From Second-in-Command to Commander-in-Chief: The US Vice Presidents Who Went On to Become President

A Job Designed to Be a Stepping Stone — Sometimes by Accident

Of the 49 men who have served as Vice President of the United States, 15 have gone on to become president — a number that reflects both the office's formal status as first in the line of succession and a long American political tradition of using the vice presidency as a launching pad for higher ambition. Some reached the presidency through tragedy, stepping into the role after an assassination or sudden death. Others reached it through resignation. And a smaller number reached it the conventional way: by winning a presidential election outright, years or even decades after their time as vice president had ended. Here is the complete list, in the order each man first became president.

1. John Adams

The nation's first vice president, serving two terms under George Washington from 1789 to 1797, Adams became the second president in his own right, winning the 1796 election. He remains the only person to transition directly from vice president to president via election in the eighteenth century, and famously described the vice presidency itself as "the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived."

2. Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson served as Adams's vice president from 1797 to 1801 — an arrangement made awkward by the fact that the two men were political rivals from opposing factions, a quirk of the original electoral system before the Twelfth Amendment separated presidential and vice-presidential balloting. Jefferson defeated Adams in the bitterly contested election of 1800, becoming the third president.

3. Martin Van Buren

Van Buren served as Andrew Jackson's vice president during Jackson's second term, from 1833 to 1837, and was elected president in his own right in 1836 — the first vice president since Adams and Jefferson to ascend to the presidency through a direct electoral win rather than succession.

4. John Tyler

Tyler became the first vice president in American history to assume the presidency through the death of a sitting president, taking office in 1841 after William Henry Harrison died just 31 days into his term — the shortest presidency in US history. Tyler's ascension was constitutionally contested at the time, with critics arguing he should be considered merely an "Acting President" rather than the president outright; Tyler insisted on the full title and powers, establishing the precedent that every subsequent vice-presidential successor would follow.

5. Millard Fillmore

Fillmore became the second "accidental president," assuming office in 1850 after President Zachary Taylor died from a sudden illness. Fillmore served out the remainder of Taylor's term but was not nominated by his own party for a full term of his own.

6. Andrew Johnson

Johnson assumed the presidency in the most fraught circumstances of any vice presidential succession to that point: he became president in April 1865 following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, just weeks after Lincoln's second inauguration and days after the Confederate surrender that ended the Civil War. Johnson's turbulent presidency culminated in his impeachment by the House of Representatives in 1868, though he was acquitted by a single vote in the Senate.

7. Chester A. Arthur

Arthur became president in September 1881 following the assassination of James Garfield, who died eleven weeks after being shot by an assassin in a Washington railway station. Arthur, previously regarded with scepticism due to his ties to the patronage-driven Republican machine politics of the era, surprised many observers by becoming a relatively independent and reform-minded president.

8. Theodore Roosevelt

Roosevelt assumed the presidency in September 1901, at age 42 — still the youngest person ever to hold the office — following the assassination of William McKinley. He went on to win election to a full term in his own right in 1904, becoming one of the most consequential and popular presidents in American history.

9. Calvin Coolidge

Coolidge became president in August 1923 upon the sudden death of Warren G. Harding, reportedly being woken in the middle of the night at his family home in Vermont to be informed of Harding's death and sworn in by his own father, a notary public. Coolidge subsequently won election to a full term in 1924.

10. Harry S. Truman

Truman assumed the presidency in April 1945 following the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, just months into Roosevelt's unprecedented fourth term and with the Second World War still underway in both the Pacific and European theatres. Truman went on to make some of the most consequential decisions of the twentieth century, including the use of atomic weapons against Japan, and was elected to a full term in his own right in 1948.

11. Lyndon B. Johnson

Johnson became president in November 1963 following the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas — one of the most traumatic single events in modern American history. Johnson was elected to a full term in 1964 in a landslide victory, going on to oversee the passage of major civil rights legislation and the escalation of the Vietnam War.

12. Richard Nixon

Nixon's path to the presidency was unusual among this group: he served as Eisenhower's vice president from 1953 to 1961, lost the 1960 presidential election to John F. Kennedy, and then returned to win the presidency outright eight years later in 1968 — the only person on this list to become president in a campaign that occurred well after his vice-presidential service had already ended.

13. Gerald Ford

Ford holds a unique distinction among all 15 men on this list: he is the only person to become president without ever being elected to either the presidency or the vice presidency by the American public. He was appointed vice president by Richard Nixon under the procedures of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment following the resignation of Spiro Agnew, and then became president himself in August 1974 when Nixon resigned amid the Watergate scandal — the only resignation of a sitting US president in the nation's history.

14. George H. W. Bush

Bush served two terms as Ronald Reagan's vice president, from 1981 to 1989, and was elected president outright in 1988 — the first sitting vice president to win election to the presidency directly since Martin Van Buren in 1836, a gap of 152 years.

15. Joe Biden

Biden served two terms as vice president under Barack Obama, from 2009 to 2017, before winning the presidency in his own right in the 2020 election, defeating incumbent president Donald Trump.

The Pattern Behind the List

Looking across these 15 names, a clear structural pattern emerges. Eight became president through the death of a sitting president — seven by natural causes or illness (Tyler, Fillmore, Arthur, Roosevelt, Coolidge, Truman) and four specifically through assassination (Lincoln's successor Johnson, Garfield's successor Arthur, McKinley's successor Roosevelt, and Kennedy's successor Lyndon Johnson). One, Gerald Ford, became president through resignation rather than death. The remaining six — Adams, Jefferson, Van Buren, Nixon, Bush and Biden — reached the presidency the conventional way, by winning a presidential election, whether immediately following their vice-presidential service or, in Nixon's unusual case, years afterward.

Further Reading

1. White House Historical Association — The Vice Presidents of the United States — whitehousehistory.org
2. US Senate Historical Office — Vice Presidents Who Became President — senate.gov
3. National Archives — Presidential Succession and the Twenty-Fifth Amendment — archives.gov
4. Miller Center, University of Virginia — American President: A Reference Resource — millercenter.org
5. Encyclopaedia Britannica — List of Vice Presidents of the United States — britannica.com