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

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

Author: United States. Presidents


        
Release date: May 1, 1997 [eBook #925]
                Most recently updated: September 22, 2025

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UNITED STATES PRESIDENTS' INAUGURAL SPEECHES: FROM WASHINGTON TO GEORGE W. BUSH ***




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 magnitude and difficulty of the trust to which the voice of my
country called me, being sufficient to awaken in the wisest and most
experienced of her citizens a distrustful scrutiny into his
qualifications, could not but overwhelm with despondence one who
(inheriting inferior endowments from nature and unpracticed in the
duties of civil administration) ought to be peculiarly conscious of his
own deficiencies. In this conflict of emotions all I dare aver is that
it has been my faithful study to collect my duty from a just
appreciation of every circumstance by which it might be affected. All I
dare hope is that if, in executing this task, I have been too much
swayed by a grateful remembrance of former instances, or by an
affectionate sensibility to this transcendent proof of the confidence of
my fellow-citizens, and have thence too little consulted my incapacity
as well as disinclination for the weighty and untried cares before me,
my error will be palliated by the motives which mislead me, and its
consequences be judged by my country with some share of the partiality
in which they originated.

Such being the impressions under which I have, in obedience to the
public summons, repaired to the present station, it would be peculiarly
improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to
that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the
councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human
defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and
happiness of the people of the United States a Government instituted by
themselves for these essential purposes, and may enable every instrument
employed in its administration to execute with success the functions
allotted to his charge. In tendering this homage to the Great Author of
every public and private good, I assure myself that it expresses your
sentiments not less than my own, nor those of my fellow-citizens at
large less than either. No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore
the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of
the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the
character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by
some token of providential agency; and in the important revolution just
accomplished in the system of their united government the tranquil
deliberations and voluntary consent of so many distinct communities from
which the event has resulted can not be compared with the means by which
most governments have been established without some return of pious
gratitude, along with an humble anticipation of the future blessings
which the past seem to presage. These reflections, arising out of the
present crisis, have forced themselves too strongly on my mind to be
suppressed. You will join with me, I trust, in thinking that there are
none under the influence of which the proceedings of a new and free
government can more auspiciously commence.

By the article establishing the executive department it is made the duty
of the President "to recommend to your consideration such measures as he
shall judge necessary and expedient." The circumstances under which I
now meet you will acquit me from entering into that subject further than
to refer to the great constitutional charter under which you are
assembled, and which, in defining your powers, designates the objects to
which your attention is to be given. It will be more consistent with
those circumstances, and far more congenial with the feelings which
actuate me, to substitute, in place of a recommendation of particular
measures, the tribute that is due to the talents, the rectitude, and the
patriotism which adorn the characters selected to devise and adopt them.
In these honorable qualifications I behold the surest pledges that as on
one side no local prejudices or attachments, no separate views nor party
animosities, will misdirect the comprehensive and equal eye which ought
to watch over this great assemblage of communities and interests, so, on
another, that the foundation of our national policy will be laid in the
pure and immutable principles of private morality, and the preeminence
of free government be exemplified by all the attributes which can win
the affections of its citizens and command the respect of the world. I
dwell on this prospect with every satisfaction which an ardent love for
my country can inspire, since there is no truth more thoroughly
established than that there exists in the economy and course of nature
an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness; between duty and
advantage; between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous
policy and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity; since we
ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can
never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order
and right which Heaven itself has ordained; and since the preservation
of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of
government are justly considered, perhaps, as deeply, as finally, staked
on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.

Besides the ordinary objects submitted to your care, it will remain with
your judgment to decide how far an exercise of the occasional power
delegated by the fifth article of the Constitution is rendered expedient
at the present juncture by the nature of objections which have been
urged against the system, or by the degree of inquietude which has given
birth to them. Instead of undertaking particular recommendations on this
subject, in which I could be guided by no lights derived from official
opportunities, I shall again give way to my entire confidence in your
discernment and pursuit of the public good; for I assure myself that
whilst you carefully avoid every alteration which might endanger the
benefits of an united and effective government, or which ought to await
the future lessons of experience, a reverence for the characteristic
rights of freemen and a regard  for the public harmony will sufficiently
influence your deliberations on the question how far the former can be
impregnably fortified or the latter be safely and advantageously
promoted.

To the foregoing observations I have one to add, which will be most
properly addressed to the House of Representatives. It concerns myself,
and will therefore be as brief as possible. When I was first honored
with a call into the service of my country, then on the eve of an
arduous struggle for its liberties, the light in which I contemplated my
duty required that I should renounce every pecuniary compensation. From
this resolution I have in no instance departed; and being still under
the impressions which produced it, I must decline as inapplicable to
myself any share in the personal emoluments which may be indispensably
included in a permanent provision for the executive department, and must
accordingly pray that the pecuniary estimates for the station in which I
am placed may during my continuance in it be limited to such actual
expenditures as the public good may be thought to require.

Having thus imparted to you my sentiments as they have been awakened by
the occasion which brings us together, I shall take my present leave;
but not without resorting once more to the benign Parent of the Human
Race in humble supplication that, since He has been pleased to favor the
American people with opportunities for deliberating in perfect
tranquillity, and dispositions for deciding with unparalleled unanimity
on a form of government for the security of their union and the
advancement of their happiness, so His divine blessing may be equally
conspicuous in the enlarged views, the temperate consultations, and the
wise measures on which the success of this Government must depend.


* * * * *




GEORGE WASHINGTON, SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS

IN THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA, MONDAY, MARCH 4, 1793


[Transcriber's note: President Washington's second oath of office was
taken in the Senate Chamber of Congress Hall in Philadelphia on March 4,
the date fixed by the Continental Congress for inaugurations. Before an
assembly of Congressmen, Cabinet officers, judges of the federal and
district courts, foreign officials, and a small gathering of
Philadelphians, the President offered the shortest inaugural address
ever given. Associate Justice of the Supreme Court William Cushing
administered the oath of office.]



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.


* * * * *




JOHN ADAMS INAUGURAL ADDRESS

IN THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA SATURDAY, MARCH 4, 1797


[Transcriber's note: The first Vice President became the second
President of the United States. His opponent in the election, Thomas
Jefferson, had won the second greatest number of electoral votes and
therefore had been elected Vice President by the electoral college.
Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth administered the oath of office in the
Hall of the House of Representatives in Federal Hall before a joint
session of Congress.]


