INAUGURAL ADDRESSES OF THE PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES
Benjamin Harrison
INAUGURAL ADDRESS
MONDAY, MARCH 4, 1889
***
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.
***
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.
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