Speech Transcript:

In compliance with an usage coeval with the existence of our Federal
Constitution, and sanctioned by the example of my predecessors in the
career upon which I am about to enter, I appear, my fellow-citizens,
in your presence and in that of Heaven to bind myself by the
solemnities of religious obligation to the faithful performance of
the duties allotted to me in the station to which I have been
called.

In unfolding to my countrymen the principles by which I shall be
governed in the fulfillment of those duties my first resort will be
to that Constitution which I shall swear to the best of my ability to
preserve, protect, and defend. That revered instrument enumerates the
powers and prescribes the duties of the Executive Magistrate, and in
its first words declares the purposes to which these and the whole
action of the Government instituted by it should be invariably and
sacredly devoted--to form a more perfect union, establish justice,
insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote
the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to the people
of this Union in their successive generations. Since the adoption of
this social compact one of these generations has passed away. It is
the work of our forefathers. Administered by some of the most eminent
men who contributed to its formation, through a most eventful period
in the annals of the world, and through all the vicissitudes of peace
and war incidental to the condition of associated man, it has not
disappointed the hopes and aspirations of those illustrious
benefactors of their age and nation. It has promoted the lasting
welfare of that country so dear to us all; it has to an extent far
beyond the ordinary lot of humanity secured the freedom and happiness
of this people. We now receive it as a precious inheritance from those
to whom we are indebted for its establishment, doubly bound by the
examples which they have left us and by the blessings which we have
enjoyed as the fruits of their labors to transmit the same unimpaired
to the succeeding generation.

In the compass of thirty-six years since this great national covenant
was instituted a body of laws enacted under its authority and in
conformity with its provisions has unfolded its powers and carried
into practical operation its effective energies. Subordinate
departments have distributed the executive functions in their various
relations to foreign affairs, to the revenue and expenditures, and to
the military force of the Union by land and sea. A coordinate
department of the judiciary has expounded the Constitution and the
laws, settling in harmonious coincidence with the legislative will
numerous weighty questions of construction which the imperfection of
human language had rendered unavoidable. The year of jubilee since
the first formation of our Union has just elapsed; that of the
declaration of our independence is at hand. The consummation of both
was effected by this Constitution.

Since that period a population of four millions has multiplied to
twelve. A territory bounded by the Mississippi has been extended from
sea to sea. New States have been admitted to the Union in numbers
nearly equal to those of the first Confederation. Treaties of peace,
amity, and commerce have been concluded with the principal dominions
of the earth. The people of other nations, inhabitants of regions
acquired not by conquest, but by compact, have been united with us in
the participation of our rights and duties, of our burdens and
blessings. The forest has fallen by the ax of our woodsmen; the soil
has been made to teem by the tillage of our farmers; our commerce has
whitened every ocean. The dominion of man over physical nature has
been extended by the invention of our artists. Liberty and law have
marched hand in hand. All the purposes of human association have been
accomplished as effectively as under any other government on the
globe, and at a cost little exceeding in a whole generation the
expenditure of other nations in a single year.

Such is the unexaggerated picture of our condition under a
Constitution founded upon the republican principle of equal rights.
To admit that this picture has its shades is but to say that it is
still the condition of men upon earth. From evil--physical, moral,
and political--it is not our claim to be exempt. We have suffered
sometimes by the visitation of Heaven through disease; often by the
wrongs and injustice of other nations, even to the extremities of
war; and, lastly, by dissensions among ourselves--dissensions perhaps
inseparable from the enjoyment of freedom, but which have more than
once appeared to threaten the dissolution of the Union, and with it
the overthrow of all the enjoyments of our present lot and all our
earthly hopes of the future. The causes of these dissensions have
been various, founded upon differences of speculation in the theory
of republican government; upon conflicting views of policy in our
relations with foreign nations; upon jealousies of partial and
sectional interests, aggravated by prejudices and prepossessions
which strangers to each other are ever apt to entertain.

