David Rice Atchison

Atchison was born to William Atchison in Frogtown (later Kirklevington), which is now part of Lexington, Kentucky. He was educated at Transylvania University in Lexington, where his classmates included five future Democratic senators (Solomon Downs of Louisiana, Jesse Bright of Indiana, George Wallace Jones of Iowa, Edward Hannegan of Indiana, and Jefferson Davis of Mississippi). Atchison was admitted to the Kentucky bar in 1829.[8]

In 1830 he moved to Liberty in Clay County in western Missouri,[8] and set up practice there, where he also farmed. Atchison's law practice flourished, and his best-known client was Latter Day Saint Movement founder Joseph Smith.[9] Atchison represented Smith in land disputes with non-Mormon settlers in Caldwell County[9] and Daviess County.[9]

Alexander William Doniphan joined Atchison's law practice in Liberty in May 1833.[10] The two became fast friends and spent many leisure time hours playing cards, going to the horse races, hunting, fishing, attending social functions and political events. Atchison, already a member of the Liberty Blues, a volunteer militia in Missouri, got Doniphan to join.[11]

Atchison was elected to the Missouri House of Representatives in 1834.[12][13] He worked hard for the Platte Purchase, which extended the northwestern boundary of Missouri to the Missouri River in 1837.

When the earlier disputes broke out into the so-called Mormon War of 1838, Atchison was appointed a major general in the state militia[14] and took part in suppression of the violence by both sides.

In 1838 he was re-elected to the Missouri State House of Representatives. In 1841, he was appointed a circuit court judge for the six-county area of the Platte Purchase. In 1843 he was named a county commissioner in Platte County, where he then lived.

In October 1843,[9] Atchison was appointed to the U.S. Senate to fill the vacancy left by the death of Lewis F. Linn. He thus became the first senator from western Missouri.[9] At age 36, he was the youngest senator from Missouri up to that time.[9] Atchison was re-elected in 1849.[9]

Atchison was very popular with his fellow Senate Democrats. When the Democrats took control of the Senate in December 1845, they chose Atchison as President pro tempore,[14] placing him second in succession for the Presidency,[15] and also giving him the duty of presiding over the Senate when the Vice President was absent. He was then only 38 years old and had served in the Senate just two years. In 1849 Atchison stepped down as President pro tempore in favor of William R. King.[14] King in turn yielded the office back to Atchison in December 1852, since King had been elected Vice President of the United States. Atchison continued as President pro tempore until December 1854.[14]

As a Senator, Atchison was a fervent advocate of slavery[14] and territorial expansion. He supported the annexation of Texas and the U.S.-Mexican War. Atchison and Missouri's other Senator, the venerable Thomas Hart Benton, became rivals and finally enemies, though both were Democrats. Benton declared himself to be against slavery in 1849, and in 1851 Atchison allied with the Whigs to defeat Benton for re-election.

Benton, intending to challenge Atchison in 1854, began to agitate for territorial organization of the area west of Missouri (now the states of Kansas and Nebraska) so it could be opened to settlement. To counter this, Atchison proposed that the area be organized and that the section of the Missouri Compromise banning slavery there be repealed in favor of popular sovereignty, under which the settlers in each territory would decide themselves whether slavery would be allowed.

At Atchison's request, Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois introduced the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which embodied this idea, in November 1853. The Act became law in May 1854, establishing the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska.

Atchison and A.W. Doniphan would fall out over the politics preceding the Civil War and on which direction Missouri should proceed. Atchison favored secession, while Doniphan was torn and would remain for the most part non-committal. Privately Doniphan favored the Union, but found it hard to go against his friends and associates.[11]

During the secession crisis in Missouri at the beginning of the American Civil War, Atchison sided with Missouri's pro-Confederate governor, Claiborne Jackson. He accepted an appointment as a major general in the Missouri State Guard. Atchison actively recruited State Guardsmen in northern Missouri and served with Missouri State Guard commander General Sterling Price in the summer campaign of 1861. In September 1861, Atchison led 3,500 State Guard recruits across the Missouri River to reinforce Price, and defeated Union troops that tried to block his force in the Battle of Liberty.

