Today is March 4. Until about eighty years ago, this was an important date to the American people, and it is still of great historical importance.

March 4, 1789 was the date set by the “United States in Congress Assembled” (the “Confederation Congress”—the U.S. legislature that preceded the Congress of the United States) for the new Constitution of the United States to take effect.

On Sept 13. 1788, the Confederation Congress passed the following resolution:

Resolved That the first Wednesday in Jan^y next be the day for appointing Electors in the several states, which before the said day shall have ratified the said Constitution; that the first Wednesday in feb^y next be the day for the electors to assemble in their respective states and vote for a president; And that the first Wednesday in March next be the time and the present seat of Congress the place for commencing proceedings under the said constitution.

As required by the resolution, the states that had ratified the Constitution chose electors in January. In February, the electors met in their states and cast votes for president. That same month, the states conducted elections for the United States House of Representatives, and the state legislatures chose the members of the Senate.

On March 4, 1789, the 1st Congress of the United States convened in Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York, near where the New York Stock Exchange and a prominent statue of George Washington now stand. Like the members of the new Congress, Washington, the electors having unanimously chosen him as president, was to begin his term on March 4. The president-elect, however, was delayed in his travels by a national tour that he hoped would rally the fragmented states behind the Constitution, and he did not arrive in New York City until late April. Washington took the oath of office on the balcony of Federal Hall on April 30, 1789, nearly two months after the date established by law for the beginning of his term. Since the Constitution specified that the presidential term should be four years and since his first term ended, as scheduled, on March 3, 1793 (or on March 4; there is debate on this matter), many scholars now concede that Washington became president on March 4, 1789, the same day the 1st Congress convened, but still had to take the oath of office, as required by the Constitution, “before he enter on the Execution of his Office.”

From Washington’s second inauguration, in 1793, through Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first inauguration, in 1933, all regularly elected presidents were sworn in on March 4, except for a few who opted to skip a Sunday ceremony and waited until the next day (again, scholarly opinion assumes that their terms began on March 4).

Following are some inaugural highlights and anecdotes that took place on or directly involved March 4. I have collected these tales in my mind, from many sources, over decades of study and teaching. They do not represent original research.

March 4, 1793: George Washington became the first person to begin a second term as president and the first to take the presidential oath of office on March 4. Held in Philadelphia, then the United States capital, this was also the first inaugural held in Pennsylvania.

March 4, 1797: On this date, one of the most important and overlooked days in United States history, with George Washington looking on, John Adams took the presidential oath, completing the first successful transfer of presidential power. This was also the second and last inaugural held in Pennsylvania.

March 4, 1801: Vice President Thomas Jefferson took the presidential oath of office, having unseated President John Adams. Thus, this date marked the first peaceful transfer of presidential power from one party to an opposing party, a milestone in history. Since Jefferson took the oath at the uncompleted United States Capitol, this was also the first inaugural held at that site, and the first held in Washington, D.C.

March 4, 1813: Beginning his second term, James Madison took the oath of office in the midst of the War of 1812, the first person to do so in wartime.

March 4, 1817: James Monroe took the oath of office at a temporary structure in Washington, D.C. The White House and the Capitol were under reconstruction, both having been burned by the British Army in August 1814.

March 5, 1821: For the first time, the March 4 inaugural day fell on a Sunday. With little discussion, President James Monroe, who was to be sworn in for his second term, quietly moved the oath to the following day. This had no effect on the end of his term, suggesting that the term actually began, as scheduled, on March 4.

March 4, 1829: Andrew Jackson, the “hero of the common man,” took the oath of office, beginning his first term as president. Jackson himself was in deep mourning for his wife, Rachel, who had died in December, but a vast number of “common men” (and women) swarmed the Capitol and the White House. At the White House, people roamed around as they pleased, cutting the draperies and stepping on the furniture. Officials restored order by serving alcohol on the lawn. Exhausted, Jackson himself slipped away to rest.

March 4, 1841: William Henry Harrison took the oath of office, becoming the first Whig president. This is one of the most famous of all inaugurals because so much folklore surrounds it. Though writers regularly describe Harrison taking his oath in rain or even in sleet, prominent 19th century American journalist Benjamin Perley Poore, who was there, said that it was cold and windy, but that the “streets were perfectly dry.” Why does this detail matter? It matters because Harrison caught a cold shortly afterward. The cold turned to pneumonia, and he died on the thirty-second day of his presidency on April 4, 1841. Popular histories commonly attribute his death to the inaugural weather, but there is no proof that the weather was to blame. (For more on this, see my blog post, “This Most Interesting Moment: Legend, Fact, and Speculation in the Death of William Henry Harrison and the Accession of John Tyler.”)

