1789 The United States Constitution went into effect as the first Congress to convene under it met in New York City.
1793 George Washington inaugurated as President. His inaugural address:
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.
1797 John Adams inaugurated as President. His inaugural address:
When it was first perceived, in early times, that no middle course
for America remained between unlimited submission to a foreign
legislature and a total independence of its claims, men of reflection
were less apprehensive of danger from the formidable power of fleets and
armies they must determine to resist than from those contests and
dissensions which would certainly arise concerning the forms of
government to be instituted over the whole and over the parts of this
extensive country. Relying, however, on the purity of their intentions,
the justice of their cause, and the integrity and intelligence of the
people, under an overruling Providence which had so signally protected
this country from the first, the representatives of this nation, then
consisting of little more than half its present number, not only broke
to pieces the chains which were forging and the rod of iron that was
lifted up, but frankly cut asunder the ties which had bound them, and
launched into an ocean of uncertainty.
The zeal and ardor of the people during the Revolutionary war,
supplying the place of government, commanded a degree of order
sufficient at least for the temporary preservation of society. The
Confederation which was early felt to be necessary was prepared from the
models of the Batavian and Helvetic confederacies, the only examples
which remain with any detail and precision in history, and certainly the
only ones which the people at large had ever considered. But reflecting
on the striking difference in so many particulars between this country
and those where a courier may go from the seat of government to the
frontier in a single day, it was then certainly foreseen by some who
assisted in Congress at the formation of it that it could not be
durable.
Negligence of its regulations, inattention to its recommendations, if
not disobedience to its authority, not only in individuals but in
States, soon appeared with their melancholy consequences--universal
languor, jealousies and rivalries of States, decline of navigation and
commerce, discouragement of necessary manufactures, universal fall in
the value of lands and their produce, contempt of public and private
faith, loss of consideration and credit with foreign nations, and at
length in discontents, animosities, combinations, partial conventions,
and insurrection, threatening some great national calamity.
In this dangerous crisis the people of America were not abandoned by
their usual good sense, presence of mind, resolution, or integrity.
Measures were pursued to concert a plan to form a more perfect union,
establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common
defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of
liberty. The public disquisitions, discussions, and deliberations issued
in the present happy Constitution of Government.
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. In its general principles and great outlines it
was conformable to such a system of government as I had ever most
esteemed, and in some States, my own native State in particular, had
contributed to establish. Claiming a right of suffrage, in common with
my fellow-citizens, in the adoption or rejection of a constitution which
was to rule me and my posterity, as well as them and theirs, I did not
hesitate to express my approbation of it on all occasions, in public and
in private. It was not then, nor has been since, any objection to it in
my mind that the Executive and Senate were not more permanent. Nor have
I ever entertained a thought of promoting any alteration in it but such
as the people themselves, in the course of their experience, should see
and feel to be necessary or expedient, and by their representatives in
Congress and the State legislatures, according to the Constitution
itself, adopt and ordain.
Returning to the bosom of my country after a painful separation from
it for ten years, I had the honor to be elected to a station under the
new order of things, and I have repeatedly laid myself under the most
serious obligations to support the Constitution. The operation of it has
equaled the most sanguine expectations of its friends, and from an
habitual attention to it, satisfaction in its administration, and
delight in its effects upon the peace, order, prosperity, and happiness
of the nation I have acquired an habitual attachment to it and
veneration for it.
What other form of government, indeed, can so well deserve our esteem and love?
There may be little solidity in an ancient idea that congregations of
men into cities and nations are the most pleasing objects in the sight
of superior intelligences, but this is very certain, that to a
benevolent human mind there can be no spectacle presented by any nation
more pleasing, more noble, majestic, or august, than an assembly like
that which has so often been seen in this and the other Chamber of
Congress, of a Government in which the Executive authority, as well as
that of all the branches of the Legislature, are exercised by citizens
selected at regular periods by their neighbors to make and execute laws
for the general good. Can anything essential, anything more than mere
ornament and decoration, be added to this by robes and diamonds? Can
authority be more amiable and respectable when it descends from
accidents or institutions established in remote antiquity than when it
springs fresh from the hearts and judgments of an honest and enlightened
people? For it is the people only that are represented. It is their
power and majesty that is reflected, and only for their good, in every
legitimate government, under whatever form it may appear. The existence
of such a government as ours for any length of time is a full proof of a
general dissemination of knowledge and virtue throughout the whole body
of the people. And what object or consideration more pleasing than this
can be presented to the human mind? If national pride is ever
justifiable or excusable it is when it springs, not from power or
riches, grandeur or glory, but from conviction of national innocence,
information, and benevolence.
In the midst of these pleasing ideas we should be unfaithful to
ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if
anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free,
fair, virtuous, and independent elections. If an election is to be
determined by a majority of a single vote, and that can be procured by a
party through artifice or corruption, the Government may be the choice
of a party for its own ends, not of the nation for the national good. If
that solitary suffrage can be obtained by foreign nations by flattery
or menaces, by fraud or violence, by terror, intrigue, or venality, the
Government may not be the choice of the American people, but of foreign
nations. It may be foreign nations who govern us, and not we, the
people, who govern ourselves; and candid men will acknowledge that in
such cases choice would have little advantage to boast of over lot or
chance.
Such is the amiable and interesting system of government (and such
are some of the abuses to which it may be exposed) which the people of
America have exhibited to the admiration and anxiety of the wise and
virtuous of all nations for eight years under the administration of a
citizen who, by a long course of great actions, regulated by prudence,
justice, temperance, and fortitude, conducting a people inspired with
the same virtues and animated with the same ardent patriotism and love
of liberty to independence and peace, to increasing wealth and
unexampled prosperity, has merited the gratitude of his fellow-citizens,
commanded the highest praises of foreign nations, and secured immortal
glory with posterity.
In that retirement which is his voluntary choice may he long live to
enjoy the delicious recollection of his services, the gratitude of
mankind, the happy fruits of them to himself and the world, which are
daily increasing, and that splendid prospect of the future fortunes of
this country which is opening from year to year. His name may be still a
rampart, and the knowledge that he lives a bulwark, against all open or
secret enemies of his country's peace. This example has been
recommended to the imitation of his successors by both Houses of
Congress and by the voice of the legislatures and the people throughout
the nation.
On this subject it might become me better to be silent or to speak
with diffidence; but as something may be expected, the occasion, I hope,
will be admitted as an apology if I venture to say that if a
preference, upon principle, of a free republican government, formed upon
long and serious reflection, after a diligent and impartial inquiry
after truth; if an attachment to the Constitution of the United States,
and a conscientious determination to support it until it shall be
altered by the judgments and wishes of the people, expressed in the mode
prescribed in it; if a respectful attention to the constitutions of the
individual States and a constant caution and delicacy toward the State
governments; if an equal and impartial regard to the rights, interest,
honor, and happiness of all the States in the Union, without preference
or regard to a northern or southern, an eastern or western, position,
their various political opinions on unessential points or their personal
attachments; if a love of virtuous men of all parties and
denominations; if a love of science and letters and a wish to patronize
every rational effort to encourage schools, colleges, universities,
academies, and every institution for propagating knowledge, virtue, and
religion among all classes of the people, not only for their benign
influence on the happiness of life in all its stages and classes, and of
society in all its forms, but as the only means of preserving our
Constitution from its natural enemies, the spirit of sophistry, the
spirit of party, the spirit of intrigue, the profligacy of corruption,
and the pestilence of foreign influence, which is the angel of
destruction to elective governments; if a love of equal laws, of
justice, and humanity in the interior administration; if an inclination
to improve agriculture, commerce, and manufacturers for necessity,
convenience, and defense; if a spirit of equity and humanity toward the
aboriginal nations of America, and a disposition to meliorate their
condition by inclining them to be more friendly to us, and our citizens
to be more friendly to them; if an inflexible determination to maintain
peace and inviolable faith with all nations, and that system of
neutrality and impartiality among the belligerent powers of Europe which
has been adopted by this Government and so solemnly sanctioned by both
Houses of Congress and applauded by the legislatures of the States and
the public opinion, until it shall be otherwise ordained by Congress; if
a personal esteem for the French nation, formed in a residence of seven
years chiefly among them, and a sincere desire to preserve the
friendship which has been so much for the honor and interest of both
nations; if, while the conscious honor and integrity of the people of
America and the internal sentiment of their own power and energies must
be preserved, an earnest endeavor to investigate every just cause and
remove every colorable pretense of complaint; if an intention to pursue
by amicable negotiation a reparation for the injuries that have been
committed on the commerce of our fellow-citizens by whatever nation, and
if success can not be obtained, to lay the facts before the
Legislature, that they may consider what further measures the honor and
interest of the Government and its constituents demand; if a resolution
to do justice as far as may depend upon me, at all times and to all
nations, and maintain peace, friendship, and benevolence with all the
world; if an unshaken confidence in the honor, spirit, and resources of
the American people, on which I have so often hazarded my all and never
been deceived; if elevated ideas of the high destinies of this country
and of my own duties toward it, founded on a knowledge of the moral
principles and intellectual improvements of the people deeply engraven
on my mind in early life, and not obscured but exalted by experience and
age; and, with humble reverence, I feel it to be my duty to add, if a
veneration for the religion of a people who profess and call themselves
Christians, and a fixed resolution to consider a decent respect for
Christianity among the best recommendations for the public service, can
enable me in any degree to comply with your wishes, it shall be my
strenuous endeavor that this sagacious injunction of the two Houses
shall not be without effect.
With this great example before me, with the sense and spirit, the
faith and honor, the duty and interest, of the same American people
pledged to support the Constitution of the United States, I entertain no
doubt of its continuance in all its energy, and my mind is prepared
without hesitation to lay myself under the most solemn obligations to
support it to the utmost of my power.
And may that Being who is supreme over all, the Patron of Order, the
Fountain of Justice, and the Protector in all ages of the world of
virtuous liberty, continue His blessing upon this nation and its
Government and give it all possible success and duration consistent with
the ends of His providence.
1801 Thomas Jefferson first president inaugurated in Washington D. C.
Friends and Fellow-Citizens:
Called upon to undertake the duties of the first executive office of
our country, I avail myself of the presence of that portion of my
fellow-citizens which is here assembled to express my grateful thanks
for the favor with which they have been pleased to look toward me, to
declare a sincere consciousness that the task is above my talents, and
that I approach it with those anxious and awful presentiments which the
greatness of the charge and the weakness of my powers so justly inspire.
A rising nation, spread over a wide and fruitful land, traversing all
the seas with the rich productions of their industry, engaged in
commerce with nations who feel power and forget right, advancing rapidly
to destinies beyond the reach of mortal eye--when I contemplate these
transcendent objects, and see the honor, the happiness, and the hopes of
this beloved country committed to the issue, and the auspices of this
day, I shrink from the contemplation, and humble myself before the
magnitude of the undertaking. Utterly, indeed, should I despair did not
the presence of many whom I here see remind me that in the other high
authorities provided by our Constitution I shall find resources of
wisdom, of virtue, and of zeal on which to rely under all difficulties.
To you, then, gentlemen, who are charged with the sovereign functions of
legislation, and to those associated with you, I look with
encouragement for that guidance and support which may enable us to steer
with safety the vessel in which we are all embarked amidst the
conflicting elements of a troubled world.
During the contest of opinion through which we have passed the
animation of discussions and of exertions has sometimes worn an aspect
which might impose on strangers unused to think freely and to speak and
to write what they think; but this being now decided by the voice of the
nation, announced according to the rules of the Constitution, all will,
of course, arrange themselves under the will of the law, and unite in
common efforts for the common good. All, too, will bear in mind this
sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases
to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the
minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and
to violate would be oppression. Let us, then, fellow-citizens, unite
with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that
harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but
dreary things. And let us reflect that, having banished from our land
that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and
suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political
intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody
persecutions. During the throes and convulsions of the ancient world,
during the agonizing spasms of infuriated man, seeking through blood and
slaughter his long- lost liberty, it was not wonderful that the
agitation of the billows should reach even this distant and peaceful
shore; that this should be more felt and feared by some and less by
others, and should divide opinions as to measures of safety. But every
difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called
by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.
If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to
change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of
the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is
left free to combat it. I know, indeed, that some honest men fear that a
republican government can not be strong, that this Government is not
strong enough; but would the honest patriot, in the full tide of
successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us
free and firm on the theoretic and visionary fear that this Government,
the world's best hope, may by possibility want energy to preserve
itself? I trust not. I believe this, on the contrary, the strongest
Government on earth. I believe it the only one where every man, at the
call of the law, would fly to the standard of the law, and would meet
invasions of the public order as his own personal concern. Sometimes it
is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can
he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found
angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this
question.
Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and
Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative
government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the
exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to
endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with
room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth
generation; entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of
our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and
confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from
our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign religion,
professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them
inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man;
acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its
dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and
his greater happiness hereafter--with all these blessings, what more is
necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one thing
more, fellow-citizens--a wise and frugal Government, which shall
restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free
to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall
not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the
sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our
felicities.
About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which
comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is proper you should
understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government, and
consequently those which ought to shape its Administration. I will
compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the
general principle, but not all its limitations. Equal and exact justice
to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political;
peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling
alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their
rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns
and the surest bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies; the
preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional
vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; a
jealous care of the right of election by the people--a mild and safe
corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where
peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute acquiescence in the
decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which
is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of
despotism; a well disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and
for the first moments of war, till regulars may relieve them; the
supremacy of the civil over the military authority; economy in the
public expense, that labor may be lightly burthened; the honest payment
of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith; encouragement
of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid; the diffusion of
information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public
reason; freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person
under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries
impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation
which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of
revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our
heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed
of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by
which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from
them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps
and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety.
I repair, then, fellow-citizens, to the post you have assigned me.
With experience enough in subordinate offices to have seen the
difficulties of this the greatest of all, I have learnt to expect that
it will rarely fall to the lot of imperfect man to retire from this
station with the reputation and the favor which bring him into it.
Without pretensions to that high confidence you reposed in our first and
greatest revolutionary character, whose preeminent services had
entitled him to the first place in his country's love and destined for
him the fairest page in the volume of faithful history, I ask so much
confidence only as may give firmness and effect to the legal
administration of your affairs. I shall often go wrong through defect of
judgment. When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose
positions will not command a view of the whole ground. I ask your
indulgence for my own errors, which will never be intentional, and your
support against the errors of others, who may condemn what they would
not if seen in all its parts. The approbation implied by your suffrage
is a great consolation to me for the past, and my future solicitude will
be to retain the good opinion of those who have bestowed it in advance,
to conciliate that of others by doing them all the good in my power,
and to be instrumental to the happiness and freedom of all.
Relying, then, on the patronage of your good will, I advance with
obedience to the work, ready to retire from it whenever you become
sensible how much better choice it is in your power to make. And may
that Infinite Power which rules the destinies of the universe lead our
councils to what is best, and give them a favorable issue for your peace
and prosperity.
1805 Jefferson's second inaugural.
Proceeding, fellow-citizens, to that qualification which the
Constitution requires before my entrance on the charge again conferred
on me, it is my duty to express the deep sense I entertain of this new
proof of confidence from my fellow-citizens at large, and the zeal with
which it inspires me so to conduct myself as may best satisfy their just
expectations.
On taking this station on a former occasion I declared the principles
on which I believed it my duty to administer the affairs of our
Commonwealth. MY conscience tells me I have on every occasion acted up
to that declaration according to its obvious import and to the
understanding of every candid mind.
In the transaction of your foreign affairs we have endeavored to
cultivate the friendship of all nations, and especially of those with
which we have the most important relations. We have done them justice on
all occasions, favored where favor was lawful, and cherished mutual
interests and intercourse on fair and equal terms. We are firmly
convinced, and we act on that conviction, that with nations as with
individuals our interests soundly calculated will ever be found
inseparable from our moral duties, and history bears witness to the fact
that a just nation is trusted on its word when recourse is had to
armaments and wars to bridle others.
At home, fellow-citizens, you best know whether we have done well or
ill. The suppression of unnecessary offices, of useless establishments
and expenses, enabled us to discontinue our internal taxes. These,
covering our land with officers and opening our doors to their
intrusions, had already begun that process of domiciliary vexation which
once entered is scarcely to be restrained from reaching successively
every article of property and produce. If among these taxes some minor
ones fell which had not been inconvenient, it was because their amount
would not have paid the officers who collected them, and because, if
they had any merit, the State authorities might adopt them instead of
others less approved.
The remaining revenue on the consumption of foreign articles is paid
chiefly by those who can afford to add foreign luxuries to domestic
comforts, being collected on our seaboard and frontiers only, and
incorporated with the transactions of our mercantile citizens, it may be
the pleasure and the pride of an American to ask, What farmer, what
mechanic, what laborer ever sees a taxgatherer of the United States?
These contributions enable us to support the current expenses of the
Government, to fulfill contracts with foreign nations, to extinguish the
native right of soil within our limits, to extend those limits, and to
apply such a surplus to our public debts as places at a short day their
final redemption, and that redemption once effected the revenue thereby
liberated may, by a just repartition of it among the States and a
corresponding amendment of the Constitution, be applied in time of peace
to rivers, canals, roads, arts, manufactures, education, and other
great objects within each State. In time of war, if injustice by
ourselves or others must sometimes produce war, increased as the same
revenue will be by increased population and consumption, and aided by
other resources reserved for that crisis, it may meet within the year
all the expenses of the year without encroaching on the rights of future
generations by burthening them with the debts of the past. War will
then be but a suspension of useful works, and a return to a state of
peace, a return to the progress of improvement.
I have said, fellow-citizens, that the income reserved had enabled us
to extend our limits, but that extension may possibly pay for itself
before we are called on, and in the meantime may keep down the accruing
interest; in all events, it will replace the advances we shall have
made. I know that the acquisition of Louisiana had been disapproved by
some from a candid apprehension that the enlargement of our territory
would endanger its union. But who can limit the extent to which the
federative principle may operate effectively? The larger our association
the less will it be shaken by local passions; and in any view is it not
better that the opposite bank of the Mississippi should be settled by
our own brethren and children than by strangers of another family? With
which should we be most likely to live in harmony and friendly
intercourse?
In matters of religion I have considered that its free exercise is
placed by the Constitution independent of the powers of the General
Government. I have therefore undertaken on no occasion to prescribe the
religious exercises suited to it, but have left them, as the
Constitution found them, under the direction and discipline of the
church or state authorities acknowledged by the several religious
societies.
The aboriginal inhabitants of these countries I have regarded with
the commiseration their history inspires. Endowed with the faculties and
the rights of men, breathing an ardent love of liberty and
independence, and occupying a country which left them no desire but to
be undisturbed, the stream of overflowing population from other regions
directed itself on these shores; without power to divert or habits to
contend against it, they have been overwhelmed by the current or driven
before it; now reduced within limits too narrow for the hunter's state,
humanity enjoins us to teach them agriculture and the domestic arts; to
encourage them to that industry which alone can enable them to maintain
their place in existence and to prepare them in time for that state of
society which to bodily comforts adds the improvement of the mind and
morals. We have therefore liberally furnished them with the implements
of husbandry and household use; we have placed among them instructors in
the arts of first necessity, and they are covered with the aegis of the
law against aggressors from among ourselves.
But the endeavors to enlighten them on the fate which awaits their
present course of life, to induce them to exercise their reason, follow
its dictates, and change their pursuits with the change of circumstances
have powerful obstacles to encounter; they are combated by the habits
of their bodies, prejudices of their minds, ignorance, pride, and the
influence of interested and crafty individuals among them who feel
themselves something in the present order of things and fear to become
nothing in any other. These persons inculcate a sanctimonious reverence
for the customs of their ancestors; that whatsoever they did must be
done through all time; that reason is a false guide, and to advance
under its counsel in their physical, moral, or political condition is
perilous innovation; that their duty is to remain as their Creator made
them, ignorance being safety and knowledge full of danger; in short, my
friends, among them also is seen the action and counteraction of good
sense and of bigotry; they too have their antiphilosophists who find an
interest in keeping things in their present state, who dread
reformation, and exert all their faculties to maintain the ascendancy of
habit over the duty of improving our reason and obeying its mandates.
In giving these outlines I do not mean, fellow-citizens, to arrogate
to myself the merit of the measures. That is due, in the first place, to
the reflecting character of our citizens at large, who, by the weight
of public opinion, influence and strengthen the public measures. It is
due to the sound discretion with which they select from among themselves
those to whom they confide the legislative duties. It is due to the
zeal and wisdom of the characters thus selected, who lay the foundations
of public happiness in wholesome laws, the execution of which alone
remains for others, and it is due to the able and faithful auxiliaries,
whose patriotism has associated them with me in the executive functions.
