The Surprising Story Of The Man Who Was President For One Day

Publish date: 2024-05-03

Throughout his Senate career, Atchison was popular among his colleagues, and they elected him 13 times to serve in the role of president pro tempore, the second-highest ranking official in the Senate. It's a position that is accounted for in Article One, Section Three of the Constitution, which provides that the vice president of the United States is the president of the Senate (regardless of not being a senator), and mandates that the Senate must choose a president pro tempore to act in the vice president's absence. It was a stipulation that mattered greatly in the early days of the republic, when the vice president regularly presided over Senate sessions, according to National Geographic.

On March 2, 1849, Vice President George M. Dallas (pictured above) took leave from the Senate for the remainder of the session, and the Senate once again elected Atchison as president pro tempore. That designation, combined with a hiccup in the calendar, allowed Atchison to make the case he was president for a day just two days later. "It was plain that there was either an interregnum [a period where there is no government] or I was the President of the United States being chairman of the Senate. ... A great many such questions are liable to arise under our form of government," Atchison told the Plattsburg Lever, according to The Presidential Book of Lists. He added, however, that he "made no pretense to the office."

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