And new President Taylor's vice president couldn't fill in, either, because you can't have a vice president without a president! So according to the Constitutional line of succession, for one day, the job went to the senior member of the U.S. Under our Constitution, Polk could not continue to hold power, and neither could his vice president. His successor, Zachary Taylor, was a religious fellow who refused to be sworn in that day because it was the Christian Sabbath. President Polk's term in office expired at noon on Sunday, March 4th, 1849. But Atchison gets precious little credit for it. He was our official, bona fide president, succeeding the 11th man in the office, James Polk. As the houses weren’t built on concrete bases, there was very little to go off of for. You see, David Atchison was president of the United States for ONE DAY! This is not a joke. By the time the Polk land was sold in the early 1800s, their family cabins had long since been demolished. He was born in 1807 in tiny Frogtown, Kentucky. Names like Franklin Pierce don't raise even a flicker of recognition.Īnd there's one president so obscure, so unaccomplished, that even most history books don't know about him! Many of the rest served so long ago, or so unmemorably, that only trivia buffs and schoolkids studying the presidency can list them all. Neither do a lot of Americans, though just about all of us have heard of some, like George Washington, the first to hold the job. presidents besides Ronald Reagan, George Bush and, maybe, Bill Clinton. But it works, as the story of David Atchison demonstrates.
0 kommentar(er)
