The beginning of presidential terms is marked with pomp and ceremony celebrating a new chapter in America's story, but what happens when no one is quite sure when, exactly, the page is supposed to be turned--what if, in other words, one chapter ends before another begins. Does America go leaderless, if only for the briefest of moments?
This is the Forgotten History of the President for a Day.
The presidential election of 1848 was a bitterly contested one, as Zachary Taylor, a hero of the Mexican-American War, narrowly defeated Democrat Lewis Cass. Incumbent Democrat James K. Polk had decided not to seek re-election, and Taylor’s Whig Party was set to assume control of the White House for the first time since William Henry Harrison’s 31-day term in 1841, the shortest in American history.
Or was it?
Inauguration Day—March 4th, 1849—fell on a Sunday, and President-Elect Taylor was so deeply religious that he refused to be inaugurated on the Sabbath, preferring instead to keep it holy with a day of rest. His decision was final, he would be sworn in as America’s 12th President the following day, on Monday, March 5th. So, too would, the new Congress.
This presented something of a problem, as tradition held that presidential terms began and ended on March 4th. There was nothing in the Constitution or federal law that mandated this, but since the very first Congress convened for the very first time on March 4th, 1789, it was just sort of decided that March 4th would make a good day for presidential terms to start, too.
Interestingly, this wasn’t adopted until 1793 for George Washington’s second inauguration. He was inaugurated for the first time on April 30th, 1789, so technically his first term wasn’t exactly four years.
President Polk’s, though, was, and it ended at exactly 12 noon on March 4th, 1849. Since Taylor refused to take the oath of office until the following day, did that mean that for exactly 24 hours there was no President of the United States?
Under the Constitution, the Vice President assumed the duties of the Presidency if the President could no longer fulfill them, but the term of Taylor’s Vice President, George Dallas, expired at the same time Taylor’s did. Who would be President from noon on March 4th until noon on March 5th?
According to the Presidential Succession Act of 1792, if neither the President nor the Vice President could perform the duties of President or those offices were vacant, the President Pro Tempore of the Senate would be Acting President of the United States.
That was Missouri Senator David Rice Atchison, and it seemed that under the Succession Act, he was President of the United States for exactly 24 hours. How did he spend his time in office? Mostly sleeping, he joked to friends.
At noon on March 5th, President Taylor took the oath of office and President Atchison’s one-day term ended.
Or did it?
Atchison never claimed to be President for a Day and never really thought that he was, and in reality he had no claim to the office. Atchison himself had just won re-election to the Senate in the election of 1848, so technically his second term in office (and thus his tenure as President Pro Tempore) didn’t begin until March 5th, either.
As Atchison himself laughingly recalled in a newspaper interview years later, the man he succeeded as President Pro Tempore, Willie Person Mangum, woke him up at 3 am on the 5th and joked that since Atchison was President now, he wanted an appointment as Secretary of State.
“I made no pretense to the office,” Atchison said, “but if I was entitled in it I had one boast to make, that not a woman or a child shed a tear on account of my removing any one from office during my incumbency of the place. A great many such questions are liable to arise under our form of government.”
So who really was President for those 24 hours? The general consensus is that even though Taylor didn’t take the oath of office, the oath of office was only required to perform the official duties of the presidency and that Taylor’s term started as soon as Polk’s ended, at 12 noon on March 4th. Once he took the oath of office 24 hours later, he could begin discharging the official duties as president.
Still, David Rice Atchison seemed to love being the subject of such debate and a unique historical footnote, and when he died in 1886, he had the inscription on his gravestone read “The President of the United States for One Day.”