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George Washington (1732–1799) -

George Washington was the nation's first president, and his presidency was a true crisis due to the fact that he had to define the role. Although the Constitution offers a loose outline of the president's duties and powers, Washington had to build the office from the ground up without any precedent or prototype. 

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John Adams (1735–1826) -

John Adams' one term in office was filled with escalating tensions with France and Britain. In the wake of the French Revolution, the British monarchy was scared that the same thing could happen there and eventually went to war with France. Adams attempted to maintain friendly relations with both nations, which neither pleased France nor Britain. 

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Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) -

Like Adams, Jefferson faced daunting foreign policy challenges as well. At the time, Great Britain was at war with Napoleonic France, and the US profited by selling goods and materials to both sides. Rising tensions with the British ultimately lead to the War of 1812.

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James Madison (1751–1836) -

Madison inherited the War of 1812, which is considered to be America's second war of independence. The British continued to seize US ships, and Madison responded with embargoes and other punitive measures. It wasn't long before the British were once again landing on America's shores. The US eventually drove them out, but not before they wrought havoc across the young country, including torching the White House, which sent Madison into hiding. 

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James Monroe (1758–1831) -

The biggest crisis of Monroe's presidency was the Panic of 1819, a major depression that was worse than any economic downturn since the 1780s. Although Monroe was mostly powerless to stop it, much of the nation held the president accountable.

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John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) -

Domestic politics were the bane of John Quincy Adams' single term in office, and his crisis was about legitimacy. The son of the second president, John Adams, the younger Adams is one of five presidents to gain the office without winning the popular vote. When the Electoral College failed to produce a winner, a deal led to the House of Representatives electing Adams president, even though he had received 84 electoral endorsements to Andrew Jackson's 99.

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Andrew Jackson (1767–1845) -

Andrew Jackson's biggest presidential crisis was the Native Americans still living in the Southeast. In response, Congress passed, and Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, which brutally forced several tribes to unsettled land west of the Mississippi River. Known as the Trail of Tears, the move opened up the land that would give rise to the Deep South's cotton economy and the expansion of slavery.

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Martin Van Buren (1782–1862) -

Martin Van Buren was limited to one term in office, mostly because of a crushing depression known as the Economic Panic of 1837. Profits, prices, and wages dropped, westward expansion was stalled, and unemployment rose. 

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William Henry Harrison (1773–1841) -

Previous presidents grappled with political, economic, and foreign crises, but a health crisis doomed William Henry Harrison's presidency. The 68-year-old Harrison delivered the longest inaugural address in history, taking him nearly two hours to read over 8,000 words during a cold, rainy day. A few days later, he came down with pneumonia and died after just 31 days in office, becoming the shortest presidency in US history.

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John Tyler (1790–1862) -

Like John Quincy Adams, John Tyler struggled for legitimacy after Harrison's death propelled him to the presidency. As Harrison's vice president, many assumed Tyler would play the role of placeholder, but Tyler had himself sworn in immediately, and refused to behave as a temp. 

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James K. Polk (1795–1849) -

Polk was a radical expansionist and wanted the nation to stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In a crisis of his choice, Polk instigated a war with Mexico to force it to cede territories that he wanted for the US. The conflict ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which forced Mexico to give the present-day states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. Through treaties, Polk also won Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and much of Montana.

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Zachary Taylor (1784–1850) -

Despite being a Southerner and a slaveholder himself, Taylor shocked the nation when he sided against the expansion of slavery. Taylor's biggest crisis was whether new states would enter the Union as free or slave states. As Taylor pressed for New Mexico and California to enter the Union as free states, slave states threatened secession. However, Taylor died unexpectedly before the issue was resolved.

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Millard Fillmore (1800–1874) -

With all the new territory gained from the Mexican-American War, the question of the expansion of slavery was pressing, and Fillmore had to deal with it after Taylor's death. The former VP opposed Taylor's anti-expansion policies and signed the Compromise of 1850, which included the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. The act enraged the North as it forced everyone in the free states to serve as slave-catchers under the penalty of law. It also threatened every free African American with a life in slavery. 

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Franklin Pierce (1804–1869) -

By the time Franklin Pierce took office, tensions were high between the North and South. Pierce advocated for and signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which repealed the ban on slavery in Kansas. The move led to an outbreak of deadly violence known as Bleeding Kansas and set the nation on the path to civil war.

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James Buchanan (1791–1868) -

James Buchanan downplayed the issue of slavery, failing to act as the nation marched toward civil war. This consistently angered both sides of the political aisle. The first shots of the Civil War were fired just one month after he left office.

