The day after the 2025 presidential inauguration, leading presidential historians and contributors to the recently published compendium My Fellow Americans: Presidents and Their Inaugural Addresses, Michael Gerhardt, Kate Masur, and Ted Widmer, reflect on inaugural addresses throughout history and how they relate to a president’s legacy. Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, moderates.
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Michael Gerhardt is the Burton Craige Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of North Carolina. The author numerous leading treatises on impeachment, appointments, presidential power, Supreme Court precedent, and separation of powers, he is also the author of several books, including The Forgotten Presidents: Their Untold Constitutional Legacy, Lincoln’s Mentors: The Education of a Leader, The Law of Presidential Impeachment: A Guide for the Engaged Citizen, and most recently, FDR’s Mentors: Navigating the Path to Greatness.
Kate Masur is the board of visitors professor of history at Northwestern University. A finalist for the Lincoln Prize, she is author and editor of acclaimed books on the Civil War and Reconstruction. Her recent book, Until Justice Be Done: America’s First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History.
Ted Widmer is Distinguished Lecturer at Macaulay Honors College (CUNY). A historian and former presidential aide, he helped to create and often contributed to The New York Times “Disunion,” a digital history of the Civil War. He is the author of several books including, Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington.
Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization devoted to educating the public about the U.S. Constitution. Rosen is also professor of law at The George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic.
Additional Resources
- Yuvraj Singh and Ted Widmer, My Fellow Americans: Presidents and Their Inaugural Addresses (2024)
- Martin Van Buren, Inaugural Address (March 4, 1837)
- Donald Trump, Second Inaugural Address (Jan. 20, 2025)
- Andrew Jackson, First Inaugural Address (March 4, 1829)
- Andrew Jackson, Second Inaugural Address (March 4, 1833)
- Grover Cleveland, Second Inaugural Address (March 4, 1893)
- Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address (March 4, 1861)
- Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address (March 4, 1865)
- Franklin D. Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address (March 4, 1933)
- John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address (Jan. 20, 1961)
- Joe Biden, Inaugural Address (Jan. 20, 2021)
Excerpt from Interview: Ted Widmer highlights the evolution of inaugural addresses, from Washington’s precedent to Jefferson’s unity and Jackson’s modesty, contrasting them with modern divisive tones.
Ted Widmer: It begins with Washington's spontaneous decision to speak after taking the oath in Federal hall in New York City in 1789. And then he repeated it barely. I mean, his second inaugural is only about one paragraph. It's very, very brief. But he kept the tradition going. And then Adams gave a pretty long one before his only inaugural. But when we get to the Jefferson speech, it's the beginning of the 19th century. But also it's just so important that Jefferson calmed things down. Politics were quite raw at the end of the Adams administration. By the way, we got a very unusual glimpse of the Adams administration in the speech yesterday with the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. But feelings were high between the Federalists and Republicans. They didn't like each other's policies. There was also a feeling, not unlike 2020, that there was something fishy about the election itself. So it was important for Jefferson to bring Americans together. And he did that very, very well. And we know what a gifted writer, the author of the Declaration of Independence was. One of the better stories in our history is the story of how far apart Adams and Jefferson were, how much acrimony there was around the time of their contest, and then how they came back together as correspondents and real friends.
And then of course they die on July 4, 1826. And that was one of the many ways in which Americans felt special. And there was a strong note of American exceptionalism in a lot of those addresses. And actually we got, I mean, in many ways Trump is ahistorical or even anti historical. He doesn't seem to like history all that much. But we got McKinley as you said, and John Adams as I said. But we got a whole lot of American exceptionalism in the speech yesterday, more than in some time I would say. I wouldn't strongly recommend to your viewers that they go through all of the early speeches of the 19th century. There's a lot of repetition of themes in there. But Jackson, well, John Quincy Adams gave a very interesting one filled with ideas like building lighthouses and observatories of the heavens and science, I mean, science was on his mind and he was only a one term president like his father but I've always had a soft spot for him just because sometimes we're afraid of our own intellectual ideas and John Quincy Adams was not. And the contrast between him and Jackson was pretty stark in that regard.
And again, when Jackson lost in 1824, there were feelings of tampered election, the corrupt bargain. So when Jackson came in, not unlike Trump, there were feelings of triumphalism and acrimony. But when I reread Jackson's first inaugural, it really was pretty subdued. Like Jefferson, it called on Americans to come together. And at the end he was very modest about his own achievements. He uses the word diffidence to talk about whether he deserves to be the president. I think he strongly felt that he did deserve it. But in the speech itself he softened all the tensions in a way that was quite different from what we heard yesterday.
Excerpt from Interview: Kate Masur connects Jackson's warning against disunion to Lincoln's similar plea before the Civil War, emphasizing the shared concern for unity and its preservation.
Kate Masur: So I was just looking at Jackson's second inaugural address. And it is really interesting to see. I actually was thinking about it in relation to Lincoln's first inaugural, and I'll kind of pass on Biden, although I also wanted to say something about Trump's vision of history, but we can kind of mix everything together. But so Jackson in his second inaugural address, he warns against disunion. And I actually hadn't read this inaugural address before, and this is not the period I generally specialize in so I found it really interesting where he says, without union, our independence and liberty would never have been achieved. Without Union, they could never be maintained, divided into 24 or even a smaller number of separate communities like the states. We shall see our internal trade burdened with numerous restraints and exactions, communication between distant points and sections obstructed or cut off. Our sons made soldiers to deluge with blood the fields they now till in peace the mass of our people born down and impoverished by taxes to support armies and navies and military leaders at the head of their victorious legions, becoming our lawgivers and judges. He's warning against what a disaster it would be to have the United States break apart into states.
