Presidents Who Went By Middle Names

Although President Joe Biden is the 46th President of the United States, only 45 men have served as President. This is owed to the fact that one of those 45 men, former President Grover Cleveland, served as the 22nd (1885-1889) and 24th (1893-1897) President of the United States (I previously wrote a little bit about the winner of the 1888 election). Another fun fact about Grover Cleveland is that his first name was not Grover, but Stephen. Grover was his middle name. Stephen Grover Cleveland was the second of four presidents to effectively use their middle name as their sole first name, following Hiram Ulysses Grant (18th President, 1869-1877) and later being followed by Thomas Woodrow Wilson (28th President, 1913-1921) and New Leaf Journal favorite John Calvin Coolidge (30th President, 1923-1929). On the subject of the names of the middle two presidents of the four, Katherine M.H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb wrote in their 1914 book The Job, The Man, The Boss.

It is obviously important to have the applicant’s name. Aside from this, there is much in a name. As a general rule, a man has no choice in the matter of his name. He may receive from his parents by inheritance and by gift the appellative John Smith, or he may be more gaudily decorated with Reginald Algernon de la Rey. But the one may appear in after life as Ivan Smyth, and the other as R. A. Delarey. The man who was known to the world as Grover Cleveland was named Stephen Grover Cleveland by his parents, and Woodrow Wilson began life as Thomas Woodrow Wilson.

Blackford and Newcomb (P. 185)

Blackford and Newcomb were correct that people cannot choose their names at birth. But as four presidents prove, men can opt to go by their middle names instead of their first names. Below, we will examine the names each of the four presidents who used their middle names as their de facto first names in public life.

(Note that I will rely only on freely accessible sources online, so you will be able to study all of the original materials. See the full bibliography at the bottom of the article.)

Why Only These Four Presidents?

Some readers may note that other Presidents are commonly known by their middle names as part of their names. The three best examples of this trend are:

• John Quincy Adams (6th President, 1825-1829)
• William Henry Harrison (10th President, 1841-1841)
• William Howard Taft (27th President, 1909-1913)

Other Presidents are often, albeit not always, named with their middle initial. The best example here is George W. Bush (43rd President, 2001-2009), where the W stands for “Walker.” In that case, it is a matter of convenience to distinguish him from his father, George H.W. Bush (41st President, 1989-1993). Franklin Delano Roosevelt (32nd President, 1933-1945), John Fitzgerald Kennedy (35th President, 1961-1963), and Lyndon Baines Johnson (36th President, 1963-1969) had their middle initial combined with their first and last initials to create three-letter monikers.

However, for the instant article, I will focus only on Presidents who used their middle name most often, if not all but exclusively, as their first name. Those whose middle name is part of how they are commonly referred to make up a different category. Of these, I will submit that William Howard Taft is a sort of borderline case (I have seen him referred to as Howard Taft), but I will put him in the “William Henry Harrison” category instead of the “Stephen Grover Cleveland” one that we are studying today.

William Safire wrote the following in an 1882 article for the New York Times (printed in the International Herald Tribute).

[N]ewspaper style should eschew the M.I. in the names of the most famous unless the middle letter is so euphonious as to make the name seem naked without it. Under that rule, Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant (whose name was originally Hiram Ulysses Grant, but the acronym struck his elders as silly) and is removed from Winston S. Churchill.

Safire (P. 16)

I thank William L. Safire for the great segue into the first of four presidents we will examine…

Hiram Ulysses Grant

See Sources.

As Safire noted, Grant’s name from birth was Hiram Ulysses Grant, not Ulysses S. Grant. How did we get from Hiram U. Grant to Ulysses S. Grant? The first place I thought too look was Grant’s own magisterial autobiography. However, Grant did a speed-run through much of his early life and made no reference to his naming situation. There is a possible indirect clue of how his name changed, but we will set that aside for the moment.