March 5, 1849: March 4 fell on a Sunday again, and this time people took notice. President-elect Zachary Taylor decided to take his oath on Monday March 5, just as Monroe had done in 1821. Overlooking the perfectly reasonable idea that the term had begun on March 4, and that Taylor was simply delaying a ceremony, people later suggested that, since President Polk’s term had ended, Taylor’s delay meant that there had been a one-day hiatus in the presidency. This, they insisted, meant that, under the presidential succession statutes of the day, David Rich Atchison, the president pro tempore of the United States Senate, had served as president for one day! I first encountered this legend when, as a child of about seven, I went through a wax museum that took the story seriously. Atchison himself joked about his “administration,” and said he slept through the whole thing, but his friends and supporters promoted the story after his death. Today, Atchison’s grave marker includes the words, “PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES FOR ONE DAY.” This is nonsense, of course, but the story has become a minor part of our political folklore, and is likely here to stay.

March 4, 1853: This was one of the gloomiest and most solemn of inaugurals. Franklin Pierce was elected president in November 1852. On January 6, 1853, Pierce, his wife Jane, and their only surviving child, Benny, who was eleven, were riding on a train in Massachusetts. Their train derailed and rolled down an embankment, horribly maiming and killing Benny. Shattered, Pierce traveled to Washington alone, leaving his almost catatonic wife in the care of relatives. At the Capitol on March 4, Pierce “affirmed,” rather than swore his oath. This is an option that is provided for in the Constitution, and thus far Pierce has been the only president to avail himself of it. On what should have been the happiest day of his life, Pierce, in his inaugural address, referred to his own “bitter sorrow.” After the ceremonies, the new president traveled alone to the White House. An artist later portrayed him, candle in hand, plodding heavily up the cold, dark stairway.

March 4, 1857: During this day’s inaugural ceremony, the President-elect, James Buchanan, was seen whispering with Roger B. Taney, the Chief Justice of the United States, who was about to administer the oath of office to him. A few minutes later, in his inaugural address, Buchanan revealed that he had reason to believe the Supreme Court would soon “settle” the slavery question in the United States. Two days later, on March 6, the Court issued perhaps its most infamous ruling, Dred Scott v. Sandford. No one knows what Buchanan and Taney were whispering about, but it would have been highly improper for a chief justice to alert a new president, in advance, of an impending decision. Given the disasters that the Dred Scott decision helped unleash and Buchanan’s gushing naivety regarding it, this little known episode has helped to punctuate Buchanan’s failures as president.

March 4, 1861: Abraham Lincoln barely survived to become president. Seven states already claimed to have seceded from the Union, and Lincoln, as president-designate and president-elect, had received many death threats. In 1861, the railroad that ran between Baltimore and Washington was not directly connected to any of the other great northern cities. Arriving from Philadelphia on his highly publicized entry into the capital, Lincoln would have to change trains in Baltimore. While he was yet in Philadelphia, military officials and detectives informed the president-elect that there was a very serious plot to murder him as he changed trains and that there was no way to guarantee his safety. He reluctantly agreed to part from his family and sneak into Washington by night. At Baltimore, he put on a floppy, felt hat and changed trains without incident, but the newspapers accused him of cowardice, and he was humiliated by the whole affair. The following day, as was customary, he went to the White House to pick up President Buchanan. Greeting him, Buchanan supposedly said, “Sir, if you are half as happy upon entering this house as I am upon leaving it, you are the happiest man in America.” At noon, with sharpshooters on the roofs and in the windows, Lincoln took the oath of office, and then pleaded with the American people to calm down and listen to the “better angels” of their nature. They didn’t. The United States’ ranking general, Winfield Scott, who had fought in the War of 1812 and in Mexico, later said that getting Abraham Lincoln sworn into the presidency alive was the most hazardous mission he had ever undertaken.

March 4, 1865: With the Civil War winding down, Abraham Lincoln traveled to Capitol Hill to take the oath of office for the second time and to try to explain to the American people what the war meant. “I’m tired, Lamon,” he is said to have told his good friend, Ward Lamon during the preliminaries. “Sometimes I think that I am the tiredest man who ever lived.” There is a persistent legend that a man who may have been John Wilkes Booth caused a minor disturbance in the Capitol’s hallways as Lincoln passed through. It could be true. Booth was at the inaugural ceremony as the guest of his fiance, Lucy Hale, whose father was a United States senator from New Hampshire. In the mid-twentieth century, some researchers claimed to have located Booth in a series of photographs of Lincoln making his inaugural address. On a railing to Lincoln’s left, in front of a sculpture of a pioneer wrestling an Indian, is a young man with dark black hair, a dark mustache, and a black top hat. It does look very much like Booth, but there is no way to conclusively prove the case. Six weeks later, Booth did murder the president and shortly afterward wrote that he had had “an excellent chance” to kill Lincoln at the inaugural if he had wished.