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Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) -

Abraham Lincoln oversaw the bloodiest period in American history. More than 600,000 Americans died in the Civil War and the South was largely destroyed. With the Civil War over and African Americans free, Lincoln was elected to a second term. However, he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre shortly after his inauguration.

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Andrew Johnson (1808–1875) -

Lincoln's vice president, Andrew Johnson was a Southerner and former enslaver who vetoed civil rights legislation and favored quick restoration of the seceded states to the Union. This made him the first president to be impeached by the House of Representatives. He avoided being convicted in the Senate by a single vote.

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Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) -

A Union Army general who won the Civil War, Grant's presidential crisis was the task of reassimilating the defeated and largely destroyed Southern states into the Union, along with over four million newly freed formerly enslaved people who lived there. 

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Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) -

An abolitionist, Rutherford B. Hayes dealt with political legitimacy and his failure to honor America's commitment to the formerly enslaved people it fought to free, in what is known as The Great Betrayal.

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James A. Garfield (1831–1881) -

James Garfield's main crisis was one of personal security. He was shot in the back by a mentally disturbed and disgruntled office seeker, and died of blood poisoning and infection a few weeks later. He served just 200 days in office.

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Chester A. Arthur (1829–1886) -

Garfield's vice president Chester A. Arthur took office upon Garfield's assassination, and inherited a crisis of immigration. Garfield had vetoed the first Chinese Exclusion Act, which would have banned immigration from China for 20 years and denied citizenship to Chinese Americans. However, in 1882, a revised bill eventually became law.

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Grover Cleveland (1837–1908) -

The only US president to serve two nonconsecutive terms, Grover Cleveland's crisis dealt with the government's role in aiding its citizenry during his first term. A business advocate, he didn't believe it was the government's place to rescue citizens in financial distress. Cleveland controversially issued more vetoes than any other president in history, including bills that would have provided pensions to military veterans. 

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Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901) -

Harrison's major crisis was the rise of corporations that had gotten so big that they stifled competition and almost functioned as governments unto themselves. As a reformer, he sent troops to restore order when thousands of militiamen and Pinkerton agents began murdering Carnegie steelworkers. 

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Grover Cleveland (1837–1908) -

After Harrison, Cleveland was back again, but his second term would be marked by the Panic of 1893. When two of the country's largest employers, the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad and the National Cordage Company, collapsed, panic swept the stock market, and the nation entered a period of economic turmoil. In the end, over 15,000 businesses collapsed.

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William McKinley (1843–1901) -

McKinley's presidency oversaw an era of extraordinary foreign turmoil that culminated in a US victory in the Spanish-American War. When Spain refused McKinley's demands to give Cuba its independence, tensions rose, and a series of escalations resulted in the war. McKinley was killed by an assassin's bullet six months into his second term.

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Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) -

Theodore Roosevelt's most significant crisis was the escalating destruction of the American wilderness due to decades of corporate excess during the Industrial Revolution. Roosevelt embarked on a campaign of conservation and used his power to save game preserves, bird reserves, and forestland. He also created the United States Forest Service and the National Park System.

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William Howard Taft (1857–1930) -

The crisis that led to the downfall of Taft was a rift between himself and his friend, mentor, and predecessor Teddy Roosevelt, who helped him to victory. But the two soon began drifting apart as Taft continuously sided with the conservative wing of the Republican Party. As Taft's conservative leanings and Roosevelt's progressive movement grew wider, Roosevelt ran as a third-party candidate to split the Republican vote and guarantee Taft's defeat to Woodrow Wilson.

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Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) -

The first Southerner elected since the Civil War, Wilson took office one year before World War I began. The US tried to stay neutral as Europe burned, but when a German U-boat sunk the British passenger ship Lusitania in 1915, killing 114 Americans, Wilson began making preparations to enter the war. The US officially declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917, joining the bloody battle. 

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Warren G. Harding (1865–1923) -

Before he died while serving out his first term, Harding's time in office was filled of personal and political scandals. One was the Teapot Dome scandal, in which Harding's secretary of the interior leased valuable oil reserves to private corporations without competitive bidding in exchange for bribes.

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Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) -

Calvin Coolidge was sworn into office during a time of rising racial tension, as African Americans who fought bravely in World War I began urging for rights denied to them across the country. Despite Coolidge's efforts to promote anti-lynching laws and civil rights legislation, African Americans were denied America's promise yet again.

