The 8 U.S. Presidents Who Have Died While in Office

9th President

Term: 1841–1841

Successor: John Tyler

The first U.S. President to die in office is also probably best remembered by most modern Americans solely for having died in office.

If you know one thing about William Henry Harrison, it’s that he died after only 30 days of being president (and if you know two things, the second is likely his campaign song, “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too”). As for who Harrison was beyond that? Well, it depends on who you ask.

In actuality, Harrison was born into wealth, the son of a Founding Father, who resigned from an inarguably accomplished military career, choosing in the words of William Freehling “celebrity over duty, enjoying parties and banquets in his honor.” But when, during the Election of 1840, incumbent Martin Van Buren tried to dismiss Harrison as an old man who should “sit in his log cabin drinking hard cider,” the Harrison campaign leapt on the critique, painting him as a common man, a la Andrew Jackson, who preferred a log cabin and cider to the lavish parties he frequented.

When Harrison ultimately trounced Van Buren in a landslide victory, he wanted to make a show at his inauguration to dispel the very air of the everyman which had just elevated him to the White House. On a notably cold and wet March 4, 1841, Harrison went without a coat to his own inauguration and proceeded to deliver the longest inaugural address in American history, a two-hour-long lecture rich with extremely erudite and academic language, and arguably far too many references to the Roman Republic.

Some have suggested Harrison’s death just a month later, on April 4, was the result of catching a cold during his verbose inaugural address, but recent scholarship has refuted that long-held bit of grim folklore. It’s actually much more likely Harrison died of septic shock as a result of tainted water: the water supply for the White House was downstream of public sewage, and the President likely contracted typhoid as a result, according to an article published in Clinical Infectious Diseases in 2014.

Upon Harrison’s death, questions were raised about what exactly happens next. It was understood that Vice President John Tyler would inherit the “powers and duties” of the presidency, per Article II of the Constitution, but it wasn’t clear if he actually became president, title and all. Tyler swiftly cut off all speculation by moving into the White House and claiming the title, setting a precedent for all future ascensions by a VP. Tyler would finish out the rest of Harrison’s single term, but ultimately declined to seek a second when it became clear he couldn’t win if he tried.

Learn More About William Henry Harrison

12th President

Term: 1849–1850

Successor: Millard Fillmore

Zachary Taylor is arguably the least politically experienced person to ever be elected to the office of the presidency. Not only had Taylor never run for office before he was at the top of the Whig party ticket in 1848; he had never even voted before that election.

His lack of political experience, and lack of public political opinion, is actually why the Whigs favored him. Having garnered popularity and headlines thanks to his leadership during the Second Seminole War and Mexican-American War, the Whigs held Taylor up as a man “without regard to creeds or principles.” Taylor didn’t have a stated platform, nor did he actively campaign ahead of the election. As a result, he was everything to everyone at once.

“Most southerners believed that Taylor supported slavery and{...}thought that he was opposed to protective tariffs and government spending for internal improvements while supporting states’ rights. In contrast, the Whigs hoped that Taylor was a Union man first, having fought so hard in defense of the nation,” Michael Holt, emeritus professor of history at the University of Virginia describes.

Taylor, the apolitical candidate, won the 1848 election by defeating both Democratic nominee Lewis Cass and former President Martin Van Buren (running this time on the ticket for America’s first third party, the Free Soil Party).

But the America of 1849 was divided over slavery. As Taylor took office, the federal government was wrestling with the fallout of the Mexican Cession, particularly the California, Utah, and New Mexico territories. Taylor, an enslaver, nevertheless favored admitting California as a “free state” where slavery would not be permitted.

President Taylor would not live to see California admitted as a state of any kind, however. He would die just 16 months into his term, after an evening of consuming a “large quantity of cherries and iced milk,” which caused him intestinal distress.

President Taylor died on July 9, 1850. While some at the time, and especially in the ensuing decades, pushed an conspiracy theory Taylor had actually been poisoned, tests conducted on his remains in the 1990s confirmed the 12th president had, in fact, been felled by digestive issues (possibly the result of the White House’s contaminated water supply).

The remainder of his term would be taken up by Vice President Millard Fillmore, who oversaw the passage of the Compromise of 1850, which attempted to avoid a brewing Civil War by admitting California as a free state, but instituting the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which not only required escaped slaves to be returned to their former enslavers, but required all people in free states, authorities and civilians alike, to participate in capturing and returning escaped slaves.

