David Rice Atchison
Channel: 宇宙のすべての知識 プリンシピア
Date: 2019-02-02

David Rice Atchison, by Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=8662 / CC BY SA 3.0

#1807_births
#1886_deaths
#County_commissioners_in_Missouri
#Politicians_from_Lexington,_Kentucky
#Missouri_state_court_judges
#Missouri_Democrats
#Members_of_the_Missouri_House_of_Representatives
#United_States_Senators_from_Missouri
#Presidents_pro_tempore_of_the_United_States_Senate
#Bleeding_Kansas
David Rice Atchison

David Rice Atchison (August 11, 1807January 26, 1886) was a mid-19th century Freemason and 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 questionable claim that for one day (March 4, 1849) he may have been Acting President of the United States. This belief, however, is dismissed by nearly all historians, scholars, and biographers.

Atchison, owner of many slaves and a plantation, was a prominent pro-slavery activist and Border Ruffian leader, deeply involved with violence against abolitionists and other free-staters during the "Bleeding Kansas" events.

Atchison was born to William Atchison in Frogtown (later Kirklevington), which is now part of Lexington, Kentucky. He was educated at Transylvania University in Lexington, where his classmates included five future Democratic senators (Solomon Downs of Louisiana, Jesse Bright of Indiana, George Wallace Jones of Iowa, Edward Hannegan of Indiana, and Jefferson Davis of Mississippi). Atchison was admitted to the Kentucky bar in 1829.

In 1830 he moved to Liberty in Clay County in western Missouri, and set up practice there, where he also farmed. Atchison's law practice flourished, and his best-known client was Latter Day Saint Movement founder Joseph Smith. Atchison represented Sm...