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.


* * * * *




THOMAS JEFFERSON FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS

IN THE WASHINGTON, D.C., WEDNESDAY, MARCH 4, 1801


[Transcriber's note:  Chief Justice John Marshall administered the first
executive oath of office ever taken in the new federal city in the new
Senate Chamber (now the Old Supreme Court Chamber) of the partially
built Capitol building. The outcome of the election of 1800 had been in
doubt until late February because Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, the
two leading candidates, each had received 73 electoral votes.
Consequently, the House of Representatives met in a special session to
resolve the impasse, pursuant to the terms spelled out in the
Constitution. After 30 hours of debate and balloting, Mr. Jefferson
emerged as the President and Mr. Burr the Vice President. President John
Adams, who had run unsuccessfully for a second term, left Washington on
the day of the inauguration without attending the ceremony.]



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.


* * * * *




THOMAS JEFFERSON SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS

IN WASHINGTON D.C., MONDAY, MARCH 4, 1805


[Transcriber's note:  The second inauguration of Mr. Jefferson followed
an election under which the offices of President and Vice President were
to be separately sought, pursuant to the newly adopted 12th Amendment to
the Constitution. George Clinton of New York was elected Vice President.
Chief Justice John Marshall administered the oath of office in the
Senate Chamber at the Capitol.]


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.


* * * * *




JAMES MADISON FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS

SATURDAY, MARCH 4, 1809


[Transcriber's note:  Chief Justice John Marshall administered the oath
of office in the Hall of the House of Representatives (now National
Statuary Hall). Subsequently the oath by Presidents-elect, with few
exceptions, was taken in the House Chamber or in a place of the Capitol
associated with the Congress as a whole. The Vice Presidential oath of
office for most administrations was taken in the Senate Chamber.
President Jefferson watched the ceremony, but he joined the crowd of
assembled visitors since he no longer was an office-holder. The mild
March weather drew a crowd of about 10,000 persons.]


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.


* * * * *




JAMES MADISON, SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS

THURSDAY, MARCH 4, 1813


[Transcriber's note:  Chief Justice John Marshall administered the oath
of office in the Hall of the House of Representatives. The United States
was at war with Great Britain at the time of James Madison's second
inauguration. Most of the battles had occurred at sea, and the physical
reminders of war seemed remote to the group assembled at the Capitol. In
little more than a year, however, both the Capitol and Executive Mansion
would be burned by an invading British garrison, and the city thrown
into a panic.]



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.


* * * * *




JAMES MONROE FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS

TUESDAY, MARCH 4, 1817


[Transcriber's note: Because the Capitol was under reconstruction after
the fire, President-elect Monroe offered to take his oath of office in
the House Chamber of the temporary "Brick Capitol," located on the site
where the Supreme Court building now stands. A controversy resulted from
the inaugural committees proposals concerning the use of the House
Chamber on the second floor of the brick building. Speaker Henry Clay
declined the use of the hall and suggested that the proceedings be held
outside. The President's speech to the crowd from a platform adjacent to
the brick building was the first outdoor inaugural address. Chief
Justice John Marshall administered the oath of office.]



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 people 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
termination.

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 its 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
expressing my 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.


* * * * *




JAMES MONROE, SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS

MONDAY, MARCH 5, 1821


[Transcriber's note:  In 1821, March 4 fell on a Sunday for the first
time that presidential inaugurations had been observed. Although his
previous term had expired on Saturday, the President waited until the
following Monday upon the advice of Chief Justice Marshall, before going
to the newly rebuilt Hall of the House of Representatives to take the
oath of office. Because the weather was cold and wet, the ceremonies
were conducted indoors. The change in the location caused some confusion
and many visitors and dignitaries were unable to find a place to stand
inside the building.]



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 to our 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.


* * * * *




JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, INAUGURAL ADDRESS

FRIDAY, MARCH 4, 1825



[Transcriber's note:  The only son of a former President to be elected
to the Nation's highest office, John Quincy Adams was chosen by the
House of Representatives when the electoral college could not determine
a clear winner of the 1824 election. The outcome was assured when Henry
Clay, one of the front-runners, threw his support to Mr. Adams so that
Andrew Jackson's candidacy would fail. General Jackson had polled more
popular votes in the election, but he did not gain enough electoral
votes to win outright. The oath of office was administered by Chief
Justice John Marshall inside the Hall of the House of Representatives.]



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.


* * * * *




ANDREW JACKSON, FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 4, 1829



[Transcriber's note:  The election of Andrew Jackson was heralded as a
new page in the history of the Republic. The first military leader
elected President since George Washington, he was much admired by the
electorate, who came to Washington to celebrate "Old Hickory's"
inauguration. Outgoing President Adams did not join in the ceremony,
which was held for the first time on the East Portico of the Capitol
building. Chief Justice John Marshall administered the oath of office.
After the proceedings at the Capitol, a large group of citizens walked
with the new President along Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House, and
many of them visited the executive mansion that day and evening. Such
large numbers of people arrived that many of the furnishings were
ruined. President Jackson left the building by a window to avoid the
crush of people.]



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.


* * * * *




ANDREW JACKSON, SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS

MONDAY, MARCH 4, 1833



[Transcriber's note:  Cold weather and the President's poor health
caused the second inauguration to be much quieter than the first. The
President's speech was delivered to a large assembly inside the Hall of
the House of Representatives. Chief Justice John Marshall administered
the oath of office for the ninth, and last, time.]



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.


* * * * *




MARTIN VAN BUREN, INAUGURAL ADDRESS

SATURDAY, MARCH 4, 1837



[Transcriber's note:  The ailing President Jackson and his Vice
President Van Buren rode together to the Capitol from the White House in
a carriage made of timbers from the U.S.S. Constitution. Chief Justice
Roger Taney administered the oath of office on the East Portico of the
Capitol. For the first and only time, the election for Vice President
had been decided by the Senate, as provided by the Constitution, when
the electoral college could not select a winner. The new Vice President,
Richard M. Johnson, took his oath in the Senate Chamber.]