It is a source of gratification and of encouragement to me to observe
that the great result of this experiment upon the theory of human
rights has at the close of that generation by which it was formed
been crowned with success equal to the most sanguine expectations of
its founders. Union, justice, tranquillity, the common defense, the
general welfare, and the blessings of liberty--all have been promoted
by the Government under which we have lived. Standing at this point of
time, looking back to that generation which has gone by and forward to
that which is advancing, we may at once indulge in grateful exultation
and in cheering hope. From the experience of the past we derive
instructive lessons for the future. Of the two great political
parties which have divided the opinions and feelings of our country,
the candid and the just will now admit that both have contributed
splendid talents, spotless integrity, ardent patriotism, and
disinterested sacrifices to the formation and administration of this
Government, and that both have required a liberal indulgence for a
portion of human infirmity and error. The revolutionary wars of
Europe, commencing precisely at the moment when the Government of the
United States first went into operation under this Constitution,
excited a collision of sentiments and of sympathies which kindled all
the passions and imbittered the conflict of parties till the nation
was involved in war and the Union was shaken to its center. This time
of trial embraced a period of five and twenty years, during which the
policy of the Union in its relations with Europe constituted the
principal basis of our political divisions and the most arduous part
of the action of our Federal Government. With the catastrophe in
which the wars of the French Revolution terminated, and our own
subsequent peace with Great Britain, this baneful weed of party
strife was uprooted. From that time no difference of principle,
connected either with the theory of government or with our
intercourse with foreign nations, has existed or been called forth in
force sufficient to sustain a continued combination of parties or to
give more than wholesome animation to public sentiment or legislative
debate. Our political creed is, without a dissenting voice that can be
heard, that the will of the people is the source and the happiness of
the people the end of all legitimate government upon earth; that the
best security for the beneficence and the best guaranty against the
abuse of power consists in the freedom, the purity, and the frequency
of popular elections; that the General Government of the Union and the
separate governments of the States are all sovereignties of limited
powers, fellow-servants of the same masters, uncontrolled within
their respective spheres, uncontrollable by encroachments upon each
other; that the firmest security of peace is the preparation during
peace of the defenses of war; that a rigorous economy and
accountability of public expenditures should guard against the
aggravation and alleviate when possible the burden of taxation; that
the military should be kept in strict subordination to the civil
power; that the freedom of the press and of religious opinion should
be inviolate; that the policy of our country is peace and the ark of
our salvation union are articles of faith upon which we are all now
agreed. If there have been those who doubted whether a confederated
representative democracy were a government competent to the wise and
orderly management of the common concerns of a mighty nation, those
doubts have been dispelled; if there have been projects of partial
confederacies to be erected upon the ruins of the Union, they have
been scattered to the winds; if there have been dangerous attachments
to one foreign nation and antipathies against another, they have been
extinguished. Ten years of peace, at home and abroad, have assuaged
the animosities of political contention and blended into harmony the
most discordant elements of public opinion. There still remains one
effort of magnanimity, one sacrifice of prejudice and passion, to be
made by the individuals throughout the nation who have heretofore
followed the standards of political party. It is that of discarding
every remnant of rancor against each other, of embracing as
countrymen and friends, and of yielding to talents and virtue alone
that confidence which in times of contention for principle was
bestowed only upon those who bore the badge of party communion.

The collisions of party spirit which originate in speculative
opinions or in different views of administrative policy are in their
nature transitory. Those which are founded on geographical divisions,
adverse interests of soil, climate, and modes of domestic life are
more permanent, and therefore, perhaps, more dangerous. It is this
which gives inestimable value to the character of our Government, at
once federal and national. It holds out to us a perpetual admonition
to preserve alike and with equal anxiety the rights of each
individual State in its own government and the rights of the whole
nation in that of the Union. Whatsoever is of domestic concernment,
unconnected with the other members of the Union or with foreign
lands, belongs exclusively to the administration of the State
governments. Whatsoever directly involves the rights and interests of
the federative fraternity or of foreign powers is of the resort of
this General Government. The duties of both are obvious in the
general principle, though sometimes perplexed with difficulties in
the detail. To respect the rights of the State governments is the
inviolable duty of that of the Union; the government of every State
will feel its own obligation to respect and preserve the rights of
the whole. The prejudices everywhere too commonly entertained against
distant strangers are worn away, and the jealousies of jarring
interests are allayed by the composition and functions of the great
national councils annually assembled from all quarters of the Union
at this place. Here the distinguished men from every section of our
country, while meeting to deliberate upon the great interests of
those by whom they are deputed, learn to estimate the talents and do
justice to the virtues of each other. The harmony of the nation is
promoted and the whole Union is knit together by the sentiments of
mutual respect, the habits of social intercourse, and the ties of
personal friendship formed between the representatives of its several
parts in the performance of their service at this metropolis.

