There is no constitutional requirement for an inaugural address.
Yet as with everything in his presidency, it was George Washington who established the precedent of what Abraham Lincoln would later call “a custom as old as the Government” when, after taking the oath of office on the balcony of the Senate chamber at Federal Hall in New York City on April 30, 1789, he addressed a joint session of Congress in the Senate chamber.
Washington delivered the first presidential inaugural address in American history.
Just as customarily, Americans routinely listen to inaugural addresses looking for messages tinged with confidence and hope. For obvious reasons, Washington’s presidency was perhaps the most anticipated in history. At the many stops during his journey from Mt. Vernon to New York, Washington was greeted by the people with a jubilation that worried him.
He was particularly concerned that such zealous enthusiasm could boomerang should the federal government fail to please. As he wrote, “So much is expected, so many untoward circumstances may intervene, in such a new and crucial situation that I feel an insuperable diffidence in my own situation.”
Those Americans who heard or read Washington’s first speech as president may have at first been slightly alarmed when absorbing a frank admission that the father of the country may have preferred to be an absentee parent while the republic took its first steps.
Washington was straightforward with his audience and, through it, the American people. He readily admitted to mixed feelings and, indeed outright fear, about embarking upon this road that had never been traveled. As befit his public career and his private character, however, Washington was congenitally incapable of ignoring the call of his country. In his book Washington: The Indispensable Man, historian James Thomas Flexner noted that Washington delivered his address “with trembling voice and trembling hands.”
Washington began by declaring:
“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.”
All in all, he would have rather been in Philadelphia or reclining along the Potomac with Martha at Mt. Vernon — anywhere but New York City.
Washington’s first inaugural was brief – a mere 1,419 words. While Washington devoted a good amount of the address to explaining his views of the role of chief executive, he set another precedent for his successors by invoking the divine.
George Washington’s faith was that of the Enlightenment. He was a deist. As Flexner and others have pointed out, he did not subscribe to the tenets of the churches of the day. While he did not utter the word “God” in his speech, Washington was indeed convinced that a divine and good “Providence” ruled the world. Nearly a third of his first inaugural address is devoted to the meditations of his heart.
“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.“
Fidelity to the Constitution, morality, and right conduct as the chief executive were subjects also very much on Washington’s mind as he assumed office, and he made both points of emphasis in his inaugural address:
“…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.
“To the preceding 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.”
Washington’s frank words combined with the appearance of true apprehension and even sadness about the task that he faced greatly moved his audience. Rep. Fisher Ames of Massachusetts, who was a famed orator, was genuinely astonished at the effect of Washington’s plain delivery, and wrote “It seemed to me an allegory in which virtue was personified, and addressing those whom she would make her votaries. Her power over the heart was never greater.”
Without question, among the amazing precedents George Washington set in his life the most significant were his walking away from power not once, but twice. But his first inaugural should not be overlooked. It established not just a tradition for his successors, but a guide and measuring stick for them, delivered by a man with a virtuous aversion to overarching power that should never be forgotten by the American people.