This diary is the third in a series of five on US Presidential Inaugural Addresses.
In Part 1, I covered the periods I call "Beginnings" and "Antebellum," or Washington through Buchanan.
In Part 2, I wrote about the periods "Lincoln" and "Reconstruction," which covered Lincoln through McKinley.
Today, I will discuss the eras "Progressivism to Depression" and "FDR," a look at presidents from Theodore Roosevelt through Franklin Roosevelt.
In Part 4 I will cover the remainder of the presidential inaugural addresses from Truman through George W. Bush in "Cold War" and "Conservatism."
In the final segment, I will provide a summary, or overview, and will speculate on Obama's upcoming inaugural address.
My thanks to those who have read, recommended, and/or commented upon these diaries. I hope you continue to enjoy the series.
Links to all presidential inauguration addresses can be found at Bartleby.com.
(Note: In quotes, original emphasis is shown in italics. My added emphasis is in bold.)
PROGRESSIVISM TO DEPRESSION (1905-1929: Theodore Roosevelt-Herbert Hoover)
Theodore Roosevelt anticipated the increasing role of the US in world affairs in his inaugural address:
Much has been given us, and much will rightfully be expected from us. We have duties to others and duties to ourselves; and we can shirk neither. We have become a great nation, forced by the fact of its greatness into relations with the other nations of the earth, and we must behave as beseems a people with such responsibilities.
But, unlike McKinley and many of his immediate predecessors, TR spoke in general terms and avoided the "laundry list" of issues. His rhetoric was clear and inspiring at times. For example, this passage reflects TR's practical optimism:
Upon the success of our experiment much depends, not only as regards our own welfare, but as regards the welfare of mankind. If we fail, the cause of free self-government throughout the world will rock to its foundations, and therefore our responsibility is heavy, to ourselves, to the world as it is to-day, and to the generations yet unborn. There is no good reason why we should fear the future, but there is every reason why we should face it seriously, neither hiding from ourselves the gravity of the problems before us nor fearing to approach these problems with the unbending, unflinching purpose to solve them aright.
Surprisingly, Roosevelt spoke not a word about the trust-busting that was the hallmark of his administration. His successor, William Howard Taft, however, pledged to continue TR's fight:
I should be untrue to myself...if I did not make the maintenance and enforcement of those reforms a most important feature of my administration. They [anti-trust laws] were directed to the suppression of the lawlessness and abuses of power of the great combinations of capital invested in railroads and in industrial enterprises carrying on interstate commerce.
Taft also noted a sea-change in government's role:
The scope of a modern government in what it can and ought to accomplish for its people has been widened far beyond the principles laid down by the old "laissez faire" school of political writers, and this widening has met popular approval.
The new responsibilities included support of agricultural experimentation, regulation of business, and conservation laws.
Taft claimed to be supportive of the right of African Americans to vote, but supported laws passed in Southern states requiring literacy tests, a ruse that would disenfranchise black voters until 1965:
Hence it is clear to all that the domination of an ignorant, irresponsible element can be prevented by constitutional laws which shall exclude from voting both negroes and whites not having education or other qualifications thought to be necessary for a proper electorate. The danger of the control of an ignorant electorate has therefore passed.
Woodrow Wilson's First Inaugural Address, while not as momentous or pithy as Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, may be the most eloquent inaugural address of them all. He begins by claiming a mandate for change in his first inaugural:
There has been a change of government. It began two years ago, when the House of Representatives became Democratic by a decisive majority. It has now been completed. The Senate about to assemble will also be Democratic. The offices of President and Vice-President have been put into the hands of Democrats. What does the change mean?
(snip)
It means much more than the mere success of a party. The success of a party means little except when the Nation is using that party for a large and definite purpose. No one can mistake the purpose for which the Nation now seeks to use the Democratic Party. It seeks to use it to interpret a change in its own plans and point of view.
