those of any other people, let us unite in fervently commending every
interest of our beloved country in all future time.

Fellow-citizens, being fully invested with that high office to which
the partiality of my countrymen has called me, I now take an
affectionate leave of you. You will bear with you to your homes the
remembrance of the pledge I have this day given to discharge all the
high duties of my exalted station according to the best of my ability,
and I shall enter upon their performance with entire confidence in the
support of a just and generous people.


***

James Knox Polk
Inaugural Address
Tuesday, March 4, 1845

Fellow-Citizens:

WITHOUT solicitation on my part, I have been chosen by the free and
voluntary suffrages of my countrymen to the most honorable and most
responsible office on earth. I am deeply impressed with gratitude for
the confidence reposed in me. Honored with this distinguished
consideration at an earlier period of life than any of my predecessors,
I can not disguise the diffidence with which I am about to enter on the
discharge of my official duties.

If the more aged and experienced men who have filled the office of
President of the United States even in the infancy of the Republic