Fellow-Citizens:

The practice of all my predecessors imposes on me an obligation I
cheerfully fulfill--to accompany the first and solemn act of my public
trust with an avowal of the principles that will guide me in performing
it and an expression of my feelings on assuming a charge so responsible
and vast. In imitating their example I tread in the footsteps of
illustrious men, whose superiors it is our happiness to believe are not
found on the executive calendar of any country. Among them we recognize
the earliest and firmest pillars of the Republic--those by whom our
national independence was first declared, him who above all others
contributed to establish it on the field of battle, and those whose
expanded intellect and patriotism constructed, improved, and perfected
the inestimable institutions under which we live. If such men in the
position I now occupy felt themselves overwhelmed by a sense of
gratitude for this the highest of all marks of their country's
confidence, and by a consciousness of their inability adequately to
discharge the duties of an office so difficult and exalted, how much
more must these considerations affect one who can rely on no such claims
for favor or forbearance! Unlike all who have preceded me, the
Revolution that gave us existence as one people was achieved at the
period of my birth; and whilst I contemplate with grateful reverence
that memorable event, I feel that I belong to a later age and that I may
not expect my countrymen to weigh my actions with the same kind and
partial hand.

So sensibly, fellow-citizens, do these circumstances press themselves
upon me that I should not dare to enter upon my path of duty did I not
look for the generous aid of those who will be associated with me in the
various and coordinate branches of the Government; did I not repose with
unwavering reliance on the patriotism, the intelligence, and the
kindness of a people who never yet deserted a public servant honestly
laboring their cause; and, above all, did I not permit myself humbly to
hope for the sustaining support of an ever-watchful and beneficent
Providence.

To the confidence and consolation derived from these sources it would be
ungrateful not to add those which spring from our present fortunate
condition. Though not altogether exempt from embarrassments that disturb
our tranquillity at home and threaten it abroad, yet in all the
attributes of a great, happy, and flourishing people we stand without a
parallel in the world. Abroad we enjoy the respect and, with scarcely an
exception, the friendship of every nation; at home, while our Government
quietly but efficiently performs the sole legitimate end of political
institutions--in doing the greatest good to the greatest number--we
present an aggregate of human prosperity surely not elsewhere to be
found.

How imperious, then, is the obligation imposed upon every citizen, in
his own sphere of action, whether limited or extended, to exert himself
in perpetuating a condition of things so singularly happy! All the
lessons of history and experience must be lost upon us if we are content
to trust alone to the peculiar advantages we happen to possess. Position
and climate and the bounteous resources that nature has scattered with
so liberal a hand--even the diffused intelligence and elevated character
of our people--will avail us nothing if we fail sacredly to uphold those
political institutions that were wisely and deliberately formed with
reference to every circumstance that could preserve or might endanger
the blessings we enjoy. The thoughtful framers of our Constitution
legislated for our country as they found it. Looking upon it with the
eyes of statesmen and patriots, they saw all the sources of rapid and
wonderful prosperity; but they saw also that various habits, opinions
and institutions peculiar to the various portions of so vast a region
were deeply fixed. Distinct sovereignties were in actual existence,
whose cordial union was essential to the welfare and happiness of all.
Between many of them there was, at least to some extent, a real
diversity of interests, liable to be exaggerated through sinister
designs; they differed in size, in population, in wealth, and in actual
and prospective resources and power; they varied in the character of
their industry and staple productions, and [in some] existed domestic
institutions which, unwisely disturbed, might endanger the harmony of
the whole. Most carefully were all these circumstances weighed, and the
foundations of the new Government laid upon principles of reciprocal
concession and equitable compromise. The jealousies which the smaller
States might entertain of the power of the rest were allayed by a rule
of representation confessedly unequal at the time, and designed forever
to remain so. A natural fear that the broad scope of general legislation
might bear upon and unwisely control particular interests was
counteracted by limits strictly drawn around the action of the Federal
authority, and to the people and the States was left unimpaired their
sovereign power over the innumerable subjects embraced in the internal
government of a just republic, excepting such only as necessarily
appertain to the concerns of the whole confederacy or its intercourse as
a united community with the other nations of the world.

This provident forecast has been verified by time. Half a century,
teeming with extraordinary events, and elsewhere producing astonishing
results, has passed along, but on our institutions it has left no
injurious mark. From a small community we have risen to a people
powerful in numbers and in strength; but with our increase has gone hand
in hand the progress of just principles. The privileges, civil and
religious, of the humblest individual are still sacredly protected at
home, and while the valor and fortitude of our people have removed far
from us the slightest apprehension of foreign power, they have not yet
induced us in a single instance to forget what is right. Our commerce
has been extended to the remotest nations; the value and even nature of
our productions have been greatly changed; a wide difference has arisen
in the relative wealth and resources of every portion of our country;
yet the spirit of mutual regard and of faithful adherence to existing
compacts has continued to prevail in our councils and never long been
absent from our conduct. We have learned by experience a fruitful
lesson--that an implicit and undeviating adherence to the principles on
which we set out can carry us prosperously onward through all the
conflicts of circumstances and vicissitudes inseparable from the lapse
of years.

The success that has thus attended our great experiment is in itself a
sufficient cause for gratitude, on account of the happiness it has
actually conferred and the example it has unanswerably given But to me,
my fellow-citizens, looking forward to the far-distant future with
ardent prayers and confiding hopes, this retrospect presents a ground
for still deeper delight. It impresses on my mind a firm belief that the
perpetuity of our institutions depends upon ourselves; that if we
maintain the principles on which they were established they are destined
to confer their benefits on countless generations yet to come, and that
America will present to every friend of mankind the cheering proof that
a popular government, wisely formed, is wanting in no element of
endurance or strength. Fifty years ago its rapid failure was boldly
predicted. Latent and uncontrollable causes of dissolution were supposed
to exist even by the wise and good, and not only did unfriendly or
speculative theorists anticipate for us the fate of past republics, but
the fears of many an honest patriot overbalanced his sanguine hopes.
Look back on these forebodings, not hastily but reluctantly made, and
see how in every instance they have completely failed.

An imperfect experience during the struggles of the Revolution was
supposed to warrant the belief that the people would not bear the
taxation requisite to discharge an immense public debt already incurred
and to pay the necessary expenses of the Government. The cost of two wars
has been paid, not only without a murmur, but with unequaled alacrity.
No one is now left to doubt that every burden will be cheerfully borne
that may be necessary to sustain our civil institutions or guard our
honor or welfare. Indeed, all experience has shown that the willingness
of the people to contribute to these ends in cases of emergency has
uniformly outrun the confidence of their representatives.

