DAVID RICE ATCHISON
These facts were gross contradictions of what the Governor had been hearing from numerous community leaders who were in a panic of hatred.
The issue is whether Kansas would enter the Union as a slave state of a free state. If a free state, the free states would be able to block further slavery. If Kansas were to become a slave state, the slave states would have a sufficient majority to make all future expansion hospitable to slavery. The slavery forces started sending men and families into Kansas so that they could vote; the abolitionists did the same. Both sides armed and a war began with each faction trying to kill or drive the other faction out of Kansas before the vote. See {612516} for the anti-slavery perspective.
Responding to the question of what he did during his one-day presidency: His term of office was only 24 hours. On March 4, 1849 President Polk's term expired. It was a Sunday, and President-elect Zachary Taylor did not wish to be inaugurated until Monday. As President Pro Tempore of the Senate, Atchison served as president for a single day.
David Rice Atchison was a mid-19th century Democratic United States Senator from Missouri. He served as President pro tempore of the United States Senate for six years. Atchison served as a major general in the Missouri State Militia in 1838 during Missouri's Mormon War and as a Confederate brigadier general during the American Civil War under Major General Sterling Price in the Missouri Home Guard. He is best known for the claim that for 24 hours—Sunday, March 4, 1849 through noon on Monday—he may have been Acting President of the United States. This belief, however, is dismissed by nearly all historians, scholars, and biographers.
