The Presidents’ Table

1732–1799 · United States

Commander who held a starving army together for eight years, presided over the Constitutional Convention, and then did the most radical thing available to a victorious general: gave power back. Twice.

1809–1865 · United States

Sixteenth president of the United States, self-educated frontier lawyer, and the leader who preserved the Union through civil war and ended slavery by proclamation and constitutional amendment.

1858–1919 · United States

The asthmatic boy who made himself into the man in the arena: rancher, police commissioner, Rough Rider, youngest president — trust-buster, canal builder, and protector of 230 million acres of wild America.

1890–1969 · United States

The Kansas farm boy who organized the largest amphibious invasion in history, held a fractious alliance together by sheer temperament, then as president built the interstates and warned, on his way out, about the military-industrial complex.

1822–1885 · United States

The failed farmer clerking in his father's store at thirty-eight who, given war, revealed relentless clarity — took Vicksburg, accepted Appomattox with grace, and, dying of cancer and broke, wrote the finest memoir in American letters to provide for his family.