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16th President

Term: 1861–1865

Successor: Andrew Johnson

"If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” This is how a 28-year-old Abraham Lincoln assessed the fate of the nation in his famous Lyceum Address, given in 1838. Unlike many of his predecessors, Lincoln fully understood the stakes of the fight over slavery in America.

Campaigning as the head of the newly formed Republican Party, Abraham Lincoln would be elected the nation’s 16th president despite virtually no support from the southern states, who would subsequently secede from the Union upon his victory. But Lincoln’s steadfast leadership in the face of unprecedented national divide, and his commitment to both the idea and the ideals of the United States of America, led not only to the Union’s victory in the Civil War, but his own reelection in 1864, making him the first president to achieve a second term since Andrew Jackson.

What Reconstruction under President Abraham Lincoln would have looked like remains one of the great “what ifs” of American history. But a treasonous plot led by an aggrieved actor (in multiple senses) saw to it that Lincoln would not see his second term through.

On the evening of April 14, 1864, Lincoln, a long-time theatre lover, attended a production of the popular comedy Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. Also in attendance was his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, as well as Major Henry Rathbone; Ulysses S. Grant, who had been invited, decided instead to spend time with his children.

Hearing that both Lincoln and (as was believed at the time) Grant would be attending the play, actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth launched into action, and at 10:15 p.m., as the actors on stage uttered the uproarious (for its time) line “I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal, you sockdologizing old man-trap,” the actor standing at the back of Lincoln’s theatre box stepped forward and fired a bullet into the back of the president’s head, mortally wounding him.

Fortunately, Lincoln’s tragic murder was as far as the killer’s plot got. Booth’s assassination of Lincoln was merely one of the three-pronged attack plan—other men in Booth’s treacherous cabal had been dispatched to murder Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William H. Seward. With no clearly defined order of succession (the formal Presidential Succession Act wouldn’t come into existence until 1947), the country might’ve been thrown into chaos.

Instead, Vice President Andrew Johnson ascended to the Oval Office. Johnson, from Tennessee, had been chosen as a symbol of national unity during the reelection campaign, with Lincoln’s previous vice president having been the avowed abolitionist Hannibal Hamlin. Now the top man, it fell to Johnson to execute Reconstruction, and historians agree he was not the man for the job. The first president to be impeached, today Andrew Johnson routinely ranks as one of the worst presidents in American history.

Learn More About Abraham Lincoln

20th President

Term: 1881–1881

Successor: Chester A. Arthur

Who killed President James A. Garfield? The answer is more complicated than you might think. Folk songs of the era will tell you about Charles Guiteau, the disappointed office seeker and inarguable madman who pulled the trigger. But recent works like the 2012 book Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard and its Netflix adaptation Death by Lightning show our 20th president’s death left blood on several uncleaned hands.

Born in a log cabin, raised without a father, James A. Garfield was a man who came from modest means. Through determination and education (particularly gifted at language and mathematics), he ascended to a state senate seat in his home state of Ohio. With the outbreak of the Civil War, Garfield, a staunch abolitionist, put his political ambitions on hold to serve his country, first on a speaking tour to encourage new recruits, and later in the Union Army, ultimately earning the rank of Major General.

A Radical Republican, adamant that all Americans deserved equal rights regardless of race, Garfield rose through the political ranks despite his own reluctance to campaign. In 1880, amidst infighting between two factions on the Republican Party, Garfield was eventually proposed as a compromise (despite Garfield’s own objections to being nominated). Once he was selected as the Republican nominee, Garfield handily beat Democrat Winfield Hancock.

Upon election, a large portion of Garfield’s early days involved assembling a cabinet, and seeing to the various office seekers who hoped to gain political positions through a spoils system, meaning those who helped elect a president were rewarded with governmental jobs.

One such office seeker was Charles Guiteau, who believed his single, sparsely delivered speech “Garfield vs. Hancock” entitled him to the ambassadorship to France (despite speaking no French and having no real qualifications). When Guiteau was ultimately told he wouldn’t be granted the job, he snapped. Believing he needed to kill Garfield in order to unify the Republican Party (Guiteau felt he was snubbed because of intra-party factionalism), he waited for President Garfield to arrive at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C. on July 2, 1881, and then shot him twice, in the back and the arm.