That change in point of view is described by Wilson in a powerful passage which resonates so well that even an accomplished wordsmith like Obama might be tempted to draw upon it today:
With riches has come inexcusable waste. We have squandered a great part of what we might have used, and have not stopped to conserve the exceeding bounty of nature, without which our genius for enterprise would have been worthless and impotent, scorning to be careful, shamefully prodigal as well as admirably efficient. We have been proud of our industrial achievements, but we have not hitherto stopped thoughtfully enough to count the human cost, the cost of lives snuffed out, of energies overtaxed and broken, the fearful physical and spiritual cost to the men and women and children upon whom the dead weight and burden of it all has fallen pitilessly the years through. The groans and agony of it all had not yet reached our ears, the solemn, moving undertone of our life, coming up out of the mines and factories, and out of every home where the struggle had its intimate and familiar seat. With the great Government went many deep secret things which we too long delayed to look into and scrutinize with candid, fearless eyes. The great Government we loved has too often been made use of for private and selfish purposes, and those who used it had forgotten the people.
(snip)
There has been something crude and heartless and unfeeling in our haste to succeed and be great. Our thought has been "Let every man look out for himself, let every generation look out for itself," while we reared giant machinery which made it impossible that any but those who stood at the levers of control should have a chance to look out for themselves. We had not forgotten our morals. We remembered well enough that we had set up a policy which was meant to serve the humblest as well as the most powerful, with an eye single to the standards of justice and fair play, and remembered it with pride. But we were very heedless and in a hurry to be great.
We have come now to the sober second thought. The scales of heedlessness have fallen from our eyes. We have made up our minds to square every process of our national life again with the standards we so proudly set up at the beginning and have always carried at our hearts. Our work is a work of restoration.
(snip)
Society must see to it that it does not itself crush or weaken or damage its own constituent parts. The first duty of law is to keep sound the society it serves. Sanitary laws, pure food laws, and laws determining conditions of labor which individuals are powerless to determine for themselves are intimate parts of the very business of justice and legal efficiency.
Wilson, previously president of Princeton University, obviously had a command of language that is rare among US Presidents, and that eloquence is captured in this remarkable speech.
By the time of Wilson's second inauguration, World War I was well underway, although the US had not officially entered it. Despite running on a platform of "He kept us out of war," Wilson hinted strongly in his address that the US would soon join the fight. A month later, on April 6, 1917, the US declared war on Germany. He said,
We may even be drawn on, by circumstances, not by our own purpose or desire, to a more active assertion of our rights as we see them and a more immediate association with the great struggle itself.
(snip)
We are provincials no longer. The tragic events of the thirty months of vital turmoil through which we have just passed have made us citizens of the world. There can be no turning back. Our own fortunes as a nation are involved whether we would have it so or not.
While Wilson clearly relegated domestic issues to the back burner in his speech, he couldn't resist throwing one more rock at big business:
We are to beware of all men who would turn the tasks and the necessities of the nation to their own private profit or use them for the building up of private power.
A world organization, like the League of Nations, went unmentioned in the speech.
After Wilson, for the next twelve years executive power rested in the hands of three Republican presidents--Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover. The end of that reign resulted in the Great Depression, the worst economic crisis in the country's history.
Harding, in the aftermath of The Great War, called for a return to isolationism and spoke fairly directly against the League of Nations:
Confident of our ability to work out our own destiny, and jealously guarding our right to do so, we seek no part in directing the destinies of the Old World. We do not mean to be entangled. We will accept no responsibility except as our own conscience and judgment, in each instance, may determine.
(snip)
In a deliberate questioning of a suggested change of national policy, where internationality was to supersede nationality, we turned to a referendum, to the American people. There was ample discussion, and there is a public mandate in manifest understanding.
In his most famous line, which he used twice, Harding called for
a world-wide benediction of understanding. It is needed among individuals, among peoples, among governments, and it will inaugurate an era of good feeling to make the birth of a new order.
(snip)
I would like to acclaim an era of good feeling amid dependable prosperity and all the blessings which attend.
In the economic turmoil churned up by the wake of WWI, Harding advocated deregulation:
I speak for administrative efficiency, for lightened tax burdens, for sound commercial practices, for adequate credit facilities, for sympathetic concern for all agricultural problems, for the omission of unnecessary interference of Government with business, for an end to Government's experiment in business, and for more efficient business in Government administration.
Teddy Roosevelt's trust-busting was going by the wayside as Republicans placed more and more faith in laissez-faire economics.
Of course, the biggest sea-change in American politics was women's suffrage, which Wilson had promoted and which was adopted in the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. Harding noted:
With the nation-wide induction of womanhood into our political life, we may count upon her intuitions, her refinements, her intelligence, and her influence to exalt the social order. We count upon her exercise of the full privileges and the performance of the duties of citizenship to speed the attainment of the highest state.