Atchison continued to serve through the end of 1861. In March 1862, Union forces in the Trans-Mississippi theater won a decisive victory at Pea Ridge in Arkansas and secured Union control of Missouri. Atchison then resigned from the army over reported strategy arguments with Price and moved to Texas for the duration of the Civil War. After the war he retired to his farm near Gower, and was noted to deny many of his pro-slavery public statements made prior to the Civil War. In addition, his retirement cottage outside of Plattsburg, Missouri burned to the ground before his death in 1886. This included the complete loss of his library containing books, documents, and letters which documented his role in the Mormon War, Indian affairs, pro-slavery activities, Civil War activities, and other legislation covering his career as a lawyer, senator, and soldier.

Inauguration Day—March 4—fell on a Sunday in 1849, and so president-elect Zachary Taylor did not take the presidential oath of office until the next day. Even so, the term of the outgoing president, James K. Polk, ended at noon on March 4. On March 2, outgoing vice president George M. Dallas relinquished his position as President of the Senate. Congress had previously chosen Atchison as president pro tempore. In 1849, according to the Presidential Succession Act of 1792, the Senate president pro tempore immediately followed the vice president in the presidential line of succession. As Dallas's term also ended at noon on the 4th, and as neither Taylor nor vice president-elect Millard Fillmore had been sworn in to office on that day, it was claimed by some of Atchison's friends and colleagues that on March 4–5, 1849, Atchison was Acting President of the United States.[21][22]

Historians, constitutional scholars and biographers all dismiss the claim. They point out that Atchison's Senate term had ended on March 4.[3] When the Senate of the new Congress convened on March 5 to allow new senators and the new vice president to take the oath of office, the secretary of the Senate called members to order, as the Senate had no president pro tempore.[21] Although an incoming president must take the oath of office before any official acts, the prevailing view is that presidential succession does not depend on the oath.[3] Even supposing that an oath were necessary, Atchison never took it, so he was no more the president than Taylor.[3]

In September 1872, Atchison, who never himself claimed that he was technically president,[3] told a reporter for the Plattsburg Lever:

It was in this way: Polk went out of office on March 3, 1849, on Saturday at 12 noon. The next day, the 4th, occurring on Sunday, Gen. Taylor was not inaugurated. He was not inaugurated till Monday, the 5th, at 12 noon. It was then canvassed among Senators whether there was an interregnum (a time during which a country lacks a government). It was plain that there was either an interregnum or I was the President of the United States being chairman of the Senate, having succeeded Judge Mangum of North Carolina. The judge waked me up at 3 o'clock in the morning and said jocularly that as I was President of the United States he wanted me to appoint him as secretary of state. I made no pretense to the office, 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.[23]

David Rice Atchison's tombstone

Atchison died on January 26, 1886, at his home near Gower, Missouri at the age of 78. He was buried at Greenlawn Cemetery in Plattsburg, Missouri. His grave marker reads "President of the United States for One Day."

• Atchison, Kansas[24] county seat of Atchison County, Kansas
• Atchison County, Missouri
• USS Atchison County (LST-60) ship
• In 1991, Atchison was inducted into the Hall of Famous Missourians, and a bronze bust depicting him is on permanent display in the rotunda of the Missouri State Capitol.[25]
• Atchison County Historical Museum in Atchison, Kansas includes a museum exhibit, jokingly titled the "World's Smallest Presidential Library" devoted to Atchison.[26]
• A historical marker designating the approximate site of Atchison's birth is located along Highway 1974 in the Landsdowne neighborhood of Lexington, Kentucky.[27]

• List of American Civil War generals (Confederate)
• List of United States Senators from Missouri

Wikimedia Commons has media related to David Rice Atchison.

• United States Congress. "David Rice Atchison (id: A000322)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
• David Rice Atchinson: On Being President For A Day - Original Letters Shapell Manuscript Foundation
• Urban Legends: President for a Day
• Another view of the President for a Day claim
• Useless Information: David Rice Atchison
• U.S. Senate Historical Minute Essay
• McAfee, John J. (1886). Kentucky politicians : sketches of representative Corncrackers and other miscellany. Louisville, Kentucky: Press of the Courier-Journal job printing company. pp. 10–16.