Hiram Ulysses Grant was born on April 27, 1822, in Point Pleasant, Clermont Country, Ohio. His father was Jesse R. Grant and his mother was Hannah Simpson. The common accounts I found describe Grant’s parents as having had some difficulty coming up with a name for their son. Grant’s parents sought the counsel of his mother’s parents. I perused public domain sources and settled on an 1868 biography of Grant titled The Life of Ulysses S. Grant by Henry Champion Deming as my choice for the first version of the story to share.

According to the testimony of the father, the maternal grandmother of the future general of the army was fascinated with the exploits of the wily Ithacan chief who introduced the wooden horse into Troy, and was anxious that the first-born of Jesse’s house should be named Ulysses. The maternal grandfather, it is presumed, was equally captivated with Tyrian history; for he was determined that the child should be christened Hiram. This family jar was finally compromised by bestowing upon him the names of both of the old people’s heroes; and he was accordingly called Hiram Ulysses.

Deming (P. 25)

I like this source for two reasons. Firstly, it is contemporaneous – 1868 falls between Grant’s Civil War service and the beginning of his presidency in March 1869. Secondly, the author explicitly cites to Grant’s father as the source for this anecdote. Here we learn that “Hiram Ulysses” was a compromise between Grant’s grandfather, who voted for Hiram, and his grandmother, who voted for Ulysses. As history would have it, Grant’s grandfather won the battle for the first name but his grandmother would eventually win the war for posterity.

The accounts I found all seem to be in accord that Hiram and Ulysses were recommended by Grant’s maternal grandfather and grandmother respectively. However, I did find some differences in accounts of their motivations. See another 1868 book, Our Standard-Bearer: Or the Life of General Ulysses S. Grant, by Grant partisans Bernard Galligasken and Oliver Optic.

His father, mother, grandfather, and grandmother, discussed the important matter, and he was called Hiram Ulysses. Hiram was his grandfather’s proposition, simply because it was a pretty name, in his opinion. His mother’s step-mother appears to have dabbled in classic lore, and to have read the Odyssey. She had a warm admiration for the hero of that remarkable tale, and insisted that the infant should have the name of Ulysses. As in the eternal fitness of things, this was an appropriate name, posterity will commend the taste, if not the prescience, of the venerable lady.

Optic and Galligasken (P. 50)

Galligasken and Optic agreed with Deming about why Grant’s grandmother suggested Ulysses, but differed in stating that Grant’s grandfather suggested Hiram simply because he thought it was a “pretty name” (Id.)

Before we move on to Grant’s accidental name change, I will discuss one additional account from Mary Stoyell Stimpson’s The Children’s Book of American Biography, which was first published much later – 1915 – than our first two accounts.

Stimpson, like the first two accounts, has Grant’s parents bringing the infant future president to the home of his maternal grandparents for help in choosing a name. She also describes them as having had some difficulty agreeing on a name. But she offers more detail on how they worked to resolve their different preferences:

But at grandpa’s it was even worse. In that house there were four people besides themselves to suit. At last, the father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, and the two aunts each wrote a favorite name on a bit of paper. These slips of paper were all put into grandpa’s tall, silk hat which was placed on the spindle-legged table. ‘Now,’ said the father to one of the aunts, ‘draw from the hat a slip of paper, and whatever name is written on that slip shall be the name of my son.’

Stimpson (P. 62-63)

Another difference in Stimpson’s story is the number of people involved. The first two accounts only noted Grant’s maternal grandfather and grandmother. According to Stimpson, Grant’s parents also submitted names as well as two of his aunts. According to Stimpson, “Ulysses” was drawn from the hat. His maternal grandfather could not conceal his disappointment:

‘Well,’ murmured the grandfather, ‘our dear child is named for a great soldier of the olden days. But I wanted him to be called Hiram, who was a good king in Bible times.’

Stimpson (P. 63)

Grant’s mother, Hannah, apparently did not want to see her father disappointed, so she suggested that her son carry both names. “So the baby was christened Hiram Ulysses Grant” (Id.).

It is worth noting that Grant’s Wikipedia page offers the hat version of the naming story and cites to two recent historians for the section.