Coolidge, who took over after Harding died in 1923, was reelected and gave his inaugural address in March 1925. To Coolidge, the post-war economy was well on its way to recovery:
Already we have sufficiently rearranged our domestic affairs so that confidence has returned, business has revived, and we appear to be entering an era of prosperity which is gradually reaching into every part of the Nation.
In addition, just twelve years after Wilson and the Democrats had controlled all the institutions of power, Coolidge found himself leading an all-Republican government, and he wanted to take the country in the same direction that Ronald Reagan would espouse 55 years later:
The time is arriving when we can have further tax reduction, when, unless we wish to hamper the people in their right to earn a living, we must have tax reform. The method of raising revenue ought not to impede the transaction of business; it ought to encourage it. I am opposed to extremely high [tax] rates, because they produce little or no revenue, because they are bad for the country, and, finally, because they are wrong. We can not finance the country, we can not improve social conditions, through any system of injustice, even if we attempt to inflict it upon the rich. Those who suffer the most harm will be the poor. This country believes in prosperity. It is absurd to suppose that it is envious of those who are already prosperous. The wise and correct course to follow in taxation and all other economic legislation is not to destroy those who have already secured success but to create conditions under which every one will have a better chance to be successful. The verdict of the country has been given on this question. That verdict stands. We shall do well to heed it.
According to Coolidge, the outlook was rosy:
These policies of better international understandings, greater economy, and lower taxes have contributed largely to peaceful and prosperous industrial relations. Under the helpful influences of restrictive immigration and a protective tariff, employment is plentiful, the rate of pay is high, and wage earners are in a state of contentment seldom before seen.
Of course, the reality was that by the time Coolidge's successor, Herbert Hoover, was sworn-in in 1929, the economy was on the edge of collapse.
Coolidge, however, was not without his eloquent moments:
The fundamental precept of liberty is toleration. We can not permit any inquisition either within or without the law or apply any religious test to the holding of office. The mind of America must be forever free.
When Hoover took office, the Roaring 20's were in full swing and few could envision the economic crash that would befall the nation six months later. Hoover boasted:
In the large view, we have reached a higher degree of comfort and security than ever existed before in the history of the world. Through liberation from widespread poverty we have reached a higher degree of individual freedom than ever before.
In the Prohibition Era, rampant with organized crime, Hoover became the first President to seriously address "law and order" in an inaugural speech:
The most malign of all these dangers today is disregard and disobedience of law. Crime is increasing. Confidence in rigid and speedy justice is decreasing. I am not prepared to believe that this indicates any decay in the moral fiber of the American people. I am not prepared to believe that it indicates an impotence of the Federal Government to enforce its laws.
In addition, Hoover proposed shifting enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment (Prohibition) from the Treasury Department to Justice. This would eventually lead to the formation of the FBI in 1935:
[I]t is essential that a large part of the enforcement activities be transferred from the Treasury Department to the Department of Justice as a beginning of more effective organization.
On the brink of the Great Depression, Hoover assured Americans that all was well:
Ours is a land rich in resources; stimulating in its glorious beauty; filled with millions of happy homes; blessed with comfort and opportunity. In no nation are the institutions of progress more advanced. In no nation are the fruits of accomplishment more secure. In no nation is the government more worthy of respect. No country is more loved by its people. I have an abiding faith in their capacity, integrity and high purpose. I have no fears for the future of our country. It is bright with hope.
By 1933, Americans had plenty of fears about their future. It would be up to Hoover's successor, FDR, to eloquently calm those fears.
FDR (1933-1945)
Because of his extraordinary rhetorical skills, because of the profundity of the Great Depression and World War II, and because he was the only US President to give more than two inaugural addresses (he gave four), I have assigned FDR his own era.
Taking office in the midst of the Great Depression, FDR opened his First Inaugural Address with a bang, speaking frankly to the American people and coining a phrase that will be remembered forever:
This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.
Roosevelt didn't hesitate to offer this scathing indictment of Wall Street:
Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.
(snip)
The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.
Then Roosevelt offered this:
Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now.
Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources.
(snip)
Finally, in our progress toward a resumption of work we require two safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order; there must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments; there must be an end to speculation with other people's money, and there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency.