During this course of administration, and in order to disturb it, the
artillery of the press has been leveled against us, charged with
whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses of an
institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be
regretted, inasmuch as they tend to lessen its usefulness and to sap its
safety. They might, indeed, have been corrected by the wholesome
punishments reserved to and provided by the laws of the several States
against falsehood and defamation, but public duties more urgent press on
the time of public servants, and the offenders have therefore been left
to find their punishment in the public indignation.
Nor was it uninteresting to the world that an experiment should be
fairly and fully made, whether freedom of discussion, unaided by power,
is not sufficient for the propagation and protection of truth--whether a
government conducting itself in the true spirit of its constitution,
with zeal and purity, and doing no act which it would be unwilling the
whole world should witness, can be written down by falsehood and
defamation. The experiment has been tried; you have witnessed the scene;
our fellow-citizens looked on, cool and collected; they saw the latent
source from which these outrages proceeded; they gathered around their
public functionaries, and when the Constitution called them to the
decision by suffrage, they pronounced their verdict, honorable to those
who had served them and consolatory to the friend of man who believes
that he may be trusted with the control of his own affairs.
No inference is here intended that the laws provided by the States
against false and defamatory publications should not be enforced; he who
has time renders a service to public morals and public tranquillity in
reforming these abuses by the salutary coercions of the law; but the
experiment is noted to prove that, since truth and reason have
maintained their ground against false opinions in league with false
facts, the press, confined to truth, needs no other legal restraint; the
public judgment will correct false reasoning and opinions on a full
hearing of all parties; and no other definite line can be drawn between
the inestimable liberty of the press and its demoralizing
licentiousness. If there be still improprieties which this rule would
not restrain, its supplement must be sought in the censorship of public
opinion.
Contemplating the union of sentiment now manifested so generally as
auguring harmony and happiness to our future course, I offer to our
country sincere congratulations. With those, too, not yet rallied to the
same point the disposition to do so is gaining strength; facts are
piercing through the veil drawn over them, and our doubting brethren
will at length see that the mass of their fellow-citizens with whom they
can not yet resolve to act as to principles and measures, think as they
think and desire what they desire; that our wish as well as theirs is
that the public efforts may be directed honestly to the public good,
that peace be cultivated, civil and religious liberty unassailed, law
and order preserved, equality of rights maintained, and that state of
property, equal or unequal, which results to every man from his own
industry or that of his father's. When satisfied of these views it is
not in human nature that they should not approve and support them. In
the meantime let us cherish them with patient affection, let us do them
justice, and more than justice, in all competitions of interest; and we
need not doubt that truth, reason, and their own interests will at
length prevail, will gather them into the fold of their country, and
will complete that entire union of opinion which gives to a nation the
blessing of harmony and the benefit of all its strength.
I shall now enter on the duties to which my fellow-citizens have
again called me, and shall proceed in the spirit of those principles
which they have approved. I fear not that any motives of interest may
lead me astray; I am sensible of no passion which could seduce me
knowingly from the path of justice, but the weaknesses of human nature
and the limits of my own understanding will produce errors of judgment
sometimes injurious to your interests. I shall need, therefore, all the
indulgence which I have heretofore experienced from my constituents; the
want of it will certainly not lessen with increasing years. I shall
need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our
fathers, as Israel of old, from their native land and planted them in a
country flowing with all the necessaries and comforts of life; who has
covered our infancy with His providence and our riper years with His
wisdom and power, and to whose goodness I ask you to join in
supplications with me that He will so enlighten the minds of your
servants, guide their councils, and prosper their measures that
whatsoever they do shall result in your good, and shall secure to you
the peace, friendship, and approbation of all nations.
1809 James Madison inaugarated as President.
Unwilling to depart from examples of the most revered authority, I
avail myself of the occasion now presented to express the profound
impression made on me by the call of my country to the station to the
duties of which I am about to pledge myself by the most solemn of
sanctions. So distinguished a mark of confidence, proceeding from the
deliberate and tranquil suffrage of a free and virtuous nation, would
under any circumstances have commanded my gratitude and devotion, as
well as filled me with an awful sense of the trust to be assumed. Under
the various circumstances which give peculiar solemnity to the existing
period, I feel that both the honor and the responsibility allotted to me
are inexpressibly enhanced.
The present situation of the world is indeed without a parallel and
that of our own country full of difficulties. The pressure of these,
too, is the more severely felt because they have fallen upon us at a
moment when the national prosperity being at a height not before
attained, the contrast resulting from the change has been rendered the
more striking. Under the benign influence of our republican
institutions, and the maintenance of peace with all nations whilst so
many of them were engaged in bloody and wasteful wars, the fruits of a
just policy were enjoyed in an unrivaled growth of our faculties and
resources. Proofs of this were seen in the improvements of agriculture,
in the successful enterprises of commerce, in the progress of
manufacturers and useful arts, in the increase of the public revenue and
the use made of it in reducing the public debt, and in the valuable
works and establishments everywhere multiplying over the face of our
land.
It is a precious reflection that the transition from this prosperous
condition of our country to the scene which has for some time been
distressing us is not chargeable on any unwarrantable views, nor, as I
trust, on any involuntary errors in the public councils. Indulging no
passions which trespass on the rights or the repose of other nations, it
has been the true glory of the United States to cultivate peace by
observing justice, and to entitle themselves to the respect of the
nations at war by fulfilling their neutral obligations with the most
scrupulous impartiality. If there be candor in the world, the truth of
these assertions will not be questioned; posterity at least will do
justice to them.
This unexceptionable course could not avail against the injustice and
violence of the belligerent powers. In their rage against each other,
or impelled by more direct motives, principles of retaliation have been
introduced equally contrary to universal reason and acknowledged law.
How long their arbitrary edicts will be continued in spite of the
demonstrations that not even a pretext for them has been given by the
United States, and of the fair and liberal attempt to induce a
revocation of them, can not be anticipated. Assuring myself that under
every vicissitude the determined spirit and united councils of the
nation will be safeguards to its honor and its essential interests, I
repair to the post assigned me with no other discouragement than what
springs from my own inadequacy to its high duties. If I do not sink
under the weight of this deep conviction it is because I find some
support in a consciousness of the purposes and a confidence in the
principles which I bring with me into this arduous service.
To cherish peace and friendly intercourse with all nations having
correspondent dispositions; to maintain sincere neutrality toward
belligerent nations; to prefer in all cases amicable discussion and
reasonable accommodation of differences to a decision of them by an
appeal to arms; to exclude foreign intrigues and foreign partialities,
so degrading to all countries and so baneful to free ones; to foster a
spirit of independence too just to invade the rights of others, too
proud to surrender our own, too liberal to indulge unworthy prejudices
ourselves and too elevated not to look down upon them in others; to hold
the union of the States as the basis of their peace and happiness; to
support the Constitution, which is the cement of the Union, as well in
its limitations as in its authorities; to respect the rights and
authorities reserved to the States and to the people as equally
incorporated with and essential to the success of the general system; to
avoid the slightest interference with the right of conscience or the
functions of religion, so wisely exempted from civil jurisdiction; to
preserve in their full energy the other salutary provisions in behalf of
private and personal rights, and of the freedom of the press; to
observe economy in public expenditures; to liberate the public resources
by an honorable discharge of the public debts; to keep within the
requisite limits a standing military force, always remembering that an
armed and trained militia is the firmest bulwark of republics—that
without standing armies their liberty can never be in danger, nor with
large ones safe; to promote by authorized means improvements friendly to
agriculture, to manufactures, and to external as well as internal
commerce; to favor in like manner the advancement of science and the
diffusion of information as the best aliment to true liberty; to carry
on the benevolent plans which have been so meritoriously applied to the
conversion of our aboriginal neighbors from the degradation and
wretchedness of savage life to a participation of the improvements of
which the human mind and manners are susceptible in a civilized state—as
far as sentiments and intentions such as these can aid the fulfillment
of my duty, they will be a resource which can not fail me.
It is my good fortune, moreover, to have the path in which I am to
tread lighted by examples of illustrious services successfully rendered
in the most trying difficulties by those who have marched before me. Of
those of my immediate predecessor it might least become me here to
speak. I may, however, be pardoned for not suppressing the sympathy with
which my heart is full in the rich reward he enjoys in the benedictions
of a beloved country, gratefully bestowed or exalted talents zealously
devoted through a long career to the advancement of its highest interest
and happiness.
But the source to which I look or the aids which alone can supply my
deficiencies is in the well-tried intelligence and virtue of my
fellow-citizens, and in the counsels of those representing them in the
other departments associated in the care of the national interests. In
these my confidence will under every difficulty be best placed, next to
that which we have all been encouraged to feel in the guardianship and
guidance of that Almighty Being whose power regulates the destiny of
nations, whose blessings have been so conspicuously dispensed to this
rising Republic, and to whom we are bound to address our devout
gratitude for the past, as well as our fervent supplications and best
hopes for the future.
1813 James Madison's second inaugural.
About to add the solemnity of an oath to the obligations imposed by a
second call to the station in which my country heretofore placed me, I
find in the presence of this respectable assembly an opportunity of
publicly repeating my profound sense of so distinguished a confidence
and of the responsibility united with it. The impressions on me are
strengthened by such an evidence that my faithful endeavors to discharge
my arduous duties have been favorably estimated, and by a consideration
of the momentous period at which the trust has been renewed. From the
weight and magnitude now belonging to it I should be compelled to shrink
if I had less reliance on the support of an enlightened and generous
people, and felt less deeply a conviction that the war with a powerful
nation, which forms so prominent a feature in our situation, is stamped
with that justice which invites the smiles of Heaven on the means of
conducting it to a successful termination.
May we not cherish this sentiment without presumption when we reflect on the characters by which this war is distinguished?
It was not declared on the part of the United States until it had
been long made on them, in reality though not in name; until arguments
and postulations had been exhausted; until a positive declaration had
been received that the wrongs provoking it would not be discontinued;
nor until this last appeal could no longer be delayed without breaking
down the spirit of the nation, destroying all confidence in itself and
in its political institutions, and either perpetuating a state of
disgraceful suffering or regaining by more costly sacrifices and more
severe struggles our lost rank and respect among independent powers.
On the issue of the war are staked our national sovereignty on the
high seas and the security of an important class of citizens whose
occupations give the proper value to those of every other class. Not to
contend for such a stake is to surrender our equality with other powers
on the element common to all and to violate the sacred title which every
member of the society has to its protection. I need not call into view
the unlawfulness of the practice by which our mariners are forced at the
will of every cruising officer from their own vessels into foreign
ones, nor paint the outrages inseparable from it. The proofs are in the
records of each successive Administration of our Government, and the
cruel sufferings of that portion of the American people have found their
way to every bosom not dead to the sympathies of human nature.
As the war was just in its origin and necessary and noble in its
objects, we can reflect with a proud satisfaction that in carrying it on
no principle of justice or honor, no usage of civilized nations, no
precept of courtesy or humanity, have been infringed. The war has been
waged on our part with scrupulous regard to all these obligations, and
in a spirit of liberality which was never surpassed.
How little has been the effect of this example on the conduct of the enemy!
They have retained as prisoners of war citizens of the United States not liable to be so considered under the usages of war.
They have refused to consider as prisoners of war, and threatened to
punish as traitors and deserters, persons emigrating without restraint
to the United States, incorporated by naturalization into our political
family, and fighting under the authority of their adopted country in
open and honorable war for the maintenance of its rights and safety.
Such is the avowed purpose of a Government which is in the practice of
naturalizing by thousands citizens of other countries, and not only of
permitting but compelling them to fight its battles against their native
country.
They have not, it is true, taken into their own hands the hatchet and
the knife, devoted to indiscriminate massacre, but they have let loose
the savages armed with these cruel instruments; have allured them into
their service, and carried them to battle by their sides, eager to glut
their savage thirst with the blood of the vanquished and to finish the
work of torture and death on maimed and defenseless captives. And, what
was never before seen, British commanders have extorted victory over the
unconquerable valor of our troops by presenting to the sympathy of
their chief captives awaiting massacre from their savage associates. And
now we find them, in further contempt of the modes of honorable
warfare, supplying the place of a conquering force by attempts to
disorganize our political society, to dismember our confederated
Republic. Happily, like others, these will recoil on the authors; but
they mark the degenerate counsels from which they emanate, and if they
did not belong to a sense of unexampled inconsistencies might excite the
greater wonder as proceeding from a Government which founded the very
war in which it has been so long engaged on a charge against the
disorganizing and insurrectional policy of its adversary.
To render the justice of the war on our part the more conspicuous,
the reluctance to commence it was followed by the earliest and strongest
manifestations of a disposition to arrest its progress. The sword was
scarcely out of the scabbard before the enemy was apprised of the
reasonable terms on which it would be resheathed. Still more precise
advances were repeated, and have been received in a spirit forbidding
every reliance not placed on the military resources of the nation.
These resources are amply sufficient to bring the war to an honorable
issue. Our nation is in number more than half that of the British
Isles. It is composed of a brave, a free, a virtuous, and an intelligent
people. Our country abounds in the necessaries, the arts, and the
comforts of life. A general prosperity is visible in the public
countenance. The means employed by the British cabinet to undermine it
have recoiled on themselves; have given to our national faculties a more
rapid development, and, draining or diverting the precious metals from
British circulation and British vaults, have poured them into those of
the United States. It is a propitious consideration that an unavoidable
war should have found this seasonable facility for the contributions
required to support it. When the public voice called for war, all knew,
and still know, that without them it could not be carried on through the
period which it might last, and the patriotism, the good sense, and the
manly spirit of our fellow-citizens are pledges for the cheerfulness
with which they will bear each his share of the common burden. To render
the war short and its success sure, animated and systematic exertions
alone are necessary, and the success of our arms now may long preserve
our country from the necessity of another resort to them. Already have
the gallant exploits of our naval heroes proved to the world our
inherent capacity to maintain our rights on one element. If the
reputation of our arms has been thrown under clouds on the other,
presaging flashes of heroic enterprise assure us that nothing is wanting
to correspondent triumphs there also but the discipline and habits
which are in daily progress.
1817 James Monroe inaugurated as President.
I should be destitute of feeling if I was not deeply affected by the
strong proof which my fellow-citizens have given me of their confidence
in calling me to the high office whose functions I am about to assume.
As the expression of their good opinion of my conduct in the public
service, I derive from it a gratification which those who are conscious
of having done all that they could to merit it can alone feel. MY
sensibility is increased by a just estimate of the importance of the
trust and of the nature and extent of its duties, with the proper
discharge of which the highest interests of a great and free people are
intimately connected. Conscious of my own deficiency, I cannot enter on
these duties without great anxiety for the result. From a just
responsibility I will never shrink, calculating with confidence that in
my best efforts to promote the public welfare my motives will always be
duly appreciated and my conduct be viewed with that candor and
indulgence which I have experienced in other stations.
In commencing the duties of the chief executive office it has been
the practice of the distinguished men who have gone before me to explain
the principles which would govern them in their respective
Administrations. In following their venerated example my attention is
naturally drawn to the great causes which have contributed in a
principal degree to produce the present happy condition of the United
States. They will best explain the nature of our duties and shed much
light on the policy which ought to be pursued in future.
From the commencement of our Revolution to the present day almost
forty years have elapsed, and from the establishment of this
Constitution twenty-eight. Through this whole term the Government has
been what may emphatically be called self-government. And what has been
the effect? To whatever object we turn our attention, whether it relates
to our foreign or domestic concerns, we find abundant cause to
felicitate ourselves in the excellence of our institutions. During a
period fraught with difficulties and marked by very extraordinary events
the United States have flourished beyond example. Their citizens
individually have been happy and the nation prosperous.
Under this Constitution our commerce has been wisely regulated with
foreign nations and between the States; new States have been admitted
into our Union; our territory has been enlarged by fair and honorable
treaty, and with great advantage to the original States; the States,
respectively protected by the National Government under a mild, parental
system against foreign dangers, and enjoying within their separate
spheres, by a wise partition of power, a just proportion of the
sovereignty, have improved their police, extended their settlements, and
attained a strength and maturity which are the best proofs of wholesome
laws well administered. And if we look to the condition of individuals
what a proud spectacle does it exhibit! On whom has oppression fallen in
any quarter of our Union? Who has been deprived of any right of person
or property? Who restrained from offering his vows in the mode which he
prefers to the Divine Author of his being? It is well known that all
these blessings have been enjoyed in their fullest extent; and I add
with peculiar satisfaction that there has been no example of a capital
punishment being inflicted on anyone for the crime of high treason.
Some who might admit the competency of our Government to these
beneficent duties might doubt it in trials which put to the test its
strength and efficiency as a member of the great community of nations.
Here too experience has afforded us the most satisfactory proof in its
favor. Just as this Constitution was put into action several of the
principal States of Europe had become much agitated and some of them
seriously convulsed. Destructive wars ensued, which have of late only
been terminated. In the course of these conflicts the United States
received great injury from several of the parties. It was their interest
to stand aloof from the contest, to demand justice from the party
committing the injury, and to cultivate by a fair and honorable conduct
the friendship of all. War became at length inevitable, and the result
has shown that our Government is equal to that, the greatest of trials,
under the most unfavorable circumstances. Of the virtue of the people
and of the heroic exploits of the Army, the Navy, and the militia I need
not speak.
Such, then, is the happy Government under which we live—a Government
adequate to every purpose for which the social compact is formed; a
Government elective in all its branches, under which every citizen may
by his merit obtain the highest trust recognized by the Constitution;
which contains within it no cause of discord, none to put at variance
one portion of the community with another; a Government which protects
every citizen in the full enjoyment of his rights, and is able to
protect the nation against injustice from foreign powers.
Other considerations of the highest importance admonish us to cherish
our Union and to cling to the Government which supports it. Fortunate
as we are in our political institutions, we have not been less so in
other circumstances on which our prosperity and happiness essentially
depend. Situated within the temperate zone, and extending through many
degrees of latitude along the Atlantic, the United States enjoy all the
varieties of climate, and every production incident to that portion of
the globe. Penetrating internally to the Great Lakes and beyond the
sources of the great rivers which communicate through our whole
interior, no country was ever happier with respect to its domain.
Blessed, too, with a fertile soil, our produce has always been very
abundant, leaving, even in years the least favorable, a surplus for the
wants of our fellow-men in other countries. Such is our peculiar
felicity that there is not a part of our Union that is not particularly
interested in preserving it. The great agricultural interest of the
nation prospers under its protection. Local interests are not less
fostered by it. Our fellow-citizens of the North engaged in navigation
find great encouragement in being made the favored carriers of the vast
productions of the other portions of the United States, while the
inhabitants of these are amply recompensed, in their turn, by the
nursery for seamen and naval force thus formed and reared up for the
support of our common rights. Our manufactures find a generous
encouragement by the policy which patronizes domestic industry, and the
surplus of our produce a steady and profitable market by local wants in
less-favored parts at home.
Such, then, being the highly favored condition of our country, it is
the interest of every citizen to maintain it. What are the dangers which
menace us? If any exist they ought to be ascertained and guarded
against.
In explaining my sentiments on this subject it may be asked, What
raised us to the present happy state? How did we accomplish the
Revolution? How remedy the defects of the first instrument of our Union,
by infusing into the National Government sufficient power for national
purposes, without impairing the just rights of the States or affecting
those of individuals? How sustain and pass with glory through the late
war? The Government has been in the hands of the people. To the people,
therefore, and to the faithful and able depositaries of their trust is
the credit due. Had the eople of the United States been educated in
different principles had they been less intelligent, less independent,
or less virtuous can it be believed that we should have maintained the
same steady and consistent career or been blessed with the same success?
While, then, the constituent body retains its present sound and
healthful state everything will be safe. They will choose competent and
faithful representatives for every department. It is only when the
people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a
populace, that they are incapable of exercising the sovereignty.
Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and an usurper soon found. The
people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement
and ruin. Let us, then, look to the great cause, and endeavor to
preserve it in full force. Let us by all wise and constitutional
measures promote intelligence among the people as the best means of
preserving our liberties.
Dangers from abroad are not less deserving of attention. Experiencing
the fortune of other nations, the United States may be again involved
in war, and it may in that event be the object of the adverse party to
overset our Government, to break our Union, and demolish us as a nation.
Our distance from Europe and the just, moderate, and pacific policy of
our Government may form some security against these dangers, but they
ought to be anticipated and guarded against. Many of our citizens are
engaged in commerce and navigation, and all of them are in a certain
degree dependent on their prosperous state. Many are engaged in the
fisheries. These interests are exposed to invasion in the wars between
other powers, and we should disregard the faithful admonition of
experience if we did not expect it. We must support our rights or lose
our character, and with it, perhaps, our liberties. A people who fail to
do it can scarcely be said to hold a place among independent nations.
National honor is national property of the highest value. The sentiment
in the mind of every citizen is national strength. It ought therefore to
be cherished.
To secure us against these dangers our coast and inland frontiers
should be fortified, our Army and Navy, regulated upon just principles
as to the force of each, be kept in perfect order, and our militia be
placed on the best practicable footing. To put our extensive coast in
such a state of defense as to secure our cities and interior from
invasion will be attended with expense, but the work when finished will
be permanent, and it is fair to presume that a single campaign of
invasion by a naval force superior to our own, aided by a few thousand
land troops, would expose us to greater expense, without taking into the
estimate the loss of property and distress of our citizens, than would
be sufficient for this great work. Our land and naval forces should be
moderate, but adequate to the necessary purposes—the former to garrison
and preserve our fortifications and to meet the first invasions of a
foreign foe, and, while constituting the elements of a greater force, to
preserve the science as well as all the necessary implements of war in a
state to be brought into activity in the event of war; the latter,
retained within the limits proper in a state of peace, might aid in
maintaining the neutrality of the United States with dignity in the wars
of other powers and in saving the property of their citizens from
spoliation. In time of war, with the enlargement of which the great
naval resources of the country render it susceptible, and which should
be duly fostered in time. of peace, it would contribute essentially,
both as an auxiliary of defense and as a powerful engine of annoyance,
to diminish the calamities of war and to bring the war to a speedy and
honorable
But it ought always to be held prominently in view that the safety of
these States and of everything dear to a free people must depend in an
eminent degree on the militia. Invasions may be made too formidable to
be resisted by any land and naval force which it would comport either
with the principles of our Government or the circumstances of the United
States to maintain. In such cases recourse must be had to the great
body of the people, and in a manner to produce the best effect. It is of
the highest importance, therefore, that they be so organized and
trained as to be prepared for any emergency. The arrangement should be
such as to put at the command of the Government the ardent patriotism
and youthful vigor of the country. If formed on equal and just
principles, it can not be oppressive. It is the crisis which makes the
pressure, and not the laws which provide a remedy for it. This
arrangement should be formed, too, in time of peace, to be the better
prepared for war. With such an organization of such a people the United
States have nothing to dread from foreign invasion. At its approach an
overwhelming force of gallant men might always be put in motion.
Other interests of high importance will claim attention, among which
the improvement of our country by roads and canals, proceeding always
with a constitutional sanction, holds a distinguished place. By thus
facilitating the intercourse between the States we shall add much to the
convenience and comfort of our fellow-citizens, much to the ornament of
the country, and, what is of greater importance, we shall shorten
distances, and, by making each part more accessible to and dependent on
the other, we shall bind the Union more closely together. Nature has
done so much for us by intersecting the country with so many great
rivers, bays, and lakes, approaching from distant points so near to each
other, that the inducement to complete the work seems to be peculiarly
strong. A more interesting spectacle was perhaps never seen than is
exhibited within the limits of the United States—a territory so vast and
advantageously situated, containing objects so grand, so useful, so
happily connected in all their parts!
Our manufacturers will likewise require the systematic and fostering
care of the Government. Possessing as we do all the raw materials, the
fruit of our own soil and industry, we ought not to depend in the degree
we have done on supplies from other countries. While we are thus
dependent the sudden event of war, unsought and unexpected, can not fail
to plunge us into the most serious difficulties It is important, too,
that the capital which nourishes our manufacturers should be domestic,
as its influence in that case instead of exhausting, as it may do in
foreign hands, would be felt advantageously on agriculture and every
other branch of industry Equally important is it to provide at home a
market for our raw materials, as by extending the competition it will
enhance the price and protect the cultivator against the casualties
incident to foreign markets.
With the Indian tribes it is our duty to cultivate friendly relations
and to act with kindness and liberality in all our transactions.
Equally proper is it to persevere in our efforts to extend to them the
advantages of civilization.
The great amount of our revenue and the flourishing state of the
Treasury are a full proof of the competency of the national resources
for any emergency, as they are of the willingness of our fellow-citizens
to bear the burdens which the public necessities require. The vast
amount of vacant lands, the value of which daily augments, forms an
additional resource of great extent and duration. These resources,
besides accomplishing every other necessary purpose, put it completely
in the power of the United States to discharge the national debt at an
early period. Peace is the best time for improvement and preparation of
every kind; it is in peace that our commerce flourishes most, that taxes
are most easily paid, and that the revenue is most productive.
The Executive is charged officially in the Departments under it with
the disbursement of the public money, and is responsible for the
faithful application of it to the purposes for which it is raised. The
Legislature is the watchful guardian over the public purse. It is its
duty to see that the disbursement has been honestly made. To meet the
requisite responsibility every facility should be afforded to the
Executive to enable it to bring the public agents intrusted with the
public money strictly and promptly to account. Nothing should be
presumed against them; but if, with the requisite facilities, the public
money is suffered to lie long and uselessly in their hands, they will
not be the only defaulters, nor will the demoralizing effect be confined
to them. It will evince a relaxation and want of tone in the
Administration which will be felt by the whole community. I shall do all
I can to secure economy and fidelity in this important branch of the
Administration, and I doubt not that the Legislature will perform its
duty with equal zeal. A thorough examination should be regularly made,
and I will promote it.
It is particularly gratifying to me to enter on the discharge of
these duties at a time when the United States are blessed with peace. It
is a state most consistent with their prosperity and happiness. It will
be my sincere desire to preserve it, so far as depends on the
Executive, on just principles with all nations, claiming nothing
unreasonable of any and rendering to each what is due.
Equally gratifying is it to witness the increased harmony of opinion
which pervades our Union. Discord does not belong to our system. Union
is recommended as well by the free and benign principles of our
Government, extending its blessings to every individual, as by the other
eminent advantages attending it. The American people have encountered
together great dangers and sustained severe trials with success. They
constitute one great family with a common interest. Experience has
enlightened us on some questions of essential importance to the country.
The progress has been slow, dictated by a just reflection and a
faithful regard to every interest connected with it. To promote this
harmony in accord with the principles of our republican Government and
in a manner to give them the most complete effect, and to advance in all
other respects the best interests of our Union, will be the object of
my constant and zealous exertions.
Never did a government commence under auspices so favorable, nor ever
was success so complete. If we look to the history of other nations,
ancient or modern, we find no example of a growth so rapid, so gigantic,
of a people so prosperous and happy. In contemplating what we have
still to perform, the heart of every citizen must expand with joy when
he reflects how near our Government has approached to perfection; that
in respect to it we have no essential improvement to make; that the
great object is to preserve it in the essential principles and features
which characterize it, and that is to be done by preserving the virtue
and enlightening the minds of the people; and as a security against
foreign dangers to adopt such arrangements as are indispensable to the
support of our independence, our rights and liberties. If we persevere
in the career in which we have advanced so far and in the path already
traced, we can not fail, under the favor of a gracious Providence, to
attain the high destiny which seems to await us.
In the Administrations of the illustrious men who have preceded me in
this high station, with some of whom I have been connected by the
closest ties from early life, examples are presented which will always
be found highly instructive and useful to their successors. From these I
shall endeavor to derive all the advantages which they may afford. Of
my immediate predecessor, under whom so important a portion of this
great and successful experiment has been made, I shall be pardoned for
earnest wishes that he may long enjoy in his retirement the affections
of a grateful country, the best reward of exalted talents and the most
faithful and meritorious service. Relying on the aid to be derived from
the other departments of the Government, I enter on the trust to which I
have been called by the suffrages of my fellow-citizens with my fervent
prayers to the Almighty that He will be graciously pleased to continue
to us that protection which He has already so conspicuously displayed in
our favor.
1821 James Monroe's second inaugural.
Fellow-Citizens:
I shall not attempt to describe the grateful emotions which the new
and very distinguished proof of the confidence of my fellow-citizens,
evinced by my reelection to this high trust, has excited in my bosom.
The approbation which it announces of my conduct in the preceding term
affords me a consolation which I shall profoundly feel through life. The
general accord with which it has been expressed adds to the great and
never-ceasing obligations which it imposes. To merit the continuance of
this good opinion, and to carry it with me into my retirement as the
solace of advancing years, will be the object of my most zealous and
unceasing efforts.
Having no pretensions to the high and commanding claims of my
predecessors, whose names are so much more conspicuously identified with
our Revolution, and who contributed so preeminently to promote its
success, I consider myself rather as the instrument than the cause of
the union which has prevailed in the late election In surmounting, in
favor of my humble pretensions, the difficulties which so often produce
division in like occurrences, it is obvious that other powerful causes,
indicating the great strength and stability of our Union, have
essentially contributed to draw you together. That these powerful causes
exist, and that they are permanent, is my fixed opinion; that they may
produce a like accord in all questions touching, however remotely, the
liberty, prosperity and happiness of our country will always be the
object of my most fervent prayers to the Supreme Author of All Good.
In a government which is founded by the people, who possess
exclusively the sovereignty, it seems proper that the person who may be
placed by their suffrages in this high trust should declare on
commencing its duties the principles on which he intends to conduct the
Administration. If the person thus elected has served the preceding
term, an opportunity is afforded him to review its principal occurrences
and to give such further explanation respecting them as in his judgment
may be useful to his constituents. The events of one year have
influence on those of another, and, in like manner, of a preceding on
the succeeding Administration. The movements of a great nation are
connected in all their parts. If errors have been committed they ought
to be corrected; if the policy is sound it ought to be supported. It is
by a thorough knowledge of the whole subject that our fellow-citizens
are enabled to judge correctly of the past and to give a proper
direction to the future.
Just before the commencement of the last term the United States had
concluded a war with a very powerful nation on conditions equal and
honorable to both parties. The events of that war are too recent and too
deeply impressed on the memory of all to require a development from me.
Our commerce had been in a great measure driven from the sea, our
Atlantic and inland frontiers were invaded in almost every part; the
waste of life along our coast and on some parts of our inland frontiers,
to the defense of which our gallant and patriotic citizens were called,
was immense, in addition to which not less than $120,000,000 were added
at its end to the public debt.
As soon as the war had terminated, the nation, admonished by its
events, resolved to place itself in a situation which should be better
calculated to prevent the recurrence of a like evil, and, in case it
should recur, to mitigate its calamities. With this view, after reducing
our land force to the basis of a peace establishment, which has been
further modified since, provision was made for the construction of
fortifications at proper points through the whole extent of our coast
and such an augmentation of our naval force as should be well adapted to
both purposes. The laws making this provision were passed in 1815 and
1816, and it has been since the constant effort of the Executive to
carry them into effect.
The advantage of these fortifications and of an augmented naval force
in the extent contemplated, in a point of economy, has been fully
illustrated by a report of the Board of Engineers and Naval
Commissioners lately communicated to Congress, by which it appears that
in an invasion by 20,000 men, with a correspondent naval force, in a
campaign of six months only, the whole expense of the construction of
the works would be defrayed by the difference in the sum necessary to
maintain the force which would be adequate toour defense with the aid of
those works and that which would be incurred without them. The reason
of this difference is obvious. If fortifications are judiciously placed
on our great inlets, as distant from our cities as circumstances will
permit, they will form the only points of attack, and the enemy will be
detained there by a small regular force a sufficient time to enable our
militia to collect and repair to that on which the attack is made. A
force adequate to the enemy, collected at that single point, with
suitable preparation for such others as might be menaced, is all that
would be requisite. But if there were no fortifications, then the enemy
might go where he pleased, and, changing his position and sailing from
place to place, our force must be called out and spread in vast numbers
along the whole coast and on both sides of every bay and river as high
up in each as it might be navigable for ships of war. By these
fortifications, supported by our Navy, to which they would afford like
support, we should present to other powers an armed front from St. Croix
to the Sabine, which would protect in the event of war our whole coast
and interior from invasion; and even in the wars of other powers, in
which we were neutral, they would be found eminently useful, as, by
keeping their public ships at a distance from our cities, peace and
order in them would be preserved and the Government be protected from
insult.
It need scarcely be remarked that these measures have not been
resorted to in a spirit of hostility to other powers. Such a disposition
does not exist toward any power. Peace and good will have been, and
will hereafter be, cultivated with all, and by the most faithful regard
to justice. They have been dictated by a love of peace, of economy, and
an earnest desire to save the lives of our fellow-citizens from that
destruction and our country from that devastation which are inseparable
from war when it finds us unprepared for it. It is believed, and
experience has shown, that such a preparation is the best expedient that
can be resorted to prevent war. I add with much pleasure that
considerable progress has already been made in these measures of
defense, and that they will be completed in a few years, considering the
great extent and importance of the object, if the plan be zealously and
steadily persevered in.
The conduct of the Government in what relates to foreign powers is
always an object of the highest importance to the nation. Its
agriculture, commerce, manufactures, fisheries, revenue, in short, its
peace, may all be affected by it. Attention is therefore due to this
subject.
At the period adverted to the powers of Europe, after having been
engaged in long and destructive wars with each other, had concluded a
peace, which happily still exists. Our peace with the power with whom we
had been engaged had also been concluded. The war between Spain and the
colonies in South America, which had commenced many years before, was
then the only conflict that remained unsettled. This being a contest
between different parts of the same community, in which other powers had
not interfered, was not affected by their accommodations.
This contest was considered at an early stage by my predecessor a
civil war in which the parties were entitled to equal rights in our
ports. This decision, the first made by any power, being formed on great
consideration of the comparative strength and resources of the parties,
the length of time, and successful opposition made by the colonies, and
of all other circumstances on which it ought to depend, was in strict
accord with the law of nations. Congress has invariably acted on this
principle, having made no change in our relations with either party. Our
attitude has therefore been that of neutrality between them, which has
been maintained by the Government with the strictest impartiality. No
aid has been afforded to either, nor has any privilege been enjoyed by
the one which has not been equally open to the other party, and every
exertion has been made in its power to enforce the execution of the laws
prohibiting illegal equipments with equal rigor against both.
By this equality between the parties their public vessels have been
received in our ports on the same footing; they have enjoyed an equal
right to purchase and export arms, munitions of war, and every other
supply, the exportation of all articles whatever being permitted under
laws which were passed long before the commencement of the contest; our
citizens have traded equally with both, and their commerce with each has
been alike protected by the Government.
Respecting the attitude which it may be proper for the United States
to maintain hereafter between the parties, I have no hesitation in
stating it as my opinion that the neutrality heretofore observed should
still be adhered to. From the change in the Government of Spain and the
negotiation now depending, invited by the Cortes and accepted by the
colonies, it may be presumed, that their differences will be settled on
the terms proposed by the colonies. Should the war be continued, the
United States, regarding its occurrences, will always have it in their
power to adopt such measures respecting it as their honor and interest
may require.
Shortly after the general peace a band of adventurers took advantage
of this conflict and of the facility which it afforded to establish a
system of buccaneering in the neighboring seas, to the great annoyance
of the commerce of the United States, and, as was represented, of that
of other powers. Of this spirit and of its injurious bearing on the
United States strong proofs were afforded by the establishment at Amelia
Island, and the purposes to which it was made instrumental by this band
in 1817, and by the occurrences which took place in other parts of
Florida in 1818, the details of which in both instances are too well
known to require to be now recited. I am satisfied had a less decisive
course been adopted that the worst consequences would have resulted from
it. We have seen that these checks, decisive as they were, were not
sufficient to crush that piratical spirit. Many culprits brought within
our limits have been condemned to suffer death, the punishment due to
that atrocious crime. The decisions of upright and enlightened tribunals
fall equally on all whose crimes subject them, by a fair interpretation
of the law, to its censure. It belongs to the Executive not to suffer
the executions under these decisions to transcend the great purpose for
which punishment is necessary. The full benefit of example being
secured, policy as well as humanity equally forbids that they should be
carried further. I have acted on this principle, pardoning those who
appear to have been led astray by ignorance of the criminality of the
acts they had committed, and suffering the law to take effect on those
only in whose favor no extenuating circumstances could be urged.
Great confidence is entertained that the late treaty with Spain,
which has been ratified by both the parties, and the ratifications
whereof have been exchanged, has placed the relations of the two
countries on a basis of permanent friendship. The provision made by it
for such of our citizens as have claims on Spain of the character
described will, it is presumed, be very satisfactory to them, and the
boundary which is established between the territories of the parties
westward of the Mississippi, heretofore in dispute, has, it is thought,
been settled on conditions just and advantageous to both. But to the
acquisition of Florida too much importance can not be attached. It
secures to the United States a territory important in itself, and whose
importance is much increased by its bearing on many of the highest
interests of the Union. It opens to several of the neighboring States a
free passage to the ocean, through the Province ceded, by several
rivers, having their sources high up within their limits. It secures us
against all future annoyance from powerful Indian tribes. It gives us
several excellent harbors in the Gulf of Mexico for ships of war of the
largest size. It covers by its position in the Gulf the Mississippi and
other great waters within our extended limits, and thereby enables the
United States to afford complete protection to the vast and very
valuable productions of our whole Western country, which find a market
through those streams.
By a treaty with the British Government, bearing date on the 20th of
October, 1818, the convention regulating the commerce between the United
States and Great Britain, concluded on the 3d of July, 1815, which was
about expiring, was revived and continued for the term of ten years from
the time of its expiration. By that treaty, also, the differences which
had arisen under the treaty of Ghent respecting the right claimed by
the United States for their citizens to take and cure fish on the coast
of His Britannic Majesty's dominions in America, with other differences
on important interests, were adjusted to the satisfaction of both
parties. No agreement has yet been entered into respecting the commerce
between the United States and the British dominions in the West Indies
and on this continent. The restraints imposed on that commerce by Great
Britain, and reciprocated by the United States on a principle of
defense, continue still in force.
The negotiation with France for the regulation of the commercial
relations between the two countries, which in the course of the last
summer had been commenced at Paris, has since been transferred to this
city, and will be pursued on the part of the United States in the spirit
of conciliation, and with an earnest desire that it may terminate in an
arrangement satisfactory to both parties.
Our relations with the Barbary Powers are preserved in the same state
and by the same means that were employed when I came into this office.
As early as 1801 it was found necessary to send a squadron into the
Mediterranean for the protection of our commerce and no period has
intervened, a short term excepted, when it was thought advisable to
withdraw it. The great interests which the United States have in the
Pacific, in commerce and in the fisheries, have also made it necessary
to maintain a naval force there In disposing of this force in both
instances the most effectual measures in our power have been taken,
without interfering with its other duties, for the suppression of the
slave trade and of piracy in the neighboring seas.
The situation of the United States in regard to their resources, the
extent of their revenue, and the facility with which it is raised
affords a most gratifying spectacle. The payment of nearly $67,000,000
of the public debt, with the great progress made in measures of defense
and in other improvements of various kinds since the late war, are
conclusive proofs of this extraordinary prosperity, especially when it
is recollected that these expenditures have been defrayed without a
burthen on the people, the direct tax and excise having been repealed
soon after the conclusion of the late war, and the revenue applied to
these great objects having been raised in a manner not to be felt. Our
great resources therefore remain untouched for any purpose which may
affect the vital interests of the nation. For all such purposes they are
inexhaustible. They are more especially to be found in the virtue,
patriotism, and intelligence of our fellow-citizens, and in the devotion
with which they would yield up by any just measure of taxation all
their property in support of the rights and honor of their country.
Under the present depression of prices, affecting all the productions
of the country and every branch of industry, proceeding from causes
explained on a former occasion, the revenue has considerably diminished,
the effect of which has been to compel Congress either to abandon these
great measures of defense or to resort to loans or internal taxes to
supply the deficiency. On the presumption that this depression and the
deficiency in the revenue arising from it would be temporary, loans were
authorized for the demands of the last and present year. Anxious to
relieve my fellow-citizens in 1817 from every burthen which could be
dispensed with and the state of the Treasury permitting it, I
recommended the repeal of the internal taxes, knowing that such relief
was then peculiarly necessary in consequence of the great exertions made
in the late war. I made that recommendation under a pledge that should
the public exigencies require a recurrence to them at any time while I
remained in this trust, I would with equal promptitude perform the duty
which would then be alike incumbent on me. By the experiment now making
it will be seen by the next session of Congress whether the revenue
shall have been so augmented as to be adequate to all these necessary
purposes. Should the deficiency still continue, and especially should it
be probable that it would be permanent, the course to be pursued
appears to me to be obvious. I am satisfied that under certain
circumstances loans may be resorted to with great advantage. I am
equally well satisfied, as a general rule, that the demands of the
current year, especially in time of peace, should be provided for by the
revenue of that year.
I have never dreaded, nor have I ever shunned, in any situation in
which I have been placed making appeals to the virtue and patriotism of
my fellow-citizens, well knowing that they could never be made in vain,
especially in times of great emergency or for purposes of high national
importance. Independently of the exigency of the case, many
considerations of great weight urge a policy having in view a provision
of revenue to meet to a certain extent the demands of the nation,
without relying altogether on the precarious resource of foreign
commerce. I am satisfied that internal duties and excises, with
corresponding imposts on foreign articles of the same kind, would,
without imposing any serious burdens on the people, enhance the price of
produce, promote our manufactures, and augment the revenue, at the same
time that they made it more secure and permanent.
The care of the Indian tribes within our limits has long been an
essential part of our system, but, unfortunately, it has not been
executed in a manner to accomplish all the objects intended by it. We
have treated them as independent nations, without their having any
substantial pretensions to that rank. The distinction has flattered
their pride, retarded their improvement, and in many instances paved the
way to their destruction. The progress of our settlements westward,
supported as they are by a dense population, has constantly driven them
back, with almost the total sacrifice of the lands which they have been
compelled to abandon. They have claims on the magnanimity and, I may
add, on the justice of this nation which we must all feel. We should
become their real benefactors; we should perform the office of their
Great Father, the endearing title which they emphatically give to the
Chief Magistrate of our Union. Their sovereignty over vast territories
should cease, in lieu of which the right of soil should be secured to
each individual and his posterity in competent portions; and for the
territory thus ceded by each tribe some reasonable equivalent should be
granted, to be vested in permanent funds for the support of civil
government over them and for the education of their children, for their
instruction in the arts of husbandry, and to provide sustenance for them
until they could provide it for themselves. My earnest hope is that
Congress will digest some plan, founded on these principles, with such
improvements as their wisdom may suggest, and carry it into effect as
soon as it may be practicable.
Europe is again unsettled and the prospect of war increasing. Should
the flame light up in any quarter, how far it may extend it is
impossible to foresee. It is our peculiar felicity to be altogether
unconnected with the causes which produce this menacing aspect
elsewhere. With every power we are in perfect amity, and it is our
interest to remain so if it be practicable on just conditions. I see no
reasonable cause to apprehend variance with any power, unless it proceed
from a violation of our maritime rights. In these contests, should they
occur, and to whatever extent they may be carried, we shall be neutral;
but as a neutral power we have rights which it is our duty to maintain.
For like injuries it will be incumbent on us to seek redress in a
spirit of amity, in full confidence that, injuring none, none would
knowingly injure us. For more imminent dangers we should be prepared,
and it should always be recollected that such preparation adapted to the
circumstances and sanctioned by the judgment and wishes of our
constituents can not fail to have a good effect in averting dangers of
every kind. We should recollect also that the season of peace is best
adapted to these preparations.
If we turn our attention, fellow-citizens, more immediately to the
internal concerns of our country, and more especially to those on which
its future welfare depends, we have every reason to anticipate the
happiest results. It is now rather more than forty-four years since we
declared our independence, and thirty-seven since it was acknowledged.
The talents and virtues which were displayed in that great struggle were
a sure presage of all that has since followed. A people who were able
to surmount in their infant state such great perils would be more
competent as they rose into manhood to repel any which they might meet
in their progress. Their physical strength would be more adequate to
foreign danger, and the practice of self-government, aided by the light
of experience, could not fail to produce an effect equally salutary on
all those questions connected with the internal organization. These
favorable anticipations have been realized.
In our whole system, national and State, we have shunned all the
defects which unceasingly preyed on the vitals and destroyed the ancient
Republics. In them there were distinct orders, a nobility and a people,
or the people governed in one assembly. Thus, in the one instance there
was a perpetual conflict between the orders in society for the
ascendency, in which the victory of either terminated in the overthrow
of the government and the ruin of the state; in the other, in which the
people governed in a body, and whose dominions seldom exceeded the
dimensions of a county in one of our States, a tumultuous and disorderly
movement permitted only a transitory existence. In this great nation
there is but one order, that of the people, whose power, by a peculiarly
happy improvement of the representative principle, is transferred from
them, without impairing in the slightest degree their sovereignty, to
bodies of their own creation, and to persons elected by themselves, in
the full extent necessary for all the purposes of free, enlightened and
efficient government. The whole system is elective, the complete
sovereignty being in the people, and every officer in every department
deriving his authority from and being responsible to them for his
conduct.
Our career has corresponded with this great outline. Perfection in
our organization could not have been expected in the outset either in
the National or State Governments or in tracing the line between their
respective powers. But no serious conflict has arisen, nor any contest
but such as are managed by argument and by a fair appeal to the good
sense of the people, and many of the defects which experience had
clearly demonstrated in both Governments have been remedied. By steadily
pursuing this course in this spirit there is every reason to believe
that our system will soon attain the highest degree of perfection of
which human institutions are capable, and that the movement in all its
branches will exhibit such a degree of order and harmony as to command
the admiration and respect of the civilized world.
Our physical attainments have not been less eminent. Twenty-five
years ago the river Mississippi was shut up and our Western brethren had
no outlet for their commerce. What has been the progress since that
time? The river has not only become the property of the United States
from its source to the ocean, with all its tributary streams (with the
exception of the upper part of the Red River only), but Louisiana, with a
fair and liberal boundary on the western side and the Floridas on the
eastern, have been ceded to us. The United States now enjoy the complete
and uninterrupted sovereignty over the whole territory from St. Croix
to the Sabine. New States, settled from among ourselves in this and in
other parts, have been admitted into our Union in equal participation in
the national sovereignty with the original States. Our population has
augmented in an astonishing degree and extended in every direction. We
now, fellow-citizens, comprise within our limits the dimensions and
faculties of a great power under a Government possessing all the
energies of any government ever known to the Old World, with an utter
incapacity to oppress the people.
Entering with these views the office which I have just solemnly sworn
to execute with fidelity and to the utmost of my ability, I derive
great satisfaction from a knowledge that I shall be assisted in the
several Departments by the very enlightened and upright citizens from
whom I have received so much aid in the preceding term. With full
confidence in the continuance of that candor and generous indulgence
from my fellow-citizens at large which I have heretofore experienced,
and with a firm reliance on the protection of Almighty God, I shall
forthwith commence the duties of the high trust to which you have called
me.
1825 John Quincy Adams inaugurated as President.
In compliance with an usage coeval with the existence of our Federal
Constitution, and sanctioned by the example of my predecessors in the
career upon which I am about to enter, I appear, my fellow-citizens, in
your presence and in that of Heaven to bind myself by the solemnities of
religious obligation to the faithful performance of the duties allotted
to me in the station to which I have been called.
In unfolding to my countrymen the principles by which I shall be
governed in the fulfillment of those duties my first resort will be to
that Constitution which I shall swear to the best of my ability to
preserve, protect, and defend. That revered instrument enumerates the
powers and prescribes the duties of the Executive Magistrate, and in its
first words declares the purposes to which these and the whole action
of the Government instituted by it should be invariably and sacredly
devoted—to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic
tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general
welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to the people of this Union
in their successive generations. Since the adoption of this social
compact one of these generations has passed away. It is the work of our
forefathers. Administered by some of the most eminent men who
contributed to its formation, through a most eventful period in the
annals of the world, and through all the vicissitudes of peace and war
incidental to the condition of associated man, it has not disappointed
the hopes and aspirations of those illustrious benefactors of their age
and nation. It has promoted the lasting welfare of that country so dear
to us all; it has to an extent far beyond the ordinary lot of humanity
secured the freedom and happiness of this people. We now receive it as a
precious inheritance from those to whom we are indebted for its
establishment, doubly bound by the examples which they have left us and
by the blessings which we have enjoyed as the fruits of their labors to
transmit the same unimpaired to the succeeding generation.
In the compass of thirty-six years since this great national covenant
was instituted a body of laws enacted under its authority and in
conformity with its provisions has unfolded its powers and carried into
practical operation its effective energies. Subordinate departments have
distributed the executive functions in their various relations to
foreign affairs, to the revenue and expenditures, and to the military
force of the Union by land and sea. A coordinate department of the
judiciary has expounded the Constitution and the laws, settling in
harmonious coincidence with the legislative will numerous weighty
questions of construction which the imperfection of human language had
rendered unavoidable. The year of jubilee since the first formation of
our Union has just elapsed that of the declaration of our independence
is at hand. The consummation of both was effected by this Constitution.
Since that period a population of four millions has multiplied to
twelve. A territory bounded by the Mississippi has been extended from
sea to sea. New States have been admitted to the Union in numbers nearly
equal to those of the first Confederation. Treaties of peace, amity,
and commerce have been concluded with the principal dominions of the
earth. The people of other nations, inhabitants of regions acquired not
by conquest, but by compact, have been united with us in the
participation of our rights and duties, of our burdens and blessings.
The forest has fallen by the ax of our woodsmen; the soil has been made
to teem by the tillage of our farmers; our commerce has whitened every
ocean. The dominion of man over physical nature has been extended by the
invention of our artists. Liberty and law have marched hand in hand.
All the purposes of human association have been accomplished as
effectively as under any other government on the globe, and at a cost
little exceeding in a whole generation the expenditure of other nations
in a single year.
Such is the unexaggerated picture of our condition under a
Constitution founded upon the republican principle of equal rights. To
admit that this picture has its shades is but to say that it is still
the condition of men upon earth. From evil— physical, moral, and
political—it is not our claim to be exempt. We have suffered sometimes
by the visitation of Heaven through disease; often by the wrongs and
injustice of other nations, even to the extremities of war; and, lastly,
by dissensions among ourselves—dissensions perhaps inseparable from the
enjoyment of freedom, but which have more than once appeared to
threaten the dissolution of the Union, and with it the overthrow of all
the enjoyments of our present lot and all our earthly hopes of the
future. The causes of these dissensions have been various, founded upon
differences of speculation in the theory of republican government; upon
conflicting views of policy in our relations with foreign nations; upon
jealousies of partial and sectional interests, aggravated by prejudices
and prepossessions which strangers to each other are ever apt to
entertain.
It is a source of gratification and of encouragement to me to observe
that the great result of this experiment upon the theory of human
rights has at the close of that generation by which it was formed been
crowned with success equal to the most sanguine expectations of its
founders. Union, justice, tranquillity, the common defense, the general
welfare, and the blessings of liberty—all have been promoted by the
Government under which we have lived. Standing at this point of time,
looking back to that generation which has gone by and forward to that
which is advancing, we may at once indulge in grateful exultation and in
cheering hope. From the experience of the past we derive instructive
lessons for the future. Of the two great political parties which have
divided the opinions and feelings of our country, the candid and the
just will now admit that both have contributed splendid talents,
spotless integrity, ardent patriotism, and disinterested sacrifices to
the formation and administration of this Government, and that both have
required a liberal indulgence for a portion of human infirmity and
error. The revolutionary wars of Europe, commencing precisely at the
moment when the Government of the United States first went into
operation under this Constitution, excited a collision of sentiments and
of sympathies which kindled all the passions and imbittered the
conflict of parties till the nation was involved in war and the Union
was shaken to its center. This time of trial embraced a period of five
and twenty years, during which the policy of the Union in its relations
with Europe constituted the principal basis of our political divisions
and the most arduous part of the action of our Federal Government. With
the catastrophe in which the wars of the French Revolution terminated,
and our own subsequent peace with Great Britain, this baneful weed of
party strife was uprooted. From that time no difference of principle,
connected either with the theory of government or with our intercourse
with foreign nations, has existed or been called forth in force
sufficient to sustain a continued combination of parties or to give more
than wholesome animation to public sentiment or legislative debate. Our
political creed is, without a dissenting voice that can be heard, that
the will of the people is the source and the happiness of the people the
end of all legitimate government upon earth; that the best security for
the beneficence and the best guaranty against the abuse of power
consists in the freedom, the purity, and the frequency of popular
elections; that the General Government of the Union and the separate
governments of the States are all sovereignties of limited powers,
fellow- servants of the same masters, uncontrolled within their
respective spheres, uncontrollable by encroachments upon each other;
that the firmest security of peace is the preparation during peace of
the defenses of war; that a rigorous economy and accountability of
public expenditures should guard against the aggravation and alleviate
when possible the burden of taxation; that the military should be kept
in strict subordination to the civil power; that the freedom of the
press and of religious opinion should be inviolate; that the policy of
our country is peace and the ark of our salvation union are articles of
faith upon which we are all now agreed. If there have been those who
doubted whether a confederated representative democracy were a
government competent to the wise and orderly management of the common
concerns of a mighty nation, those doubts have been dispelled; if there
have been projects of partial confederacies to be erected upon the ruins
of the Union, they have been scattered to the winds; if there have been
dangerous attachments to one foreign nation and antipathies against
another, they have been extinguished. Ten years of peace, at home and
abroad, have assuaged the animosities of political contention and
blended into harmony the most discordant elements of public opinion
There still remains one effort of magnanimity, one sacrifice of
prejudice and passion, to be made by the individuals throughout the
nation who have heretofore followed the standards of political party. It
is that of discarding every remnant of rancor against each other, of
embracing as countrymen and friends, and of yielding to talents and
virtue alone that confidence which in times of contention for principle
was bestowed only upon those who bore the badge of party communion.
The collisions of party spirit which originate in speculative
opinions or in different views of administrative policy are in their
nature transitory. Those which are founded on geographical divisions,
adverse interests of soil, climate, and modes of domestic life are more
permanent, and therefore, perhaps, more dangerous. It is this which
gives inestimable value to the character of our Government, at once
federal and national. It holds out to us a perpetual admonition to
preserve alike and with equal anxiety the rights of each individual
State in its own government and the rights of the whole nation in that
of the Union. Whatsoever is of domestic concernment, unconnected with
the other members of the Union or with foreign lands, belongs
exclusively to the administration of the State governments. Whatsoever
directly involves the rights and interests of the federative fraternity
or of foreign powers is of the resort of this General Government. The
duties of both are obvious in the general principle, though sometimes
perplexed with difficulties in the detail. To respect the rights of the
State governments is the inviolable duty of that of the Union; the
government of every State will feel its own obligation to respect and
preserve the rights of the whole. The prejudices everywhere too commonly
entertained against distant strangers are worn away, and the jealousies
of jarring interests are allayed by the composition and functions of
the great national councils annually assembled from all quarters of the
Union at this place. Here the distinguished men from every section of
our country, while meeting to deliberate upon the great interests of
those by whom they are deputed, learn to estimate the talents and do
justice to the virtues of each other. The harmony of the nation is
promoted and the whole Union is knit together by the sentiments of
mutual respect, the habits of social intercourse, and the ties of
personal friendship formed between the representatives of its several
parts in the performance of their service at this metropolis.
Passing from this general review of the purposes and injunctions of
the Federal Constitution and their results as indicating the first
traces of the path of duty in the discharge of my public trust, I turn
to the Administration of my immediate predecessor as the second. It has
passed away in a period of profound peace, how much to the satisfaction
of our country and to the honor of our country's name is known to you
all. The great features of its policy, in general concurrence with the
will of the Legislature, have been to cherish peace while preparing for
defensive war; to yield exact justice to other nations and maintain the
rights of our own; to cherish the principles of freedom and of equal
rights wherever they were proclaimed; to discharge with all possible
promptitude the national debt; to reduce within the narrowest limits of
efficiency the military force; to improve the organization and
discipline of the Army; to provide and sustain a school of military
science; to extend equal protection to all the great interests of the
nation; to promote the civilization of the Indian tribes, and to proceed
in the great system of internal improvements within the limits of the
constitutional power of the Union. Under the pledge of these promises,
made by that eminent citizen at the time of his first induction to this
office, in his career of eight years the internal taxes have been
repealed; sixty millions of the public debt have been discharged;
provision has been made for the comfort and relief of the aged and
indigent among the surviving warriors of the Revolution; the regular
armed force has been reduced and its constitution revised and perfected;
the accountability for the expenditure of public moneys has been made
more effective; the Floridas have been peaceably acquired, and our
boundary has been extended to the Pacific Ocean; the independence of the
southern nations of this hemisphere has been recognized, and
recommended by example and by counsel to the potentates of Europe;
progress has been made in the defense of the country by fortifications
and the increase of the Navy, toward the effectual suppression of the
African traffic in slaves; in alluring the aboriginal hunters of our
land to the cultivation of the soil and of the mind, in exploring the
interior regions of the Union, and in preparing by scientific researches
and surveys for the further application of our national resources to
the internal improvement of our country.
In this brief outline of the promise and performance of my immediate
predecessor the line of duty for his successor is clearly delineated To
pursue to their consummation those purposes of improvement in our common
condition instituted or recommended by him will embrace the whole
sphere of my obligations. To the topic of internal improvement,
emphatically urged by him at his inauguration, I recur with peculiar
satisfaction. It is that from which I am convinced that the unborn
millions of our posterity who are in future ages to people this
continent will derive their most fervent gratitude to the founders of
the Union; that in which the beneficent action of its Government will be
most deeply felt and acknowledged. The magnificence and splendor of
their public works are among the imperishable glories of the ancient
republics. The roads and aqueducts of Rome have been the admiration of
all after ages, and have survived thousands of years after all her
conquests have been swallowed up in despotism or become the spoil of
barbarians. Some diversity of opinion has prevailed with regard to the
powers of Congress for legislation upon objects of this nature. The most
respectful deference is due to doubts originating in pure patriotism
and sustained by venerated authority. But nearly twenty years have
passed since the construction of the first national road was commenced.
The authority for its construction was then unquestioned. To how many
thousands of our countrymen has it proved a benefit? To what single
individual has it ever proved an injury? Repeated, liberal, and candid
discussions in the Legislature have conciliated the sentiments and
approximated the opinions of enlightened minds upon the question of
constitutional power. I can not but hope that by the same process of
friendly, patient, and persevering deliberation all constitutional
objections will ultimately be removed. The extent and limitation of the
powers of the General Government in relation to this transcendently
important interest will be settled and acknowledged to the common
satisfaction of all, and every speculative scruple will be solved by a
practical public blessing.
Fellow-citizens, you are acquainted with the peculiar circumstances
of the recent election, which have resulted in affording me the
opportunity of addressing you at this time. You have heard the
exposition of the principles which will direct me in the fulfillment of
the high and solemn trust imposed upon me in this station. Less
possessed of your confidence in advance than any of my predecessors, I
am deeply conscious of the prospect that I shall stand more and oftener
in need of your indulgence. Intentions upright and pure, a heart devoted
to the welfare of our country, and the unceasing application of all the
faculties allotted to me to her service are all the pledges that I can
give for the faithful performance of the arduous duties I am to
undertake. To the guidance of the legislative councils, to the
assistance of the executive and subordinate departments, to the friendly
cooperation of the respective State governments, to the candid and
liberal support of the people so far as it may be deserved by honest
industry and zeal, I shall look for whatever success may attend my
public service; and knowing that "except the Lord keep the city the
watchman waketh but in vain," with fervent supplications for His favor,
to His overruling providence I commit with humble but fearless
confidence my own fate and the future destinies of my country.
1829 Andrew Jackson inaugurated as President.
Fellow-Citizens:
About to undertake the arduous duties that I have been appointed to
perform by the choice of a free people, I avail myself of this customary
and solemn occasion to express the gratitude which their confidence
inspires and to acknowledge the accountability which my situation
enjoins. While the magnitude of their interests convinces me that no
thanks can be adequate to the honor they have conferred, it admonishes
me that the best return I can make is the zealous dedication of my
humble abilities to their service and their good.
As the instrument of the Federal Constitution it will devolve on me
for a stated period to execute the laws of the United States, to
superintend their foreign and their confederate relations, to manage
their revenue, to command their forces, and, by communications to the
Legislature, to watch over and to promote their interests generally. And
the principles of action by which I shall endeavor to accomplish this
circle of duties it is now proper for me briefly to explain.
In administering the laws of Congress I shall keep steadily in view
the limitations as well as the extent of the Executive power trusting
thereby to discharge the functions of my office without transcending its
authority. With foreign nations it will be my study to preserve peace
and to cultivate friendship on fair and honorable terms, and in the
adjustment of any differences that may exist or arise to exhibit the
forbearance becoming a powerful nation rather than the sensibility
belonging to a gallant people.
In such measures as I may be called on to pursue in regard to the
rights of the separate States I hope to be animated by a proper respect
for those sovereign members of our Union, taking care not to confound
the powers they have reserved to themselves with those they have granted
to the Confederacy.
The management of the public revenue—that searching operation in all
governments—is among the most delicate and important trusts in ours, and
it will, of course, demand no inconsiderable share of my official
solicitude. Under every aspect in which it can be considered it would
appear that advantage must result from the observance of a strict and
faithful economy. This I shall aim at the more anxiously both because it
will facilitate the extinguishment of the national debt, the
unnecessary duration of which is incompatible with real independence,
and because it will counteract that tendency to public and private
profligacy which a profuse expenditure of money by the Government is but
too apt to engender. Powerful auxiliaries to the attainment of this
desirable end are to be found in the regulations provided by the wisdom
of Congress for the specific appropriation of public money and the
prompt accountability of public officers.
With regard to a proper selection of the subjects of impost with a
view to revenue, it would seem to me that the spirit of equity, caution
and compromise in which the Constitution was formed requires that the
great interests of agriculture, commerce, and manufactures should be
equally favored, and that perhaps the only exception to this rule should
consist in the peculiar encouragement of any products of either of them
that may be found essential to our national independence.
Internal improvement and the diffusion of knowledge, so far as they
can be promoted by the constitutional acts of the Federal Government,
are of high importance.
Considering standing armies as dangerous to free governments in time
of peace, I shall not seek to enlarge our present establishment, nor
disregard that salutary lesson of political experience which teaches
that the military should be held subordinate to the civil power. The
gradual increase of our Navy, whose flag has displayed in distant climes
our skill in navigation and our fame in arms; the preservation of our
forts, arsenals, and dockyards, and the introduction of progressive
improvements in the discipline and science of both branches of our
military service are so plainly prescribed by prudence that I should be
excused for omitting their mention sooner than for enlarging on their
importance. But the bulwark of our defense is the national militia,
which in the present state of our intelligence and population must
render us invincible. As long as our Government is administered for the
good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it
secures to us the rights of person and of property, liberty of
conscience and of the press, it will be worth defending; and so long as
it is worth defending a patriotic militia will cover it with an
impenetrable aegis. Partial injuries and occasional mortifications we
may be subjected to, but a million of armed freemen, possessed of the
means of war, can never be conquered by a foreign foe. To any just
system, therefore, calculated to strengthen this natural safeguard of
the country I shall cheerfully lend all the aid in my power.
It will be my sincere and constant desire to observe toward the
Indian tribes within our limits a just and liberal policy, and to give
that humane and considerate attention to their rights and their wants
which is consistent with the habits of our Government and the feelings
of our people.
The recent demonstration of public sentiment inscribes on the list of
Executive duties, in characters too legible to be overlooked, the task
of reform, which will require particularly the correction of those
abuses that have brought the patronage of the Federal Government into
conflict with the freedom of elections, and the counteraction of those
causes which have disturbed the rightful course of appointment and have
placed or continued power in unfaithful or incompetent hands.
In the performance of a task thus generally delineated I shall
endeavor to select men whose diligence and talents will insure in their
respective stations able and faithful cooperation, depending for the
advancement of the public service more on the integrity and zeal of the
public officers than on their numbers.
A diffidence, perhaps too just, in my own qualifications will teach
me to look with reverence to the examples of public virtue left by my
illustrious predecessors, and with veneration to the lights that flow
from the mind that founded and the mind that reformed our system. The
same diffidence induces me to hope for instruction and aid from the
coordinate branches of the Government, and for the indulgence and
support of my fellow-citizens generally. And a firm reliance on the
goodness of that Power whose providence mercifully protected our
national infancy, and has since upheld our liberties in various
vicissitudes, encourages me to offer up my ardent supplications that He
will continue to make our beloved country the object of His divine care
and gracious benediction.
1833 Andrew Jackson second inaugural.
Fellow-Citizens:
The will of the American people, expressed through their unsolicited
suffrages, calls me before you to pass through the solemnities
preparatory to taking upon myself the duties of President of the United
States for another term. For their approbation of my public conduct
through a period which has not been without its difficulties, and for
this renewed expression of their confidence in my good intentions, I am
at a loss for terms adequate to the expression of my gratitude. It shall
be displayed to the extent of my humble abilities in continued efforts
so to administer the Government as to preserve their liberty and promote
their happiness.
So many events have occurred within the last four years which have
necessarily called forth—sometimes under circumstances the most delicate
and painful—my views of the principles and policy which ought to be
pursued by the General Government that I need on this occasion but
allude to a few leading considerations connected with some of them.
The foreign policy adopted by our Government soon after the formation
of our present Constitution, and very generally pursued by successive
Administrations, has been crowned with almost complete success, and has
elevated our character among the nations of the earth. To do justice to
all and to submit to wrong from none has been during my Administration
its governing maxim, and so happy have been its results that we are not
only at peace with all the world, but have few causes of controversy,
and those of minor importance, remaining unadjusted.
In the domestic policy of this Government there are two objects which
especially deserve the attention of the people and their
representatives, and which have been and will continue to be the
subjects of my increasing solicitude. They are the preservation of the
rights of the several States and the integrity of the Union.
These great objects are necessarily connected, and can only be
attained by an enlightened exercise of the powers of each within its
appropriate sphere in conformity with the public will constitutionally
expressed. To this end it becomes the duty of all to yield a ready and
patriotic submission to the laws constitutionally enacted and thereby
promote and strengthen a proper confidence in those institutions of the
several States and of the United States which the people themselves have
ordained for their own government.
My experience in public concerns and the observation of a life
somewhat advanced confirm the opinions long since imbibed by me, that
the destruction of our State governments or the annihilation of their
control over the local concerns of the people would lead directly to
revolution and anarchy, and finally to despotism and military
domination. In proportion, therefore, as the General Government
encroaches upon the rights of the States, in the same proportion does it
impair its own power and detract from its ability to fulfill the
purposes of its creation. Solemnly impressed with these considerations,
my countrymen will ever find me ready to exercise my constitutional
powers in arresting measures which may directly or indirectly encroach
upon the rights of the States or tend to consolidate all political power
in the General Government. But of equal and, indeed of incalculable,
importance is the union of these States, and the sacred duty of all to
contribute to its preservation by a liberal support of the General
Government in the exercise of its just powers. You have been wisely
admonished to "accustom yourselves to think and speak of the Union as of
the palladium of your political safety and prosperity, watching for its
preservation with Jealous anxiety, discountenancing whatever may
suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned, and
indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of any attempt to alienate
any portion of our country from the rest or to enfeeble the sacred ties
which now link together the various parts." Without union our
independence and liberty would never have been achieved; without union
they never can be maintained. Divided into twenty-four, or even a
smaller number, of separate communities, we shall see our internal trade
burdened with numberless restraints and exactions; communication
between distant points and sections obstructed or cut off; our sons made
soldiers to deluge with blood the fields they now till in peace; the
mass of our people borne down and impoverished by taxes to support
armies and navies, and military leaders at the head of their victorious
legions becoming our lawgivers and judges. The loss of liberty, of all
good government, of peace, plenty, and happiness, must inevitably follow
a dissolution of the Union. In supporting it, therefore, we support all
that is dear to the freeman and the philanthropist.
The time at which I stand before you is full of interest. The eyes of
all nations are fixed on our Republic. The event of the existing crisis
will be decisive in the opinion of mankind of the practicability of our
federal system of government. Great is the stake placed in our hands;
great is the responsibility which must rest upon the people of the
United States. Let us realize the importance of the attitude in which we
stand before the world. Let us exercise forbearance and firmness. Let
us extricate our country from the dangers which surround it and learn
wisdom from the lessons they inculcate.
Deeply impressed with the truth of these observations, and under the
obligation of that solemn oath which I am about to take, I shall
continue to exert all my faculties to maintain the just powers of the
Constitution and to transmit unimpaired to posterity the blessings of
our Federal Union. At the same time, it will be my aim to inculcate by
my official acts the necessity of exercising by the General Government
those powers only that are clearly delegated; to encourage simplicity
and economy in the expenditures of the Government; to raise no more
money from the people than may be requisite for these objects, and in a
manner that will best promote the interests of all classes of the
community and of all portions of the Union. Constantly bearing in mind
that in entering into society "individuals must give up a share of
liberty to preserve the rest," it will be my desire so to discharge my
duties as to foster with our brethren in all parts of the country a
spirit of liberal concession and compromise, and, by reconciling our
fellow-citizens to those partial sacrifices which they must unavoidably
make for the preservation of a greater good, to recommend our invaluable
Government and Union to the confidence and affections of the American
people.
Finally, it is my most fervent prayer to that Almighty Being before
whom I now stand, and who has kept us in His hands from the infancy of
our Republic to the present day, that He will so overrule all my
intentions and actions and inspire the hearts of my fellow-citizens that
we may be preserved from dangers of all kinds and continue forever a
united and happy people.
1837 Martin Van Buren inaugurated as President.
1841 William Henry Harrison inaugurated as President.
1845 James K. Polk inaugurated as President.
1853 Franklin Pierce inaugurated as President.
1857 James Buchanan inaugurated as President.
1861 Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office as the 16th president.
I do not consider it necessary at present for me to discuss those
matters of administration about which there is no special anxiety or
excitement.
Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States
that by the accession of a Republican administration their property and
their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never
been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample
evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to
their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of
him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches
when I declare that "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere
with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I
believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do
so." Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that
I had made this and many similar declarations, and had never recanted
them. And, more than this, they placed in the platform for my
acceptance, and as a law to themselves and to me, the clear and emphatic
resolution which I now read:
- Resolved, That the maintenance
inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each
State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to
its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on
which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend, and
we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State
or Territory, no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest of
crimes.
I now reiterate these sentiments; and, in doing so, I only press upon
the public attention the most conclusive evidence of which the case is
susceptible, that the property, peace, and security of no section are to
be in any wise endangered by the now incoming administration. I add,
too, that all the protection which, consistently with the Constitution
and the laws, can be given, will be cheerfully given to all the States
when lawfully demanded, for whatever cause—as cheerfully to one section
as to another.
There is much controversy about the delivering up of fugitives from
service or labor. The clause I now read is as plainly written in the
Constitution as any other of its provisions:
- No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence
of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or
labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such
service or labor may be due.
It is scarcely questioned that this provision was intended by those
who made it for the reclaiming of what we call fugitive slaves; and the
intention of the lawgiver is the law. All members of Congress swear
their support to the whole Constitution—to this provision as much as to
any other. To the proposition, then, that slaves whose cases come within
the terms of this clause "shall be delivered up," their oaths are
unanimous. Now, if they would make the effort in good temper, could they
not with nearly equal unanimity frame and pass a law by means of which
to keep good that unanimous oath?
There is some difference of opinion whether this clause should be
enforced by national or by State authority; but surely that difference
is not a very material one. If the slave is to be surrendered, it can be
of but little consequence to him or to others by which authority it is
done. And should anyone in any case be content that his oath shall go
unkept on a merely unsubstantial controversy as to how it shall be kept?
Again, in any law upon this subject, ought not all the safeguards of
liberty known in civilized and humane jurisprudence to be introduced, so
that a free man be not, in any case, surrendered as a slave? And might
it not be well at the same time to provide by law for the enforcement of
that clause in the Constitution which guarantees that "the citizen of
each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of
citizens in the several States."
I
take the official oath to-day with no mental reservations, and with no
purpose to construe the Constitution or laws by any hypercritical rules.
And while I do not choose now to specify particular acts of Congress as
proper to be enforced, I do suggest that it will be much safer for all,
both in official and private stations, to conform to and abide by all
those acts which stand unrepealed, than to violate any of them, trusting
to find impunity in having them held to be unconstitutional.
It is seventy-two years since the first inauguration of a President
under our National Constitution. During that period fifteen different
and greatly distinguished citizens have, in succession, administered the
executive branch of the government. They have conducted it through many
perils, and generally with great success. Yet, with all this scope of
precedent, I now enter upon the same task for the brief constitutional
term of four years under great and peculiar difficulty. A disruption of
the Federal Union, heretofore only menaced, is now formidably attempted.
I hold that, in contemplation of universal law and of the
Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is
implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national
governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a
provision in its organic law for its own termination. Continue to
execute all the express provisions of our National Constitution, and the
Union will endure forever—it being impossible to destroy it except by
some action not provided for in the instrument itself.
Again, if the United States be not a government proper, but an association of States in the nature
of contract merely, can it, as a contract, be peaceably unmade by less
than all the parties who made it? One party to a contract may violate
it—break it, so to speak; but does it not require all to lawfully
rescind it?
Descending from these general principles, we find the proposition
that, in legal contemplation the Union is perpetual confirmed by the
history of the Union itself. The Union is much older than the
Constitution. It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence
in 1776. It was further matured, and the faith of all the then thirteen
States expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by
the Articles of Confederation
in 1778. And, finally, in 1787 one of the declared objects for
ordaining and establishing the Constitution was "to form a more perfect
Union."
But if the destruction of the Union by one or by a part only of the
States be lawfully possible, the Union is less perfect than before the
Constitution, having lost the vital element of perpetuity.
It follows from these views that no State upon its own mere motion
can lawfully get out of the Union; that resolves and ordinances to that
effect are legally void; and that acts of violence, within any State or
States, against the authority of the United States, are insurrectionary
or revolutionary, according to circumstances.
I therefore consider that, in view of the Constitution and the laws,
the Union is unbroken; and to the extent of my ability I shall take
care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the
laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States. Doing this I
deem to be only
a simple duty on my part; and I shall perform it so far as practicable,
unless my rightful masters, the American people, shall withhold the
requisite means, or in some authoritative manner direct the contrary. I
trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as the declared
purpose of the Union that it will constitutionally defend and maintain
itself.
In doing this there needs to be no bloodshed or violence; and there
shall be none, unless it be forced upon the national authority. The
power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the
property and places belonging to the government, and to collect the
duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects,
there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people
anywhere. Where hostility to the United States, in any interior
locality, shall be so great and universal as to prevent competent
resident citizens from holding the Federal offices, there will be no
attempt to force obnoxious strangers among the people for that object.
While the strict legal right may exist in the government to enforce the
exercise of these offices, the attempt to do so would be so irritating,
and so nearly impracticable withal, that I deem it better to forego for
the time the uses of such offices.
The mails, unless repelled, will continue to be furnished in all
parts of the Union. So far as possible, the people everywhere shall have
that sense of perfect security which is most favorable to calm thought
and reflection. The course here indicated will be followed unless
current events and experience shall show a modification or change to be
proper, and in every case and exigency
my best discretion will be exercised according to circumstances
actually existing, and with a view and a hope of a peaceful solution of
the national troubles and the restoration of fraternal sympathies and
affections.
That there are persons in one section or another who seek to destroy
the Union at all events, and are glad of any pretext to do it, I will
neither affirm nor deny; but if there be such, I need address no word to
them. To those, however, who really love the Union may I not speak?
Before entering upon so grave a matter as the destruction of our
national fabric, with all its benefits, its memories, and its hopes,
would it not be wise to ascertain precisely why we do it? Will you
hazard so desperate a step while there is any possibility that any
portion of the ills you fly from have no real existence? Will you, while
the certain ills you fly to are greater than all the real ones you fly
from—will you risk the commission of so fearful a mistake?
All profess to be content in the Union if all constitutional rights
can be maintained. Is it true, then, that any right, plainly written in
the Constitution, has been denied? I think not. Happily the human mind
is so constituted that no party can reach to the audacity of doing this.
Think, if you can, of a single instance in which a plainly written
provision of the Constitution has ever been denied. If by the mere force
of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written
constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of view, justify
revolution—certainly would if such a right were a vital one. But such is
not our case. All the vital rights of minorities and of individuals are
so plainly assured
to them by affirmations and negations, guarantees and prohibitions, in
the Constitution, that controversies never arise concerning them. But no
organic law can ever be framed with a provision specifically applicable
to every question which may occur in practical administration. No
foresight can anticipate, nor any document of reasonable length contain,
express provisions for all possible questions. Shall fugitives from
labor be surrendered by national or by State authority? The Constitution
does not expressly say. May Congress prohibit slavery in the Territories? The Constitution does not expressly say. Must Congress protect slavery in the Territories? The Constitution does not expressly say.
From questions of this class spring all our constitutional
controversies, and we divide upon them into majorities and minorities.
If the minority will not acquiesce, the majority must, or the government
must cease. There is no other alternative; for continuing the
government is acquiescence on one side or the other.
If a minority in such case will secede rather than acquiesce, they
make a precedent which in turn will divide and ruin them; for a minority
of their own will secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be
controlled by such minority. For instance, why may not any portion of a
new confederacy a year or two hence arbitrarily secede again, precisely
as portions of the present Union now claim to secede from it? All who
cherish disunion sentiments are now being educated to the exact temper
of doing this.
Is there such perfect identity of interests among the States to compose a new Union, as to produce harmony only, and prevent renewed secession?
Plainly, the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy. A
majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and
always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and
sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects
it does, of necessity, fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is
impossible; the rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is
wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy
or despotism in some form is all that is left.
I do not forget the position, assumed by some, that constitutional
questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court; nor do I deny that
such decisions must be binding, in any case, upon the parties to a suit,
as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very
high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by all other
departments of the government. And while it is obviously possible that
such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect
following it, being limited to that particular case, with the chance
that it may be overruled and never become a precedent for other cases,
can better be borne than could the evils of a different practice. At the
same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the
government, upon vital questions affecting the whole people, is to be
irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they
are made, in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions,
the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that
extent practically resigned
their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal. Nor is there
in this view any assault upon the court or the judges. It is a duty from
which they may not shrink to decide cases properly brought before them,
and it is no fault of theirs if others seek to turn their decisions to
political purposes.
One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be
extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be
extended. This is the only substantial dispute. The fugitive-slave
clause of the Constitution, and the law for the suppression of the
foreign slave-trade, are each as well enforced, perhaps, as any law can
ever be in a community where the moral sense of the people imperfectly
supports the law itself. The great body of the people abide by the dry
legal obligation in both cases, and a few break over in each. This, I
think, cannot be perfectly cured; and it would be worse in both cases
after the separation of the sections than before. The foreign
slave-trade, now imperfectly suppressed, would be ultimately revived,
without restriction, in one section, while fugitive slaves, now only
partially surrendered, would not be surrendered at all by the other.
Physically speaking, we cannot separate. We cannot remove our
respective sections from each other, nor build an impassable wall
between them. A husband and wife may be divorced, and go out of the
presence and beyond the reach of each other; but the different parts of
our country cannot do this. They cannot but remain face to face, and
intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them. Is
it possible, then, to make that intercourse more advantageous or
more satisfactory after separation than before? Can aliens make
treaties easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties be more
faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends? Suppose
you go to war, you cannot fight always; and when, after much loss on
both sides, and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old
questions as to terms of intercourse are again upon you.
This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who
inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government,
they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their
revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it. I cannot be ignorant
of the fact that many worthy and patriotic citizens are desirous of
having the National Constitution amended. While I make no recommendation
of amendments, I fully recognize the rightful authority of the people
over the whole subject, to be exercised in either of the modes
prescribed in the instrument itself; and I should, under existing
circumstances, favor rather than oppose a fair opportunity being
afforded the people to act upon it. I will venture to add that to me the
convention mode seems preferable, in that it allows amendments to
originate with the people themselves, instead of only permitting them to
take or reject propositions originated by others not especially chosen
for the purpose, and which might not be precisely such as they would
wish to either accept or refuse. I understand a proposed amendment
to the Constitution—which amendment, however, I have not seen—has
passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never
interfere with the domestic
institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service.
To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose
not to speak of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding
such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no
objection to its being made express and irrevocable.
The chief magistrate derives all his authority from the people, and
they have conferred none upon him to fix terms for the separation of the
States. The people themselves can do this also if they choose; but the
executive, as such, has nothing to do with it. His duty is to administer
the present government, as it came to his hands, and to transmit it,
unimpaired by him, to his successor.
Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice
of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world? In our
present differences is either party without faith of being in the right?
If the Almighty Ruler of Nations, with his eternal truth and justice,
be on your side of the North, or on yours of the South, that truth and
that justice will surely prevail by the judgment of this great tribunal
of the American people.
By the frame of the government under which we live, this same people
have wisely given their public servants but little power for mischief;
and have, with equal wisdom, provided for the return of that little to
their own hands at very short intervals. While the people retain their
virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or
folly, can very seriously injure the government in the short space of
four years.
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
battle-field 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.
