Project Gutenberg's United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches, by Various

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches
From Washington to George W. Bush

Author: Various

Posting Date: August 7, 2008 [EBook #925]
Release Date: May, 1997

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INAUGURAL SPEECHES ***

Produced by Several Project Gutenberg Volunteers

INAUGURAL ADDRESSES OF THE PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES

FROM GEORGE WASHINGTON TO GEORGE W. BUSH

1789-2005

* * * * *

GEORGE WASHINGTON, FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS

IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK THURSDAY, APRIL 30, 1789

[Transcriber's note: The Nation's first chief executive took his oath
of office in April in New York City on the balcony of the Senate Chamber
at Federal Hall on Wall Street. General Washington had been unanimously
elected President by the first electoral college, and John Adams was
elected Vice President because he received the second greatest number of
votes. Under the rules, each elector cast two votes. The Chancellor of
New York and fellow Freemason, Robert R. Livingston administered the
oath of office. The Bible on which the oath was sworn belonged to New
York's St. John's Masonic Lodge. The new President gave his inaugural
address before a joint session of the two Houses of Congress assembled
inside the Senate Chamber.]

Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and of the House of Representatives:

Among the vicissitudes incident to life no event could have filled me
with greater anxieties than that of which the notification was
transmitted by your order, and received on the 14th day of the present
month. On the one hand, I was summoned by my Country, whose voice I can
never hear but with veneration and love, from a retreat which I had
chosen with the fondest predilection, and, in my flattering hopes, with
an immutable decision, as the asylum of my declining years--a retreat
which was rendered every day more necessary as well as more dear to me
by the addition of habit to inclination, and of frequent interruptions
in my health to the gradual waste committed on it by time. On the other
hand, the mag