Every account I came across was consistent in asserting that the name change to Ulysses S. Grant came about from a mishap when his local Congressman nominated him for admission to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Deming described what happened as follows:

[H]he was recommended to the Secretary of War by the Hon. Thomas L. Hamer, a member of Congress from Ohio, for a cadetship in West Point, by the name of Ulysses Simpson Grant. The fact that Simpson was the maiden name of his [Grant’s] mother, and was also borne by one of his brothers as a Christian name, undoubtedly originated the mistake.

Deming (P. 25)

We know that Ulysses S. Grant would stick. However, the accounts differed to some extent on how the young Grant reacted to the mix-up.

Optic and Galligasken wrote that Grant tried unsuccessfully to correct his record:

While at West Point the interloping S. stood for Sidney. Grant made two attempts to have the matter set right, but the Fates were against him. It seemed to be foreordained that the United States and himself should be so far synonymous as to be designated in the same manner; and he accepted his ‘manifest destiny,’ only causing the S. to stand for Simpson, in honor of his mother, instead of for Sidney.

Optic and Gailligasken (P. 50)

Emma Elizabeth Brown had a similar account in her 1885 Life of Ulysses Simpson Grant:

Cadet Grant tried to correct this mistake at the beginning and end of his cadet life, without success ; and to history his name must ever be U. S. Grant.

Brown (P. 341)

This story is unique in a few respects. Firstly, it is the only version in my brief survey that has Grant trying to correct his name. Secondly, it is the only one that has Grant originally being recorded at West Point as Ulysses Sydney Grant and having it changed to Simpson.

These versions of the story are unique in my sources in their reporting that Grant unsuccessfully tried to correct his name in the official records. Some reports, however, disagreed. Walter Allen wrote in a 1901 biography titled Ulysses S. Grant:

When Congressman Hamer was asked for the full name of his protege to be inserted in the warrant, he knew that his name was Ulysses, and was sure there was more of it. He knew that the maiden name of his friend’s wife was Simpson. At a venture, he gave the boy’s name as Ulysses Simpson Grant. Grant found it so recorded when he reached the school, and as he had no special fondness for the name Hiram, which was bestowed to gratify an aged relative, he thought it not worth while to go through a long red-tape process to correct the error. There was another Cadet Grant, and their comrades distinguished this one by sundry nicknames, of which ‘Uncle Sam’ was one and ‘Useless’ another.

Allen (P. 21)

Stimpson also agreed that Grant did not try to fix his name at West Point:

He found, when he reached the school, that his name had been changed. Up to this time his initials had spelled HUG, but the senator who sent young Grant’s appointment papers to Washington had forgotten Ulysses’ middle name. He wrote his full name as Ulysses Simpson Grant, and as it would make much trouble to have it changed at Congress, Ulysses let it stand that way. So instead of being called H-U-G Grant (as he had been by his mates at home) the West Point boys, to tease him, caught up the new initials and shouted ‘Uncle Sam’ Grant, or ‘United States’ Grant—and sometimes ‘Useless’ Grant.

Stimpson (P. 65)

We have multiple accounts stating that Grant was teased for the initials “USG” – although Stimpson states that he was good natured about it. But Stimpson highlights problem that Grant could have had if his name had been submitted correctly: “Up to this time his initials had been spelled HUG.” The current page on Grant by the Encyclopedia Britannica offers a slightly different version, suggesting that Grant had planned to change his own name before learning that it had unexpectedly been done for him under strange circumstances:

Grant decided to reverse his given names and enroll at the academy as Ulysses Hiram (probably to avoid having the acronym HUG embroidered on his clothing); however, his congressional appointment was erroneously made in the name Ulysses S. Grant, the name he eventually accepted, maintaining that the middle initial stood for nothing.

This seems consistent with Allen’s account that Grant did not like the name Hiram, but this is the first version that states that Grant had planned to enroll as Ulysses Hiram Grant. It also differs from other accounts in stating that Grant held that “S” stood for nothing. Most versions I have seen suggest he accepted it stood for Simpson and one quoted here stated he pushed for the S to be Simpson.

