Today in history: March 4, 1789

The US Constitution went into effect – and it was also chosen as the Inauguration Day for incoming presidents, which it was until the 20th century. George Washington’s first inaugural was actually on April 30, for various reasons – but his second inaugural was on March 4, 1793. His second inaugural address was the shortest address ever given:

Fellow Citizens:

I am again called upon by the voice of my country to execute the functions of its Chief Magistrate. When the occasion proper for it shall arrive, I shall endeavor to express the high sense I entertain of this distinguished honor, and of the confidence which has been reposed in me by the people of united America.

Previous to the execution of any official act of the President the Constitution requires an oath of office. This oath I am now about to take, and in your presence: That if it shall be found during my administration of the Government I have in any instance violated willingly or knowingly the injunctions thereof, I may (besides incurring constitutional punishment) be subject to the upbraidings of all who are now witnesses of the present solemn ceremony.

On March 4, 1797 was the inauguration of John Adams. I love Adams’ memory (of course, subjective and emotional) about what he imagined George Washington was thinking as he handed over the reins. Here’s the transcription of Adam’s inaugural address – which, in typical Adams fashion (love that man) is kind of chatty – – always highly intelligent – and to me, I can almost hear his voice saying it. It is at times self-serving and self-important (he basically lists his resume – which – can you blame him? Following George Washington was a thankless task – and Adams pretty much knew it going in. So he kind of lists what he has done in service for his country – whereas Washington would never have had to state his case like that.)

Employed in the service of my country abroad during the whole course of these transactions, I first saw the Constitution of the United States in a foreign country. Irritated by no literary altercation, animated by no public debate, heated by no party animosity, I read it with great satisfaction, as the result of good heads prompted by good hearts, as an experiment better adapted to the genius, character, situation, and relations of this nation and country than any which had ever been proposed or suggested.

His prose has a living quality for me in a way Washington’s prose, with all its formality and brevity, never does. I always feel Adams, the real man, behind the words.

Thomas Jefferson was inaugurated on March 4, 1801 – after the first really nasty presidential campaign in our nation’s history. (David McCullough describes that day in his biography of John Adams.) And to the folks who bemoan how politics nowadays are so nasty, and so personal – I suggest you learn your history. People said crap about each other back then that makes our modern blowhards look like grade school tantrum-throwers. Seriously. Jefferson meant business. Fascinating – it’s one of my favorite parts of the story of our nation’s birth – the story of that presidential election. I can’t get enough of it. As ugly as it all was. But that’s one of the reasons I love it. We are not a utopia. This American experiment was not meant, unlike other ideological constructs, to be perfect. Anyone who yearns for perfection, anyway, is either a candidate for cult membership or a dictator-in-training. It was always going to be messy, it was always going to involve compromise – but then, in the end – it was also going to involve peaceful handovers of power (ideally). Which if you look at historical precedent – almost never happened. Ever, in any civilization. In the entire story of the human race. So the fact of the election of 1801 … and the fact that although the enemies were destroyed, pretty much … they were not lined up against the wall and shot for being traitors, and the fight went on. The fight for power went on, and it’s been going on ever since. So Utopian folks, the “wah wah, everyone was so much nicer in the past, they had better manners” – seriously need to read some books. Read the broadsides. We are mild now compared to the character assassination and vitriol that went on back then. Maybe their manners were more formal, but you think power politics have changed since then? If anything, we are nicer now. And also – to the folks who have pinwheeling-eyeballs fantasizing about some ideologically pure Utopia in the future – with no political disagreement, and permanent destruction of your opponents – you can count me already as one of your fiercest enemies. If your greatest idea of heaven on earth is 100% agreement then yo, count me out, fascists. You can strive for a perfect neat little world all by yourself, and guaranteed: you will fail. You might succeed for a little while – but rigidity like that never lasts. Again: read your history. And so – having said all that – to me, 1801 is the key to so much of who we are. The mess, the hatred, the defeat, the sucking up, the compromise, the fallout, the struggle for power – and, in the end, acceptance. 4 more years. Re-group, go in again. And Jefferson’s inaugural address – with its measured phrases of unity and union (“We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.” Oh really? Tell that to my dead boyfriend.) is a masterpiece of diplomacy, and hidden agendas. He had just destroyed his political enemies – he said he abhorred “factionalism” and yet when it came down to it – he played it dirtier than anybody. He writes “every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle” … and yet he referred to some of Adam’s views (in a letter not meant to be read publicly) “political heresies” – a phrase which caused the years-long riff between these two old friends and colleagues. Political “heresies”. Jefferson’s writing is untouchable. Seriously. He’s the best. It’s so smooth, so elegant.

On March 4, 1829 Andrew Jackson was inaugurated – and, notoriously, invited the entire public to join the festivities at the White House. Apparently things got way out of hand – people were wasted – tramping through the house – furniture was ruined – things were stolen – and Jackson had to flee from the building through a window to escape the masses. haha

Here’s his address and also a painting of the “public” on that day in 1829.

Oh – and then of course – there is the sad (and yet I can’t help it, I laugh) story of William Henry Harrison’s inaugural – on March 4, 1841. (William Henry Harrison and his oh-so-brief tenure as President will always remind me of Jackie’s son – explanation here.) What happened that day is notorious. His speech was five billion years long – there was a freezing icy storm that day – he stood outside, said his speech -which took him 2 hours – maybe more – and then caught pneumonia and died a month later. Not to disrespect the dead and I know that Elements of Style wasn’t even written then – but I think Harrison could definitely have benefited from Strunk and White’s most important rule for writers: “Omit needless words.”

Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated (for the first time) on March 4, 1861. His first inaugural is (in my humble opinion) a masterpiece. Within the first two sentences, you MUST read to the end – his prose is that simple and that heartfelt and compelling. And look at how he gets right to the point. I find it hard to imagine how the ending of this speech could be improved upon. It brings tears to my eyes:

My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well upon this whole subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time. If there be an object to hurry any of you in hot haste to a step which you would never take deliberately, that object will be frustrated by taking time; but no good object can be frustrated by it. Such of you as are now dissatisfied still have the old Constitution unimpaired, and, on the sensitive point, the laws of your own framing under it; while the new Administration will have no immediate power, if it would, to change either. If it were admitted that you who are dissatisfied hold the right side in the dispute, there still is no single good reason for precipitate action. Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulty.

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to “preserve, protect, and defend it.”

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

“I am loath to close.” “The mystic chords of memory.” Now that is rhetorical style. Goose bumps.

Here’s a photo of his first inauguration:

March 4, 1865 was Lincoln’s second inauguration as President.

The text of Lincoln’s second inaugural:

Fellow-Countrymen:

At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Many people who were there that day describe a sense of impending doom over the event.

Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865, 42 days later. Andrew Johnson would be sworn into office on April 15, 1865.

The last president to be inaugurated on March 4 was Franklin Delano Roosevelt on March 4, 1933. Here is his first inaugural address. Despite his polio legs and disability – he walked up the staircase to the podium, and stood – to give his address, and kept standing, for the swearing-in.