THINK ONCE, THINK TWICE—GUESS WHAT!!!

By Edwin Cooney

Guess what event never takes place on a Sunday!  Its significance is doubly dramatic when one considers all of the things you can do on a Sunday these days.  You can, since most of our old “blue laws” have long since been repealed: watch or attend Super Bowl games, attend rock or other concerts, buy beer and even hard liquor on a Sunday, and you can even work on a Sunday in blatant violation of one of the Ten Commandments “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy"!

However, what has never happened on a Sunday throughout the whole two hundred and thirty-seven years of the history of this great republic of ours is a public celebration of the inauguration of an American president.  Yesterday, Sunday, January 20^th, 2013 was our sixth opportunity to do just that -- and we muffed it.  You can even say we blew it!  So the next question is: How significant or important is this strange institutional American reluctance?  Well, the answer to that question is that it depends on the state of our national security at the close of any particular presidential term.

Six presidential terms have ended on a Sunday: James Monroe’s first term in 1821, James K. Polk’s only term in 1849 and Ulysses S. Grant’s second term in 1877. (Those were March 4^th inauguration days.)

Dwight D. Eisenhower’s first term in 1957 ended on Sunday, January the 20^th as did Ronald W. Reagan’s first term in 1985, and now President Barack H. Obama’s first term in 2013 has come to a grinding halt.  However, today rather than yesterday those of us so inclined celebrate the beginning of President Obama’s second term.  Two things are particularly notable about this rather obscure historical fact.  First: two of the six presidents (Monroe in 1821 and Taylor in 1849) didn’t take the presidential oath at all until noon on the 5^th of March.  Then, Rutherford B. Hayes took his oath in 1877 before Grant’s administration ended at noon on Sunday the 4^th of March.  Two of these situations were potentially significant to the ongoing welfare of the United States.

When President James K. Polk and Vice President George M. Dallas’s terms ended on Sunday, March 4^th, 1849, President-elect Zachary Taylor and Vice President-elect Millard Fillmore, supposedly for religious reasons, held off taking their oaths until noon of Monday, March 5^th, 1849.  Under the Presidential Succession Act of 1792 which was then in effect, Senator David Rice Atchison of Missouri was serving as President pro tempore of the United States Senate and was in line directly behind the outgoing and incoming vice presidents in the line of presidential succession.  Atchison, a violent and rather irreverent pro-slavery, anti-Union and anti-abolitionist ruffian, could have been a very dangerous president.  Although Atchison never claimed to have been acting president during that twenty-four hour period, his grave marker at Plattsburg, Missouri reads: “David Rice Atchison, President of the United States for one day.”

Sunday, March 4^th, 1877 came at a time of considerable political and emotional disquiet.  New York Governor Samuel J. Tilden, a Democrat, was believed by many to have been duly elected president of the United States since he’d received 184 electoral votes, just one shy of an absolute majority in the Electoral College the previous November.  However, Republican officials in South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana insisted that all of their electoral votes, plus one illegal vote in the state of Oregon, belonged to Ohio Governor Rutherford B. Hayes.  If these claims were granted, Hayes’s total would jump from 165 to 185 electoral votes giving him rather than Tilden the presidency.  These officials asked President Grant, a Republican, to send federal troops to their capitols if necessary to reinforce their claims.  Grant complied and ultimately Congress appointed a special electoral commission to resolve the matter when the United States Senate and the House of Representatives, meeting in joint session as required by the Constitution, couldn’t certify the total vote of the Electoral College.  Both Tilden and Hayes publicly stayed away from the controversy, but there were plenty of angry Union and Confederate hotheads who were fully prepared to exacerbate the situation on a moment’s notice.  Hence, once the Electoral Commission headed by Supreme Court Associate Justice Nathan Clifford issued its eight to seven decision favoring the Republican Hayes, Grant took action.  Hayes arrived in Washington D.C. on Friday, March the second and visited President Grant on Saturday night, March the third.  Considering that his term of office would end at noon the following day, Grant decided that it would be dangerous if any time was allowed to elapse between noon on Sunday and the time planned for Hayes’ scheduled Monday, March 5^th inauguration.  Hence, Hayes took the presidential oath of office in the Red Room of the White House even before Grant’s term ended.  No one, insofar as I’m aware, ever challenged the legality of Grant’s and Hayes’s action.

One thing our federal system does better than any governmental system in the world is in the way it handles the transition of executive power from one administration to another.  Thus, this rather irregular and uneven procedure by which we avoid Sunday inaugurations, which occurs approximately every twenty-eight years, can be and occasionally is a little awkward.

Yesterday, as did Presidents Eisenhower and Reagan in recent years, President Obama officially took his second presidential oath of office in the White House at noon eastern standard time. In so doing, he invited Chief Justice John Roberts to “officially” swear him in.  Unlike four years ago, you can be sure they both got it right this time!

“So,” you may wonder, “what does it all mean?”

Not very much, perhaps, except that it provides for the chance to do a bit of storytelling and what’s more American than that!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY