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Background: Nominated on the 8th ballot of the
Republican convention, the Civil War veteran, jurist,
and Senator from Indiana was the only grandson of
a President to be elected to the office, as well as
the only incumbent to lose in the following election
to the person he had defeated. In a rainstorm, the
oath of office was administered by Chief Justice Melville
Fuller on the East Portico of the Capitol. President
Cleveland held an umbrella over his head as he took
the oath. John Philip Sousa's Marine Corps band played
for a large crowd at the inaugural ball in the Pension
Building. |
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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 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 Godthat 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 find inspiration and guidance in the teachings
and example of Washington and his great associates,
and hope and courage in the contrast which thirty-eight
populous and prosperous States offer to the thirteen
States, weak in everything except courage and
the love of liberty, that then fringed our Atlantic
seaboard.
The Territory of Dakota has now
a population greater than any of the original
States (except Virginia) and greater than the
aggregate of five of the smaller States in 1790.
The center of population when our national capital
was located was east of Baltimore, and it was
argued by many well-informed persons that it would
move eastward rather than westward; yet in 1880
it was found to be near Cincinnati, and the new
census about to be taken will show another stride
to the westward. That which was the body has come
to be only the rich fringe of the nation's robe.
But our growth has not been limited to territory,
population and aggregate wealth, marvelous as
it has been in each of those directions. The masses
of our people are better fed, clothed, and housed
than their fathers were. The facilities for popular
education have been vastly enlarged and more generally
diffused.
The virtues of courage and patriotism
have given recent proof of their continued presence
and increasing power in the hearts and over the
lives of our people. The influences of religion
have been multiplied and strengthened. The sweet
offices of charity have greatly increased. The
virtue of temperance is held in higher estimation.
We have not attained an ideal condition. Not all
of our people are happy and prosperous; not all
of them are virtuous and law-abiding. But on the
whole the opportunities offered to the individual
to secure the comforts of life are better than
are found elsewhere and largely better than they
were here one hundred years ago.
The surrender of a large measure
of sovereignty to the General Government, effected
by the adoption of the Constitution, was not accomplished
until the suggestions of reason were strongly
reenforced by the more imperative voice of experience.
The divergent interests of peace speedily demanded
a "more perfect union." The merchant,
the shipmaster, and the manufacturer discovered
and disclosed to our statesmen and to the people
that commercial emancipation must be added to
the political freedom which had been so bravely
won. The commercial policy of the mother country
had not relaxed any of its hard and oppressive
features. To hold in check the development of
our commercial marine, to prevent or retard the
establishment and growth of manufactures in the
States, and so to secure the American market for
their shops and the carrying trade for their ships,
was the policy of European statesmen, and was
pursued with the most selfish vigor.
Petitions poured in upon Congress
urging the imposition of discriminating duties
that should encourage the production of needed
things at home. The patriotism of the people,
which no longer found afield of exercise in war,
was energetically directed to the duty of equipping
the young Republic for the defense of its independence
by making its people self-dependent. Societies
for the promotion of home manufactures and for
encouraging the use of domestics in the dress
of the people were organized in many of the States.
The revival at the end of the century of the same
patriotic interest in the preservation and development
of domestic industries and the defense of our
working people against injurious foreign competition
is an incident worthy of attention. It is not
a departure but a return that we have witnessed.
The protective policy had then its opponents.
The argument was made, as now, that its benefits
inured to particular classes or sections.
If the question became in any sense
or at any time sectional, it was only because
slavery existed in some of the States. But for
this there was no reason why the cotton-producing
States should not have led or walked abreast with
the New England States in the production of cotton
fabrics. There was this reason only why the States
that divide with Pennsylvania the mineral treasures
of the great southeastern and central mountain
ranges should have been so tardy in bringing to
the smelting furnace and to the mill the coal
and iron from their near opposing hillsides. Mill
fires were lighted at the funeral pile of slavery.
The emancipation proclamation was heard in the
depths of the earth as well as in the sky; men
were made free, and material things became our
better servants.
The sectional element has happily
been eliminated from the tariff discussion. We
have no longer States that are necessarily only
planting States. None are excluded from achieving
that diversification of pursuits among the people
which brings wealth and contentment. The cotton
plantation will not be less valuable when the
product is spun in the country town by operatives
whose necessities call for diversified crops and
create a home demand for garden and agricultural
products. Every new mine, furnace, and factory
is an extension of the productive capacity of
the State more real and valuable than added territory.