READ: The True Story Behind Netflix’s Death by Lightning and James A. Garfield’s Assassination

We know now that Garfield’s gunshot wounds would have been survivable, had those around him acted properly. But due to the medical community’s reluctance at the time to embrace germ theory and antiseptic techniques like handwashing (as well as the arrogance of chief physician Willard Bliss), President Garfield instead lavished in agony for 80 days as his wounds became infected from constant contact with unclean hands. He would ultimately die on September 19, 1881.

Garfield’s VP, Chester A. Arthur, a New York City lawyer and former Collector of the Port of New York stepped into the presidency. One of the primary acts Arthur undertook when assuming the office was to pass the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, a massive reform which required political positions to be awarded based on merit, undoing the spoils system which had contributed to his predecessor’s death.

Learn More About James A. Garfield

25th President

Term: 1897–1901

Successor: Theodore Roosevelt

Throughout American history, assassins and would-be assassins alike have had some very strange reasons for wanting to shoot the president, from “securing Puerto Rican independence” to “impressing Jodie Foster.” When Leon Czolgosz was executed for killing President William McKinley, his final words were “I killed the president because he was the enemy of the good people—the working people.” But would killing McKinley really strike a blow to the rich industrialists crushing the lower classes of the country beneath their thumb? Technically, it did, but not in the way Czolgosz had intended.

McKinley’s presidency is often overshadowed by the young man who ultimately succeeded him upon his death, Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt, a vocal anti-trust advocate who was viewed as a threat by the powerful robber-barons of the Gilded Age, was ostensibly “shelved” by New York political operator Thomas Platt into the powerless position of vice president on William McKinley’s reelection ticket.

But while President McKinley was not the “trust buster” his vice president would prove to be, he certainly was not an inactive president. McKinley’s economic focus was on protectionism through heavy tariffs, as well as adhering to the gold standard, and he sought American expansion through imperialism, including the annexation of Hawaii.

McKinley proved a popular president after winning the election of 1896, and the election of 1900 was set to be a rematch with his previous opponent, Democrat William Jennings Bryant. However, McKinley’s previous vice president, Garret Hobart, died in 1899, so he needed a new running mate. Theodore Roosevelt got the job, and together, the two secured the largest Republican electoral victory since 1872.

Upon his election in March of 1901, President McKinley planned a speaking tour around the country on the topic of trade, which culminated in an appearance at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York in September. There, shaking hands with the public at the Temple of Music exhibition space, McKinley was approached by Czolgosz, an anarchist who fired two shots into McKinley’s stomach with a pistol concealed beneath a handkerchief.

At first, it appeared McKinley would make it through, so much so that Vice President Roosevelt departed for a camping trip, assuming he would not be needed. However, in the days after the shooting, McKinley’s condition worsened. On September 14, 1901, McKinley succumbed to his injuries, and Roosevelt was rushed to Buffalo, New York, to take the Oath of Office.

The youngest president in U.S. history at just 42 years of age, Roosevelt set about instituting a wave of reforms. Though what historians call the Progressive Era began with McKinley, Roosevelt became the living symbol of the American progressive reform through his Bully Pulpit.

Learn More About William McKinley

29th President

Term: 1921–1923

Successor: Calvin Coolidge

By the early ‘20s. American were reeling from a tumultuous start to the decade, which brought a pandemic, civil unrest over racial tensions turned deadly, costly U.S. involvement in foreign conflicts, and an economic recession that severely impacted food prices. What’s more, rumors are swirling that incumbent Democratic President Woodrow Wilson’s health is in decline, and being covered up by his staff.

Enter Warren G. Harding, the Republican candidate whose promise of a “return to normalcy” on the campaign trail helped him become the 29th U.S. president.

The actual accomplishments of Harding’s two years in office range from the overall positive (the Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Act which provided funding to support care for mothers and babies) to the controversial (the Emergency Quotas Act restricting immigration, and the Fordney-McCumber Tariff Act creating a brief domestic economic boom, but ultimately a trade war which contributed to the Great Depression).

But Harding’s prevailing legacy is one of corruption. The rot in his administration, primarily the infamous Teapot Dome Scandal, was already beginning to emerge in the final year of Harding’s life. In January 1923, both Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall and head of the Veterans’ Bureau Charles Forbes would resign as a result of the scandal. By June of that year, an embattled Harding would set out on a transcontinental railroad tour dubbed a “voyage of understanding” to try and quell concerns about corruption in his administration.

Instead, less than two months into the journey, Harding would die of a heart attack in San Francisco. As the president was just 57 when he died, rumors swirled Harding may have actually been murdered or possibly committed suicide.

