The Capitol Dome

Fig. 7. Alexander Gardner took several photographs of the second inaugural. is photograph is among the clearest showing Lincoln delivering the inaugural address. THE CAPITOL DOME 14 L IBR ARY OF CONGRE S S PRIN T S AND PHOTO GR APHS DIVISION of London estimated that "at least half the multitude were colored people." 11 e New York Tribune concluded that the inauguration presented "the negro in a new character." "One distinguishing feature of the procession and the assemblage," it reported, "was the presence of the negro as a citizen and as a soldier. No longer a slave and a chattel." 12 FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT e first Capitol ceremony on inauguration day was the swear- ing-in of Vice President Andrew Johnson in the Senate Cham- ber. Only those with tickets were admitted. By all accounts, Johnson made a spectacle of himself. He had been ill for weeks and took several glasses of "medicinal whiskey" to steady him- self, which of course had the opposite effect. His rambling, virtually incoherent inaugural address mortified the assembled senators and dignitaries. Lincoln, who had taken a seat during the discourse, gave orders that Johnson not be allowed to say anything at the outdoor presidential swearing-in ceremony. 13 e presidential party and the ticketed guests marched from the Senate Chamber through the rotunda and out onto the East Front steps (fig. 7) into a gray, overcast day. en, just as the crowd erupted in loud, prolonged, and enthusiastic cheers for the president, the clouds dispersed, sunshine illuminated the proceedings, and "the beautiful white Capitol seemed to assume a brighter hue, while the bronze Goddess of Liberty on the ample dome looked down for the first time on the inaugu- ration of a President of the United States." It was as though the heavens had provided "a well accepted omen of the better days just dawning on the country." 14 Even Lincoln admitted later that "he was just superstitious enough to consider it a happy omen." 15 His brief second inaugural address (fig. 8), which probably lasted only six or seven minutes, was a somber, deeply-felt, and articulate meditation on the meaning of the Civil War to the soul of America. To those in the North who saw the war as a divinely-ordained crusade and who sought to exact retribution on the conquered enemy, he urged mercy tempered by under- standing. Both sides, he reminded listeners, "read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. e prayers of both could not be answered. at of neither has been answered fully." e last paragraph is the most famous of any presidential inaugural address: "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for

• Cover