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