ATCHISON: Have you ever heard of David Rice Atchison and claims that he was the U.S. president for a day?

According to the U.S. Senate Historical Office, Atchison was a Missouri Democrat who served in the Senate from 1843 to 1855. An attorney, he “rose to prominence in Missouri when he served as legal counsel to members of Joseph Smith’s Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, popularly known as the Mormons, who were being forcibly removed from Jackson County in 1833. He went on to serve as a state court judge for two years before the governor appointed him to fill a vacant seat in the Senate in 1843.”

On March 2, 1849, Atchison was elected president pro tempore.

“Until the adoption of the Twentieth Amendment in 1933, presidential and congressional terms began and ended at noon on March 4. In 1849 March 4 fell on a Sunday. On the morning of March 4, President James Polk signed the last of the session’s legislation at the White House. President-elect Zachary Taylor preferred not to conduct his inauguration on Sunday, March 4, and the ceremony was delayed until the next day. On Monday, March 5, Taylor took the oath of office and the transition of power was complete.”

So who was president from noon March 4 to noon March 5?

“Neither the Congressional Globe nor the Senate Journal included any suggestion that there was a vacancy in the presidency prior to Taylor’s inauguration on the 5th, yet the notion that Atchison had briefly ascended to the office of president of the United States began to circulate.”

Scholars dispute that point, concluding that once Polk left office, Taylor became president immediately, yet took his oath the next day. Besides, Atchison’s term as president pro tempore ended at noon March 4, too. Yet the myth carries on, including with a plaque in Plattsburg, Missouri commemorating Atchison’s one-day presidency.