Roosevelt enunciated his foreign policy with another famous turn of phrase:
In the field of world policy I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of the good neighbor—the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others—the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors.
In the most troubling passage of his speech, which threatens martial law, FDR warned that if needed changes to improve the economy were not made legislatively, he would
ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis—broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.
Roosevelt's Second Inaugural in 1937 was the first held on January 20 rather than March 4. Its soaring rhetoric and its strong advocacy of the role of government in the lives of the people rank it among the finest inaugural addresses ever. FDR's vision of government presented in this speech would dominate American political philosophy until Ronald Reagan's inauguration in 1981. FDR said,
Instinctively we recognized a deeper need—the need to find through government the instrument of our united purpose to solve for the individual the ever-rising problems of a complex civilization. Repeated attempts at their solution without the aid of government had left us baffled and bewildered. For, without that aid, we had been unable to create those moral controls over the services of science which are necessary to make science a useful servant instead of a ruthless master of mankind. To do this we knew that we must find practical controls over blind economic forces and blindly selfish men.
We of the Republic sensed the truth that democratic government has innate capacity to protect its people against disasters once considered inevitable, to solve problems once considered unsolvable. We would not admit that we could not find a way to master economic epidemics just as, after centuries of fatalistic suffering, we had found a way to master epidemics of disease. We refused to leave the problems of our common welfare to be solved by the winds of chance and the hurricanes of disaster.
In this we Americans were discovering no wholly new truth; we were writing a new chapter in our book of self-government.
Additionally, FDR included this gem, which could easily grace Obama's upcoming speech (or make a good sig line):
We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics.
FDR was no stranger to oratory, either. Note his effective use of the rhetorical question and the tricolon in these passages:
Shall we pause now and turn our back upon the road that lies ahead? Shall we call this the promised land? Or, shall we continue on our way? For "each age is a dream that is dying, or one that is coming to birth."
Many voices are heard as we face a great decision. Comfort says, "Tarry a while." Opportunism says, "This is a good spot." Timidity asks, "How difficult is the road ahead?"
True, we have come far from the days of stagnation and despair. Vitality has been preserved. Courage and confidence have been restored. Mental and moral horizons have been extended.
But our present gains were won under the pressure of more than ordinary circumstances. Advance became imperative under the goad of fear and suffering. The times were on the side of progress.
To hold to progress today, however, is more difficult.
(snip)
But here is the challenge to our democracy: In this nation I see tens of millions of its citizens—a substantial part of its whole population—who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life.
I see millions of families trying to live on incomes so meager that the pall of family disaster hangs over them day by day.
I see millions whose daily lives in city and on farm continue under conditions labeled indecent by a so-called polite society half a century ago.
I see millions denied education, recreation, and the opportunity to better their lot and the lot of their children.
I see millions lacking the means to buy the products of farm and factory and by their poverty denying work and productiveness to many other millions.
I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.
It is not in despair that I paint you that picture. I paint it for you in hope—because the Nation, seeing and understanding the injustice in it, proposes to paint it out.
Clearly, FDR's Second rivals Lincoln's Second and Wilson's First among great inaugural addresses.
By January 1941 and the Third Inaugural, Roosevelt's priorities had shifted. World War II had begun on September 1, 1939. Now a little over a year later, Nazi Germany controlled all of continental Europe and Great Britain was hanging by a thread. Japan controlled China, Southeast Asia, and the Western Pacific rim. So it is unsurprising that the Depression had been eclipsed in importance. FDR explained:
In Washington's day the task of the people was to create and weld together a nation.
In Lincoln's day the task of the people was to preserve that Nation from disruption from within.
In this day the task of the people is to save that Nation and its institutions from disruption from without.
This speech, however, was an inspirational one from start to finish. Policy was barely mentioned. The most famous passage, and it truly soars, is this one:
A nation, like a person, has a body—a body that must be fed and clothed and housed, invigorated and rested, in a manner that measures up to the objectives of our time.
A nation, like a person, has a mind—a mind that must be kept informed and alert, that must know itself, that understands the hopes and the needs of its neighbors—all the other nations that live within the narrowing circle of the world.
And a nation, like a person, has something deeper, something more permanent, something larger than the sum of all its parts. It is that something which matters most to its future—which calls forth the most sacred guarding of its present.
It is a thing for which we find it difficult—even impossible—to hit upon a single, simple word.
