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Article: President Atchison?(Flashback: to know nothing of what happened before you were born is to remain ever a child--Cicero)
- Article from:
- The American Enterprise
- Article date:
- January 1, 2005
- Author:
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The names of antebellum Presidents float dreamily across the mind: Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler, Polk, Atchison, Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce.... Wait a minute. Atchison?
Well, that all depends on whether or not epitaphs lie. For in the Greenlawn Cemetery in Plattsburg, Missouri, David Rice Atchison, who served two terms in the U.S. Senate, is interred under a gravestone bearing the inscription:
President of the United States For One Day Sunday, Mar. 4, 1849
Blame it on the Sabbath. Zachary Taylor refused to be inaugurated at noon on Sunday, March 4, delaying his oathtaking till Monday. Since the terms of outgoing President Polk and Vice President ...