I noted at the top that Grant does not discuss his name in his memoirs. However, he did offer a clue as to the circumstances that may have caused Congressman Hamer to get his name wrong. The following quote is from Grant himself explaining the circumstances of his recommendation to West Point:

The Honorable Thomas L. Hamer, one of the ablest men Ohio ever produced, was our member of Congress at the time, and had the right of nomination. He and my father had been members of the same debating society (where they were generally pitted on opposite sides), and intimate personal friends from their early manhood up to a few years before. In politics they differed. Hamer was a life-long Democrat, while my father was a Whig. They had a warm discussion, which finally became angry—over some act of President Jackson, the removal of the deposit of public moneys, I think—after which they never spoke until after my appointment. I know both of them felt badly over this estrangement, and would have been glad at any time to come to a reconciliation; but neither would make the advance. Under these circumstances my father would not write to Hamer for the appointment, but he wrote to Thomas Morris, United States Senator from Ohio, informing him that there was a vacancy at West Point from our district, and that he would be glad if I could be appointed to fill it. This letter, I presume, was turned over to Mr. Hamer, and, as there was no other applicant, he cheerfully appointed me. This healed the breach between the two, never after reopened.

Grant

According to Grant, his father had been friends with Congressman Hamer before they had a falling out over a political disagreement. Grant ties the political disagreement to the administration of President Andrew Jackson, so we can infer it happened sometime between 1829-1837. On account of their falling out, Grant’s father submitted his request for his son’s appointment not to his local congressman, but instead to Thomas Morris, one of the two United States Senators for Ohio. Grant assumes Morris turned the letter over to Hamer, who then appointed Grant – thereby leading to reconciliation between Hamer and Grant’s father. While Grant says nothing of the naming issue (I will venture Grant thought it would have been disrespectful to Congressman Hamer to highlight the error), this story may well explain how the error came to pass. From Grant’s story, we can glean that Congressman Hamer had knowledge of the Grant family but had not spoken to Grant’s father for several years. If Grant is correct that Hamer received the request indirectly, he may have misremembered the name of the son of his estranged friend based on things he remembered about his estranged friend. Because Hamer and Grant’s father apparently did not reconcile until Hamer made the appointment, we can infer that Hamer would not have been able to set the record straight. Of course, this is all speculative – but I think that Grant’s small account of his father’s relationship with Hamer is noteworthy given what we know about the name error.

Stephen Grover Cleveland

See sources.

Let us begin with the origin of Stephen Grover Cleveland’s name. I quote from Herman Dieck’s 1888 authorized biography (the only authorized biography according to the cover) of then-President Cleveland and his running-mate, Allen G. Thurman:

This is the house in which President Cleveland was born. It was first occupied by Stephen Grover, a former pastor of the church. In 1834 Mr. Grover resigned the pastorate, and Richard F. Cleveland was called on May 13th of the same year. Mr. Cleveland had many children, one of whom, William M., became a minister and went to Long Island. In the old church baptismal record we find the record of the birth and baptizing of the Democratic nominee;” and Mr. Berry pointed to an entry which reads as follows; ‘Stephen Grover Cleveland, baptized July 1, 1837; born March 18th, 1837.’

Dieck (P. 19)

Stephen Grover Cleveland bore the name of his grandfather (Richard F. Cleveland was his father). The same text includes a note about how Stephen Grover Cleveland came to be known as Grover Cleveland:

The baptismal name was Stephen Grover Cleveland, but at an early age the Stephen was dropped, and afterward the Governor has been known as Grover Cleveland.