In the early stages of the new Government, when all felt the imposing
influence as they recognized the unequaled services of the first
President, it was a common sentiment that the great weight of his
character could alone bind the discordant materials of our Government
together and save us from the violence of contending factions. Since his
death nearly forty years are gone. Party exasperation has been often
carried to its highest point; the virtue and fortitude of the people
have sometimes been greatly tried; yet our system, purified and enhanced
in value by all it has encountered, still preserves its spirit of free
and fearless discussion, blended with unimpaired fraternal feeling.

The capacity of the people for self-government, and their willingness,
from a high sense of duty and without those exhibitions of coercive
power so generally employed in other countries, to submit to all needful
restraints and exactions of municipal law, have also been favorably
exemplified in the history of the American States. Occasionally, it is
true, the ardor of public sentiment, outrunning the regular progress of
the judicial tribunals or seeking to reach cases not denounced as
criminal by the existing law, has displayed itself in a manner
calculated to give pain to the friends of free government and to
encourage the hopes of those who wish for its overthrow. These
occurrences, however, have been far less frequent in our country than in
any other of equal population on the globe, and with the diffusion of
intelligence it may well be hoped that they will constantly diminish in
frequency and violence. The generous patriotism and sound common sense
of the great mass of our fellow-citizens will assuredly in time produce
this result; for as every assumption of illegal power not only wounds
the majesty of the law, but furnishes a pretext for abridging the
liberties of the people, the latter have the most direct and permanent
interest in preserving the landmarks of social order and maintaining on
all occasions the inviolability of those constitutional and legal
provisions which they themselves have made.

In a supposed unfitness of our institutions for those hostile
emergencies which no country can always avoid their friends found a
fruitful source of apprehension, their enemies of hope. While they
foresaw less promptness of action than in governments differently
formed, they overlooked the far more important consideration that with
us war could never be the result of individual or irresponsible will,
but must be a measure of redress for injuries sustained voluntarily
resorted to by those who were to bear the necessary sacrifice, who would
consequently feel an individual interest in the contest, and whose
energy would be commensurate with the difficulties to be encountered.
Actual events have proved their error; the last war, far from impairing,
gave new confidence to our Government, and amid recent apprehensions of
a similar conflict we saw that the energies of our country would not be
wanting in ample season to vindicate its rights. We may not possess, as
we should not desire to possess, the extended and ever-ready military
organization of other nations; we may occasionally suffer in the outset
for the want of it; but among ourselves all doubt upon this great point
has ceased, while a salutary experience will prevent a contrary opinion
from inviting aggression from abroad.

Certain danger was foretold from the extension of our territory, the
multiplication of States, and the increase of population. Our system was
supposed to be adapted only to boundaries comparatively narrow. These
have been widened beyond conjecture; the members of our Confederacy are
already doubled, and the numbers of our people are incredibly augmented.
The alleged causes of danger have long surpassed anticipation, but none
of the consequences have followed. The power and influence of the
Republic have arisen to a height obvious to all mankind; respect for its
authority was not more apparent at its ancient than it is at its present
limits; new and inexhaustible sources of general prosperity have been
opened; the effects of distance have been averted by the inventive
genius of our people, developed and fostered by the spirit of our
institutions; and the enlarged variety and amount of interests,
productions, and pursuits have strengthened the chain of mutual
dependence and formed a circle of mutual benefits too apparent ever to
be overlooked.

In justly balancing the powers of the Federal and State authorities
difficulties nearly insurmountable arose at the outset and subsequent
collisions were deemed inevitable. Amid these it was scarcely believed
possible that a scheme of government so complex in construction could
remain uninjured. From time to time embarrassments have certainly
occurred; but how just is the confidence of future safety imparted by
the knowledge that each in succession has been happily removed!
Overlooking partial and temporary evils as inseparable from the
practical operation of all human institutions, and looking only to the
general result, every patriot has reason to be satisfied. While the
Federal Government has successfully performed its appropriate functions
in relation to foreign affairs and concerns evidently national, that of
every State has remarkably improved in protecting and developing local
interests and individual welfare; and if the vibrations of authority
have occasionally tended too much toward one or the other, it is
unquestionably certain that the ultimate operation of the entire system
has been to strengthen all the existing institutions and to elevate our
whole country in prosperity and renown.

The last, perhaps the greatest, of the prominent sources of discord and
disaster supposed to lurk in our political condition was the institution
of domestic slavery. Our forefathers were deeply impressed with the
delicacy of this subject, and they treated it with a forbearance so
evidently wise that in spite of every sinister foreboding it never until
the present period disturbed the tranquillity of our common country.
Such a result is sufficient evidence of the justice and the patriotism
of their course; it is evidence not to be mistaken that an adherence to
it can prevent all embarrassment from this as well as from every other
anticipated cause of difficulty or danger. Have not recent events made
it obvious to the slightest reflection that the least deviation from
this spirit of forbearance is injurious to every interest, that of
humanity included? Amidst the violence of excited passions this generous
and fraternal feeling has been sometimes disregarded; and standing as I
now do before my countrymen, in this high place of honor and of trust, I
can not refrain from anxiously invoking my fellow-citizens never to be
deaf to its dictates. Perceiving before my election the deep interest
this subject was beginning to excite, I believed it a solemn duty fully
to make known my sentiments in regard to it, and now, when every motive
for misrepresentation has passed away, I trust that they will be
candidly weighed and understood. At least they will be my standard of
conduct in the path before me. I then declared that if the desire of
those of my countrymen who were favorable to my election was gratified
"I must go into the Presidential chair the inflexible and uncompromising
opponent of every attempt on the part of Congress to abolish slavery in
the District of Columbia against the wishes of the slaveholding States,
and also with a determination equally decided to resist the slightest
interference with it in the States where it exists." I submitted also to
my fellow-citizens, with fullness and frankness, the reasons which led
me to this determination. The result authorizes me to believe that they
have been approved and are confided in by a majority of the people of
the United States, including those whom they most immediately affect. It
now only remains to add that no bill conflicting with these views can
ever receive my constitutional sanction. These opinions have been
adopted in the firm belief that they are in accordance with the spirit
that actuated the venerated fathers of the Republic, and that succeeding
experience has proved them to be humane, patriotic, expedient,
honorable, and just. If the agitation of this subject was intended to
reach the stability of our institutions, enough has occurred to show
that it has signally failed, and that in this as in every other instance
the apprehensions of the timid and the hopes of the wicked for the
destruction of our Government are again destined to be disappointed.
Here and there, indeed, scenes of dangerous excitement have occurred,
terrifying instances of local violence have been witnessed, and a
reckless disregard of the consequences of their conduct has exposed
individuals to popular indignation; but neither masses of the people nor
sections of the country have been swerved from their devotion to the
bond of union and the principles it has made sacred. It will be ever
thus. Such attempts at dangerous agitation may periodically return, but
with each the object will be better understood. That predominating
affection for our political system which prevails throughout our
territorial limits, that calm and enlightened judgment which ultimately
governs our people as one vast body, will always be at hand to resist
and control every effort, foreign or domestic, which aims or would lead
to overthrow our institutions.