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Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) -

Right after Herbert Hoover came to office, the stock market crashed, and the world sunk into the Great Depression. As the country's economy continued to sink, Hoover pursued several policies but refused to directly involve the federal government in any relief efforts. 

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Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) -

The longest-serving president in US history, FDR successfully navigated two of the greatest crises of the 20th century, the Great Depression and World War II. Taking the exact opposite approach as Hoover, Roosevelt put the federal government's full weight into Depression-relief efforts in the form of the New Deal in the '30s. Then, World War II dominated his third and fourth terms.

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Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) -

Truman took office when Roosevelt died in 1945, and he oversaw the Allied victory in World War II. But his biggest crisis was the rise of the Soviet Union. The two competing powers were enemies at the dawn of the Cold War, and in 1949, the Russians achieved what had been exclusive to the US since the end of the war: their own atomic bomb.

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Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) -

Dwight Eisenhower's administration saw two simultaneous crises, the Cold War expansion of the Soviet Union, and African Americans' demand for the civil rights they had been denied since the end of the Civil War. 

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John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) -

The 36th President of the United States, Kennedy was the fourth president to be assassinated when he was killed in 1963. The year prior, however, saw the event that defined his presidency, the Cuban Missile Crisis. For 13 days, the world held its breath as the US and the Soviet Union threatened each other with nuclear annihilation.

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Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) -

Entering his presidency during one of the most tumultuous periods in US history, Johnson's main crisis was the Vietnam War. Although Americans had been there since the '50s, Johnson oversaw the bulk of the world's first televised war. The conflict divided the nation, fueled outrage at home, and ultimately killed over 58,000 Americans and millions of North and South Vietnamese civilians and soldiers.

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Richard Nixon (1913–1994) -

Nixon's presidency was defined by the crisis that forced him to resign, the Watergate scandal. It originated from attempts by the Nixon administration to conceal its involvement in the June 17, 1972, break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters located in the Watergate Office Building in Washington, D.C.

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Gerald Ford (1913–2006) -

Nixon's vice president, Gerald Ford, came to power when the nation was deeply distrustful of its government. However, his main crisis was the failing economy. Ford rose and cut taxes, and reduced spending, but an oil embargo from 1973 kept energy prices high, and inflation soared. Unemployment was also at an all-time high. 

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Jimmy Carter (1924-) -

An energy crisis and sky-high inflation plagued Carter's presidency, but the Iranian Revolution and hostage crisis became his downfall. In 1979, Iranian revolutionaries overthrew the American-backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and installed an Islamic fundamentalist regime. That same year, Iranian students stormed the US Embassy and took 52 US citizens and diplomats hostage for 444 days. 

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Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) -

The AIDS and crack epidemics ravaged the country while Reagan was in office, but the Iran-Contra affair was his biggest crisis. Reagan eventually admitted that his administration illegally sold arms to Iran, and secretly diverted the profits to fund Nicaraguan contras without Congress's approval.

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George H.W. Bush (1924-2018) -

Reagan's vice president, George H.W. Bush, faced a foreign crisis that led to the Gulf War. As he was managing the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, a strategic American ally. Bush responded by organizing an international coalition, which quickly liberated Kuwait but didn't remove Hussein from power.

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Bill Clinton (1946-) -

Bill Clinton's presidency will always be remembered for his scandal with Monica Lewinsky, a young intern with whom Clinton engaged in an affair inside the White House. When the news broke, Clinton lied about it both to the American people directly and while under oath. The Republican-held House of Representatives impeached him, but he was acquitted in the Senate.

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George W. Bush (1946-) -

The September 11 attacks of 2001, which killed 2,977 people, happened on the watch of George W. Bush. As a result, his administration embarked on a perpetual War on Terror, which included the disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq in pursuit of weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist.

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Barack Obama (1961-) -

The end of Bush's second term saw the greatest economic calamity since the Great Depression, and Barack Obama, the nation's first African American president, inherited the Great Recession. 

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Donald Trump (1946-) -

Trump shocked the world when he defeated Hillary Clinton in one of the greatest political upsets in history. A controversial president from the outset, Trump's presidency included three major crises: COVID-19, a struggling economy, and protests over systemic racism and police brutality.

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Joe Biden (1942-) -

With the Israel-Hamas conflict, Biden has been facing anger from all sides, especially from progressives who pressure him to take a tougher stance on Israel as Palestinians face a growing humanitarian crisis. With protests around the nation supporting a ceasefire, Biden is currently navigating the biggest crises of his presidency. 

Sources: (Stacker) (CNN) (Politico) 

See also: Heartbreaking images of the Israel-Hamas War

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