Stepping Stones to the Presidency Quiz

Answer: Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson was vice-president under John Adams, having finished second to Adams in the 1796 election. He turned the tables on Adams and defeated him in the election of 1800 to become the third U.S. president.

Other vice-presidents elected while serving as VP are John Adams, Martin van Buren, and George H. W. Bush.

Answer: James Madison

Madison served as Secretary of State during the entire eight years of the Jefferson presidency, and then succeeded Jefferson as president in 1809. Others who used the Secretary of State position as a stepping stone to the presidency are James Monroe in 1817, and John Quincy Adams in 1825.

Answer: James K. Polk

James K. Polk is the only president to move from the House of Representatives directly to the presidency. He served a single presidential term, from 1845 to 1849.

Answer: Zachary Taylor

Taylor was nominated for the presidency by the Whig party in 1848, despite the fact that had no prior political experience, and had never even voted. He had spent the previous forty years in the army, distinguishing himself in the War of 1812, the Black Hawk War in 1832, the war against the Florida Seminoles in 1837, and the Mexican-American War in 1847.

Historians generally rank him in the bottom quarter of U.S. presidents, due to his political naivete.

Answer: James Buchanan

Buchanan had previously served as minister to Russia during the Andrew Jackson administration, and then came out of retirement to serve as minister to England during the Pierce administration. This post proved to be a good stepping stone to the presidency, as being overseas meant he had managed to stay out of the bitter dispute over slavery in the prospective new state of Kansas.

This "bleeding Kansas" issue torpedoed the chances of his rivals for the nomination, President Pierce and Senator Stephen Douglas.

He was also helped by the fragmentation of the old Whig party, which was dying out at the time.

Answer: Ulysses S. Grant

After winning the Civil War for the union, Grant served as Secretary of War in the Andrew Johnson administration, before being elected president in 1868. The Secretary of War didn't become known as the Secretary of Defense until 1947.

Answer: Rutherford B. Hayes

Hayes was Governor of Ohio when he was selected by the Republican party to be its nominee in the 1876 election. Initial election returns had his Democratic opponent winning the electoral vote, but Republicans challenged the results, claiming that blacks had been prevented from voting in three southern states. Eventually an Electoral Commission of fifteen men decided the election in favor of Hayes.

Answer: Woodrow Wilson

Wilson had spent his adult life in academia, prior to entering politics and serving as New Jersey governor from 1911-1913. At the Democratic Convention in 1912, Wilson and Champ Clark, Speaker of the House, were deadlocked for many ballots, until Wilson pulled ahead and won the nomination on the 46th ballot.

He then was elected president due to the split in the Republican Party between Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft.

Answer: Dwight Eisenhower

Ike retired from active duty in 1948 to become president of Columbia University. However, President Truman coaxed him out of retirement and Ike served as NATO commander from 1951 to 1952, when he was elected president over Adlai Stevenson.

Answer: John F. Kennedy

Kennedy served three terms in the U.S. House before being elected to the Senate in 1952. He served one term in the Senate and part of a second before assuming the presidency in 1961, having won a narrow victory over VP Richard Nixon.

Other presidents elected to the presidency while in the Senate are James A. Garfield, Warren G. Harding, and Barack Obama. Garfield's service comes with an asterisk, as he was elected to the Senate but had never actually assumed the office when the 1880 presidential campaign intervened.