The Debate Behind How to Number a President

In January 2025, Donald Trump will take the oath of office and become the 47th president of the United States. Or should that be 44th? Or 45th? Or perhaps the 60-ish-th? How to count presidents is a question that has long vexed presidential trivia lovers.

There was little debate on the issue before 1892—because it hadn’t been an issue until Grover Cleveland was elected for the second time. Cleveland first assumed the presidency in 1884 when he defeated James G. Blaine. In 1888, Cleveland himself was defeated, and Benjamin Harrison became the 23rd president. Then, in 1892, Cleveland came roaring back and defeated Harrison, becoming the first president with non-consecutive terms. (Trump is the second.)

Almost immediately, newspapers asked the most important question: “Is Cleveland to be the twenty-fourth as well as the twenty-second, or won’t his second term count numerically?” Or, as a later newspaper put it, “Did Cleveland get back his old presidential jersey, with No. 22 on the back? Or was he entitled to a new outfit, with No. 24?”

There were two sides to the debate. On the “Cleveland was only the 22nd president” side, people argued it made no sense to treat Grover Cleveland as two separate presidencies. If that were the case, why is Washington or any other two-term president listed only once? Was there anything particularly different about taking two different oaths of office with a bit of a gap in the middle as compared to taking the oath of office two different times without the gap? As one writer explained, “He held two terms, but he was not two different men.”

But on the face of it, treating Washington or Grant’s two consecutive terms as separate presidencies hardly seemed better, because how would presidents be numbered if a sitting president departed? Take, for example, what happened with James Garfield, who was elected, assassinated, and replaced by Vice President Chester Arthur, who finished out the term but wasn’t reelected. Should those two people only count as one?

A 1909 newspaper article—published whenTheodore Roosevelt, who had himself gone from VP to president when William McKinley was assassinated, was leaving office—put it this way: “If each term is a presidency then Washington was the first and second presidents, and Garfield and Arthur were jointly the twenty-third president. If the four year term is not to determine the number, then should Mr. Cleveland have two numbers merely because his two terms were disconnected?”

A 1901 article, meanwhile, argued that the gap was not just an adjournment of Cleveland’s first presidency, but something more meaningful than that. Between his two terms, “Grover Cleveland moved about the country for four years, no more a president than any man who had never been one. The action making him a president was an entirely new and original movement, in no way connected with his first term. Hence he should be separately numbered twice.” And anyway, the article reasoned, listing him as only the 22nd president would be at best confusing to a “hasty reader.”

The 22nd and 24th camp has always been the most prominent, but the debate raged on, popping up for Theodore Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson, Harding, and Coolidge. Some sources in the early 20th century confusingly called both McKinley and Cleveland the 24th President. And this wasn’t just in newspapers—some august institutions preferred to only count Cleveland once. For years, the Congressional Directory listed Arthur as the 21st president, Cleveland as the 22nd, and Harrison as the 23rd; noted, but did not number, Cleveland’s non-consecutive term; and listed McKinley as the 24th president.

These days, though, few people even question the numbering system, except to be a pedant. Why the change?

Part of it comes down tradition. When Harding died, Coolidge called him the 29th president, and Truman declared Franklin Delano Roosevelt “the 32nd president of the United States,” both of which only work if you count Cleveland as the 24th. (Truman himself was inconsistent on this point, however; he was also quoted as saying, “I am the thirty-second man to be president … you might try to justify the designation of me as thirty-third president. But then why don’t you number all the second terms of other presidents and the third and fourth terms of President Roosevelt, and where will you be. I am the thirty-second president.”)

According to some newspaper accounts, even a lawyer in the State Department weighed in on the debate around that time. In the lawyer’s opinion, Cleveland should be double counted because counting Cleveland twice was easier and, critically, doing otherwise resulted in the odd scenario of the 22nd president coming after the 23rd.

But the real end of the debate occurred in 1950, when the last great holdout—the Congressional Directory—realized they were “probably … the only official publication” still counting Cleveland only once. That year they officially redid their numbering and listed Cleveland as 22nd and 24th. We’ve hardly questioned the decision since.

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