There does not seem to be an unusual stories surrounding Cleveland’s transition to using his middle name as his first name – but all accounts are in accord that it occurred early in life. In an 1884 campaign biography by then-Congressman Benjamin La Fevre reported that there was no special reason:

Grover, as he was always called for sake of euphony…

Le Fevre (P. 6)

In short: People around the young Stephen Grover Cleveland decided that Grover Cleveland sounded better. We do find some nuance if we study enough accounts. For example, Charles Morris gave the name-change credit to Cleveland himself in a 1903 chapter of his biography of the presidents:

The boy was named Stephen Grover Cleveland, but he took to calling himself Grover, without the Stephen, and everybody knows him as Grover Cleveland to-day.

Morris (P. 215)

An 1884 campaign biography of Cleveland and his then-running mate Thomas Andrews Hendricks by Frank Triplett – who took pains to note his biography was duly authorized by the candidate himself – included an interesting source supporting our understanding that Stephen was dropped at a young age. I quote the passage in its entirety:

In Fayetteville, New York, is located the firm of Burhans & Blanchard, proprietors of a planing mill and lumber yard at that place. One of the members of this firm is O. D. Blanchard, who was the teacher of Grover Cleveland when he attended the village school at that place. Mr. Blanchard is a hale, hearty, well-preserved gentleman, and when approached in regard to his now illustrious pupil evinced a perfect readiness to talk upon that subject. *‘And so you want my reminiscences of Stephen Grover Cleveland as a school-boy, do you?” said Mr. Blanchard. ’Well, as I think of him now I wonder if Grover was ever a boy. He had such a thorough determined way about him and did everything in so man-like and methodical a manner that he never did seem childish to me.’

Triplett (P. 129)

Blanchard first uses Cleveland’s first name, but then when describing the young Cleveland in glowing terms – reverts to using “Grover.” I dare say this is evidence that people around Cleveland had been calling him Grover since a young age.

However, while Grover Cleveland did not often use Stephen in public life, the contemporaneous sources suggest that it was generally well known that his full name was Stephen Grover Cleveland. For example, a number of the books about him and his campaign used his full name in the title while referring to him as “Grover Cleveland” in the text.

I did find evidence that one person close to Grover Cleveland used his full name. The following passage comes from volume 1 of a 1923 three volume biography on Cleveland’s life by Robert McElroy describing Cleveland’s first inauguration:

The oath was administered by Chief Justice Waite, who used for the ceremony the little Bible which Mr. Cleveland kept always at hand, and upon the fly-leaf of which would appear the words: ‘My son, Stephen Grover Cleveland, from his loving Mother.’

McElroy (P. 110)

However, while Cleveland’s mother inscribed his Bible with his full name, the Clerk of the Supreme Court used Cleveland’s omitted his first name in an annotation in the Bible:

Before returning this precious book to the President, the Clerk of the Supreme Court entered this record on the flyleaf: ’It was used to administer the oath of office to Grover Cleveland, President of the United States, on the fourth of March, 1885.

McElroy (P. 111)

Thomas Woodrow Wilson

See sources.

I came up with less material on T. Woodrow Wilson than I did on his three middle-as-first-name presidential peers, but less is still a decent amount.

First, I quote from William Bayard Hale’s 1912 biography of then-candidate Wilson on his parents’ marriage:

One afternoon, the lessons at Doctor Seattle’s school being over, Janet Woodrow took a walk; passing by the Wilson house, she spied, through the pickets of the garden fence, the young theolog, raking, in a pair of kid gloves. On the 7th day of June, 1849, Joseph R. Wilson and Janet Woodrow were legally joined in marriage by Thomas Woodrow, minister of the Gospel.

Hale (P. 16)

Wilson’s mother was Jenet “Jessie” Woodrow and his father was Joseph R. Wilson. His parents were married by Thomas Woodrow, his maternal grandfather. With this information, the source of Thomas Woodrow Wilson’s name should be clear. Henry Jones Ford stated it plainly in his 1916 biography of then-President Wilson:

[O]n December 28, 1856, there was born to [Joseph R. Wilson] a son who received the family names, Thomas Woodrow Wilson.

