Hello everyone! This is post 22 in my series on Kansas history, today's story is on politician David Rice Atchison, who is probably most famous for being President of the United States (for a single day). Enjoy!

David Rice Atchison was born on August 11th, 1807 in Frogtown, Kentucky near Lexington. He attended Transylvania University there and passed the bar to become a lawyer in 1829. The next year he moved to Liberty, Missouri where he started his law practice and had a farm where he held slaves. One of his best known clients during this time was Joseph Smith, leader of the Later Day Saints (or Mormons) who he helped with land disputes as the organization was pushed further west eventually to Utah following the “Mormon War” in 1838.

David was elected to the Missouri House of Representatives in 1834, and one of his biggest achievements while in the legislature was securing the Platte Purchase in 1837 which forced the Ioway, Pottawatomie, Sauk, and Meskwaki tribes to cede their land to the state. In 1843 he was appointed to the United States Senate by Governor Thomas Reynolds to fill the seat held by Lewis Linn (who died in office). In 1845 the Democrats took control of the Senate and Atchison, who was extremely well liked by his colleagues, was elected president pro tempore after only two years in the seat.

On March 4th, 1849 at noon the presidency of James Polk ended and both him and his Vice President George Dallas resigning to make way for President-Elect Zachary Taylor and VP Millard Fillmore. However, March 4th was a Sunday, and Taylor being a staunch Christian refused to take the oath of office until noon the next day. According to the Presidential Succession Act of 1792, the president pro tempore was the 3rd in line for presidential succession and so for 24 hours, David Rice Atchison became the 11th 1/2 President.

This is a fact that some historians (and even Atchison himself in an 1880 letter to a friend) contest the validity of, but to many his one day presidency is a fact and an oddity of history. Later that year he stepped down for a time from his spot in the line of succession but served again from 1852-1854.

He then became very involved in the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 which gave both territories the right to choose if they would allow slavery. After its passage he helped to found the town (and county) of Atchison as a pro-slavery town north of Leavenworth along the Missouri River. In 1855 as the free-state movement began to grow, Atchison and his supporters took to violence to prevent Kansas from blocking slavery by any means necessary.

He said in a speech to supporters “kill every God-damned abolitionist in the district” and recruited a mob of over 5,000 Missourians to seize control of polling locations and stop free-staters from voting. His actions were even backed by President Franklin Pierce. Atchison delivered a speech on the floor of the Senate that they were going to invade Lawrence (the primary free-state stronghold in Kansas) and “draw blood” under their flag that proclaims “Southern Rights”.

On May 21st 1856 Atchison and Douglas County Sheriff Samuel Jones with a mob of 300 men entered Lawrence and began ransacking the town. They burned the Free State Hotel and the home of Charles Robinson (who would later be the 1st Governor of Kansas after statehood) and surprisingly no one was killed except for a member of the mob crushed by falling debris from the burning hotel.

Following his time in “Bleeding Kansas” Atchison served in the Missouri State Guard during the Civil War. Later in life he retired to Plattsburg, Missouri where he lived until his death in 1886 at the age of 78, still denying that he was ever really president of the United States. Hope you all enjoyed!