That it would be bad for, obviously, the idea of the nation and the Union, but also terrible for the economy, terrible for the lives lost, terrible for democracy if we end up being governed by military leaders. And some of that is really echoed by Lincoln. It makes me wonder if Lincoln had actually read that address by Jackson, because Lincoln, in his first inaugural address, when the nation is on the cusp of civil war, after several states had already seceded, says very similar things about the disaster of secession and civil war that could happen. And he says, we cannot separate. We can't draw a line in this country because we have all this trade, we have all this communication. We are one people. And, obviously Lincoln's pleas in 1861 to stop secession and stop the formation or the attempted formation of a Confederate nation didn't work out. And that is what, that is the Civil War. But it's interesting to see how in Jackson's case, obviously, in 1833, it doesn't come to that. And the nation doesn't end up descending into a war at that time, but some two and a half decades later, that actually comes to pass.
Excerpt from Interview: Michael Gerhardt highlights the shift from Gilded Age reforms to modern presidencies, focusing on civil service, economic crises, and evolving presidential rhetoric.
Michael Gerhardt: Well, I'm gonna try and really kind of shorten the historical overview of that period, but it's a very important period, as you suggest Jeff. So one thing that's happening during that period between Garfield and eventually Roosevelt is the Gilded Age. And there's a convergence of a number of different sorts of developments during that time period. It's not just the industrial age, but it's also an age of what they call the robber barons, very powerful financial sources and people who will try and sort of corrupt government and certainly try and get around any sort of governmental constraints. One thing that coincides with sort of the Gilded Age is also economic downturns. And they may well be related, but I'll try not to go down that tangent. All of that is going to help sort of characterize and influence the inaugural addresses and the visions of the different presidents that served during that period. The Gilded Age doesn't really begin to end until the second term of McKinley's begins. McKinley, unfortunately, is killed just within months of his inauguration. That brings Teddy Roosevelt into the presidency. And Roosevelt is gonna pick up on something that McKinley had begun to talk about, even Garfield had begun to talk about, and that was civil service reform.
And civil service reform was really a response to Andrew Jackson's bringing into politics what we call the spoils system. Jackson even talks in his first inaugural about rotation in office and the need to sort of get out the partisans, bring in expertise and people we can trust. Those people, by the way, turn out to be Jacksonians. And it turns out that even beneficiaries of the spoils system, like Garfield and later McKinley are going to champion civil service reform, which will also be supported by Chester Arthur, a man known for almost nothing else but the fact that as a beneficiary of the spoils system, he's going to sign into law civil service reform. And all these different developments are going to help Teddy Roosevelt when he starts reorienting the government towards going after big business. And that in itself is gonna signal a very important development, which will be followed by Woodrow Wilson. There's gonna be another economic downturn, as we all know, followed by Franklin Roosevelt becoming the first Democrat after Wilson to be elected president. And Wilson and FDR understand something. Wilson even told FDR at one point, I'm paraphrasing, that the only way Democrats are gonna get back into power is if the economy goes down downhill.
So Roosevelt's waiting for that. Needless to say, it happens. And when Roosevelt is sworn into the presidency, one of the things he's gonna really try to champion is the role of government in trying to not just ensure greater fairness and equality, but the role of government in reinvigorating the economy. So as the Gilded Age ends toward the early 1900s, we get more and more attention paid to civil service reform and ultimately to a different role for the federal government in addressing economic downturns. That will be, of course, a big hallmark of FDR's presidency. But FDR, I think, along with some of these other presidents, delivers an inaugural address at a very dark time but it is optimistic. And that is one of the great achievements I think FDR accomplished which is to try and reshape Americans' spirit and thinking about the future. And so he wants to introduce this idea of optimism of a government that can solve problems, not just be the problem. And of course, that's the presidency he then undertakes. We then have to fast forward a number of years before, as Reagan says, government becomes the problem. And I think as far as Donald Trump is concerned, it's the government that is the problem.
He insinuates the California government is failing. There are other failures too the government has had. And while Trump is rather vague about how American decline will actually be ultimately stopped and the new golden age will begin, he's not unclear Trump about who the enemy is. It's the other party, the enemy within. That's a different kind of message for a president to deliver. Notice FDR didn't do that. And other presidents like Lincoln that we talked about before are very careful about how they characterize the other side. Lincoln goes out of his way, I think, to try and avoid lambasting the other side, with one big exception, and that is he makes clear in his first inaugural that if there's gonna be a war, it's going to be caused by the Southern forces, not by, Lincoln's not going to fire the first shot. That's the only time he really sort of goes out of his way, so to speak, to put down the other side or at least challenge the other side. But we are coming a long way by the time we get to Reagan, who although he's hardly happy with the Democratic presidency that preceded him, Jimmy Carter's, he's also trying to unify Americans. And by the time you get to the second inaugural and it's morning in America, he's trying to sort of pick up on the optimism that he thinks needs to sort of be re-embraced by the American people to ensure that they could go forward.
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