ATCHISON ? In a state with a presidential library, a presidential loser’s library and a gallery of Oval Office occupant wannabes, add what’s being billed as the “world’s smallest presidential library.”

Actually, it really will be as much a presidential library as some say David Rice Atchison really was president for a day in 1849.

But it’s something the Atchison County Historical Society Museum plans to open Feb. 20 – Presidents Day – using the presidential story to attract visitors to a larger view of the man for whom this Missouri River town is named.

“It’s our hook to get people in, and hopefully they will learn something about this man,” said Chris Taylor, the society’s executive director.

Pro-slavery player

They’ll learn that Atchison was a pro-slavery but well-respected U.S. senator from Missouri and that his supporters founded this community and named it for him to give it pro-slavery cache.

Atchison also was a major player behind the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act that allowed voters to bring Kansas into the union as a free state. He often is portrayed as a Border Ruffian during the violent Bleeding Kansas period leading up to the Civil War.

“It was all consuming to him. He saw having Kansas as a slave state as a way to keep the union from breaking,” Taylor said. “He spent the vast majority of his time trying to avoid violence.”

Atchison became a senator in 1843 at age 36 and served until 1855. He also was Senate president pro tem most of that time, including 1849.

President or not?

Whether he ever was president has been debated for decades.

James K. Polk’s term expired at noon March 4, when the next president normally would have been sworn in. However, March 4 was a Sunday, so Zachary Taylor waited until the next day to take the oath.

William E. Parrish, author of the only Atchison biography, sees more myth than reality to the story.

“It’s a nice story, and I like the story, but he wasn’t president for a day,” said Parrish, a history professor emeritus at Mississippi State University.

He said Atchison’s Senate term ended with the adjournment of Congress at midnight March 3, and he wasn’t sworn in as a senator and elected president pro tem by colleagues until March 5, before Taylor was sworn in.

“You could say he was president for a day, but his term as senator expired along with that of the old president,” he said. “So, technically, he was out of office, too. But that doesn’t make for as good of a story.”

Parrish said Atchison told a reporter years later that he slept most of that Sunday and felt there was no president that day.

“If Atchison was right, it probably got started as a joke among the senators,” he said.

Others, including the historical society director, maintain that Atchison probably was president.

“You could have a good argument both ways. I would come down on the side of him being president because such an unusual set of circumstances occurred,” he said. “Even at the time, it was acknowledged he was in the line of succession.”

But, he added, “Nothing happened at the time to cause any action to make it apparent he was president.”

Vice president

Taylor said Atchison did serve as vice president during the Millard Fillmore and Franklin Pierce administrations.

As vice president, Fillmore became president when Zachary Taylor died in 1850; Pierce’s vice president, William Rufus King, died a month after taking office in 1853.

“The press at the time referred to him as vice president,” Taylor said. “He assumed the duties of the vice president, which was to preside over the Senate.”

Paper trail thin

Atchison’s story is a favorite topic of trivia quizzes and Web sites devoted to exploring urban legends, such as Snopes.com.

“It could be argued he was no more president than Zachary Taylor that day,” Snopes founder David Mikkelson said. “If you follow the line of reasoning that they had – no president because nobody was sworn in – then we went without a president for a day because Atchison wasn’t sworn in either.”

Finding the genesis of the President Atchison story is difficult. Most of his personal papers were destroyed by fire in the 1870s at his farm near Gower, Mo., where he lived until his 1886 death.