University of Virginia Library

16. CHAPTER XVI.
THE INAUGURATION.

While the votes for president were being counted
in the senate, Mr. Clay remarked to Mr. Van Buren,
with courteous significance: —

“It is a cloudy day, sir!”

“The sun will shine on the fourth of March!” was
the confident reply.

True to his augury, the sun shone out of heaven
without a cloud on the inaugural morning. The air
was cold, but clear and life-giving; and the broad
avenues of Washington for once seemed not too large
for the thronging population. The crowds who had
been pouring in from every direction for several days
before, ransacking the town for but a shelter from the
night, were apparent on the spacious sidewalks; and
the old campaigners of the winter seemed but a thin
sprinkling among the thousands of new and strange
faces. The sun shone alike on the friends and opponents
of the new administration, and, as far as one
might observe in a walk to the capitol, all were made
cheerful alike by its brightness. It was another
augury, perhaps, and may foretell a more extended
fusion under the light of the luminary new risen. In
a whole day passed in a crowd composed of all classes
and parties, I heard no remark that the president would
have been unwilling to hear.

I was at the capitol a half hour before the procession
arrived, and had leisure to study a scene for
which I was not at all prepared. The noble staircase
of the east front of the building leaps over three
arches, under one of which carriages pass to the basement
door; and, as you approach from the gate, the

eye cuts the ascent at right angles, and the sky, broken
by a small spire at a short distance, is visible beneath.
Broad stairs occur at equal distances, with corresponding
projections; and from the upper platform rise
the outer columns of the portico, with ranges of columns
three deep extending back to the pilasters. I
had often admired this front with its many graceful
columns, and its superb flight of stairs, as one of the
finest things I had seen in the world. Like the effect
of the assembled population of Rome waiting to receive
the blessing before the front of St. Peter's, however,
the assembled crowd on the steps and at the
base of the capitol heightened inconceivably the grandeur
of the design. They were piled up like the
people on the temples of Babylon in one of Martin's
sublime pictures — every projection covered, and an
inexpressible soul and character given by their presence
to the architecture. Boys climbed about the
bases of the columns, single figures stood on the posts
of the surrounding railings in the boldest relief against
the sky; and the whole thing was exactly what Paul
Veronese would have delighted to draw. I stood near
an accomplished artist who is commissioned to fill one
of the panels of the rotunda, and I can not but hope
he may have chosen this magnificent scene for his
subject.

The republican procession, consisting of the presidents
and their families, escorted by a small volunteer
corps, arrived soon after twelve. The General and
Mr. Van Buren were in the constitution phaeton,
drawn by four grays, and as it entered the gate, they
both rode uncovered. Descending from the carriage
at the foot of the steps, a passage was made for them
through the dense crowd, and the tall white head of
the old chieftain, still uncovered, went steadily up
through the agitated mass, marked by its peculiarity
from all around it.

I was in the crowd thronging the opposite side of
the court, and lost sight of the principal actors in this
imposing drama, till they returned from the senate
chamber. A temporary platform had been laid, and
railed in on the broad stair which supports the portico,
and, for all preparation to one of the most important
and most meaning and solemn ceremonies on
earth — for the inauguration of a chief magistrate over a
republic of fifteen millions of freemen — the whole addition
to the open air, and the presence of the people,
was a volume of holy writ. In comparing the impressive
simplicity of this consummation of the wishes of
a mighty people, with the tricked-out ceremonial, and
hollow show, which embarrass a corresponding event
in other lands, it was impossible not to feel that the
moral sublime was here — that a transaction so important,
and of such extended and weighty import, could
borrow nothing from drapery or decoration, and that
the simple presence of the sacred volume, consecrating
the act, spoke more thrillingly to the heart than the
trumpets of a thousand heralds.

The crowd of diplomatists and senators in the rear
of the columns made way, and the ex-president and
Mr. Van Buren advanced with uncovered heads. A
murmur of feeling rose up from the moving mass below,
and the infirm old man, emerged from a sick-chamber,
which his physician had thought it impossible
he should leave, bowed to the people, and, still
uncovered in the cold air, took his seat beneath the
portico. Mr. Van Buren then advanced, and with a
voice remarkably distinct, and with great dignity, read
his address to the people. The air was elastic, and
the day still; and it is supposed that near twenty thousand
persons heard him from his elevated position distinctly.
I stood myself on the outer limit of the
crowd, and though I lost occasionally a sentence from
the interruption near by, his words came clearly articulated
to my ear.

When the address was closed, the chief justice ad
vanced and administered the oath. As the book
touched the lips of the new president, there arose a
general shout, and expression of fecling common
enough in other countries, but drawn with difficulty
from an American assemblage. The sons, and the
immediate friends of Mr. Van Buren, then closed
about him; the ex-president, the chief justice, and
others, gave him the hand of congratulation, and the
ceremony was over. They descended the steps, the
people gave one more shout as they mounted the constitution
carriage together, and the procession returned
through the avenue, followed by the whole population
of Washington.

Mr. Van Buren held a levee immediately afterward,
but I endeavored in vain to get my foot over the
threshold. The crowd was tremendous. At four,
the diplomatic body had an audience; and in replying
to the address of Don Angel Calderon, the president
astonished the gold coats, by addressing them as the
democratic corps. The representatives of the crowned
heads of Europe stood rather uneasily under the
epither, till it was suggested that he possibly meant to
say diplomatic.