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The first 10 new US presidents after Lincoln

Daily Tens #84 · Monday, October 5, 2026 · Ranked by order of first taking office

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Heads up: the answers are published further down this page.

About this ranking

Ten people first entered the US presidency after Abraham Lincoln and before Woodrow Wilson. Their sequence contains an assassination, a nonconsecutive return and several transitions within a calendar year. A list of presidential numbers alone can therefore mislead: this puzzle counts people once and sorts them by the beginning of their first presidency.

The answers

First year in office for the archived answer set
Rank Answer First year in office
1 Andrew Johnson 1,865
2 Ulysses S. Grant 1,869
3 Rutherford B. Hayes 1,877
4 James A. Garfield 1,881
5 Chester A. Arthur 1,881
6 Grover Cleveland 1,885
7 Benjamin Harrison 1,889
8 William McKinley 1,897
9 Theodore Roosevelt 1,901
10 William Howard Taft 1,909

Values follow the dated source snapshot and the original answer order. Rounding is for display only; the ranking uses the stored values.

Why Cleveland occupies one answer

Grover Cleveland first took office in 1885 and returned in 1893. The conventional numbering calls him both the 22nd and 24th president, but he remains one person in this game. Benjamin Harrison follows Cleveland because Harrison first took office in 1889; Cleveland’s return does not add another row between Harrison and McKinley. The distinction is essential to the tenth-place cutoff. Counting administrations instead of people would end the sequence sooner and change the challenge.

Succession counts as taking office

Andrew Johnson became president after Lincoln’s assassination, and Chester A. Arthur succeeded James A. Garfield after Garfield’s death. Theodore Roosevelt likewise entered office after William McKinley’s death. None needs a first presidential election victory to qualify for this chronology. The event being measured is assuming the presidency, not winning a campaign or receiving a nomination. This gives a single rule for ordinary inaugurations and unexpected transfers of power.

The crowded year of 1881

Rutherford B. Hayes’s term ended in 1881; Garfield and then Arthur both began presidencies that year. A year-only table can show their dates as identical even though the sequence is unambiguous. For this reason, the order comes from the historical succession record and the table records the first year as supporting information. Alphabetical sorting within 1881 would be wrong. The pattern also illustrates why a date rounded to a year should not be mistaken for evidence that events were simultaneous.

A useful way to remember the boundaries

Begin with Johnson in 1865, the first successor to Lincoln, and end with Taft in 1909. Grant and Hayes fill the earlier part; Garfield and Arthur form the 1881 transition; Cleveland and Harrison explain the nonconsecutive-term exception; McKinley and Roosevelt bridge the turn of the century. This grouping follows actual transitions instead of asking a player to memorise ten isolated names. The endpoint is fixed by the ten-person rule, not by a claim that the surrounding historical periods begin or end precisely there.

Sources & further reading

Explanation updated . The puzzle’s original data date is listed below.

Sources & methodology

Metric
Order of first taking office
Data through
Historical presidential sequence
Source
White House Historical Association — Presidents Timeline
Notes
Each person counts once, ordered by the start of their first presidency. A return for a nonconsecutive term does not create another answer.

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