Editing David Rice Atchison (section)

==Purported one-day presidency==
[[United States presidential inauguration|Inauguration Day]]—March 4—fell on a Sunday in 1849, and so [[president-elect of the United States|president-elect]] [[Zachary Taylor]] did not take the [[Oath of office of the President of the United States|presidential oath of office]] until [[Inauguration of Zachary Taylor|the next day]] out of religious concerns. 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 [[Presiding Officer of the United States Senate|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 [[United States presidential line of succession|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 into office on that day, it was claimed by some of Atchison's friends and colleagues that from March 4–5, 1849, Atchison was [[acting president of the United States]].<ref name=1day441849>{{cite web| title=President for a Day: March 4, 1849| url=https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/President_For_A_Day.htm| publisher=Office of the Secretary, United States Senate| location=Washington, D.C.| access-date=June 20, 2018}}</ref><ref>{{cite book| title=From Failing Hands: the Story of Presidential Succession| last1=Feerick| first1=John D.| last2=Freund| first2=Paul A.| date=1965| url=https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=twentyfifth_amendment_books| publisher=Fordham University Press| location=New York City| pages=100–101| lccn=65-14917}}</ref>

Historians, constitutional scholars, and biographers dismiss the claim. They point out that Atchison's Senate term had also ended on March 4.<ref name=HistoryChannel/> 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.<ref name=1day441849/> 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.<ref name=HistoryChannel/> Even supposing that an oath was necessary, Atchison never took it, so he was no more the president than Taylor.<ref name=HistoryChannel/>

In September 1872, Atchison, who never himself claimed that he was technically president,<ref name=HistoryChannel/> told a reporter for the ''Plattsburg Lever'':
{{blockquote|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 [[Willie Person Mangum|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.<ref>{{cite web| url = http://www.rootsweb.com/~moclinto/histsoc/| title = Clinton Co. Historical Society}}</ref>}}