1863 Most of Wyoming becomes part of the Idaho Territory.
1865 Abraham Lincoln's second inauguration.
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, insurgent 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 bondman'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.
1869 U. S. Grant inaugurated as President.
1873 U. S. Grant's second inauguration.
1881 A mine explosion in Almy kills 31 miners. Attribution: On This Day.
1881 James A. Garfield inaugurated as President.
1882 Evanston re-incorporated.
1884 Legislature passes a tax authorization for the purpose of constructing a university.
1885 Grover Cleveland's first inauguration.
1886 Gov. Warren authorized the construction of a Capitol Building, as just approved by the Legislature.
Wyoming State Capitol Building today.
1886 University of Wyoming chartered.
1889 Benjamin Harrison inaugurated as President.
1893 Grover Cleveland's second inauguration.
1893 Henry Coffeen takes office as Wyoming's Congressman.
1893 Wyoming's Class 1 Senator's position falls vacant, which it would remain until January of the following year, due to the Class 1 Senator, Francis E. Warren, taking office as the Class 2 Senator, also on this day.
1895 Frank Mondell takes office as Wyoming's Congressman.
1897 William McKinley inaugurated as President.
1897 John E. Osborne took office as Wyoming's Congressman.
1899 Wyoming's former Governor Richards appointed as Assistant Commissioner to the General Land Office. Attribution: On This Day.
1899 Frank Mondell, after an absence of two years, takes office again as Congressman from Wyoming.
1901 William McKinley's second inauguration.
1902 The American Automobile Association was founded in Chicago.
1905 Inauguration of Theodore Roosevelt for his second term.
My fellow-citizens, no people on earth have more cause to be thankful
than ours, and this is said reverently, in no spirit of boastfulness in
our own strength, but with gratitude to the Giver of Good who has
blessed us with the conditions which have enabled us to achieve so large
a measure of well-being and of happiness. To us as a people it has been
granted to lay the foundations of our national life in a new continent.
We are the heirs of the ages, and yet we have had to pay few of the
penalties which in old countries are exacted by the dead hand of a
bygone civilization. We have not been obliged to fight for our existence
against any alien race; and yet our life has called for the vigor and
effort without which the manlier and hardier virtues wither away. Under
such conditions it would be our own fault if we failed; and the success
which we have had in the past, the success which we confidently believe
the future will bring, should cause in us no feeling of vainglory, but
rather a deep and abiding realization of all which life has offered us; a
full acknowledgment of the responsibility which is ours; and a fixed
determination to show that under a free government a mighty people can
thrive best, alike as regards the things of the body and the things of
the soul.
Much has been given us, and much will rightfully be expected from us. We
have duties to others and duties to ourselves; and we can shirk
neither. We have become a great nation, forced by the fact of its
greatness into relations with the other nations of the earth, and we
must behave as beseems a people with such responsibilities. Toward all
other nations, large and small, our attitude must be one of cordial and
sincere friendship. We must show not only in our words, but in our
deeds, that we are earnestly desirous of securing their good will by
acting toward them in a spirit of just and generous recognition of all
their rights. But justice and generosity in a nation, as in an
individual, count most when shown not by the weak but by the strong.
While ever careful to refrain from wrongdoing others, we must be no less
insistent that we are not wronged ourselves. We wish peace, but we wish
the peace of justice, the peace of righteousness. We wish it because we
think it is right and not because we are afraid. No weak nation that
acts manfully and justly should ever have cause to fear us, and no
strong power should ever be able to single us out as a subject for
insolent aggression.
Our relations with the other powers of the world are important; but
still more important are our relations among ourselves. Such growth in
wealth, in population, and in power as this nation has seen during the
century and a quarter of its national life is inevitably accompanied by a
like growth in the problems which are ever before every nation that
rises to greatness. Power invariably means both responsibility and
danger. Our forefathers faced certain perils which we have outgrown. We
now face other perils, the very existence of which it was impossible
that they should foresee. Modern life is both complex and intense, and
the tremendous changes wrought by the extraordinary industrial
development of the last half century are felt in every fiber of our
social and political being. Never before have men tried so vast and
formidable an experiment as that of administering the affairs of a
continent under the forms of a Democratic republic. The conditions which
have told for our marvelous material well-being, which have developed
to a very high degree our energy, self-reliance, and individual
initiative, have also brought the care and anxiety inseparable from the
accumulation of great wealth in industrial centers. Upon the success of
our experiment much depends, not only as regards our own welfare, but as
regards the welfare of mankind. If we fail, the cause of free
self-government throughout the world will rock to its foundations, and
therefore our responsibility is heavy, to ourselves, to the world as it
is to-day, and to the generations yet unborn. There is no good reason
why we should fear the future, but there is every reason why we should
face it seriously, neither hiding from ourselves the gravity of the
problems before us nor fearing to approach these problems with the
unbending, unflinching purpose to solve them aright.
Yet, after all, though the problems are new, though the tasks set before
us differ from the tasks set before our fathers who founded and
preserved this Republic, the spirit in which these tasks must be
undertaken and these problems faced, if our duty is to be well done,
remains essentially unchanged. We know that self-government is
difficult. We know that no people needs such high traits of character as
that people which seeks to govern its affairs aright through the freely
expressed will of the freemen who compose it. But we have faith that we
shall not prove false to the memories of the men of the mighty past.
They did their work, they left us the splendid heritage we now enjoy. We
in our turn have an assured confidence that we shall be able to leave
this heritage unwasted and enlarged to our children and our children's
children. To do so we must show, not merely in great crises, but in the
everyday affairs of life, the qualities of practical intelligence, of
courage, of hardihood, and endurance, and above all the power of
devotion to a lofty ideal, which made great the men who founded this
Republic in the days of Washington, which made great the men who
preserved this Republic in the days of Abraham Lincoln.
1909 William Howard Taft took the oath of office as the 27th president of the United Sates.
My Fellow-Citizens:
Anyone who has taken the oath I have just taken must feel a heavy
weight of responsibility. If not, he has no conception of the powers and
duties of the office upon which he is about to enter, or he is lacking
in a proper sense of the obligation which the oath imposes.
The office of an inaugural address is to give a summary outline of
the main policies of the new administration, so far as they can be
anticipated. I have had the honor to be one of the advisers of my
distinguished predecessor, and, as such, to hold up his hands in the
reforms he has initiated. I should be untrue to myself, to my promises,
and to the declarations of the party platform upon which I was elected
to office, if I did not make the maintenance and enforcement of those
reforms a most important feature of my administration. They were
directed to the suppression of the lawlessness and abuses of power of
the great combinations of capital invested in railroads and in
industrial enterprises carrying on interstate commerce. The steps which
my predecessor took and the legislation passed on his recommendation
have accomplished much, have caused a general halt in the vicious
policies which created popular alarm, and have brought about in the
business affected a much higher regard for existing law.
To render the reforms lasting, however, and to secure at the same
time freedom from alarm on the part of those pursuing proper and
progressive business methods, further legislative and executive action
are needed. Relief of the railroads from certain restrictions of the
antitrust law have been urged by my predecessor and will be urged by me.
On the other hand, the administration is pledged to legislation looking
to a proper federal supervision and restriction to prevent excessive
issues of bonds and stock by companies owning and operating interstate
commerce railroads.
Then, too, a reorganization of the Department of Justice, of the
Bureau of Corporations in the Department of Commerce and Labor, and of
the Interstate Commerce Commission, looking to effective cooperation of
these agencies, is needed to secure a more rapid and certain enforcement
of the laws affecting interstate railroads and industrial combinations.
I hope to be able to submit at the first regular session of the
incoming Congress, in December next, definite suggestions in respect to
the needed amendments to the antitrust and the interstate commerce law
and the changes required in the executive departments concerned in their
enforcement.
It is believed that with the changes to be recommended American
business can be assured of that measure of stability and certainty in
respect to those things that may be done and those that are prohibited
which is essential to the life and growth of all business. Such a plan
must include the right of the people to avail themselves of those
methods of combining capital and effort deemed necessary to reach the
highest degree of economic efficiency, at the same time differentiating
between combinations based upon legitimate economic reasons and those
formed with the intent of creating monopolies and artificially
controlling prices.
The work of formulating into practical shape such changes is creative
word of the highest order, and requires all the deliberation possible
in the interval. I believe that the amendments to be proposed are just
as necessary in the protection of legitimate business as in the
clinching of the reforms which properly bear the name of my predecessor.
A matter of most pressing importance is the revision of the tariff.
In accordance with the promises of the platform upon which I was
elected, I shall call Congress into extra session to meet on the 15th
day of March, in order that consideration may be at once given to a bill
revising the Dingley Act. This should secure an adequate revenue and
adjust the duties in such a manner as to afford to labor and to all
industries in this country, whether of the farm, mine or factory,
protection by tariff equal to the difference between the cost of
production abroad and the cost of production here, and have a provision
which shall put into force, upon executive determination of certain
facts, a higher or maximum tariff against those countries whose trade
policy toward us equitably requires such discrimination. It is thought
that there has been such a change in conditions since the enactment of
the Dingley Act, drafted on a similarly protective principle, that the
measure of the tariff above stated will permit the reduction of rates in
certain schedules and will require the advancement of few, if any.
The proposal to revise the tariff made in such an authoritative way
as to lead the business community to count upon it necessarily halts all
those branches of business directly affected; and as these are most
important, it disturbs the whole business of the country. It is
imperatively necessary, therefore, that a tariff bill be drawn in good
faith in accordance with promises made before the election by the party
in power, and as promptly passed as due consideration will permit. It is
not that the tariff is more important in the long run than the
perfecting of the reforms in respect to antitrust legislation and
interstate commerce regulation, but the need for action when the
revision of the tariff has been determined upon is more immediate to
avoid embarrassment of business. To secure the needed speed in the
passage of the tariff bill, it would seem wise to attempt no other
legislation at the extra session. I venture this as a suggestion only,
for the course to be taken by Congress, upon the call of the Executive,
is wholly within its discretion.
In the mailing of a tariff bill the prime motive is taxation and the
securing thereby of a revenue. Due largely to the business depression
which followed the financial panic of 1907, the revenue from customs and
other sources has decreased to such an extent that the expenditures for
the current fiscal year will exceed the receipts by $100,000,000. It is
imperative that such a deficit shall not continue, and the framers of
the tariff bill must, of course, have in mind the total revenues likely
to be produced by it and so arrange the duties as to secure an adequate
income. Should it be impossible to do so by import duties, new kinds of
taxation must be adopted, and among these I recommend a graduated
inheritance tax as correct in principle and as certain and easy of
collection.
The obligation on the part of those responsible for the expenditures
made to carry on the Government, to be as economical as possible, and to
make the burden of taxation as light as possible, is plain, and should
be affirmed in every declaration of government policy. This is
especially true when we are face to face with a heavy deficit. But when
the desire to win the popular approval leads to the cutting off of
expenditures really needed to make the Government effective and to
enable it to accomplish its proper objects, the result is as much to be
condemned as the waste of government funds in unnecessary expenditure.
The scope of a modern government in what it can and ought to accomplish
for its people has been widened far beyond the principles laid down by
the old "laissez faire" school of political writers, and this widening
has met popular approval.
In the Department of Agriculture the use of scientific experiments on
a large scale and the spread of information derived from them for the
improvement of general agriculture must go on.
The importance of supervising business of great railways and
industrial combinations and the necessary investigation and prosecution
of unlawful business methods are another necessary tax upon Government
which did not exist half a century ago.
The putting into force of laws which shall secure the conservation of
our resources, so far as they may be within the jurisdiction of the
Federal Government, including the most important work of saving and
restoring our forests and the great improvement of waterways, are all
proper government functions which must involve large expenditure if
properly performed. While some of them, like the reclamation of and
lands, are made to pay for themselves, others are of such an indirect
benefit that this cannot be expected of them. A permanent improvement,
like the Panama Canal, should be treated as a distinct enterprise, and
should be paid for by the proceeds of bonds, the issue of which will
distribute its cost between the present and future generations in
accordance with the benefits derived. It may well be submitted to the
serious consideration of Congress whether the deepening and control of
the channel of a great river system, like that of the Ohio or of the
Mississippi, when definite and practical plans for the enterprise have
been approved and determined upon, should not be provided for in the
same way.
Then, too, there are expenditures of Government absolutely necessary
if our country is to maintain its proper place among the nations of the
world, and is to exercise its proper influence in defense of its own
trade interests in the maintenance of traditional American policy
against the colonization of European monarchies in this hemisphere, and
in the promotion of peace and international morality. I refer to the
cost of maintaining a proper army, a proper navy, and suitable
fortifications upon the mainland of the United States and in its
dependencies.
We should have an army so organized and so officered as to be capable
in time of emergency, in cooperation with the national militia and
under the provisions of a proper national volunteer law, rapidly to
expand into a force sufficient to resist all probable invasion from
abroad and to furnish a respectable expeditionary force if necessary in
the maintenance of our traditional American policy which bears the name
of President Monroe.
Our fortifications are yet in a state of only partial completeness,
and the number of men to man them is insufficient. In a few years
however, the usual annual appropriations for our coast defenses, both on
the mainland and in the dependencies, will make them sufficient to
resist all direct attack, and by that time we may hope that the men to
man them will be provided as a necessary adjunct. The distance of our
shores from Europe and Asia of course reduces the necessity for
maintaining under arms a great army, but it does not take away the
requirement of mere prudence— that we should have an army sufficiently
large and so constituted as to form a nucleus out of which a suitable
force can quickly grow.
What has been said of the army may be affirmed in even a more
emphatic way of the navy. A modern navy can not be improvised. It must
be built and in existence when the emergency arises which calls for its
use and operation. My distinguished predecessor has in many speeches and
messages set out with great force and striking language the necessity
for maintaining a strong navy commensurate with the coast line, the
governmental resources, and the foreign trade of our Nation; and I wish
to reiterate all the reasons which he has presented in favor of the
policy of maintaining a strong navy as the best conservator of our peace
with other nations, and the best means of securing respect for the
assertion of our rights, the defense of our interests, and the exercise
of our influence in international matters.
Our international policy is always to promote peace. We shall enter
into any war with a full consciousness of the awful consequences that it
always entails, whether successful or not, and we, of course, shall
make every effort consistent with national honor and the highest
national interest to avoid a resort to arms. We favor every
instrumentality, like that of the Hague Tribunal and arbitration
treaties made with a view to its use in all international controversies,
in order to maintain peace and to avoid war. But we should be blind to
existing conditions and should allow ourselves to become foolish
idealists if we did not realize that, with all the nations of the world
armed and prepared for war, we must be ourselves in a similar condition,
in order to prevent other nations from taking advantage of us and of
our inability to defend our interests and assert our rights with a
strong hand.
In the international controversies that are likely to arise in the
Orient growing out of the question of the open door and other issues the
United States can maintain her interests intact and can secure respect
for her just demands. She will not be able to do so, however, if it is
understood that she never intends to back up her assertion of right and
her defense of her interest by anything but mere verbal protest and
diplomatic note. For these reasons the expenses of the army and navy and
of coast defenses should always be considered as something which the
Government must pay for, and they should not be cut off through mere
consideration of economy. Our Government is able to afford a suitable
army and a suitable navy. It may maintain them without the slightest
danger to the Republic or the cause of free institutions, and fear of
additional taxation ought not to change a proper policy in this regard.
The policy of the United States in the Spanish war and since has
given it a position of influence among the nations that it never had
before, and should be constantly exerted to securing to its bona fide
citizens, whether native or naturalized, respect for them as such in
foreign countries. We should make every effort to prevent humiliating
and degrading prohibition against any of our citizens wishing
temporarily to sojourn in foreign countries because of race or religion.
The admission of Asiatic immigrants who cannot be amalgamated with
our population has been made the subject either of prohibitory clauses
in our treaties and statutes or of strict administrative regulation
secured by diplomatic negotiation. I sincerely hope that we may continue
to minimize the evils likely to arise from such immigration without
unnecessary friction and by mutual concessions between self-respecting
governments. Meantime we must take every precaution to prevent, or
failing that, to punish outbursts of race feeling among our people
against foreigners of whatever nationality who have by our grant a
treaty right to pursue lawful business here and to be protected against
lawless assault or injury.
This leads me to point out a serious defect in the present federal
jurisdiction, which ought to be remedied at once. Having assured to
other countries by treaty the protection of our laws for such of their
subjects or citizens as we permit to come within our jurisdiction, we
now leave to a state or a city, not under the control of the Federal
Government, the duty of performing our international obligations in this
respect. By proper legislation we may, and ought to, place in the hands
of the Federal Executive the means of enforcing the treaty rights of
such aliens in the courts of the Federal Government. It puts our
Government in a pusillanimous position to make definite engagements to
protect aliens and then to excuse the failure to perform those
engagements by an explanation that the duty to keep them is in States or
cities, not within our control. If we would promise we must put
ourselves in a position to perform our promise. We cannot permit the
possible failure of justice, due to local prejudice in any State or
municipal government, to expose us to the risk of a war which might be
avoided if federal jurisdiction was asserted by suitable legislation by
Congress and carried out by proper proceedings instituted by the
Executive in the courts of the National Government.
One of the reforms to be carried out during the incoming
administration is a change of our monetary and banking laws, so as to
secure greater elasticity in the forms of currency available for trade
and to prevent the limitations of law from operating to increase the
embarrassment of a financial panic. The monetary commission, lately
appointed, is giving full consideration to existing conditions and to
all proposed remedies, and will doubtless suggest one that will meet the
requirements of business and of public interest.
We may hope that the report will embody neither the narrow dew of
those who believe that the sole purpose of the new system should be to
secure a large return on banking capital or of those who would have
greater expansion of currency with little regard to provisions for its
immediate redemption or ultimate security. There is no subject of
economic discussion so intricate and so likely to evoke differing views
and dogmatic statements as this one. The commission, in studying the
general influence of currency on business and of business on currency,
have wisely extended their investigations in European banking and
monetary methods. The information that they have derived from such
experts as they have found abroad will undoubtedly be found helpful in
the solution of the difficult problem they have in hand.
The incoming Congress should promptly fulfill the promise of the
Republican platform and pass a proper postal savings bank bill. It will
not be unwise or excessive paternalism. The promise to repay by the
Government will furnish an inducement to savings deposits which private
enterprise can not supply and at such a low rate of interest as not to
withdraw custom from existing banks. It will substantially increase the
funds available for investment as capital in useful enterprises. It will
furnish absolute security which makes the proposed scheme of government
guaranty of deposits so alluring, without its pernicious results.
I sincerely hope that the incoming Congress will be alive, as it
should be, to the importance of our foreign trade and of encouraging it
in every way feasible. The possibility of increasing this trade in the
Orient, in the Philippines, and in South America are known to everyone
who has given the matter attention. The direct effect of free trade
between this country and the Philippines will be marked upon our sales
of cottons, agricultural machinery, and other manufactures. The
necessity of the establishment of direct lines of steamers between North
and South America has been brought to the attention of Congress by my
predecessor and by Mr. Root before and after his noteworthy visit to
that continent, and I sincerely hope that Congress may be induced to see
the wisdom of a tentative effort to establish such lines by the use of
mail subsidies.
The importance of the part which the Departments of Agriculture and
of Commerce and Labor may play in ridding the markets of Europe of
prohibitions and discriminations against the importation of our products
is fully understood, and it is hoped that the use of the maximum and
minimum feature of our tariff law to be soon passed will be effective to
remove many of those restrictions.
The Panama Canal will have a most important bearing upon the trade
between the eastern and far western sections of our country, and will
greatly increase the facilities for transportation between the eastern
and the western seaboard, and may possibly revolutionize the
transcontinental rates with respect to bulky merchandise. It will also
have a most beneficial effect to increase the trade between the eastern
seaboard of the United States and the western coast of South America,
and, indeed, with some of the important ports on the east coast of South
America reached by rail from the west coast.
The work on the canal is making most satisfactory progress. The type
of the canal as a lock canal was fixed by Congress after a full
consideration of the conflicting reports of the majority and minority of
the consulting board, and after the recommendation of the War
Department and the Executive upon those reports. Recent suggestion that
something had occurred on the Isthmus to make the lock type of the canal
less feasible than it was supposed to be when the reports were made and
the policy determined on led to a visit to the Isthmus of a board of
competent engineers to examine the Gatun dam and locks, which are the
key of the lock type. The report of that board shows nothing has
occurred in the nature of newly revealed evidence which should change
the views once formed in the original discussion. The construction will
go on under a most effective organization controlled by Colonel Goethals
and his fellow army engineers associated with him, and will certainly
be completed early in the next administration, if not before.
