A Custom as Old as the Government
A brief history of the Inaugural Address by Matthew May
1/21/25 - A Custom as Old as the Government: A brief history of the Inaugural Address (not as long as William Henry Harrison’s, though not as brief as Washington’s second) - Matthew May
Donald Trump isn’t accustomed much to being second.
But yesterday he became the second president – Grover Cleveland was the first – to deliver a second Inaugural Address non-consecutively, and, due to the Arctic weather conditions in the Federal City, the second since 1981 to deliver it inside the Capitol Rotunda rather than the West Portico and out toward the National Mall.
When Abraham Lincoln began his first inaugural address on March 4, 1861, on the opposite side of the building by saying “In compliance with a custom as old as the Government itself, I appear before you to address you briefly and to take in your presence the oath prescribed by the Constitution of the United States…”, he inimitably described the tradition begun by George Washington of the Inaugural Address.
It is the first address that presidents make to the nation and the world at the beginning of their administrations, a chance to introduce – or reintroduce – themselves as head of the executive branch of the United States.
The composition, delivery, and even the backdrop of this oration has been as varied as the presidents themselves, yet overwhelmingly uniform in celebrating republican government and unity (Thomas Jefferson’s “We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists” echoes still today), the orderly transfer of power, optimism and renewal, and pleas for divine assistance – the keystone of that uniquely American sacrament: Inauguration Day.
There is no constitutional requirement for an inaugural address, but as with everything in his presidency, Washington established the “custom as old as the Government” when, after taking the oath of office on the balcony of the Senate chamber at Federal Hall in New York City on April 30, 1789, he addressed a joint session of Congress.
He admitted to mixed feelings and, indeed, “anxieties” about “being summoned by my country, whose voice I can never hear but with veneration and love,” though having heard that voice “from a retreat which I had chosen with the fondest predilection, and…with an immutable decision, as the asylum of my declining years.”
In other words, he would have rather been at Mt. Vernon.
Washington’s first inaugural was brief – a mere 1,419 words – and largely an explanation of his views of the role of chief executive. Yet the precedent had been set. He established another by delivering remarks four years later at Congress Hall in Philadelphia when being sworn in for a second term.
That second address, delivered to members of Congress, some of the judiciary, and a few citizens, was a mere 133 words in two paragraphs, by far the most concise of all inaugural addresses. In the fashion of Trump, it could have nearly been tweeted.
Not all chief executives observed Washington’s standard of brevity, and one of them paid for it with his life.
While long-winded oratory was common in the 19th century, William Henry Harrison delivered his Inaugural Address of nearly 8,500 words over two hours on a terribly chilly, wet day in Washington, D.C., on March 4, 1841, sans topcoat or hat. (The inaugural ceremony began largely taking place outdoors in 1829, when Andrew Jackson assumed office at the East Portico of the Capitol.)
Harrison intriguingly expounded upon his belief that executive power had become too concentrated and severely critiqued partisanship, saying “If parties in a republic are necessary to secure a degree of vigilance sufficient to keep the public functionaries within the bounds of law and duty, at that point their usefulness ends.”
Yet his words are largely forgotten as they were not the story. Refusing to change out of his soaked clothing for the various receptions that followed his inauguration, Harrison quickly developed pneumonia and was dead exactly one month later. He was the first U.S. president to die in office and remains the shortest-tenured. No subsequent president has come close to matching the length of his address (William Howard Taft is a distant second at slightly over 5,400 words).
Another president whose term was cut short delivered an Inaugural Address that remains one of the finest expositions of full citizenship and civil rights by a president, yet is unfortunately little-remembered.
James A. Garfield was one of the most intelligent and accomplished Americans, overcoming crushing poverty to become a college president, decorated major general in the Civil War, and successful politician. He was president for less than a year when he succumbed to wounds from an assassin’s bullet, but used his first words as president to speak with clarity and strength.
In his address, delivered on March 4, 1881, Garfield noted that it was just over 100 years since the adoption of the Articles of Confederation and offered a fascinating review of the republic before and after the Civil War. He boldly declared that “the elevation of the Negro race from slavery to the full rights of citizenship is the most important political change we have known since the adoption of the Constitution in 1787…Those who resisted the change should remember that under our institutions there was no middle ground for the Negro race between slavery and equal citizenship. There can be no permanent disenfranchised peasantry in the United States.” (italics added)
Perhaps such strong phrasing would be ingrained in the national memory had he had the chance to forge a consequential presidency and/or was president in the radio or television age. This was certainly the case for another president who died in office but also served the longest. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s enduring declaration that, amid the Great Depression, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” was heard in real time on March 4, 1933, by millions of Americans over the radio, foreshadowing FDR’s use of the medium to connect with the nation.
Similarly, the first president to make the best political use of television was John F. Kennedy, whose January 20, 1961, Inaugural Address is widely regarded by historians as one of the best of all, delivered by the young, tan, and trim president whose mass appeal was only enhanced by the small screen.
Kennedy’s chief writing collaborator, Theodore Sorenson, once gave a clipped answer to a question about the goals of an inaugural address: “Lofty, non-partisan, vision, basic principles.” He and Kennedy hit upon all of these succinctly – the address was only 14 minutes in duration.
