If you spend enough time with history trivia lovers, sooner or later somebody will hit you with the one about America’s “President for a Day.” They lean in with a grin, ask who was the 12th President, and when you say Zachary Taylor, they triumphantly declare, “Wrong! It was David Rice Atchison!” That’s when you’re supposed to look confused, and they get to explain that, for twenty-four hours in 1849, a little-known Missouri senator held the highest office in the land.
It makes for a fun party trick. The problem is that it is not true. Atchison himself said so, and the record backs him up. But the real story of his life is far more colorful than one lazy Sunday in Washington, D.C.
Atchison was born on August 11, 1807, in Frogtown, Kentucky, later part of Lexington. He grew up on a family plantation, attended Transylvania University, and counted among his classmates some of the biggest political names of the mid-19th century, including Jefferson Davis. After becoming a lawyer in 1829, he moved west to Liberty, Missouri. There he built a law practice, bought a plantation worked by enslaved laborers, and even represented Joseph Smith and the Latter Day Saints in land disputes.
He first entered politics in the Missouri House of Representatives in 1834. He was a key advocate for the Platte Purchase, which pushed Missouri’s borders farther northwest. During the Mormon War of 1838 he served as a major general in the state militia, trying to contain violence between settlers and Mormon communities. His political star rose quickly. By 1843, he was appointed to the United States Senate to fill a vacancy, the first senator from western Missouri.
In Washington, Atchison gained influence fast. He was elected President pro tempore of the Senate at the age of thirty-eight, putting him high in the line of succession. He was a fierce supporter of slavery and territorial expansion, backing the annexation of Texas and the war with Mexico. He became a bitter rival of Missouri’s other senator, Thomas Hart Benton, after Benton shifted toward opposing the spread of slavery.
Atchison played a central role in the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise and opened new territories to decide the slavery question by popular vote. He helped found the town of Atchison, Kansas, as a pro-slavery stronghold. And when it appeared Kansas might reject slavery, he rallied armed Missourians to cross the border in 1855, seize polling places, and install a pro-slavery legislature. The “Border Ruffians,” as they were called, brought intimidation and bloodshed to the Kansas frontier.
It was during his Senate years that the so-called “President for a Day” story took root. In 1849, Inauguration Day fell on a Sunday. Outgoing President James K. Polk’s term expired at noon, but Zachary Taylor, the incoming president, refused to take the oath until Monday. Polk’s vice president was already gone from office, and friends of Atchison, then Senate President pro tempore, liked to joke that he must have been president for that one day. The truth is simpler. Atchison’s own Senate term had expired before noon that Sunday, he was never sworn in for the new term until Monday, and he spent most of the day sleeping. His own later comment was that if he had been president, he could at least boast that not one tear was shed from anyone losing a job during his term.
Defeated in his bid for re-election in 1855, Atchison turned his attention to promoting a central route for the first transcontinental railroad, one that would pass directly through Atchison, Kansas.
When the Civil War came, he sided with Missouri’s pro-Confederate governor and accepted a commission as a brigadier general in the Missouri State Guard under Sterling Price. He fought at the Battle of Liberty in 1861 but resigned after Union victories secured Missouri. He spent the rest of the war in Texas and returned home afterward. In retirement, he downplayed many of his earlier pro-slavery statements and lived quietly on his farm near Gower, Missouri.
David Rice Atchison died in 1886. His tombstone in Plattsburg, Missouri, reads “President of the United States for One Day.” The legend will likely outlive every scholarly rebuttal. But if we remember him only for that story, we miss the far more complicated figure he really was. Atchison was a sharp political operator, a fierce champion of slavery’s expansion, a man deeply tied to the violence of Bleeding Kansas, and a booster for the westward spread of railroads. He shaped the turbulent politics of his time more than most senators could claim, even if he never actually sat in the big chair in the White House.
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