yield willing obedience to all the laws and each to every other citizen
his equal civil and political rights. Entering thus solemnly into
covenant with each other, we may reverently invoke and confidently
expect the favor and help of Almighty God - that He will give to me
wisdom, strength, and fidelity, and to our people a spirit of
fraternity and a love of righteousness and peace.

This occasion derives peculiar interest from the fact that the
Presidential term which begins this day is the twenty-sixth under our
Constitution. The first inauguration of President Washington took place
in New York, where Congress was then sitting, on the 30th day of April,
1789, having been deferred by reason of delays attending the
organization of the Congress and the canvass of the electoral vote. Our
people have already worthily observed the centennials of the
Declaration of Independence, of the battle of Yorktown, and of the
adoption of the Constitution, and will shortly celebrate in New York
the institution of the second great department of our constitutional
scheme of government. When the centennial of the institution of the
judicial department, by the organization of the Supreme Court, shall
have been suitably observed, as I trust it will be, our nation will
have fully entered its second century.

I will not attempt to note the marvelous and in great part happy
contrasts between our country as it steps over the threshold into its
second century of organized existence under the Constitution and that
weak but wisely ordered young nation that looked undauntedly down the
first century, when all its years stretched out before it.

Our people will not fail at this time to recall the incidents which
accompanied the institution of government under the Constitution, or to