Posted
on August 11, 2014
You
can't hold a presidential inauguration on a Sunday!
We're
talking U.S. presidential inaugurations here, and there has always
been one Constitutionally-set day on which inaugurations are held.
For decades, the inauguration was held on March 4. But after the
Twentieth Amendment to the Constitution, it has been held on January
20.
Unless
Inauguration Day falls on a Sunday!
In
that case...
 |
| This was the 2013 private swearing-in of President Obama on Sunday, Jan. 20. The public inauguration ceremony followed custom and was held on the next day. |
Well,
in that case, slightly different solutions were used. The
Inauguration-on-a-Sunday problem has happened seven times in the
nation's history. The last time it happened was in 2013, when
President Barack Obama was sworn into office in a private ceremony on
Sunday, January 20, and then again in public ceremonies the next day,
Monday, January 21. That sort of solution has happened with four
other presidents before him, although some of the private
swearing-ins occurred on Saturdays, and others on Sunday.
But
the first two times the Inauguration-on-a-Sunday conundrum occurred,
there was no private swearing in of the president elect.
Back
in 1849, the second time that Inauguration Day fell on a Sunday, the
outgoing president, James Polk, had a term that ended at noon on
Saturday, March 3, 1849. The new president-elect, Zachary Taylor,
refused to be inaugurated on a Sunday, so the President Pro Tem of
the U.S. Senate was the President of the United States.
For
a day!
On
March 4, 1849, the then-President Pro Tem of the Senate, David
Atchison, was (theoretically, at least) the head honcho of the
country. However, he was never sworn in as president, and he did no
presidential duties.
You
might think, wait a minute, if the president of the United States
can't serve, doesn't the Vice-President serve in his place?
Well,
Polk's VP, George M. Dallas, had the same term as Polk, so HIS term
ended on Saturday, March 3, as well.
Presidential
Succession
These
days, after the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, the powers of
the presidency fall to people in this order:
Vice-President,
Speaker
of the House,
President
Pro Tempore of the Senate,
Secretary
of State,
Secretary
of the Treasury,
Secretary
of Defense,
Attorney
General,
Secretary
of the Interior,
Secretary
of Agriculture,
Secretary
of Commerce,
Secretary
of Labor,
Secretary
of Health and Human Services,
Secretary
of Housing and Urban Development,
Secretary
of Tranportation,
Secretary
of Energy,
Secretary
of Education,
Secretary
of Veterans Affairs, and
Secretary
of Homeland Security.
But
if any of these people do not meet the eligibility requirements to be
President, they are skipped. Eligibility requirements include being
born in the United States, being a resident of the U.S. for at least
14 years, and being at least 35 years old. Our current Secretary of
the Interior, Sally Jewell, was born in the United Kingdom (and is a
naturalized U.S. citizen), so she would be skipped in the line of
succession.
By
the way...
In
case you lost sight of the connection of this story to today's date,
David Atchison was born in Kentucky on this date in 1807.
David
Atchison may have been on of the nation's less lovely presidents; he
was a slave owner (as many of the early presidents were), and he was
fiercely pro-slavery (as many of the early presidents, even the
slave-owning ones, were NOT). Not only that, he was deeply involved
with violence against abolitionists and against people who wanted
Kansas to be a free state rather than a slave state.
It
takes a special kind of unloveliness to not only want to own people,
but also to be willing to kill free people who are citizens of your
own nation just because they are against people owning people.
Notice
that Atchison's tombstone reads “President of the United States for
one day....Sunday, March 4, 1849.”
Also
on this date:
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out my Pinterest boards for:
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here are my Pinterest boards for:
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