Passing from this general review of the purposes and injunctions of
the Federal Constitution and their results as indicating the first
traces of the path of duty in the discharge of my public trust, I
turn to the Administration of my immediate predecessor as the second.
It has passed away in a period of profound peace, how much to the
satisfaction of our country and to the honor of our country's name is
known to you all. The great features of its policy, in general
concurrence with the will of the Legislature, have been to cherish
peace while preparing for defensive war; to yield exact justice to
other nations and maintain the rights of our own; to cherish the
principles of freedom and of equal rights wherever they were
proclaimed; to discharge with all possible promptitude the national
debt; to reduce within the narrowest limits of efficiency the
military force; to improve the organization and discipline of the
Army; to provide and sustain a school of military science; to extend
equal protection to all the great interests of the nation; to promote
the civilization of the Indian tribes, and to proceed in the great
system of internal improvements within the limits of the
constitutional power of the Union. Under the pledge of these
promises, made by that eminent citizen at the time of his first
induction to this office, in his career of eight years the internal
taxes have been repealed; sixty millions of the public debt have been
discharged; provision has been made for the comfort and relief of the
aged and indigent among the surviving warriors of the Revolution; the
regular armed force has been reduced and its constitution revised and
perfected; the accountability for the expenditure of public moneys
has been made more effective; the Floridas have been peaceably
acquired, and our boundary has been extended to the Pacific Ocean;
the independence of the southern nations of this hemisphere has been
recognized, and recommended by example and by counsel to the
potentates of Europe; progress has been made in the defense of the
country by fortifications and the increase of the Navy, toward the
effectual suppression of the African traffic in slaves; in alluring
the aboriginal hunters of our land to the cultivation of the soil and
of the mind, in exploring the interior regions of the Union, and in
preparing by scientific researches and surveys for the further
application of our national resources to the internal improvement of
our country.

In this brief outline of the promise and performance of my immediate
predecessor the line of duty for his successor is clearly delineated.
To pursue to their consummation those purposes of improvement in our
common condition instituted or recommended by him will embrace the
whole sphere of my obligations. To the topic of internal improvement,
emphatically urged by him at his inauguration, I recur with peculiar
satisfaction. It is that from which I am convinced that the unborn
millions of our posterity who are in future ages to people this
continent will derive their most fervent gratitude to the founders of
the Union; that in which the beneficent action of its Government will
be most deeply felt and acknowledged. The magnificence and splendor
of their public works are among the imperishable glories of the
ancient republics. The roads and aqueducts of Rome have been the
admiration of all after ages, and have survived thousands of years
after all her conquests have been swallowed up in despotism or become
the spoil of barbarians. Some diversity of opinion has prevailed with
regard to the powers of Congress for legislation upon objects of this
nature. The most respectful deference is due to doubts originating in
pure patriotism and sustained by venerated authority. But nearly
twenty years have passed since the construction of the first national
road was commenced. The authority for its construction was then
unquestioned. To how many thousands of our countrymen has it proved a
benefit? To what single individual has it ever proved an injury?
Repeated, liberal, and candid discussions in the Legislature have
conciliated the sentiments and approximated the opinions of
enlightened minds upon the question of constitutional power. I can
not but hope that by the same process of friendly, patient, and
persevering deliberation all constitutional objections will
ultimately be removed. The extent and limitation of the powers of the
General Government in relation to this transcendently important
interest will be settled and acknowledged to the common satisfaction
of all, and every speculative scruple will be solved by a practical
public blessing.

Fellow-citizens, you are acquainted with the peculiar circumstances
of the recent election, which have resulted in affording me the
opportunity of addressing you at this time. You have heard the
exposition of the principles which will direct me in the fulfillment
of the high and solemn trust imposed upon me in this station. Less
possessed of your confidence in advance than any of my predecessors,
I am deeply conscious of the prospect that I shall stand more and
oftener in need of your indulgence. Intentions upright and pure, a
heart devoted to the welfare of our country, and the unceasing
application of all the faculties allotted to me to her service are
all the pledges that I can give for the faithful performance of the
arduous duties I am to undertake. To the guidance of the legislative
councils, to the assistance of the executive and subordinate
departments, to the friendly cooperation of the respective State
governments, to the candid and liberal support of the people so far
as it may be deserved by honest industry and zeal, I shall look for
whatever success may attend my public service; and knowing that
"except the Lord keep the city the watchman waketh but in vain," with
fervent supplications for His favor, to His overruling providence I
commit with humble but fearless confidence my own fate and the future
destinies of my country.