And yet we all understand what it is—the spirit—the faith of America. It is the product of centuries. It was born in the multitudes of those who came from many lands—some of high degree, but mostly plain people, who sought here, early and late, to find freedom more freely.
By his Fourth Inaugural Address in 1945, Roosevelt was a tired, sick old man. Because of WWII, the inaugural was very muted, held at the South Portico of the White House with no public ceremony, no parade, and no inaugural balls. The speech is by far the shortest of the four inaugurals and is understandably focused on the war. Yet, despite its brevity, the speech showed FDR still had his oratorical powers. This passage describing a shrunken modern world is beautifully crafted:
And so today, in this year of war, 1945, we have learned lessons—at a fearful cost—and we shall profit by them.
We have learned that we cannot live alone, at peace; that our own well-being is dependent on the well-being of other nations far away. We have learned that we must live as men, not as ostriches, nor as dogs in the manger.
We have learned to be citizens of the world, members of the human community.
We have learned the simple truth, as Emerson said, that "The only way to have a friend is to be one."
On April 12, 1945, FDR suffered a fatal stroke at the Little White House in Warm Springs, GA, and a little-known former senator from Missouri became President. By the time Harry Truman gave his inaugural address after his upset victory over Thomas Dewey in 1948, the world had changed. WWII had ended, and the Cold War had begun.
SUMMARY OF PART 3
Although it was Teddy Roosevelt's Republican Party that ushered in pro-union, trust-busting reforms, the GOP soon abandoned TR and became the party of big business and laissez-faire economics under Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover. With the ascension of FDR to the presidency, the shift in the positions of the two parties was nearly complete.
The Republicans, who had fought for high tariffs, racial equality, and labor, had shifted their allegiance to the corporations. Democrats, meanwhile, became the party of labor and, to a large extent, black Americans. That shift would become complete when LBJ signed the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts in the mid-1960s. The Democrats, whose advocacy of states rights had been born in slavery, became the advocate of an active federal government, while the Republicans, who were born of the abolitionists and bred fighting for the Union under Lincoln, became the small government, states rights party. That role reversal pivoted primarily on the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Rhetorically, this period produced two of the finest presidential inaugural addresses--Wilson's First and FDR's Second. Both men were highly educated, and Roosevelt in particular was one of the nation's finest presidential orators.
Other presidents have had their moments, but the first half of the Twentieth Century produced two strong, articulate Democratic Presidents who both had a gift for speech-making.
Don't miss tomorrow's edition covering Truman to W. You'll never forgive yourself.
SPECIAL BONUS SECTION: Inauguration Photos.
Inauguration of James Buchanan, 1857, the first ever photographed:
(Photo courtesy PictureHistory.com)
Lincoln's Second Inauguration, 1865:
(Photo courtesy neatorama.com)
Theodore Roosevelt's inauguration, 1905:
(Photo courtesy senate.gov)
Woodrow Wilson (L) and William Howard Taft attend Wilson's First Inauguration in 1913:
(Photo courtesy memory.loc.gov)
1933-FDR's First Inauguration:
(Photo courtesy historyplace.com)
Harry S. Truman addresses the nation in 1949:
(Photo courtesy trumanlibrary.org)
A Matador missile on display in Eisenhower's Second Inaugural Parade in 1957 during the midst of the Cold War:
(Photo courtesy mace-b.com)
"The torch is passed" to JFK, 1961:
(Photo courtesy medaloffreedom.com)
LBJ and Lady Bird Johnson dance at the Inaugural Ball at the Mayflower Hotel, 1.20.65:
(Photo courtesy metimes.com)
Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter stroll down Pennsylvania Avenue at the 1977 inauguration:
(Photo courtesy voanews.cn)
1981--Ronald Reagan is sworn in:
(Photo courtesy alarmingnews.com)
Poet Maya Angelou recites her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at Bill Clinton's First Inaugural in 1993:
(Photo courtesy wordpress.com)
Lookin' smug. W at his Second Inaugural, 2005:
(Photo courtesy btinternet.com)
Preview of coming attractions:
(Photo courtesy imao.us)
UPDATE: Here are links to the other parts of this diary series:
Part 1 1789-1857 Washington-Buchanan
Part 2 1861-1901: Lincoln-McKinley
Part 4 1949-2005: Truman-G. W. Bush
Part 5 Summary and Speculation