What can be more gratifying than such a retrospect as this? We look back
on obstacles avoided and dangers overcome, on expectations more than
realized and prosperity perfectly secured. To the hopes of the hostile,
the fears of the timid, and the doubts of the anxious actual experience
has given the conclusive reply. We have seen time gradually dispel every
unfavorable foreboding and our Constitution surmount every adverse
circumstance dreaded at the outset as beyond control. Present excitement
will at all times magnify present dangers, but true philosophy must
teach us that none more threatening than the past can remain to be
overcome; and we ought (for we have just reason) to entertain an abiding
confidence in the stability of our institutions and an entire conviction
that if administered in the true form, character, and spirit in which
they were established they are abundantly adequate to preserve to us and
our children the rich blessings already derived from them, to make our
beloved land for a thousand generations that chosen spot where happiness
springs from a perfect equality of political rights.

For myself, therefore, I desire to declare that the principle that will
govern me in the high duty to which my country calls me is a strict
adherence to the letter and spirit of the Constitution as it was
designed by those who framed it. Looking back to it as a sacred
instrument carefully and not easily framed; remembering that it was
throughout a work of concession and compromise; viewing it as limited to
national objects; regarding it as leaving to the people and the States
all power not explicitly parted with, I shall endeavor to preserve,
protect, and defend it by anxiously referring to its provision for
direction in every action. To matters of domestic concernment which it
has intrusted to the Federal Government and to such as relate to our
intercourse with foreign nations I shall zealously devote myself; beyond
those limits I shall never pass.

To enter on this occasion into a further or more minute exposition of my
views on the various questions of domestic policy would be as obtrusive
as it is probably unexpected. Before the suffrages of my countrymen were
conferred upon me I submitted to them, with great precision, my opinions
on all the most prominent of these subjects. Those opinions I shall
endeavor to carry out with my utmost ability.

Our course of foreign policy has been so uniform and intelligible as to
constitute a rule of Executive conduct which leaves little to my
discretion, unless, indeed, I were willing to run counter to the lights
of experience and the known opinions of my constituents. We sedulously
cultivate the friendship of all nations as the conditions most
compatible with our welfare and the principles of our Government. We
decline alliances as adverse to our peace. We desire commercial
relations on equal terms, being ever willing to give a fair equivalent
for advantages received. We endeavor to conduct our intercourse with
openness and sincerity, promptly avowing our objects and seeking to
establish that mutual frankness which is as beneficial in the dealings
of nations as of men. We have no disposition and we disclaim all right
to meddle in disputes, whether internal or foreign, that may molest
other countries, regarding them in their actual state as social
communities, and preserving a strict neutrality in all their
controversies. Well knowing the tried valor of our people and our
exhaustless resources, we neither anticipate nor fear any designed
aggression; and in the consciousness of our own just conduct we feel a
security that we shall never be called upon to exert our determination
never to permit an invasion of our rights without punishment or redress.

In approaching, then, in the presence of my assembled countrymen, to
make the solemn promise that yet remains, and to pledge myself that I
will faithfully execute the office I am about to fill, I bring with me a
settled purpose to maintain the institutions of my country, which I
trust will atone for the errors I commit.

In receiving from the people the sacred trust twice confided to my
illustrious predecessor, and which he has discharged so faithfully and
so well, I know that I can not expect to perform the arduous task with
equal ability and success. But united as I have been in his counsels, a
daily witness of his exclusive and unsurpassed devotion to his country's
welfare, agreeing with him in sentiments which his countrymen have
warmly supported, and permitted to partake largely of his confidence, I
may hope that somewhat of the same cheering approbation will be found to
attend upon my path. For him I but express with my own the wishes of
all, that he may yet long live to enjoy the brilliant evening of his
well-spent life; and for myself, conscious of but one desire, faithfully
to serve my country, I throw myself without fear on its justice and its
kindness. Beyond that I only look to the gracious protection of the
Divine Being whose strengthening support I humbly solicit, and whom I
fervently pray to look down upon us all. May it be among the
dispensations of His providence to bless our beloved country with honors
and with length of days. May her ways be ways of pleasantness and all
her paths be peace!


* * * * *




WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON, INAUGURAL ADDRESS

THURSDAY, MARCH 4, 1841



[Transcriber's note:  President Harrison has the dual distinction among
all the Presidents of giving the longest inaugural speech and of serving
the shortest term of office. Known to the public as "Old Tippecanoe,"
the former general of the Indian campaigns delivered an
hour-and-forty-five-minute speech in a snowstorm. The oath of office
was administered on the East Portico of the Capitol by Chief Justice
Roger Taney. The 68-year-old President stood outside for the entire
proceeding, greeted crowds of well-wishers at the White House later that
day, and attended several celebrations that evening. One month later he
died of pneumonia.]



Called from a retirement which I had supposed was to continue for the
residue of my life to fill the chief executive office of this great and
free nation, I appear before you, fellow-citizens, to take the oaths
which the Constitution prescribes as a necessary qualification for the
performance of its duties; and in obedience to a custom coeval with our
Government and what I believe to be your expectations I proceed to
present to you a summary of the principles which will govern me in the
discharge of the duties which I shall be called upon to perform.

It was the remark of a Roman consul in an early period of that
celebrated Republic that a most striking contrast was observable in the
conduct of candidates for offices of power and trust before and after
obtaining them, they seldom carrying out in the latter case the pledges
and promises made in the former. However much the world may have
improved in many respects in the lapse of upward of two thousand years
since the remark was made by the virtuous and indignant Roman, I fear
that a strict examination of the annals of some of the modern elective
governments would develop similar instances of violated confidence.