Some type of canal must be constructed. The lock type has been
selected. We are all in favor of having it built as promptly as
possible. We must not now, therefore, keep up a fire in the rear of the
agents whom we have authorized to do our work on the Isthmus. We must
hold up their hands, and speaking for the incoming administration I wish
to say that I propose to devote all the energy possible and under my
control to pushing of this work on the plans which have been adopted,
and to stand behind the men who are doing faithful, hard work to bring
about the early completion of this, the greatest constructive enterprise
of modern times.
The governments of our dependencies in Porto Rico and the Philippines
are progressing as favorably as could be desired. The prosperity of
Porto Rico continues unabated. The business conditions in the
Philippines are not all that we could wish them to be, but with the
passage of the new tariff bill permitting free trade between the United
States and the archipelago, with such limitations on sugar and tobacco
as shall prevent injury to domestic interests in those products, we can
count on an improvement in business conditions in the Philippines and
the development of a mutually profitable trade between this country and
the islands. Meantime our Government in each dependency is upholding the
traditions of civil liberty and increasing popular control which might
be expected under American auspices. The work which we are doing there
redounds to our credit as a nation.
I look forward with hope to increasing the already good feeling
between the South and the other sections of the country. My chief
purpose is not to effect a change in the electoral vote of the Southern
States. That is a secondary consideration. What I look forward to is an
increase in the tolerance of political views of all kinds and their
advocacy throughout the South, and the existence of a respectable
political opposition in every State; even more than this, to an
increased feeling on the part of all the people in the South that this
Government is their Government, and that its officers in their states
are their officers.
The consideration of this question can not, however, be complete and
full without reference to the negro race, its progress and its present
condition. The thirteenth amendment secured them freedom; the fourteenth
amendment due process of law, protection of property, and the pursuit
of happiness; and the fifteenth amendment attempted to secure the negro
against any deprivation of the privilege to vote because he was a negro.
The thirteenth and fourteenth amendments have been generally enforced
and have secured the objects for which they are intended. While the
fifteenth amendment has not been generally observed in the past, it
ought to be observed, and the tendency of Southern legislation today is
toward the enactment of electoral qualifications which shall square with
that amendment. Of course, the mere adoption of a constitutional law is
only one step in the right direction. It must be fairly and justly
enforced as well. In time both will come. Hence it is clear to all that
the domination of an ignorant, irresponsible element can be prevented by
constitutional laws which shall exclude from voting both negroes and
whites not having education or other qualifications thought to be
necessary for a proper electorate. The danger of the control of an
ignorant electorate has therefore passed. With this change, the interest
which many of the Southern white citizens take in the welfare of the
negroes has increased. The colored men must base their hope on the
results of their own industry, self-restraint, thrift, and business
success, as well as upon the aid and comfort and sympathy which they may
receive from their white neighbors of the South.
There was a time when Northerners who sympathized with the negro in
his necessary struggle for better conditions sought to give him the
suffrage as a protection to enforce its exercise against the prevailing
sentiment of the South. The movement proved to be a failure. What
remains is the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution and the right to
have statutes of States specifying qualifications for electors subjected
to the test of compliance with that amendment. This is a great
protection to the negro. It never will be repealed, and it never ought
to be repealed. If it had not passed, it might be difficult now to adopt
it; but with it in our fundamental law, the policy of Southern
legislation must and will tend to obey it, and so long as the statutes
of the States meet the test of this amendment and are not otherwise in
conflict with the Constitution and laws of the United States, it is not
the disposition or within the province of the Federal Government to
interfere with the regulation by Southern States of their domestic
affairs. There is in the South a stronger feeling than ever among the
intelligent well-to-do, and influential element in favor of the
industrial education of the negro and the encouragement of the race to
make themselves useful members of the community. The progress which the
negro has made in the last fifty years, from slavery, when its
statistics are reviewed, is marvelous, and it furnishes every reason to
hope that in the next twenty-five years a still greater improvement in
his condition as a productive member of society, on the farm, and in the
shop, and in other occupations may come.
The negroes are now Americans. Their ancestors came here years ago
against their will, and this is their only country and their only flag.
They have shown themselves anxious to live for it and to die for it.
Encountering the race feeling against them, subjected at times to cruel
injustice growing out of it, they may well have our profound sympathy
and aid in the struggle they are making. We are charged with the sacred
duty of making their path as smooth and easy as we can. Any recognition
of their distinguished men, any appointment to office from among their
number, is properly taken as an encouragement and an appreciation of
their progress, and this just policy should be pursued when suitable
occasion offers.
But it may well admit of doubt whether, in the case of any race, an
appointment of one of their number to a local office in a community in
which the race feeling is so widespread and acute as to interfere with
the ease and facility with which the local government business can be
done by the appointee is of sufficient benefit by way of encouragement
to the race to outweigh the recurrence and increase of race feeling
which such an appointment is likely to engender. Therefore the
Executive, in recognizing the negro race by appointments, must exercise a
careful discretion not thereby to do it more harm than good. On the
other hand, we must be careful not to encourage the mere pretense of
race feeling manufactured in the interest of individual political
ambition.
Personally, I have not the slightest race prejudice or feeling, and
recognition of its existence only awakens in my heart a deeper sympathy
for those who have to bear it or suffer from it, and I question the
wisdom of a policy which is likely to increase it. Meantime, if nothing
is done to prevent it, a better feeling between the negroes and the
whites in the South will continue to grow, and more and more of the
white people will come to realize that the future of the South is to be
much benefited by the industrial and intellectual progress of the negro.
The exercise of political franchises by those of this race who are
intelligent and well to do will be acquiesced in, and the right to vote
will be withheld only from the ignorant and irresponsible of both races.
There is one other matter to which I shall refer. It was made the
subject of great controversy during the election and calls for at least a
passing reference now. My distinguished predecessor has given much
attention to the cause of labor, with whose struggle for better things
he has shown the sincerest sympathy. At his instance Congress has passed
the bill fixing the liability of interstate carriers to their employees
for injury sustained in the course of employment, abolishing the rule
of fellow-servant and the common-law rule as to contributory negligence,
and substituting therefor the so-called rule of "comparative
negligence." It has also passed a law fixing the compensation of
government employees for injuries sustained in the employ of the
Government through the negligence of the superior. It has also passed a
model child-labor law for the District of Columbia. In previous
administrations an arbitration law for interstate commerce railroads and
their employees, and laws for the application of safety devices to save
the lives and limbs of employees of interstate railroads had been
passed. Additional legislation of this kind was passed by the outgoing
Congress.
I wish to say that insofar as I can I hope to promote the enactment
of further legislation of this character. I am strongly convinced that
the Government should make itself as responsible to employees injured in
its employ as an interstate-railway corporation is made responsible by
federal law to its employees; and I shall be glad, whenever any
additional reasonable safety device can be invented to reduce the loss
of life and limb among railway employees, to urge Congress to require
its adoption by interstate railways.
Another labor question has arisen which has awakened the most excited
discussion. That is in respect to the power of the federal courts to
issue injunctions in industrial disputes. As to that, my convictions are
fixed. Take away from the courts, if it could be taken away, the power
to issue injunctions in labor disputes, and it would create a privileged
class among the laborers and save the lawless among their number from a
most needful remedy available to all men for the protection of their
business against lawless invasion. The proposition that business is not a
property or pecuniary right which can be protected by equitable
injunction is utterly without foundation in precedent or reason. The
proposition is usually linked with one to make the secondary boycott
lawful. Such a proposition is at variance with the American instinct,
and will find no support, in my judgment, when submitted to the American
people. The secondary boycott is an instrument of tyranny, and ought
not to be made legitimate.
The issue of a temporary restraining order without notice has in
several instances been abused by its inconsiderate exercise, and to
remedy this the platform upon which I was elected recommends the
formulation in a statute of the conditions under which such a temporary
restraining order ought to issue. A statute can and ought to be framed
to embody the best modern practice, and can bring the subject so closely
to the attention of the court as to make abuses of the process unlikely
in the future. The American people, if I understand them, insist that
the authority of the courts shall be sustained, and are opposed to any
change in the procedure by which the powers of a court may be weakened
and the fearless and effective administration of justice be interfered
with.
Having thus reviewed the questions likely to recur during my
administration, and having expressed in a summary way the position which
I expect to take in recommendations to Congress and in my conduct as an
Executive, I invoke the considerate sympathy and support of my
fellow-citizens and the aid of the Almighty God in the discharge of my
responsible duties.
1911 The U.S. Congress appropriated $20,000 "to be made available immediately for feeding and protecting the elk in Jackson Hole and vicinity, and for removing some of them to stock other localities." Attribution: On This Day.
1913 Woodrow Wilson was sworn as the 28th president of the United States.
There has been a change of government. It began two years ago, when
the House of Representatives became Democratic by a decisive majority.
It has now been completed. The Senate about to assemble will also be
Democratic. The offices of President and Vice-President have been put
into the hands of Democrats. What does the change mean? That is the
question that is uppermost in our minds to-day. That is the question I
am going to try to answer, in order, if I may, to interpret the
occasion.
It means much more than the mere success of a party. The success of a
party means little except when the Nation is using that party for a
large and definite purpose. No one can mistake the purpose for which the
Nation now seeks to use the Democratic Party. It seeks to use it to
interpret a change in its own plans and point of view. Some old things
with which we had grown familiar, and which had begun to creep into the
very habit of our thought and of our lives, have altered their aspect as
we have latterly looked critically upon them, with fresh, awakened
eyes; have dropped their disguises and shown themselves alien and
sinister. Some new things, as we look frankly upon them, willing to
comprehend their real character, have come to assume the aspect of
things long believed in and familiar, stuff of our own convictions. We
have been refreshed by a new insight into our own life.
We see that in many things that life is very great. It is
incomparably great in its material aspects, in its body of wealth, in
the diversity and sweep of its energy, in the industries which have been
conceived and built up by the genius of individual men and the
limitless enterprise of groups of men. It is great, also, very great, in
its moral force. Nowhere else in the world have noble men and women
exhibited in more striking forms the beauty and the energy of sympathy
and helpfulness and counsel in their efforts to rectify wrong, alleviate
suffering, and set the weak in the way of strength and hope. We have
built up, moreover, a great system of government, which has stood
through a long age as in many respects a model for those who seek to set
liberty upon foundations that will endure against fortuitous change,
against storm and accident. Our life contains every great thing, and
contains it in rich abundance.
But the evil has come with the good, and much fine gold has been
corroded. With riches has come inexcusable waste. We have squandered a
great part of what we might have used, and have not stopped to conserve
the exceeding bounty of nature, without which our genius for enterprise
would have been worthless and impotent, scorning to be careful,
shamefully prodigal as well as admirably efficient. We have been proud
of our industrial achievements, but we have not hitherto stopped
thoughtfully enough to count the human cost, the cost of lives snuffed
out, of energies overtaxed and broken, the fearful physical and
spiritual cost to the men and women and children upon whom the dead
weight and burden of it all has fallen pitilessly the years through. The
groans and agony of it all had not yet reached our ears, the solemn,
moving undertone of our life, coming up out of the mines and factories,
and out of every home where the struggle had its intimate and familiar
seat. With the great Government went many deep secret things which we
too long delayed to look into and scrutinize with candid, fearless eyes.
The great Government we loved has too often been made use of for
private and selfish purposes, and those who used it had forgotten the
people.
At last a vision has been vouchsafed us of our life as a whole. We
see the bad with the good, the debased and decadent with the sound and
vital. With this vision we approach new affairs. Our duty is to cleanse,
to reconsider, to restore, to correct the evil without impairing the
good, to purify and humanize every process of our common life without
weakening or sentimentalizing it. There has been something crude and
heartless and unfeeling in our haste to succeed and be great. Our
thought has been "Let every man look out for himself, let every
generation look out for itself," while we reared giant machinery which
made it impossible that any but those who stood at the levers of control
should have a chance to look out for themselves. We had not forgotten
our morals. We remembered well enough that we had set up a policy which
was meant to serve the humblest as well as the most powerful, with an
eye single to the standards of justice and fair play, and remembered it
with pride. But we were very heedless and in a hurry to be great.
We have come now to the sober second thought. The scales of
heedlessness have fallen from our eyes. We have made up our minds to
square every process of our national life again with the standards we so
proudly set up at the beginning and have always carried at our hearts.
Our work is a work of restoration.
We have itemized with some degree of particularity the things that
ought to be altered and here are some of the chief items: A tariff which
cuts us off from our proper part in the commerce of the world, violates
the just principles of taxation, and makes the Government a facile
instrument in the hand of private interests; a banking and currency
system based upon the necessity of the Government to sell its bonds
fifty years ago and perfectly adapted to concentrating cash and
restricting credits; an industrial system which, take it on all its
sides, financial as well as administrative, holds capital in leading
strings, restricts the liberties and limits the opportunities of labor,
and exploits without renewing or conserving the natural resources of the
country; a body of agricultural activities never yet given the
efficiency of great business undertakings or served as it should be
through the instrumentality of science taken directly to the farm, or
afforded the facilities of credit best suited to its practical needs;
watercourses undeveloped, waste places unreclaimed, forests untended,
fast disappearing without plan or prospect of renewal, unregarded waste
heaps at every mine. We have studied as perhaps no other nation has the
most effective means of production, but we have not studied cost or
economy as we should either as organizers of industry, as statesmen, or
as individuals.
Nor have we studied and perfected the means by which government may
be put at the service of humanity, in safeguarding the health of the
Nation, the health of its men and its women and its children, as well as
their rights in the struggle for existence. This is no sentimental
duty. The firm basis of government is justice, not pity. These are
matters of justice. There can be no equality or opportunity, the first
essential of justice in the body politic, if men and women and children
be not shielded in their lives, their very vitality, from the
consequences of great industrial and social processes which they can not
alter, control, or singly cope with. Society must see to it that it
does not itself crush or weaken or damage its own constituent parts. The
first duty of law is to keep sound the society it serves. Sanitary
laws, pure food laws, and laws determining conditions of labor which
individuals are powerless to determine for themselves are intimate parts
of the very business of justice and legal efficiency.
These are some of the things we ought to do, and not leave the others
undone, the old-fashioned, never-to-be-neglected, fundamental
safeguarding of property and of individual right. This is the high
enterprise of the new day: To lift everything that concerns our life as a
Nation to the light that shines from the hearthfire of every man's
conscience and vision of the right. It is inconceivable that we should
do this as partisans; it is inconceivable we should do it in ignorance
of the facts as they are or in blind haste. We shall restore, not
destroy. We shall deal with our economic system as it is and as it may
be modified, not as it might be if we had a clean sheet of paper to
write upon; and step by step we shall make it what it should be, in the
spirit of those who question their own wisdom and seek counsel and
knowledge, not shallow self-satisfaction or the excitement of excursions
whither they can not tell. Justice, and only justice, shall always be
our motto.
And yet it will be no cool process of mere science. The Nation has
been deeply stirred, stirred by a solemn passion, stirred by the
knowledge of wrong, of ideals lost, of government too often debauched
and made an instrument of evil. The feelings with which we face this new
age of right and opportunity sweep across our heartstrings like some
air out of God's own presence, where justice and mercy are reconciled
and the judge and the brother are one. We know our task to be no mere
task of politics but a task which shall search us through and through,
whether we be able to understand our time and the need of our people,
whether we be indeed their spokesmen and interpreters, whether we have
the pure heart to comprehend and the rectified will to choose our high
course of action.
This is not a day of triumph; it is a day of dedication. Here muster,
not the forces of party, but the forces of humanity. Men's hearts wait
upon us; men's lives hang in the balance; men's hopes call upon us to
say what we will do. Who shall live up to the great trust? Who dares
fail to try? I summon all honest men, all patriotic, all forward-looking
men, to my side. God helping me, I will not fail them, if they will but
counsel and sustain me!
1917 Republican Jeanette Rankin of Montana took her seat as the first woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. She soon become famous for her "no" vote on declaring war in World War One, which she knew would be unpopular, but she was a pacifist.
1917 John B. Kendrick takes office as Senator.
1917
The Sunday State Leader for March 4, 1917: Wyoming Guard back in Wyoming.
The Wyoming National Guard was back in Cheyenne to demobilize just as
the Leader was reporting that Ft. D. A. Russell could mobilize 50,000
men there in the event of war. Something just doesn't quite add up with
that.
Zimmerman admitted his note, in other news. And the nation was set for
the second inauguration of Woodrow Wilson, which was set for the
following day.
Soldiers with the Flu, Camp Funston, 1918.
1918 Mess Sergeant Albert Gitchell reported sick at Sick Call on Monday, March 4, 1918. He was sent to the ward housing those suspected of carrying infectious diseases by the medical orderly at Hospital Building 91. The same orderly then saw the next man in line, Cpl. Lee W. Drake, a truck driver assigned to the Headquarters Transportation Detachment's First Battalion. He reported with the same symptoms as Gitchell. The duty medic sent him to the same ward. The orderly then saw Sgt. Adolph Hurby who if anything was sicker.The orderly was then alarmed and called Lt. Elizabeth Harding, the chief nurse. By the time she arrived at the hospital two more sick soldiers were present. She called Col. Edward R. Schreiner, a 45-year-old army surgeon, awakening him from bed. Schreiner was alarmed and was taken to the hospital in the sidecar of a motorcycle driven by his orderly.
By noon there were 107. By the week's end, 522 were sick.
1921 Warren G. Harding inaugurated as President.
Harding inauguration.
1925 Calvin Coolidge inaugurated as President. His inaugural address:
My Countrymen:
No one can contemplate current conditions without finding much that
is satisfying and still more that is encouraging. Our own country is
leading the world in the general readjustment to the results of the
great conflict. Many of its burdens will bear heavily upon us for years,
and the secondary and indirect effects we must expect to experience for
some time. But we are beginning to comprehend more definitely what
course should be pursued, what remedies ought to be applied, what
actions should be taken for our deliverance, and are clearly manifesting
a determined will faithfully and conscientiously to adopt these methods
of relief. Already we have sufficiently rearranged our domestic affairs
so that confidence has returned, business has revived, and we appear to
be entering an era of prosperity which is gradually reaching into every
part of the Nation. Realizing that we can not live unto ourselves
alone, we have contributed of our resources and our counsel to the
relief of the suffering and the settlement of the disputes among the
European nations. Because of what America is and what America has done, a
firmer courage, a higher hope, inspires the heart of all humanity.
These results have not occurred by mere chance. They have been secured
by a constant and enlightened effort marked by many sacrifices and
extending over many generations. We can not continue these brilliant
successes in the future, unless we continue to learn from the past. It
is necessary to keep the former experiences of our country both at home
and abroad continually before us, if we are to have any science of
government. If we wish to erect new structures, we must have a definite
knowledge of the old foundations. We must realize that human nature is
about the most constant thing in the universe and that the essentials of
human relationship do not change. We must frequently take our bearings
from these fixed stars of our political firmament if we expect to hold a
true course. If we examine carefully what we have done, we can
determine the more accurately what we can do.
We stand at the opening of the one hundred and fiftieth year since our
national consciousness first asserted itself by unmistakable action with
an array of force. The old sentiment of detached and dependent colonies
disappeared in the new sentiment of a united and independent Nation.
Men began to discard the narrow confines of a local charter for the
broader opportunities of a national constitution. Under the eternal urge
of freedom we became an independent Nation. A little less than 50 years
later that freedom and independence were reasserted in the face of all
the world, and guarded, supported, and secured by the Monroe doctrine.
The narrow fringe of States along the Atlantic seaboard advanced its
frontiers across the hills and plains of an intervening continent until
it passed down the golden slope to the Pacific. We made freedom a
birthright. We extended our domain over distant islands in order to
safeguard our own interests and accepted the consequent obligation to
bestow justice and liberty upon less favored peoples. In the defense of
our own ideals and in the general cause of liberty we entered the Great
War. When victory had been fully secured, we withdrew to our own shores
unrecompensed save in the consciousness of duty done.
Throughout all these experiences we have enlarged our freedom, we have
strengthened our independence. We have been, and propose to be, more and
more American. We believe that we can best serve our own country and
most successfully discharge our obligations to humanity by continuing to
be openly and candidly, in tensely and scrupulously, American. If we
have any heritage, it has been that. If we have any destiny, we have
found it in that direction.
But if we wish to continue to be distinctively American, we must
continue to make that term comprehensive enough to embrace the
legitimate desires of a civilized and enlightened people determined in
all their relations to pursue a conscientious and religious life. We can
not permit ourselves to be narrowed and dwarfed by slogans and phrases.