Shall the prejudices and paralysis
of slavery continue to hang upon the skirts of
progress? How long will those who rejoice that
slavery no longer exists cherish or tolerate the
incapacities it put upon their communities? I
look hopefully to the continuance of our protective
system and to the consequent development of manufacturing
and mining enterprises in the States hitherto
wholly given to agriculture as a potent influence
in the perfect unification of our people. The
men who have invested their capital in these enterprises,
the farmers who have felt the benefit of their
neighborhood, and the men who work in shop or
field will not fail to find and to defend a community
of interest.
Is it not quite possible that the
farmers and the promoters of the great mining
and manufacturing enterprises which have recently
been established in the South may yet find that
the free ballot of the workingman, without distinction
of race, is needed for their defense as well as
for his own? I do not doubt that if those men
in the South who now accept the tariff views of
Clay and the constitutional expositions of Webster
would courageously avow and defend their real
convictions they would not find it difficult,
by friendly instruction and cooperation, to make
the black man their efficient and safe ally, not
only in establishing correct principles in our
national administration, but in preserving for
their local communities the benefits of social
order and economical and honest government. At
least until the good offices of kindness and education
have been fairly tried the contrary conclusion
can not be plausibly urged.
I have altogether rejected the
suggestion of a special Executive policy for any
section of our country. It is the duty of the
Executive to administer and enforce in the methods
and by the instrumentalities pointed out and provided
by the Constitution all the laws enacted by Congress.
These laws are general and their administration
should be uniform and equal. As a citizen may
not elect what laws he will obey, neither may
the Executive eject which he will enforce. The
duty to obey and to execute embraces the Constitution
in its entirety and the whole code of laws enacted
under it. The evil example of permitting individuals,
corporations, or communities to nullify the laws
because they cross some selfish or local interest
or prejudices is full of danger, not only to the
nation at large, but much more to those who use
this pernicious expedient to escape their just
obligations or to obtain an unjust advantage over
others. They will presently themselves be compelled
to appeal to the law for protection, and those
who would use the law as a defense must not deny
that use of it to others.
If our great corporations would
more scrupulously observe their legal limitations
and duties, they would have less cause to complain
of the unlawful limitations of their rights or
of violent interference with their operations.
The community that by concert, open or secret,
among its citizens denies to a portion of its
members their plain rights under the law has severed
the only safe bond of social order and prosperity.
The evil works from a bad center both ways. It
demoralizes those who practice it and destroys
the faith of those who suffer by it in the efficiency
of the law as a safe protector. The man in whose
breast that faith has been darkened is naturally
the subject of dangerous and uncanny suggestions.
Those who use unlawful methods, if moved by no
higher motive than the selfishness that prompted
them, may well stop and inquire what is to be
the end of this.
An unlawful expedient can not become
a permanent condition of government. If the educated
and influential classes in a community either
practice or connive at the systematic violation
of laws that seem to them to cross their convenience,
what can they expect when the lesson that convenience
or a supposed class interest is a sufficient cause
for lawlessness has been well learned by the ignorant
classes? A community where law is the rule of
conduct and where courts, not mobs, execute its
penalties is the only attractive field for business
investments and honest labor.
Our naturalization laws should
be so amended as to make the inquiry into the
character and good disposition of persons applying
for citizenship more careful and searching. Our
existing laws have been in their administration
an unimpressive and often an unintelligible form.
We accept the man as a citizen without any knowledge
of his fitness, and he assumes the duties of citizenship
without any knowledge as to what they are. The
privileges of American citizenship are so great
and its duties so grave that we may well insist
upon a good knowledge of every person applying
for citizenship and a good knowledge by him of
our institutions. We should not cease to be hospitable
to immigration, but we should cease to be careless
as to the character of it. There are men of all
races, even the best, whose coming is necessarily
a burden upon our public revenues or a threat
to social order. These should be identified and
excluded.
We have happily maintained a policy
of avoiding all interference with European affairs.
We have been only interested spectators of their
contentions in diplomacy and in war, ready to
use our friendly offices to promote peace, but
never obtruding our advice and never attempting
unfairly to coin the distresses of other powers
into commercial advantage to ourselves. We have
a just right to expect that our European policy
will be the American policy of European courts.
It is so manifestly incompatible
with those precautions for our peace and safety
which all the great powers habitually observe
and enforce in matters affecting them that a shorter
waterway between our eastern and western seaboards
should be dominated by any European Government
that we may confidently expect that such a purpose
will not be entertained by any friendly power.
We shall in the future, as in the
past, use every endeavor to maintain and enlarge
our friendly relations with all the great powers,
but they will not expect us to look kindly upon
any project that would leave us subject to the
dangers of a hostile observation or environment.