Although the fiat of the people has gone forth proclaiming me the Chief
Magistrate of this glorious Union, nothing upon their part remaining to
be done, it may be thought that a motive may exist to keep up the
delusion under which they may be supposed to have acted in relation to
my principles and opinions; and perhaps there may be some in this
assembly who have come here either prepared to condemn those I shall now
deliver, or, approving them, to doubt the sincerity with which they are
now uttered. But the lapse of a few months will confirm or dispel their
fears. The outline of principles to govern and measures to be adopted by
an Administration not yet begun will soon be exchanged for immutable
history, and I shall stand either exonerated by my countrymen or classed
with the mass of those who promised that they might deceive and
flattered with the intention to betray. However strong may be my present
purpose to realize the expectations of a magnanimous and confiding
people, I too well understand the dangerous temptations to which I shall
be exposed from the magnitude of the power which it has been the
pleasure of the people to commit to my hands not to place my chief
confidence upon the aid of that Almighty Power which has hitherto
protected me and enabled me to bring to favorable issues other important
but still greatly inferior trusts heretofore confided to me by my
country.

The broad foundation upon which our Constitution rests being the
people--a breath of theirs having made, as a breath can unmake, change,
or modify it--it can be assigned to none of the great divisions of
government but to that of democracy. If such is its theory, those who
are called upon to administer it must recognize as its leading principle
the duty of shaping their measures so as to produce the greatest good to
the greatest number. But with these broad admissions, if we would
compare the sovereignty acknowledged to exist in the mass of our people
with the power claimed by other sovereignties, even by those which have
been considered most purely democratic, we shall find a most essential
difference. All others lay claim to power limited only by their own
will. The majority of our citizens, on the contrary, possess a
sovereignty with an amount of power precisely equal to that which has
been granted to them by the parties to the national compact, and nothing
beyond. We admit of no government by divine right, believing that so far
as power is concerned the Beneficent Creator has made no distinction
amongst men; that all are upon an equality, and that the only legitimate
right to govern is an express grant of power from the governed. The
Constitution of the United States is the instrument containing this
grant of power to the several departments composing the Government. On
an examination of that instrument it will be found to contain
declarations of power granted and of power withheld. The latter is also
susceptible of division into power which the majority had the right to
grant, but which they do not think proper to intrust to their agents,
and that which they could not have granted, not being possessed by
themselves. In other words, there are certain rights possessed by each
individual American citizen which in his compact with the others he has
never surrendered. Some of them, indeed, he is unable to surrender,
being, in the language of our system, unalienable. The boasted privilege
of a Roman citizen was to him a shield only against a petty provincial
ruler, whilst the proud democrat of Athens would console himself under a
sentence of death for a supposed violation of the national faith--which
no one understood and which at times was the subject of the mockery of
all--or the banishment from his home, his family, and his country with
or without an alleged cause, that it was the act not of a single tyrant
or hated aristocracy, but of his assembled countrymen. Far different is
the power of our sovereignty. It can interfere with no one's faith,
prescribe forms of worship for no one's observance, inflict no
punishment but after well-ascertained guilt, the result of investigation
under rules prescribed by the Constitution itself. These precious
privileges, and those scarcely less important of giving expression to
his thoughts and opinions, either by writing or speaking, unrestrained
but by the liability for injury to others, and that of a full
participation in all the advantages which flow from the Government, the
acknowledged property of all, the American citizen derives from no
charter granted by his fellow-man. He claims them because he is himself
a man, fashioned by the same Almighty hand as the rest of his species
and entitled to a full share of the blessings with which He has endowed
them. Notwithstanding the limited sovereignty possessed by the people of
the United States and the restricted grant of power to the Government
which they have adopted, enough has been given to accomplish all the
objects for which it was created. It has been found powerful in war, and
hitherto justice has been administered, and intimate union effected,
domestic tranquillity preserved, and personal liberty secured to the
citizen. As was to be expected, however, from the defect of language and
the necessarily sententious manner in which the Constitution is written,
disputes have arisen as to the amount of power which it has actually
granted or was intended to grant.

This is more particularly the case in relation to that part of the
instrument which treats of the legislative branch, and not only as
regards the exercise of powers claimed under a general clause giving
that body the authority to pass all laws necessary to carry into effect
the specified powers, but in relation to the latter also. It is,
however, consolatory to reflect that most of the instances of alleged
departure from the letter or spirit of the Constitution have ultimately
received the sanction of a majority of the people. And the fact that
many of our statesmen most distinguished for talent and patriotism have
been at one time or other of their political career on both sides of
each of the most warmly disputed questions forces upon us the inference
that the errors, if errors there were, are attributable to the intrinsic
difficulty in many instances of ascertaining the intentions of the
framers of the Constitution rather than the influence of any sinister or
unpatriotic motive. But the great danger to our institutions does not
appear to me to be in a usurpation by the Government of power not
granted by the people, but by the accumulation in one of the departments
of that which was assigned to others. Limited as are the powers which
have been granted, still enough have been granted to constitute a
despotism if concentrated in one of the departments. This danger is
greatly heightened, as it has been always observable that men are less
jealous of encroachments of one department upon another than upon their
own reserved rights. When the Constitution of the United States first
came from the hands of the Convention which formed it, many of the
sternest republicans of the day were alarmed at the extent of the power
which had been granted to the Federal Government, and more particularly
of that portion which had been assigned to the executive branch. There
were in it features which appeared not to be in harmony with their ideas
of a simple representative democracy or republic, and knowing the
tendency of power to increase itself, particularly when exercised by a
single individual, predictions were made that at no very remote period
the Government would terminate in virtual monarchy. It would not become
me to say that the fears of these patriots have been already realized;
but as I sincerely believe that the tendency of measures and of men's
opinions for some years past has been in that direction, it is, I
conceive, strictly proper that I should take this occasion to repeat the
assurances I have heretofore given of my determination to arrest the
progress of that tendency if it really exists and restore the Government
to its pristine health and vigor, as far as this can be effected by any
legitimate exercise of the power placed in my hands.

