General Washington had been
unanimously elected President by the first electoral college, and
John Adams was elected Vice President because he received the
second greatest number of votes. Under the rules, each elector
cast two votes. The Chancellor of New York and fellow Freemason,
Robert R. Livingston administered the oath of office. The Bible on
which the oath was sworn belonged to New York's St. John's Masonic
Lodge. The new President gave his inaugural address before a joint
session of the two Houses of Congress assembled inside the Senate
Chamber.
***
Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and of the House of Representatives:
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.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25