We have not sought to dominate or to absorb any
of our weaker neighbors, but rather to aid and
encourage them to establish free and stable governments
resting upon the consent of their own people.
We have a clear right to expect, therefore, that
no European Government will seek to establish
colonial dependencies upon the territory of these
independent American States. That which a sense
of justice restrains us from seeking they may
be reasonably expected willingly to forego.
It must not be assumed, however,
that our interests are so exclusively American
that our entire inattention to any events that
may transpire elsewhere can be taken for granted.
Our citizens domiciled for purposes of trade in
all countries and in many of the islands of the
sea demand and will have our adequate care in
their personal and commercial rights. The necessities
of our Navy require convenient coaling stations
and dock and harbor privileges. These and other
trading privileges we will feel free to obtain
only by means that do not in any degree partake
of coercion, however feeble the government from
which we ask such concessions. But having fairly
obtained them by methods and for purposes entirely
consistent with the most friendly disposition
toward all other powers, our consent will be necessary
to any modification or impairment of the concession.
We shall neither fail to respect
the flag of any friendly nation or the just rights
of its citizens, nor to exact the like treatment
for our own. Calmness, justice, and consideration
should characterize our diplomacy. The offices
of an intelligent diplomacy or of friendly arbitration
in proper cases should be adequate to the peaceful
adjustment of all international difficulties.
By such methods we will make our contribution
to the world's peace, which no nation values more
highly, and avoid the opprobrium which must fall
upon the nation that ruthlessly breaks it.
The duty devolved by law upon the
President to nominate and, by and with the advice
and consent of the Senate, to appoint all public
officers whose appointment is not otherwise provided
for in the Constitution or by act of Congress
has become very burdensome and its wise and efficient
discharge full of difficulty. The civil list is
so large that a personal knowledge of any large
number of the applicants is impossible. The President
must rely upon the representations of others,
and these are often made inconsiderately and without
any just sense of responsibility. I have a right,
I think, to insist that those who volunteer or
are invited to give advice as to appointments
shall exercise consideration and fidelity. A high
sense of duty and an ambition to improve the service
should characterize all public officers.
There are many ways in which the
convenience and comfort of those who have business
with our public offices may be promoted by a thoughtful
and obliging officer, and I shall expect those
whom I may appoint to justify their selection
by a conspicuous efficiency in the discharge of
their duties. Honorable party service will certainly
not be esteemed by me a disqualification for public
office, but it will in no case be allowed to serve
as a shield of official negligence, incompetency,
or delinquency. It is entirely creditable to seek
public office by proper methods and with proper
motives, and all applicants will be treated with
consideration; but I shall need, and the heads
of Departments will need, time for inquiry and
deliberation. Persistent importunity will not,
therefore, be the best support of an application
for office. Heads of Departments, bureaus, and
all other public officers having any duty connected
therewith will be expected to enforce the civil-service
law fully and without evasion. Beyond this obvious
duty I hope to do something more to advance the
reform of the civil service. The ideal, or even
my own ideal, I shall probably not attain. Retrospect
will be a safer basis of judgment than promises.
We shall not, however, I am sure, be able to put
our civil service upon a nonpartisan basis until
we have secured an incumbency that fair-minded
men of the opposition will approve for impartiality
and integrity. As the number of such in the civil
list is increased removals from office will diminish.
While a Treasury surplus is not
the greatest evil, it is a serious evil. Our revenue
should be ample to meet the ordinary annual demands
upon our Treasury, with a sufficient margin for
those extraordinary but scarcely less imperative
demands which arise now and then. Expenditure
should always be made with economy and only upon
public necessity. Wastefulness, profligacy, or
favoritism in public expenditures is criminal.
But there is nothing in the condition of our country
or of our people to suggest that anything presently
necessary to the public prosperity, security,
or honor should be unduly postponed.
It will be the duty of Congress
wisely to forecast and estimate these extraordinary
demands, and, having added them to our ordinary
expenditures, to so adjust our revenue laws that
no considerable annual surplus will remain. We
will fortunately be able to apply to the redemption
of the public debt any small and unforeseen excess
of revenue. This is better than to reduce our
income below our necessary expenditures, with
the resulting choice between another change of
our revenue laws and an increase of the public
debt. It is quite possible, I am sure, to effect
the necessary reduction in our revenues without
breaking down our protective tariff or seriously
injuring any domestic industry.
The construction of a sufficient
number of modern war ships and of their necessary
armament should progress as rapidly as is consistent
with care and perfection in plans and workmanship.