However, while he is commonly ranked by historians as one of the worst presidents, Harding’s reputation immediately upon his death was a positive one, only tarnished in the years and decades after.

In actuality, it was a heart attack that killed him. Ironically, after riding to victory in part due to speculation about the hidden poor health of his predecessor, Woodrow Wilson, Harding would actually die about six months before him.

Harding was succeeded by his vice president, Calvin Coolidge, who made his reputation on tax cuts, fiscal conservatism, and his famous “pocket veto.”

Learn More About Warren G. Harding

32nd President

Term: 1933–1945

Successor: Harry S. Truman

To date, four U.S. Presidents have been slain by an assassin’s bullet. Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), who shepherded America through the Great Depression and most of World War II during an unprecedented four presidential terms, was not one of them; but it was not from lack of trying.

In February 1933, a newly elected FDR narrowly avoided a gunman’s bullet in Miami, when Giuseppe Zangara exclaimed “Too many people are starving!” and fired a shot that missed Roosevelt (but hit Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak). A full decade later, Soviet espionage allegedly uncovered a Nazi plot to assassinate Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin all at once during the Tehran Conference.

Instead, the killer that ultimately came for Roosevelt and succeeded was time itself.

“The fatal event was anything but an unexpected cosmic occurrence,” according to a review published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The president’s condition notably deteriorated across his final year, with those who witnessed the president after the famous Yalta Conference remarking upon his frail and fragile state, according to The Dying President: Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1944–1945.

FDR who taught himself to “walk” with heavy iron braces on his hips after polio left him paralyzed from the waist down, never allowed himself to be photographed in his wheelchair or seen as infirm, delivered his final address to Congress sitting down. Even with Germany mere weeks away from surrender, it was apparent to some that Roosevelt might not see the war through to its end.

On April 12, 1945, during a stay at his hydrotherapy rehabilitation facility in Warm Springs, Georgia, President Roosevelt was sitting for a portrait when he suddenly remarked he had a headache, and slumped forward in his chair. He was pronounced dead at 3:35 p.m., his death attributed to a massive cerebral hemorrhage.

Having only served as vice president for 82 days, Harry S. Truman was now tasked with taking on the presidency, managing a war effort whose strategic discussions he had largely been left out of, and coordinating a woefully understaffed White House to boot. After ending the war and overseeing the formation of the United Nations, Truman was able to win an election to a presidential term entirely his own, one that famously surprised many a prognosticator.

Learn More About Franklin D. Roosevelt

35th President

Term: 1961–1963

Successor: Lyndon B. Johnson

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was elected on the promise of a “New Frontier,” of a new era for America, tackling new challenges to build a brighter future. For many, Kennedy was a symbol of hope that burned so bright, and so briefly, that to believe that a single man with a rifle could snuff it out was too much to bear; it simply didn’t feel possible.

When Kennedy first entered the race for the 1960 Democratic nomination, his relative inexperience compared to the other, older contenders was a point of contention. He faced opposition not just from the party Old Guard who sought the nomination for themselves, like Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, but even the party's own previous president, Harry S. Truman.

But his charisma and clear vision won over voters within his party and beyond, with Kennedy winning not only the primary but ultimately defeating the Republican nominee, then-Vice President Richard Nixon. Thanks to his on-camera presence, and his dynamic and vibrant speaking style, Kennedy presented himself as a young and hearty president for a new age (even though privately he was afflicted with a myriad of health struggles).

On November 22, 1963, at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time, President Kennedy was shot while riding in his presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas. Just 30 minutes later, at nearby Parkland Hospital, he was pronounced dead. The youngest man ever elected to the presidency died at 46 years old, less than three years into his first term.

As this was the only successful U.S. presidential assassination not carried out at close range, rumors swirled in the immediate aftermath, and the decades since, that accused gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, was not the real shooter or that he did not act alone. These conspiracy theories were aided by peculiar events like Oswald’s insistence that he was framed, his abrupt murder by nightclub owner Jack Ruby before he could stand trial, and the hurried nature of the Warren Commission investigation.

But while many were focused on relitigating what happened that day in Dallas, Vice President Lyndon Johnson immediately stepped forward to ensure Kennedy’s vision of that New Frontier would be secured. The Miller Center notes Johnson “advanced the Kennedy legacy, obtaining far more than Kennedy would likely have gotten out of Congress,” overseeing the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the establishment of Medicare and Medicaid.

Learn More About John F. Kennedy