Acting President of the United States On April 4, 1841, only one month after his inauguration, President William Henry Harrison died. He was the first U.S. president to die in office. Afterward, a constitutional crisis ensued over the Constitution's ambiguous presidential succession provision (). Shortly after Harrison's death, his Cabinet met and decided that Vice President John Tyler would assume the responsibilities of presidency under the title "Vice-President acting President". Instead of accepting the Cabinet's proposed title, however, Tyler asserted that the Constitution gave him full and unqualified powers of the office and had himself sworn in immediately as President, setting a critical precedent for an
President Broz Tito and François Duvalier died in office. Kim Il-sung was named Eternal President of the Republic after his death. In ancient Rome, Lucius Cornelius Sulla appointed himself in 82 BC to an entirely new office, "dictator rei publicae constituendae causa" ("dictator for the making of laws and for the settling of the constitution"), which was functionally identical to the dictatorate "rei gerundae causa" ("for the matter to be done," e.g., a military command against a specific enemy) except that it lacked any set time limit, although Sulla held this office for over two years before he voluntarily abdicated and