I proceed to state in as summary a manner as I can my opinion of the
sources of the evils which have been so extensively complained of and
the correctives which may be applied. Some of the former are
unquestionably to be found in the defects of the Constitution; others,
in my judgment, are attributable to a misconstruction of some of its
provisions. Of the former is the eligibility of the same individual to a
second term of the Presidency. The sagacious mind of Mr. Jefferson early
saw and lamented this error, and attempts have been made, hitherto
without success, to apply the amendatory power of the States to its
correction. As, however, one mode of correction is in the power of every
President, and consequently in mine, it would be useless, and perhaps
invidious, to enumerate the evils of which, in the opinion of many of
our fellow-citizens, this error of the sages who framed the Constitution
may have been the source and the bitter fruits which we are still to
gather from it if it continues to disfigure our system. It may be
observed, however, as a general remark, that republics can commit no
greater error than to adopt or continue any feature in their systems of
government which may be calculated to create or increase the lover of
power in the bosoms of those to whom necessity obliges them to commit
the management of their affairs; and surely nothing is more likely to
produce such a state of mind than the long continuance of an office of
high trust. Nothing can be more corrupting, nothing more destructive of
all those noble feelings which belong to the character of a devoted
republican patriot. When this corrupting passion once takes possession
of the human mind, like the love of gold it becomes insatiable. It is
the never-dying worm in his bosom, grows with his growth and strengthens
with the declining years of its victim. If this is true, it is the part
of wisdom for a republic to limit the service of that officer at least
to whom she has intrusted the management of her foreign relations, the
execution of her laws, and the command of her armies and navies to a
period so short as to prevent his forgetting that he is the accountable
agent, not the principal; the servant, not the master. Until an
amendment of the Constitution can be effected public opinion may secure
the desired object. I give my aid to it by renewing the pledge
heretofore given that under no circumstances will I consent to serve a
second term.

But if there is danger to public liberty from the acknowledged defects
of the Constitution in the want of limit to the continuance of the
Executive power in the same hands, there is, I apprehend, not much less
from a misconstruction of that instrument as it regards the powers
actually given. I can not conceive that by a fair construction any or
either of its provisions would be found to constitute the President a
part of the legislative power. It can not be claimed from the power to
recommend, since, although enjoined as a duty upon him, it is a
privilege which he holds in common with every other citizen; and
although there may be something more of confidence in the propriety of
the measures recommended in the one case than in the other, in the
obligations of ultimate decision there can be no difference. In the
language of the Constitution, "all the legislative powers" which it
grants "are vested in the Congress of the United States." It would be a
solecism in language to say that any portion of these is not included in
the whole.

It may be said, indeed, that the Constitution has given to the Executive
the power to annul the acts of the legislative body by refusing to them
his assent. So a similar power has necessarily resulted from that
instrument to the judiciary, and yet the judiciary forms no part of the
Legislature. There is, it is true, this difference between these grants
of power: The Executive can put his negative upon the acts of the
Legislature for other cause than that of want of conformity to the
Constitution, whilst the judiciary can only declare void those which
violate that instrument. But the decision of the judiciary is final in
such a case, whereas in every instance where the veto of the Executive
is applied it may be overcome by a vote of two-thirds of both Houses of
Congress. The negative upon the acts of the legislative by the executive
authority, and that in the hands of one individual, would seem to be an
incongruity in our system. Like some others of a similar character,
however, it appears to be highly expedient, and if used only with the
forbearance and in the spirit which was intended by its authors it may
be productive of great good and be found one of the best safeguards to
the Union. At the period of the formation of the Constitution the
principle does not appear to have enjoyed much favor in the State
governments. It existed but in two, and in one of these there was a
plural executive. If we would search for the motives which operated upon
the purely patriotic and enlightened assembly which framed the
Constitution for the adoption of a provision so apparently repugnant to
the leading democratic principle that the majority should govern, we
must reject the idea that they anticipated from it any benefit to the
ordinary course of legislation. They knew too well the high degree of
intelligence which existed among the people and the enlightened
character of the State legislatures not to have the fullest confidence
that the two bodies elected by them would be worthy representatives of
such constituents, and, of course, that they would require no aid in
conceiving and maturing the measures which the circumstances of the
country might require. And it is preposterous to suppose that a thought
could for a moment have been entertained that the President, placed at
the capital, in the center of the country, could better understand the
wants and wishes of the people than their own immediate representatives,
who spend a part of every year among them, living with them, often
laboring with them, and bound to them by the triple tie of interest,
duty, and affection. To assist or control Congress, then, in its
ordinary legislation could not, I conceive, have been the motive for
conferring the veto power on the President. This argument acquires
additional force from the fact of its never having been thus used by the
first six Presidents--and two of them were members of the Convention,
one presiding over its deliberations and the other bearing a larger
share in consummating the labors of that august body than any other
person. But if bills were never returned to Congress by either of the
Presidents above referred to upon the ground of their being inexpedient
or not as well adapted as they might be to the wants of the people, the
veto was applied upon that of want of conformity to the Constitution or
because errors had been committed from a too hasty enactment.

There is another ground for the adoption of the veto principle, which
had probably more influence in recommending it to the Convention than
any other. I refer to the security which it gives to the just and
equitable action of the Legislature upon all parts of the Union. It
could not but have occurred to the Convention that in a country so
extensive, embracing so great a variety of soil and climate, and
consequently of products, and which from the same causes must ever
exhibit a great difference in the amount of the population of its
various sections, calling for a great diversity in the employments of
the people, that the legislation of the majority might not always justly
regard the rights and interests of the minority, and that acts of this
character might be passed under an express grant by the words of the
Constitution, and therefore not within the competency of the judiciary
to declare void; that however enlightened and patriotic they might
suppose from past experience the members of Congress might be, and
however largely partaking, in the general, of the liberal feelings of
the people, it was impossible to expect that bodies so constituted
should not sometimes be controlled by local interests and sectional
feelings. It was proper, therefore, to provide some umpire from whose
situation and mode of appointment more independence and freedom from
such influences might be expected. Such a one was afforded by the
executive department constituted by the Constitution. A person elected
to that high office, having his constituents in every section, State,
and subdivision of the Union, must consider himself bound by the most
solemn sanctions to guard, protect, and defend the rights of all and of
every portion, great or small, from the injustice and oppression of the
rest. I consider the veto power, therefore, given by the Constitution to
the Executive of the United States solely as a conservative power, to be
used only first, to protect the Constitution from violation; secondly,
the people from the effects of hasty legislation where their will has
been probably disregarded or not well understood, and, thirdly, to
prevent the effects of combinations violative of the rights of
minorities. In reference to the second of these objects I may observe
that I consider it the right and privilege of the people to decide
disputed points of the Constitution arising from the general grant of
power to Congress to carry into effect the powers expressly given; and I
believe with Mr. Madison that "repeated recognitions under varied
circumstances in acts of the legislative, executive, and judicial
branches of the Government, accompanied by indications in different
modes of the concurrence of the general will of the nation," as
affording to the President sufficient authority for his considering such
disputed points as settled.