Ford (P. 4)

It is not entirely clear when Wilson dropped “Thomas” for all practical intents and purposes and used his mother’s maiden name as his first name. Hale noted that Wilson published an article in 1879 signed “Thomas W. Wilson,” which makes clear that he still used his first name for academic purposes but does not necessarily establish that people regularly called him “Thomas” instead of “Woodrow” (Hale P. 77). However, while the matter may have still been ambiguous in 1879, it was not so as early as 1893. Wilson published a book titled An Old Master and Other Political Essays in 1893, 20 years before be became president, and the author is listed only as “Woodrow Wilson.”

John Calvin Coolidge

See sources.

I noted in an earlier article that the last of our four middle-as-first-name presidents, John Calvin Coolidge, was born on July 4, 1873 (an auspicious birthday for a future president).

To begin, both Coolidge’s paternal grandfather and his father were named John Coolidge. His father was John Calvin Coolidge, making the future president a perfect junior. Thus, there is no mystery in the origin of Coolidge’s name. Coolidge is unique among the four presidents on our list in that he directly addressed the matter of his name in his 1929 post-presidential autobiography. I quote John Calvin Coolidge himself:

While they intended to name me for my father, they always called me Calvin, so the John became discarded.

Coolidge (P. 4)

This passage strongly suggests that Coolidge was called “Calvin” instead of “John” for as long as he could remember. That he said little about it despite writing about some of the characters and experiences of his youth in detail may be further evidence that he was always “Calvin” for practical intents and purposes.

Despite the fact that Calvin Coolidge settled the issue in his autobiography and I am not aware of any evidence to contradict him, I perused a few other materials about his life to see if I could find additional information. In William Allen White’s 1938 biography A Puritan in Babylon: The Story of Calvin Coolidge, he repeated Coolidge’s account almost verbatim but then suggested that his parents took to calling Coolidge “Calvin” instead of the first name he shared with his father because they thought that Calvin Coolidge “‘took after’ his mother more than his father” (White P. 11). I wrote an article about Coolidge’s fond recollections of his mother, Victoria Josephene Moor, which may support the theory that he took after her the most, but I am admittedly skeptical that this alone would have prompted his parents to call him “Calvin” instead of “John.”

Claude M. Fuess offered a somewhat critical take of Coolidge’s own account in a 1940 biography titled Calvin Coolidge: The Man From Vermont. After opining that Coolidge’s autobiography was insufficiently detailed from the perspective of a historian, he wrote the following about Coolidge’s name:

We do know that he was named John Calvin Coolidge, after his father, and that his parents called him Calvin or ‘Cal.’ In the school records he appears as J. Calvin Coolidge, John C. Coolidge, Jr., Calvin G. Coolidge, and even Calvin J. Coolidge. Not until he left college did he discard the John and start fresh with the world as Calvin Coolidge.

Fuess (P. 22)

This is an interesting note – Fuess clearly establishes that “John” was still used in school records and other documents throughout Coolidge’s schooling. However, I am not convinced that Feuss’ conclusion – that Coolidge only discarded “John” after college – necessarily follows from his findings. It is entirely possible that Coolidge’s full name was still used on documents and he was still recognized by his full name, but people around him called him Calvin. Moreover, even if Coolidge went by Calvin and preferred it, he would not have been in position to control the record-making process. For example, we saw that name-record issues were well beyond the control of Grant when he was a cadet at West Point. I also think that it is unlikely that his parents called Coolidge “Calvin” but his classmates and teachers regularly called him John. Possible for sure, but I think that we would need more evidence to question Coolidge’s account that he more or less always went by Calvin for practical purposes.

Conclusion

Of our four middle-as-first-name presidents, Grant had the most interesting story with respect to his birth name, Hiram Ulysses Grant, and the name he carried to national prominence, Ulysses S. Grant. While there are some differing accounts about how Grant’s birth name came to be and the precise circumstances his name was confused at West Point, we can put a general story together from older sources while quibbling over the details.