The quality of the speech itself is first-rate, observing “not a victory of party, but a celebration of freedom” during “the maximum hour of danger” in the Cold War. Kennedy’s inspiring call to action to his fellow citizens “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” is indeed one of the most memorable uttered by any president in any speech, let alone Inaugural Addresses, enhanced by its preservation on film that has been watched by generations since.
While not doing so in the body of his speech, Kennedy reinforced the concept of political comity and goodwill that is usually a theme of the sacrament of Inauguration Day. Just prior to taking the rostrum for his address and for all the world to see on television, he warmly greeted and shook hands with outgoing vice president Richard Nixon, whom Kennedy narrowly bested in the 1960 general election. Nixon, for his part, emphasized the theme when, during his first Inaugural Address eight years later, he invited all who were watching and listening “to share with me today the majesty of the moment. In the orderly transfer of power, we celebrate the unity that keeps us free.”
The recently departed Jimmy Carter established the contemporary tradition of newly-sworn presidents graciously recognizing and thanking their immediate predecessors for their service in office when he thanked Gerald Ford for his stewardship in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal. Joe Biden eschewed that nicety in 2021 for reasons related to the events of January 6 of that year and because Trump declined to attend the Inauguration.
Trump repaid the snub yesterday in an address remarkable in that it sounded more like a stump speech than an Inaugural Address with many of the people he deemed responsible for American decline just a few feet away. The address reinforced the fact that Trump is incapable of playing any part but his own – though his phrases “the impossible is what we do best” and “ambition is the lifeblood of a great nation” may have staying power.
Befitting his background as a film star, it was most appropriate that Ronald Reagan was the first president to deliver an Inaugural Address from the West Portico of the Capitol, which he did on January 20, 1981. While Reagan delivered some of the great lines that would become his trademark (“We are a nation that has a government – not the other way around.”), the signature of his first inaugural was the setting itself.
The vista of the National Mall made for a striking image of the nation looking westward, and Reagan wrapped up his speech by invoking the stirring symbolism of the monuments that he could see before him, which was of course amplified by the carefully-produced images of the monuments and Arlington National Cemetery beyond for maximum effect on the television viewing audience.
Aside from Trump’s second and Reagan’s Second Inaugural, which were moved to the Capitol Rotunda due to ambient temperatures in the single digits and a fierce wind chill, every subsequent inauguration has taken place at the West Portico. The patriotic symbolism has become synonymous with Inauguration Day.
But for all of the pageantry and eloquence of even the best Inaugural Addresses, Lincoln’s second, delivered on a rainy March 4, 1865, may be the gold standard. As a writer, no president is Lincoln’s equal.
Lincoln’s first Inaugural Address on its own contains phrases that have been etched into the American story: “to speak to the better angels of our nature”; “mystic chords of memory”; “the chorus of the Union”, just to name a few.
Given the circumstances of potential civil war, it is constructed and written almost like a legal brief that outlines Lincoln’s views about the oath of office and the constitutional responsibilities of the chief executive in preserving the Union. But, again owing to the historic circumstances and Lincoln’s particular gifts as a writer and thinker, there had never been, never has, and likely never will be anything like his second.
Remarkably – and due to security considerations that have long been unthinkable – Lincoln delivered his speech beneath the symbolism of a Capitol Dome under renovation and surrounded by John Wilkes Booth and his gang of conspirators. What they all heard was not so much an inaugural address as devotional poetry.
It was sparse – 700 words that are carved into one of the walls of the Lincoln Memorial that modern presidents can see as they deliver their Inaugural Addresses.
The address was the culmination of Lincoln’s deep philosophical and theological thinking about slavery and the reasons for why the Civil War dragged on – a polished “Meditation on the Divine Will” that he had long been working out in letters and slips of paper that he would store in his well-known hat.
“None of America’s respected religious leaders mustered the theological power so economically expressed in Lincoln’s Second Inaugural,” wrote historian Mark Noll. “None penetrated as deeply into the nature of providence.”
Lincoln concluded with words that may best capture not only the condition of the Union at the Civil War’s end, but the tone of each Inauguration Day following the bitter political fight of an election, the hope – with a divine appeal – that every president expresses at the dawn of a new administration in order to attempt to set the tone and send a signal to the republic and the entire world for the four years ahead:
“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 we may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”
In the absence of today’s massive parades and glamourous balls, Lincoln hosted a public reception at the White House, shaking the hands of thousands of citizens. One of those was the former slave and great orator in his own right, Frederick Douglass. Towering above the throng, Lincoln spotted him and beckoned a reluctant Douglass.
“No, no, you must stop a little, Douglass,” Lincoln insisted, “there is no man in the country whose opinion I value more than yours.”
“Mr. Lincoln,” Douglass replied, “that was a sacred effort.”
There was nobody like Lincoln and no president is fairly held to his standard. But the “custom as old as the Government” is indeed the feature presentation of an American sacrament, and each president has striven in his own way to give the same sacred effort.
While the setting has changed throughout the history of the republic, the Inaugural Address has remained an expression of the hope, idealism, and promise of America.
Long may it endure.