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laws” have long since been repealed: watch or attend Super Bowl games, attend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 20th, 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 4th inauguration
days.)
Dwight D. Eisenhower’s first term in 1957 ended on Sunday,
January the 20th 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 5th of March. Then, Rutherford B. Hayes took his oath in 1877 before
Grant’s administration ended at noon on Sunday the 4th 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 4th, 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 5th,
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 4th, 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 5th
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
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