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Grover Cleveland's First Inaugural Address:
| Fellow-Citizens: IN the presence of this vast assemblage of my countrymen I am about to
supplement and seal by the oath which I shall take the manifestation of the will of a
great and free people. In the exercise of their power and right of self-government they
have committed to one of their fellow-citizens a supreme and sacred trust, and he here
consecrates himself to their service. |
| This impressive ceremony adds little to the solemn
sense of responsibility with which I contemplate the duty I owe to all the people of the
land. Nothing can relieve me from anxiety lest by any act of mine their interests may
suffer, and nothing is needed to strengthen my resolution to engage every faculty and
effort in the promotion of their welfare. |
| Amid the din of party strife the people's choice was
made, but its attendant circumstances have demonstrated anew the strength and safety of a
government by the people. In each succeeding year it more clearly appears that our
democratic principle needs no apology, and that in its fearless and faithful application
is to be found the surest guaranty of good government. |
| But the best results in the operation of a government
wherein every citizen has a share largely depend upon a proper limitation of purely
partisan zeal and effort and a correct appreciation of the time when the heat of the
partisan should be merged in the patriotism of the citizen. |
| To-day the executive branch of the Government is
transferred to new keeping. But this is still the Government of all the people, and it
should be none the less an object of their affectionate solicitude. At this hour the
animosities of political strife, the bitterness of partisan defeat, and the exultation of
partisan triumph should be supplanted by an ungrudging acquiescence in the popular will
and a sober, conscientious concern for the general weal. Moreover, if from this hour we
cheerfully and honestly abandon all sectional prejudice and distrust, and determine, with
manly confidence in one another, to work out harmoniously the achievements of our national
destiny, we shall deserve to realize all the benefits which our happy form of government
can bestow. |
| On this auspicious occasion we may well renew the
pledge of our devotion to the Constitution, which, launched by the founders of the
Republic and consecrated by their prayers and patriotic devotion, has for almost a century
borne the hopes and the aspirations of a great people through prosperity and peace and
through the shock of foreign conflicts and the perils of domestic strife and vicissitudes. |
| By the Father of his Country our Constitution was
commended for adoption as "the result of a spirit of amity and mutual
concession." In that same spirit it should be administered, in order to promote the
lasting welfare of the country and to secure the full measure of its priceless benefits to
us and to those who will succeed to the blessings of our national life. The large variety
of diverse and competing interests subject to Federal control, persistently seeking the
recognition of their claims, need give us no fear that "the greatest good to the
greatest number" will fail to be accomplished if in the halls of national legislation
that spirit of amity and mutual concession shall prevail in which the Constitution had its
birth. If this involves the surrender or postponement of private interests and the
abandonment of local advantages, compensation will be found in the assurance that the
common interest is subserved and the general welfare advanced. |
| In the discharge of my official duty I shall endeavor
to be guided by a just and unstrained construction of the Constitution, a careful
observance of the distinction between the powers granted to the Federal Government and
those reserved to the States or to the people, and by a cautious appreciation of those
functions which by the Constitution and laws have been especially assigned to the
executive branch of the Government. |
| But he who takes the oath today to preserve, protect,
and defend the Constitution of the United States only assumes the solemn obligation which
every patriotic citizen—on the farm, in the workshop, in the busy marts of trade, and
everywhere—should share with him. The Constitution which prescribes his oath, my
countrymen, is yours; the Government you have chosen him to administer for a time is
yours; the suffrage which executes the will of freemen is yours; the laws and the entire
scheme of our civil rule, from the town meeting to the State capitals and the national
capital, is yours. Your every voter, as surely as your Chief Magistrate, under the same
high sanction, though in a different sphere, exercises a public trust. Nor is this all.