Grant had the most interesting middle name origin story. But in terms of choosing a name, I found Wilson to be particularly interesting. Wilson’s parents gave him his mother’s maiden name as his middle name, which is unsurprising in light of the fact that she came from a prominent, reputable family. But Wilson’s choice to eventually use that as his first name – especially when “Woodrow” is less conventional than “Thomas,” caught my attention. Unfortunately, I did not come across any source in my survey discussing his preference for Woodrow over Thomas. Thomas would have been a fitting name for a president Wilson in light of the fact that the two proverbial patron saints of the Democratic Party at the the time Wilson became president were Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson.

Sources

Introduction Sections

• Blackford, Katherine Melvina, and Arthur Newcomb. The Job, the Man, the Boss. Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, Page & company, 1914. Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/14009855/.
• William L. Safire. “On Middle Initials.” International Herald Tribune, June 14, 1982, sec. Language. https://archive.org/details/InternationalHeraldTribune1982FranceEnglish/Jun%2014%201982%2C%20International%20Herald%20Tribune%2C%20%2330890%2C%20France%20%28en%29/mode/2up?q=%22hiram+ulysses+grant%22

Grant

• Allen, Walter. Ulysses S. Grant. Boston, New York, Houghton, Mifflin and company, 1901. Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/01031811/.
• Brown, Emma Elizabeth. Life of Ulysses Simpson Grant. [Boston, D. Lothrop & co, 1885] Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/10032739/.
• Deming, Henry Champion. The life of Ulysses S. Grant, general United States Army. [Hartford Conn. S.S. Scranton & Co.; Cincinnati, National Pub. Co.; etc., et, 1868] Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/10032730/.
• Dieck, Herman. The life and public services of our great reform president, Grover Cleveland. [Philadelphia, S. I. Bell, 1888] Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/01010269/.
• Optic, Oliver. Our Standard-Bearer; Or, The Life of General Uysses S. Grant, 2014. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/45118.
• Stimpson, Mary Stoyell and Frank T. Merrill. The Child’s Book of American Biography, 2010. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32628.
• “Ulysses S. Grant | Biography, Presidency, & History | Britannica,” December 25, 2023. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ulysses-S-Grant.
• “Ulysses S. Grant.” In Wikipedia, February 16, 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ulysses_S._Grant&oldid=1207926939.

Cleveland

• Boyd, James Penny. Biographies of Pres. Grover Cleveland, and Hon. Allen G. Thurman, with full proceedings of the St. Louis convention and authorized text of the national platform. Philadelphia, Franklin news co, 1888. Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/07018408/.
• Le Fevre, B., Cooper, T. V. & Fenton, H. T. (1884) Campaign of ’84. Biographies of S. Grover Cleveland. Philadelphia, Fireside publishing company. [Pdf] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/07018411/.
• Mcelroy, Robert Mcnutt, and Woodrow Wilson Collection. Grover Cleveland, the man and the statesman: an authorized biography. New York ; London: Harper & Brothers, 1923. Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/23016894/.
• Morris, Charles. Our presidents from Washington to Roosevelt; containing an account of the boyhood days, adventures, careers and homes of the twenty-six presidents of the United States of America. [Philadelphia?, 1903] Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/03026977/.
• Triplett, Frank. The authorized pictorial lives of Stephen Grover Cleveland and Thomas Andrews Hendricks. New York and St. Louis, N. D. Thompson & co, 1884. Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/38017418/.

Wilson

• Ford, Henry Jones. Woodrow Wilson, the man and his work. [New York, etc. D. Appleton and company, 1916] Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/16009569/.
• Hale, William Bayard. Woodrow Wilson, the story of his life. Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, Page, 1912. Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/12011001/.
• Wilson, Woodrow. An Old Master, and Other Political Essays, 2023. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/71776.

Coolidge

• Cooldge, Calvin. The Autobiography Of Calvin Coolidge. Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, 1929. http://archive.org/details/autobiographyofc011710mbp.
• Fuess, Claude M. Calvin Coolidge The Man From Vermont, 1940. http://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.157145.
• William Allen White. A Puritan In Babylon The Story Of Calvin Coolidge. The Macmillan company, 1938. http://archive.org/details/puritaninbabylon011493mbp.