The spirit, courage, and skill of our naval officers
and seamen have many times in our history given
to weak ships and inefficient guns a rating greatly
beyond that of the naval list. That they will
again do so upon occasion I do not doubt; but
they ought not, by premeditation or neglect, to
be left to the risks and exigencies of an unequal
combat. We should encourage the establishment
of American steamship lines. The exchanges of
commerce demand stated, reliable, and rapid means
of communication, and until these are provided
the development of our trade with the States lying
south of us is impossible.
Our pension laws should give more
adequate and discriminating relief to the Union
soldiers and sailors and to their widows and orphans.
Such occasions as this should remind us that we
owe everything to their valor and sacrifice.
It is a subject of congratulation
that there is a near prospect of the admission
into the Union of the Dakotas and Montana and
Washington Territories. This act of justice has
been unreasonably delayed in the case of some
of them. The people who have settled these Territories
are intelligent, enterprising, and patriotic,
and the accession these new States will add strength
to the nation. It is due to the settlers in the
Territories who have availed themselves of the
invitations of our land laws to make homes upon
the public domain that their titles should be
speedily adjusted and their honest entries confirmed
by patent.
It is very gratifying to observe
the general interest now being manifested in the
reform of our election laws. Those who have been
for years calling attention to the pressing necessity
of throwing about the ballot box and about the
elector further safeguards, in order that our
elections might not only be free and pure, but
might clearly appear to be so, will welcome the
accession of any who did not so soon discover
the need of reform. The National Congress has
not as yet taken control of elections in that
case over which the Constitution gives it jurisdiction,
but has accepted and adopted the election laws
of the several States, provided penalties for
their violation and a method of supervision. Only
the inefficiency of the State laws or an unfair
partisan administration of them could suggest
a departure from this policy.
It was clearly, however, in the
contemplation of the framers of the Constitution
that such an exigency might arise, and provision
was wisely made for it. The freedom of the ballot
is a condition of our national life, and no power
vested in Congress or in the Executive to secure
or perpetuate it should remain unused upon occasion.
The people of all the Congressional districts
have an equal interest that the election in each
shall truly express the views and wishes of a
majority of the qualified electors residing within
it. The results of such elections are not local,
and the insistence of electors residing in other
districts that they shall be pure and free does
not savor at all of impertinence.
If in any of the States the public
security is thought to be threatened by ignorance
among the electors, the obvious remedy is education.
The sympathy and help of our people will not be
withheld from any community struggling with special
embarrassments or difficulties connected with
the suffrage if the remedies proposed proceed
upon lawful lines and are promoted by just and
honorable methods. How shall those who practice
election frauds recover that respect for the sanctity
of the ballot which is the first condition and
obligation of good citizenship? The man who has
come to regard the ballot box as a juggler's hat
has renounced his allegiance.
Let us exalt patriotism and moderate
our party contentions. Let those who would die
for the flag on the field of battle give a better
proof of their patriotism and a higher glory to
their country by promoting fraternity and justice.
A party success that is achieved by unfair methods
or by practices that partake of revolution is
hurtful and evanescent even from a party standpoint.
We should hold our differing opinions in mutual
respect, and, having submitted them to the arbitrament
of the ballot, should accept an adverse judgment
with the same respect that we would have demanded
of our opponents if the decision had been in our
favor.
No other people have a government
more worthy of their respect and love or a land
so magnificent in extent, so pleasant to look
upon, and so full of generous suggestion to enterprise
and labor. God has placed upon our head a diadem
and has laid at our feet power and wealth beyond
definition or calculation. But we must not forget
that we take these gifts upon the condition that
justice and mercy shall hold the reins of power
and that the upward avenues of hope shall be free
to all the people.
I do not mistrust the future. Dangers
have been in frequent ambush along our path, but
we have uncovered and vanquished them all. Passion
has swept some of our communities, but only to
give us a new demonstration that the great body
of our people are stable, patriotic, and law-abiding.
No political party can long pursue advantage at
the expense of public honor or by rude and indecent
methods without protest and fatal disaffection
in its own body. The peaceful agencies of commerce
are more fully revealing the necessary unity of
all our communities, and the increasing intercourse
of our people is promoting mutual respect. We
shall find unalloyed pleasure in the revelation
which our next census will make of the swift development
of the great resources of some of the States.
Each State will bring its generous contribution
to the great aggregate of the nation's increase.
And when the harvests from the fields, the cattle
from the hills, and the ores of the earth shall
have been weighed, counted, and valued, we will
turn from them all to crown with the highest honor
the State that has most promoted education, virtue,
justice, and patriotism among its people. |
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