familiar: 32nd Franklin D. Roosevelt in Apr 1945 of cerebral hemorage, 35th John F. Kennedy in Nov 1963 was assassinated, and 37th Richard Nixon resigned in Aug 1974.