Upward of half a century has elapsed since the adoption of the present
form of government. It would be an object more highly desirable than the
gratification of the curiosity of speculative statesmen if its precise
situation could be ascertained, a fair exhibit made of the operations of
each of its departments, of the powers which they respectively claim and
exercise, of the collisions which have occurred between them or between
the whole Government and those of the States or either of them. We could
then compare our actual condition after fifty years' trial of our system
with what it was in the commencement of its operations and ascertain
whether the predictions of the patriots who opposed its adoption or the
confident hopes of its advocates have been best realized. The great
dread of the former seems to have been that the reserved powers of the
States would be absorbed by those of the Federal Government and a
consolidated power established, leaving to the States the shadow only of
that independent action for which they had so zealously contended and on
the preservation of which they relied as the last hope of liberty.
Without denying that the result to which they looked with so much
apprehension is in the way of being realized, it is obvious that they
did not clearly see the mode of its accomplishment. The General
Government has seized upon none of the reserved rights of the States. AS
far as any open warfare may have gone, the State authorities have amply
maintained their rights. To a casual observer our system presents no
appearance of discord between the different members which compose it.
Even the addition of many new ones has produced no jarring. They move in
their respective orbits in perfect harmony with the central head and
with each other. But there is still an undercurrent at work by which, if
not seasonably checked, the worst apprehensions of our antifederal
patriots will be realized, and not only will the State authorities be
overshadowed by the great increase of power in the executive department
of the General Government, but the character of that Government, if not
its designation, be essentially and radically changed. This state of
things has been in part effected by causes inherent in the Constitution
and in part by the never-failing tendency of political power to increase
itself. By making the President the sole distributer of all the
patronage of the Government the framers of the Constitution do not
appear to have anticipated at how short a period it would become a
formidable instrument to control the free operations of the State
governments. Of trifling importance at first, it had early in Mr.
Jefferson's Administration become so powerful as to create great alarm
in the mind of that patriot from the potent influence it might exert in
controlling the freedom of the elective franchise. If such could have
then been the effects of its influence, how much greater must be the
danger at this time, quadrupled in amount as it certainly is and more
completely under the control of the Executive will than their
construction of their powers allowed or the forbearing characters of all
the early Presidents permitted them to make. But it is not by the extent
of its patronage alone that the executive department has become
dangerous, but by the use which it appears may be made of the appointing
power to bring under its control the whole revenues of the country. The
Constitution has declared it to be the duty of the President to see that
the laws are executed, and it makes him the Commander in Chief of the
Armies and Navy of the United States. If the opinion of the most
approved writers upon that species of mixed government which in modern
Europe is termed monarchy in contradistinction to despotism is correct,
there was wanting no other addition to the powers of our Chief
Magistrate to stamp a monarchical character on our Government but the
control of the public finances; and to me it appears strange indeed that
anyone should doubt that the entire control which the President
possesses over the officers who have the custody of the public money, by
the power of removal with or without cause, does, for all mischievous
purposes at least, virtually subject the treasure also to his disposal.
The first Roman Emperor, in his attempt to seize the sacred treasure,
silenced the opposition of the officer to whose charge it had been
committed by a significant allusion to his sword. By a selection of
political instruments for the care of the public money a reference to
their commissions by a President would be quite as effectual an argument
as that of Caesar to the Roman knight. I am not insensible of the great
difficulty that exists in drawing a proper plan for the safe-keeping
and disbursement of the public revenues, and I know the importance which
has been attached by men of great abilities and patriotism to the
divorce, as it is called, of the Treasury from the banking institutions
It is not the divorce which is complained of, but the unhallowed union
of the Treasury with the executive department, which has created such
extensive alarm. To this danger to our republican institutions and that
created by the influence given to the Executive through the
instrumentality of the Federal officers I propose to apply all the
remedies which may be at my command. It was certainly a great error in
the framers of the Constitution not to have made the officer at the head
of the Treasury Department entirely independent of the Executive. He
should at least have been removable only upon the demand of the popular
branch of the Legislature. I have determined never to remove a Secretary
of the Treasury without communicating all the circumstances attending
such removal to both Houses of Congress.

The influence of the Executive in controlling the freedom of the
elective franchise through the medium of the public officers can be
effectually checked by renewing the prohibition published by Mr.
Jefferson forbidding their interference in elections further than giving
their own votes, and their own independence secured by an assurance of
perfect immunity in exercising this sacred privilege of freemen under
the dictates of their own unbiased judgments. Never with my consent
shall an officer of the people, compensated for his services out of
their pockets, become the pliant instrument of Executive will.

There is no part of the means placed in the hands of the Executive which
might be used with greater effect for unhallowed purposes than the
control of the public press. The maxim which our ancestors derived from
the mother country that "the freedom of the press is the great bulwark
of civil and religious liberty" is one of the most precious legacies
which they have left us. We have learned, too, from our own as well as
the experience of other countries, that golden shackles, by whomsoever
or by whatever pretense imposed, are as fatal to it as the iron bonds of
despotism. The presses in the necessary employment of the Government
should never be used "to clear the guilty or to varnish crime." A decent
and manly examination of the acts of the Government should be not only
tolerated, but encouraged.

Upon another occasion I have given my opinion at some length upon the
impropriety of Executive interference in the legislation of
Congress--that the article in the Constitution making it the duty of
the President to communicate information and authorizing him to
recommend measures was not intended to make him the source in
legislation, and, in particular, that he should never be looked to for
schemes of finance. It would be very strange, indeed, that the
Constitution should have strictly forbidden one branch of the
Legislature from interfering in the origination of such bills and that
it should be considered proper that an altogether different department
of the Government should be permitted to do so. Some of our best
political maxims and opinions have been drawn from our parent isle.
There are others, however, which can not be introduced in our system
without singular incongruity and the production of much mischief, and
this I conceive to be one. No matter in which of the houses of
Parliament a bill may originate nor by whom introduced--a minister or a
member of the opposition--by the fiction of law, or rather of
constitutional

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