blessings upon our labors.


***

Benjamin Harrison
Inaugural Address
Monday, March 4, 1889

Fellow-Citizens:

THERE is no constitutional or legal requirement that the President
shall take the oath of office in the presence of the people, but there
is so manifest an appropriateness in the public induction to office of
the chief executive officer of the nation that from the beginning of
the Government the people, to whose service the official oath
consecrates the officer, have been called to witness the solemn
ceremonial. The oath taken in the presence of the people becomes a
mutual covenant. The officer covenants to serve the whole body of the
people by a faithful execution of the laws, so that they may be the
unfailing defense and security of those who respect and observe them,
and that neither wealth, station, nor the power of combinations shall
be able to evade their just penalties or to wrest them from a
beneficent public purpose to serve the ends of cruelty or selfishness.

My promise is spoken; yours unspoken, but not the less real and solemn.
The people of every State have here their representatives. Surely I do
not misinterpret the spirit of the occasion when I assume that the
whole body of the people covenant with me and with each other to-day to
support and defend the Constitution and the Union of the States, to