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The President for a Day
Jeffby
Bob Bowman | |
From
Dave Hinton, our Teneha,
Timpson, Bobo and Blair correspondent, comes an startling morsel of trivia:
Barack
Obama isn’t really our 44th President; he is actually the 45th.
As it
turns out, a little-known politician born in Kentucky in 1807 served as President
for a single day back in 1849, but he is rarely mentioned in presidential histories.
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David Rice Atchison served as President for a day in 1849.
Photo submitted
by author |
David
Rice Atchison was appointed to the U.S. Senate at the age of 36 to replace a Missouri
Senator who had died. Atchison served sixteen terms in the Senate as President
Pro Tem.
By right of succession, some biographers contend Atchison was
a U.S. Vice President from April 18, 1853, until December 4, 1854 when William
R. King, President Franklin Pierce’s vice-president, died.
To show you
how unimportant vice presidents are, our country found a way to do without one
for almost nine months.
Some historians say that Atchison, as President
Pro Tem, has the singular honor of having served as U.S. President for one day
when General Zachary Taylor refused to be inaugurated on March 4, 1849, because
it was a Sunday.
However, Atchison never took an oath as either vice-president
or president.
Consequently, despite the clear line of succession and the
expiration of President Pierce’s term in office, Atchison never officially held
the constitutional offices of either vice-president or president.
But
many lists of our presidents sandwich Atchison between James K. Polk and Zachary
Taylor as one of our presidents.
Then, again, Jefferson Davis is
also on the list as a president because he was president of the Confederate States
of America. Some lists place him between Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson.
Atchison
was born in Frogtown, Kentucky, now known as Kirklevington. It beats me why they
changed the town’s name. I suspect, even in the early l800s, it was a heck of
a lot easier to remember and spell Frogtown than Kirklevington.
Being
a lawyer who had moved from Kentucky to Missouri, Senator Atchison should have
had enough sense to take an oath of office on that fateful Sunday in 1849.
By
doing so, he would have assured himself a rightful place in American history,
instead of being just another politician from Frogtown. | |
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