It is not the adjective, but the substantive, which is of real
importance. It is not the name of the action, but the result of the
action, which is the chief concern. It will be well not to be too much
disturbed by the thought of either isolation or entanglement of
pacifists and militarists. The physical configuration of the earth has
separated us from all of the Old World, but the common brotherhood of
man, the highest law of all our being, has united us by inseparable
bonds with all humanity. Our country represents nothing but peaceful
intentions toward all the earth, but it ought not to fail to maintain
such a military force as comports with the dignity and security of a
great people. It ought to be a balanced force, intensely modern, capable
of defense by sea and land, beneath the surface and in the air. But it
should be so conducted that all the world may see in it, not a menace,
but an instrument of security and peace.
This Nation believes thoroughly in an honorable peace under which the
rights of its citizens are to be everywhere protected. It has never
found that the necessary enjoyment of such a peace could be maintained
only by a great and threatening array of arms. In common with other
nations, it is now more determined than ever to promote peace through
friendliness and good will, through mutual understandings and mutual
forbearance. We have never practiced the policy of competitive
armaments. We have recently committed ourselves by covenants with the
other great nations to a limitation of our sea power. As one result of
this, our Navy ranks larger, in comparison, than it ever did before.
Removing the burden of expense and jealousy, which must always accrue
from a keen rivalry, is one of the most effective methods of diminishing
that unreasonable hysteria and misunderstanding which are the most
potent means of fomenting war. This policy represents a new departure in
the world. It is a thought, an ideal, which has led to an entirely new
line of action. It will not be easy to maintain. Some never moved from
their old positions, some are constantly slipping back to the old ways
of thought and the old action of seizing a musket and relying on force.
America has taken the lead in this new direction, and that lead America
must continue to hold. If we expect others to rely on our fairness and
justice we must show that we rely on their fairness and justice.
If we are to judge by past experience, there is much to be hoped for in
international relations from frequent conferences and consultations. We
have before us the beneficial results of the Washington conference and
the various consultations recently held upon European affairs, some of
which were in response to our suggestions and in some of which we were
active participants. Even the failures can not but be accounted useful
and an immeasurable advance over threatened or actual warfare. I am
strongly in favor of continuation of this policy, whenever conditions
are such that there is even a promise that practical and favorable
results might be secured.
In conformity with the principle that a display of reason rather than a
threat of force should be the determining factor in the intercourse
among nations, we have long advocated the peaceful settlement of
disputes by methods of arbitration and have negotiated many treaties to
secure that result. The same considerations should lead to our adherence
to the Permanent Court of International Justice. Where great principles
are involved, where great movements are under way which promise much
for the welfare of humanity by reason of the very fact that many other
nations have given such movements their actual support, we ought not to
withhold our own sanction because of any small and inessential
difference, but only upon the ground of the most important and
compelling fundamental reasons. We can not barter away our independence
or our sovereignty, but we ought to engage in no refinements of logic,
no sophistries, and no subterfuges, to argue away the undoubted duty of
this country by reason of the might of its numbers, the power of its
resources, and its position of leadership in the world, actively and
comprehensively to signify its approval and to bear its full share of
the responsibility of a candid and disinterested attempt at the
establishment of a tribunal for the administration of even-handed
justice between nation and nation. The weight of our enormous influence
must be cast upon the side of a reign not of force but of law and trial,
not by battle but by reason.
We have never any wish to interfere in the political conditions of any
other countries. Especially are we determined not to become implicated
in the political controversies of the Old World. With a great deal of
hesitation, we have responded to appeals for help to maintain order,
protect life and property, and establish responsible government in some
of the small countries of the Western Hemisphere. Our private citizens
have advanced large sums of money to assist in the necessary financing
and relief of the Old World. We have not failed, nor shall we fail to
respond, whenever necessary to mitigate human suffering and assist in
the rehabilitation of distressed nations. These, too, are requirements
which must be met by reason of our vast powers and the place we hold in
the world.
Some of the best thought of mankind has long been seeking for a formula
for permanent peace. Undoubtedly the clarification of the principles of
international law would be helpful, and the efforts of scholars to
prepare such a work for adoption by the various nations should have our
sympathy and support. Much may be hoped for from the earnest studies of
those who advocate the outlawing of aggressive war. But all these plans
and preparations, these treaties and covenants, will not of themselves
be adequate. One of the greatest dangers to peace lies in the economic
pressure to which people find themselves subjected. One of the most
practical things to be done in the world is to seek arrangements under
which such pressure may be removed, so that opportunity may be renewed
and hope may be revived. There must be some assurance that effort and
endeavor will be followed by success and prosperity. In the making and
financing of such adjustments there is not only an opportunity, but a
real duty, for America to respond with her counsel and her resources.
Conditions must be provided under which people can make a living and
work out of their difficulties. But there is another element, more
important than all, without which there can not be the slightest hope of
a permanent peace. That element lies in the heart of humanity. Unless
the desire for peace be cherished there, unless this fundamental and
only natural source of brotherly love be cultivated to its highest
degree, all artificial efforts will be in vain. Peace will come when
there is realization that only under a reign of law, based on
righteousness and supported by the religious conviction of the
brotherhood of man, can there be any hope of a complete and satisfying
life. Parchment will fail, the sword will fail, it is only the spiritual
nature of man that can be triumphant.
It seems altogether probable that we can contribute most to these
important objects by maintaining our position of political detachment
and independence. We are not identified with any Old World interests.
This position should be made more and more clear in our relations with
all foreign countries. We are at peace with all of them. Our program is
never to oppress, but always to assist. But while we do justice to
others, we must require that justice be done to us. With us a treaty of
peace means peace, and a treaty of amity means amity. We have made great
contributions to the settlement of contentious differences in both
Europe and Asia. But there is a very definite point beyond which we can
not go. We can only help those who help themselves. Mindful of these
limitations, the one great duty that stands out requires us to use our
enormous powers to trim the balance of the world.
While we can look with a great deal of pleasure upon what we have done
abroad, we must remember that our continued success in that direction
depends upon what we do at home. Since its very outset, it has been
found necessary to conduct our Government by means of political parties.
That system would not have survived from generation to generation if it
had not been fundamentally sound and provided the best
instrumentalities for the most complete expression of the popular will.
It is not necessary to claim that it has always worked perfectly. It is
enough to know that nothing better has been devised. No one would deny
that there should be full and free expression and an opportunity for
independence of action within the party. There is no salvation in a
narrow and bigoted partisanship. But if there is to be responsible party
government, the party label must be something more than a mere device
for securing office. Unless those who are elected under the same party
designation are willing to assume sufficient responsibility and exhibit
sufficient loyalty and coherence, so that they can cooperate with each
other in the support of the broad general principles, of the party
platform, the election is merely a mockery, no decision is made at the
polls, and there is no representation of the popular will. Common
honesty and good faith with the people who support a party at the polls
require that party, when it enters office, to assume the control of that
portion of the Government to which it has been elected. Any other
course is bad faith and a violation of the party pledges.
When the country has bestowed its confidence upon a party by making it a
majority in the Congress, it has a right to expect such unity of action
as will make the party majority an effective instrument of government.
This Administration has come into power with a very clear and definite
mandate from the people. The expression of the popular will in favor of
maintaining our constitutional guarantees was overwhelming and decisive.
There was a manifestation of such faith in the integrity of the courts
that we can consider that issue rejected for some time to come.
Likewise, the policy of public ownership of railroads and certain
electric utilities met with unmistakable defeat. The people declared
that they wanted their rights to have not a political but a judicial
determination, and their independence and freedom continued and
supported by having the ownership and control of their property, not in
the Government, but in their own hands. As they always do when they have
a fair chance, the people demonstrated that they are sound and are
determined to have a sound government.
When we turn from what was rejected to inquire what was accepted, the
policy that stands out with the greatest clearness is that of economy in
public expenditure with reduction and reform of taxation. The principle
involved in this effort is that of conservation. The resources of this
country are almost beyond computation. No mind can comprehend them. But
the cost of our combined governments is likewise almost beyond
definition. Not only those who are now making their tax returns, but
those who meet the enhanced cost of existence in their monthly bills,
know by hard experience what this great burden is and what it does. No
matter what others may want, these people want a drastic economy. They
are opposed to waste. They know that extravagance lengthens the hours
and diminishes the rewards of their labor. I favor the policy of
economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save
people. The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear
the cost of the Government. Every dollar that we carelessly waste means
that their life will be so much the more meager. Every dollar that we
prudently save means that their life will be so much the more abundant.
Economy is idealism in its most practical form.
If extravagance were not reflected in taxation, and through taxation
both directly and indirectly injuriously affecting the people, it would
not be of so much consequence. The wisest and soundest method of solving
our tax problem is through economy. Fortunately, of all the great
nations this country is best in a position to adopt that simple remedy.
We do not any longer need wartime revenues. The collection of any taxes
which are not absolutely required, which do not beyond reasonable doubt
contribute to the public welfare, is only a species of legalized
larceny. Under this republic the rewards of industry belong to those who
earn them. The only constitutional tax is the tax which ministers to
public necessity. The property of the country belongs to the people of
the country. Their title is absolute. They do not support any privileged
class; they do not need to maintain great military forces; they ought
not to be burdened with a great array of public employees. They are not
required to make any contribution to Government expenditures except that
which they voluntarily assess upon themselves through the action of
their own representatives. Whenever taxes become burdensome a remedy can
be applied by the people; but if they do not act for themselves, no one
can be very successful in acting for them.
The time is arriving when we can have further tax reduction, when,
unless we wish to hamper the people in their right to earn a living, we
must have tax reform. The method of raising revenue ought not to impede
the transaction of business; it ought to encourage it. I am opposed to
extremely high rates, because they produce little or no revenue, because
they are bad for the country, and, finally, because they are wrong. We
can not finance the country, we can not improve social conditions,
through any system of injustice, even if we attempt to inflict it upon
the rich. Those who suffer the most harm will be the poor. This country
believes in prosperity. It is absurd to suppose that it is envious of
those who are already prosperous. The wise and correct course to follow
in taxation and all other economic legislation is not to destroy those
who have already secured success but to create conditions under which
every one will have a better chance to be successful. The verdict of the
country has been given on this question. That verdict stands. We shall
do well to heed it.
These questions involve moral issues. We need not concern ourselves much
about the rights of property if we will faithfully observe the rights
of persons. Under our institutions their rights are supreme. It is not
property but the right to hold property, both great and small, which our
Constitution guarantees. All owners of property are charged with a
service. These rights and duties have been revealed, through the
conscience of society, to have a divine sanction. The very stability of
our society rests upon production and conservation. For individuals or
for governments to waste and squander their resources is to deny these
rights and disregard these obligations. The result of economic
dissipation to a nation is always moral decay.
These policies of better international understandings, greater economy,
and lower taxes have contributed largely to peaceful and prosperous
industrial relations. Under the helpful influences of restrictive
immigration and a protective tariff, employment is plentiful, the rate
of pay is high, and wage earners are in a state of contentment seldom
before seen. Our transportation systems have been gradually recovering
and have been able to meet all the requirements of the service.
Agriculture has been very slow in reviving, but the price of cereals at
last indicates that the day of its deliverance is at hand.
We are not without our problems, but our most important problem is not
to secure new advantages but to maintain those which we already possess.
Our system of government made up of three separate and independent
departments, our divided sovereignty composed of Nation and State, the
matchless wisdom that is enshrined in our Constitution, all these need
constant effort and tireless vigilance for their protection and support.
In a republic the first rule for the guidance of the citizen is
obedience to law. Under a despotism the law may be imposed upon the
subject. He has no voice in its making, no influence in its
administration, it does not represent him. Under a free government the
citizen makes his own laws, chooses his own administrators, which do
represent him. Those who want their rights respected under the
Constitution and the law ought to set the example themselves of
observing the Constitution and the law. While there may be those of high
intelligence who violate the law at times, the barbarian and the
defective always violate it. Those who disregard the rules of society
are not exhibiting a superior intelligence, are not promoting freedom
and independence, are not following the path of civilization, but are
displaying the traits of ignorance, of servitude, of savagery, and
treading the way that leads back to the jungle.
The essence of a republic is representative government. Our Congress
represents the people and the States. In all legislative affairs it is
the natural collaborator with the President. In spite of all the
criticism which often falls to its lot, I do not hesitate to say that
there is no more independent and effective legislative body in the
world. It is, and should be, jealous of its prerogative. I welcome its
cooperation, and expect to share with it not only the responsibility,
but the credit, for our common effort to secure beneficial legislation.
These are some of the principles which America represents. We have not
by any means put them fully into practice, but we have strongly
signified our belief in them. The encouraging feature of our country is
not that it has reached its destination, but that it has overwhelmingly
expressed its determination to proceed in the right direction. It is
true that we could, with profit, be less sectional and more national in
our thought. It would be well if we could replace much that is only a
false and ignorant prejudice with a true and enlightened pride of race.
But the last election showed that appeals to class and nationality had
little effect. We were all found loyal to a common citizenship. The
fundamental precept of liberty is toleration. We can not permit any
inquisition either within or without the law or apply any religious test
to the holding of office. The mind of America must be forever free.
It is in such contemplations, my fellow countrymen, which are not
exhaustive but only representative, that I find ample warrant for
satisfaction and encouragement. We should not let the much that is to do
obscure the much which has been done. The past and present show faith
and hope and courage fully justified. Here stands our country, an
example of tranquillity at home, a patron of tranquillity abroad. Here
stands its Government, aware of its might but obedient to its
conscience. Here it will continue to stand, seeking peace and
prosperity, solicitous for the welfare of the wage earner, promoting
enterprise, developing waterways and natural resources, attentive to the
intuitive counsel of womanhood, encouraging education, desiring the
advancement of religion, supporting the cause of justice and honor among
the nations. America seeks no earthly empire built on blood and force.
No ambition, no temptation, lures her to thought of foreign dominions.
The legions which she sends forth are armed, not with the sword, but
with the cross. The higher state to which she seeks the allegiance of
all mankind is not of human, but of divine origin. She cherishes no
purpose save to merit the favor of Almighty God.
1926 The first library in Kemmerer opened in Legion building. Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society.
1929 Herbert Hoover inaugurated as President.
1929 Vincent Carter takes office as Congressman from Wyoming. He'd occupy the position until 1935.
1931 Fort Laramie National Historic Site was established.
1933 Franklin Roosevelt inaugurated as President in the last March 4 inauguration.
I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction
into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision
which the present situation of our Nation impels. This is preeminently
the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor
need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today.
This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will
prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only
thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified
terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and
vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people
themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will
again give that support to leadership in these critical days.
In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common
difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. Values have
shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has
fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of
income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the
withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find
no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of
families are gone.
More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem
of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a
foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.
Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken
by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers
conquered because they believed and were not afraid we have still much
to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts
have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it
languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because
rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed through their own
stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure,
and have abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand
indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and
minds of men.
True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern
of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed
only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which
to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have
resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence.
They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no
vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.
The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of
our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths.
The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply
social values more noble than mere monetary profit.
Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the
joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral
stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of
evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if
they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to
minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.
Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of
success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that
public office and high political position are to be valued only by the
standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an
end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to
a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small
wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on
honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on
unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.
Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now.
Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no
unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be
accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself,
treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the
same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed
projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources.
Hand in hand with this we must frankly recognize the overbalance of
population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national
scale in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land
for those best fitted for the land. The task can be helped by definite
efforts to raise the values of agricultural products and with this the
power to purchase the output of our cities. It can be helped by
preventing realistically the tragedy of the growing loss through
foreclosure of our small homes and our farms. It can be helped by
insistence that the Federal, State, and local governments act forthwith
on the demand that their cost be drastically reduced. It can be helped
by the unifying of relief activities which today are often scattered,
uneconomical, and unequal. It can be helped by national planning for and
supervision of all forms of transportation and of communications and
other utilities which have a definitely public character. There are many
ways in which it can be helped, but it can never be helped merely by
talking about it. We must act and act quickly.
Finally, in our progress toward a resumption of work we require two
safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order: there must be
a strict supervision of all banking and credits: and investments, so
that there will be an end to speculation with other people's money; and
there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency.
These are the lines of attack. I shall presently urge upon a new
Congress, in special session, detailed measures for their fulfillment,
and I shall seek the immediate assistance of the several States.
Through this program of action we address ourselves to putting our
own national house in order and making income balance outgo. Our
international trade relations, though vastly important, are in point of
time and necessity secondary to the establishment of a sound national
economy. I favor as a practical policy the putting of first things
first. I shall spare no effort to restore world trade by international
economic readjustment, but the emergency at home cannot wait on that
accomplishment.
The basic thought that guides these specific means of national
recovery is not narrowly nationalistic. It is the insistence, as a first
consideration, upon the interdependence of the various elements in and
parts of the United States — a recognition of the old and permanently
important manifestation of the American spirit of the pioneer. It is the
way to recovery. It is the immediate way. It is the strongest assurance
that the recovery will endure.
In the field of world policy I would dedicate this Nation to the
policy of the good neighbor — the neighbor who resolutely respects
himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others — the
neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his
agreements in and with a world of neighbors.
If I read the temper of our people correctly, we now realize as we
have never realized before our interdependence on each other; that we
cannot merely take but we must give as well; that if we are to go
forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice
for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no
progress is made, no leadership becomes effective. We are, I know, ready
and willing to submit our lives and property to such discipline,
because it makes possible a leadership which aims at a larger good. This
I propose to offer, pledging that the larger purposes will bind upon us
all as a sacred obligation with a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in
time of armed strife.
With this pledge taken, I assume unhesitatingly the leadership of
this great army of our people dedicated to a disciplined attack upon our
common problems.
Action in this image and to this end is feasible under the form of
government which we have inherited from our ancestors. Our Constitution
is so simple and practical that it is possible always to meet
extraordinary needs by changes in emphasis and arrangement without loss
of essential form. That is why our constitutional system has proved
itself the most superbly enduring political mechanism the modern world
has produced. It has met every stress of vast expansion of territory, of
foreign wars, of bitter internal strife, of world relations.
It is to be hoped that the normal balance of Executive and
legislative authority may be wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented
task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for
undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal
balance of public procedure.
I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures
that a stricken Nation in the midst of a stricken world may require.
These measures, or such other measures as the Congress may build out of
its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional
authority, to bring to speedy adoption.
But in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these
two courses, and in the event that the national emergency is still
critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then
confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument
to meet the crisis—broad Executive power to wage a war against the
emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in
fact invaded by a foreign foe.
For the trust reposed in me I will return the courage and the devotion that befit the time. I can do no less.
We face the arduous days that lie before us in the warm courage of
national unity; with the clear consciousness of seeking old and precious
moral values; with the clean satisfaction that comes from the stern
performance of duty by old and young alike. We aim at the assurance of a
rounded and permanent national life.
We do not distrust the future of essential democracy. The people of
the United States have not failed. In their need they have registered a
mandate that they want direct, vigorous action. They have asked for
discipline and direction under leadership. They have made me the present
instrument of their wishes. In the spirit of the gift I take it.
In this dedication of a Nation we humbly ask the blessing of God. May
He protect each and every one of us. May He guide me in the days to
come.
1933 The Twentieth Amendment to the United States Constitution went into effect changing, amongst other things, the Inauguration date for Federal offices, which was moved from March 4 to January 20. It's full text provides:
Section 1. The terms of the President and Vice President shall
end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and
Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which
such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and
the terms of their successors shall then begin.
Section 2. The Congress shall assemble at least once in every
year, and such meeting shall begin at noon on the 3d day of January,
unless they shall by law appoint a different day.
Section 3. If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term
of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice
President elect shall become President. If a President shall not have
been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if
the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice
President elect shall act as President until a President shall have
qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein
neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have
qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in
which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act
accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified.
Section 4. The Congress may by law provide for the case of the
death of any of the persons from whom the House of Representatives may
choose a President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon
them, and for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the
Senate may choose a Vice President whenever the right of choice shall
have devolved upon them.
Section 5. Sections 1 and 2 shall take effect on the 15th day of October following the ratification of this article.
Section 6. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have
been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures
of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date
of its submission.
1954 Cheyenne Patrolman Jernigan died in the line of duty when he and two Air Policemen reported to a disturbance at a restaurant. Jernigan pushed the APs out of the way when the suspect became violent and attempted to gain their weapons, and both he and the suspect were shot and killed.
1955 Sweetwater County Deputy Sheriff Edward Phillips killed in the line of duty attempting to arrest a murder suspect in the Green River rail yard. The suspect was later killed by a Union Pacific special agent.
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