March 3-4, 1877: Until the 2000 debacle, the election of 1876 was the most disputed in history, and the winner was not decided until just days before March 4. Congress created a special commission to determine whether Rutherford B. Hayes or Samuel J. Tilden would become the 19th president, and the commission, on a straight party basis, finally awarded the presidency to Hayes. March 4 once again fell on a Sunday, and Hayes planned to follow the custom of holding his inaugural ceremony on Monday March 5. Concerned that someone would use this delay to undermine Hayes’s claim, the outgoing president, Ulysses S. Grant, hosted a White House dinner party for the president-elect on the evening of March 3, 1877. Before dinner, Grant asked Hayes to join him in the Red Room. When they entered, they were met by the Chief Justice of the United States, Morrison R. Waite. At Grant’s insistence, Hayes took the oath of office that night in the White House, the first person ever to do so. On Monday, Hayes and Waite repeated the oath in a public ceremony at the Capitol.

March 4, 1897: As President Grover Cleveland and President-elect William McKinley approached the Capitol by carriage for McKinley’s first inaugural ceremony, Cleveland said to his successor, “Bill, I am pretty sure I have left you a war with Spain.” A little over a year later, Congress declared war on the Spanish Empire.

March 4, 1913: On the day of Woodrow Wilson’s first inaugural, women’s suffrage activists marched in the streets and picketed the White House, denouncing what they considered Wilson’s empty rhetoric about human rights. Such behavior was unprecedented and was widely denounced by the press and the public.

March 4, 1921: Warren G. Harding was the first president-elect to travel to his inaugural by automobile. By then, the outgoing president, Woodrow Wilson, once the toast of the world, was a pitiful figure. World War I and its aftermath had broken his health, and he had suffered a debilitating stroke in 1919. The Senate’s subsequent and repeated rejection of the Treaty of Versailles and US membership in Wilson’s League of Nations bitterly disappointed the president. That the lofty Wilson should be replaced by so common a politician as Harding also cut him deeply. Updating the custom, Harding and Wilson rode to the Capitol in the back seat of a vast open limousine, and the people on the streets cheered wildly. Wilson, who had once been cheered through the streets of the European capitals wore a grim visage and sank into his overcoat. Harding was a soft-hearted man. Embarrassed by the cheering, and understanding why it seemed to hurt Wilson so, he engaged the frail president in conversation. Harding’s sister was a Christian missionary in Burma, and Harding began to relate to Wilson a story his sister had told him. The story involved an old, blind elephant that, as it lay dying, reached out with its trunk and stroked the face of its beloved handler. Harding meant no harm, but when he looked up, he was horrified to find that his story had made Wilson cry. When they arrived at the Capitol, Wilson, embarrassed, explained that he could not possibly execute the steps, and the two men parted. Ironically, Wilson outlived Harding by several months; both men would be dead within three years.

By the early 1930s, Congress had grown impatient with the long “lame duck” period between the presidential “election” (in actuality the choosing of the electors) and the March 4 inaugural. With rail and air transportation available, such a long wait before inaugurating a new president was no longer necessary. Furthermore, in 1860 and 1861, the secession crisis had grown far worse between Lincoln’s election and March 4. In the interim, Lincoln was helpless, and President Buchanan, unwilling to provoke civil war, had done little to help matters. In 1932, the nation was mired in the Great Depression, the worst crisis since Lincoln, and Congress, sensing that future crises might call for faster transitions, decided to change the date of the presidential inauguration.

The March 4 date was not mentioned in the Constitution, but since that document did grant each president a four-year term and since someone’s term would have to be shortened in order to set an earlier start date; this could be done only by constitutional amendment. Early in 1932, months before the upcoming presidential election, Congress proposed the Twentieth Amendment, moving the inaugural to “noon, on the twentieth day of January.” While some members of Congress might gladly have shortened the then-current term of President Herbert Hoover, a less disruptive plan emerged, and the proposed amendment specified that the inaugural date change would not take effect until the October 15 following the amendment’s ratification by three-fourth of the states. While it was theoretically possible that 36 state legislatures could ratify the amendment by October 15, 1932, thus ending Hoover’s term on January 20, rather than March 4, 1933, it seemed highly unlikely. In November, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president. In late January 1933, the Twentieth Amendment was ratified by the 36th state, and became part of the Constitution. Since the new date did not become operative until October 15, on March 4, 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt became the last person to take the oath of office on March 4. Therefore, when the amendment became fully operational later that fall, it shortened Roosevelt’s first term by a little more than forty days. In November 1936, Roosevelt easily won reelection and in 1937 became the first person to take the Presidential Oath of Office “at noon on the twentieth day of January.”

Thus, after 31 presidents, 134 years, and many colorful stories, March 4 finally receded into American political history and folklore. For historians, though, it will always remain as one of key organizational and conceptual touchstones for an understanding of the American past.