Every citizen owes to the country a vigilant watch and close scrutiny of its public
servants and a fair and reasonable estimate of their fidelity and usefulness. Thus is the
people's will impressed upon the whole framework of our civil polity—municipal,
State, and Federal; and this is the price of our liberty and the inspiration of our faith
in the Republic. |
| It is the duty of those serving the people in public
place to closely limit public expenditures to the actual needs of the Government
economically administered, because this bounds the right of the Government to exact
tribute from the earnings of labor or the property of the citizen, and because public
extravagance begets extravagance among the people. We should never be ashamed of the
simplicity and prudential economies which are best suited to the operation of a republican
form of government and most compatible with the mission of the American people. Those who
are selected for a limited time to manage public affairs are still of the people, and may
do much by their example to encourage, consistently with the dignity of their official
functions, that plain way of life which among their fellow-citizens aids integrity and
promotes thrift and prosperity. |
| The genius of our institutions, the needs of our
people in their home life, and the attention which is demanded for the settlement and
development of the resources of our vast territory dictate the scrupulous avoidance of any
departure from that foreign policy commended by the history, the traditions, and the
prosperity of our Republic. It is the policy of independence, favored by our position and
defended by our known love of justice and by our power. It is the policy of peace suitable
to our interests. It is the policy of neutrality, rejecting any share in foreign broils
and ambitions upon other continents and repelling their intrusion here. It is the policy
of Monroe and of Washington and Jefferson—"Peace, commerce, and honest
friendship with all nations; entangling alliance with none." |
| A due regard for the interests and prosperity of all
the people demands that our finances shall be established upon such a sound and sensible
basis as shall secure the safety and confidence of business interests and make the wage of
labor sure and steady, and that our system of revenue shall be so adjusted as to relieve
the people of unnecessary taxation, having a due regard to the interests of capital
invested and workingmen employed in American industries, and preventing the accumulation
of a surplus in the Treasury to tempt extravagance and waste. |
| Care for the property of the nation and for the needs
of future settlers requires that the public domain should be protected from purloining
schemes and unlawful occupation. |
| The conscience of the people demands that the Indians
within our boundaries shall be fairly and honestly treated as wards of the Government and
their education and civilization promoted with a view to their ultimate citizenship, and
that polygamy in the Territories, destructive of the family relation and offensive to the
moral sense of the civilized world, shall be repressed. |
| The laws should be rigidly enforced which prohibit
the immigration of a servile class to compete with American labor, with no intention of
acquiring citizenship, and bringing with them and retaining habits and customs repugnant
to our civilization. |
| The people demand reform in the administration of the
Government and the application of business principles to public affairs. As a means to
this end, civil-service reform should be in good faith enforced. Our citizens have the
right to protection from the incompetency of public employees who hold their places solely
as the reward of partisan service, and from the corrupting influence of those who promise
and the vicious methods of those who expect such rewards; and those who worthily seek
public employment have the right to insist that merit and competency shall be recognized
instead of party subserviency or the surrender of honest political belief. |
| In the administration of a government pledged to do
equal and exact justice to all men there should be no pretext for anxiety touching the
protection of the freedmen in their rights or their security in the enjoyment of their
privileges under the Constitution and its amendments. All discussion as to their fitness
for the place accorded to them as American citizens is idle and unprofitable except as it
suggests the necessity for their improvement. The fact that they are citizens entitles
them to all the rights due to that relation and charges them with all its duties,
obligations, and responsibilities. |
| These topics and the constant and ever-varying wants
of an active and enterprising population may well receive the attention and the patriotic
endeavor of all who make and execute the Federal law. Our duties are practical and call
for industrious application, an intelligent perception of the claims of public office,
and, above all, a firm determination, by united action, to secure to all the people of the
land the full benefits of the best form of government ever vouchsafed to man. And let us
not trust to human effort alone, but humbly acknowledging the power and goodness of
Almighty God, who presides over the destiny of nations, and who has at all times been
revealed in our country's history, let us invoke His aid and His blessings upon our
labors. |
Back
to Grover Cleveland
Executive Oath of Office
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of
President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and
defend the Constitution of the United States."
United States Constitution, Article II,
Section 1, Clause 8
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Van Buren,9William H Harrison,10John Tyler,11James K
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Johnson, 18Ulysses S Grant,19Rutherford B Hayes, 20James A Garfield, 21Chester
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Cleveland,23Benjamin Harrison, 24Grover Cleveland, 25William
McKinley,26Theodore Roosevelt, 27William H. Taft,28Woodrow Wilson, 29Warren
G. Harding,30Calvin Coolidge,31Herbert Hoover,32Franklin
D Roosevelt,33Harry S.
Truman, 34Dwight D Eisenhower,35John F Kennedy, 36Lyndon
B Johnson, 37RichardN. Nixon, 38Gerald R Ford, 39James E
Carter,40Ronald
W. Reagan, 41George
HerbertW. Bush, 42Bill Clinton,
43George Walker Bush 44
Barack H. Obama last updated
07/14/09
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