Remember All 46 US Presidents in Order: A Flashcard Method

Forty-six presidents, 235 years, and one question that keeps showing up in trivia nights, citizenship tests and AP US History exams: who came after whom? The US Presidents deck (code OZ5860, 46 cards) is built for exactly that. Each card asks for a number and answers with the name, the years in office and, where relevant, the one detail that makes the presidency memorable.

The card format

Because the prompt is the ordinal number, the deck trains order, not just recognition. That is the hard part: most people can name Jefferson, Jackson and Kennedy, but few can say that Millard Fillmore is #13, Chester A. Arthur is #21 or Warren G. Harding is #29.

Every name you will memorize

Washington, John Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Jackson, Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, Tyler, Polk, Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan, Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, Cleveland again, McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden.

The cards also flag the four assassinations (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Kennedy), the one resignation (Nixon), the shortest term (W. H. Harrison, one month) and the only president with two non-consecutive terms (Cleveland, #22 and #24 — which is why 46 presidencies correspond to 45 people).

Two tricks that make the order stick

1. Learn the list in blocks of eras, not one long chain. The years on the back of each card give you natural chapters:

• Founders, #1–#6 (1789–1829): Washington → Adams → Jefferson → Madison → Monroe → J. Q. Adams. Two Adamses bracket the Virginians.
• Jacksonian to Civil War, #7–#16 (1829–1865): the forgettable middle — Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler, Polk, Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan — ending with Lincoln.
• Reconstruction and Gilded Age, #17–#25 (1865–1901): Johnson, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, B. Harrison, Cleveland, McKinley.
• 20th century, #26–#40: T. Roosevelt through Reagan.
• Modern, #41–#46: Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden.

When a card asks for #19, you do not scan the whole list; you think "Gilded Age, third one" and land on Hayes.

2. Use the years as a second retrieval cue. Anchor a few fixed points — Lincoln 1861, McKinley 1901, FDR 1933, Kennedy 1961 — and count from the nearest anchor. Since terms are mostly four or eight years, #34 Eisenhower is "two before Kennedy, 1953".

A study plan for one week

Study the deck forward on days 1–3 (ten to fifteen numbers a day), then switch direction: cover the answer, read the name, and recall the number. Flip It's spaced repetition will keep resurfacing the middle block (#8–#15), which is where nearly everyone's errors cluster. By day 7 you should be able to recite all 46 in order in under two minutes.

To get started, sign in at flip-it.app and search the library for US Presidents or the deck code OZ5860.