As 1849 dawned, America prepared for a change in presidential
administrations. These were the days before Inauguration Day
fell on January 20, and the term of the outgoing president,
James K. Polk, ended at noon on Sunday, March 4, 1849, at which
time his successor, Zachary Taylor, was to be sworn into office.
However, the pious Taylor refused to take the oath on the
Sabbath, so he and his vice president were not sworn in until
noon on Monday, March 5. So who was president for those
intervening 24 hours? According to a devout band of believers,
David Rice Atchison is the answer. The proslavery Missouri
Democrat had been sworn in as president pro tempore of the
Senate on March 2, and according to the 1792 law in effect at
the time, the Senate’s president pro tempore was directly behind
the vice president in the line of succession. Thus, the
contention that Atchison served as president for a day in
between Polk and Taylor. It’s an assertion that most historians,
constitutional scholars and even Atchison’s biogr