Presidential Inauguration Day

Three Years Of Donald Trump, One Year To Next Presidential Inauguration

Ronald 10 Comments

It is hard to believe that Donald Trump has been in office, disgracing and besmirching the institution of the Presidency, for three years. With one year left to this term, hopefully, we will see next year on this day the end of this nightmare threat to civil order and international stability.

All possible efforts must be made to eradicate this cancer on the office of the Presidency, with commitment by voters and by those in public office to do everything needed to remove this man from the Presidency. We must then work to reverse the horrific damage he has done in so many areas of public policy.

There is no perfect candidate, but the nation must unite around the winner of the Democratic Presidential nomination as the only alternative to the horror of a second term for Trump, as that would create lasting damage to the nation, with little chance of reversal.

This is particularly true in the case of the federal judiciary, as if Trump is able to make the Supreme Court extremist right wing, it will reverberate on the nation in a deleterious manner for the next 20-30 years. It would insure domestic chaos and injustice long term, in a nation becoming rapidly a majority minority by the 2040s.

100 Years Ago Sunday, The Woman Suffrage Parade In Washington, DC Took Place, A Day Before The Inauguration Of President Woodrow Wilson!

Ronald 2 Comments

The woman suffrage movement, which had begun with the Equal Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848, used the occasion of the upcoming Presidential Inauguration of Woodrow Wilson to conduct a massive parade in Washington DC, the day before the inauguration, which is 100 years ago on March 3, with Wilson inaugurated the following day.

Alice Paul led the march of about 8,000 women, who were mobbed by tens of thousands of spectators, majority being men, who injured, shoved, and tripped many of the marchers, and in so doing, created a scandal and motivated the further push toward a constitutional amendment, which came about finally in 1920, despite President Wilson’s opposition, and his order of arrest of suffragettes on Pennsylvania Avenue, who regularly marched and demonstrated for the amendment.

The battle of women for equal protection and equal rights was at fever pitch then, as sadly it is now, as Republicans work at weakening the rights of women in all spheres of public life, including their rights to their own bodies, and to their right to avoid assault that cannot be prosecuted, something that happened too often in American history, and still goes on today!

Ironically, the sponsor of the 19th Amendment for woman suffrage was the first woman to serve in either house of Congress, Congresswoman Jeanette Rankin of Montana, who was a Republican, at a time when former President Theodore Roosevelt was advocating woman suffrage, as he did in his Progressive Party Presidential campaign the previous year, 1912!

March 4: Traditional Presidential Inauguration Day Through 1933

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March 4 was set up in the Constitution as Inauguration Day every four years, and every inauguration through 1933, except for the first, was held on that day.

George Washington was delayed in reaching the then capital of New York City in 1789, and did not arrive for the inauguration until April 30, but every other elected President from John Adams to Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated on March 4.

Then, the 20th Amendment in 1933 changed the inauguration date to January 20, beginning in 1937 and every fourth year since.

So March 4 was historic, particularly with the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln in 1861 and Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, at the two most delicate and dangerous moments in our history, the oncoming Civil War, and the worst moments of the Great Depression.

Other March 4 inaugurations which stood out historically include 1829, 1841, 1865, and 1877.

In 1829, the newly inaugurated Andrew Jackson invited the crowd to come back to the White House and celebrate, and a mob descended on the White House, and proceeded to break the windows, and commit other destruction since many were drunk!

In 1841, newly elected President William Henry Harrison gave the longest inaugural address in American history on a cold, rainy day, and contracted pneumonia, and died exactly a month later.

In 1865, President Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address became the most memorable such speech in American history, at least until Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Inaugural Address in 1933.

And in 1877, President Rutherford Hayes was inaugurated, after only learning of his selection by the specially constituted Electoral Commission two days earlier, in a political compromise agreement known as the Compromise of 1877. Many had wondered whether a new civil war was in the offing because of the dispute over the Presidential election results.

So March 4 will always remain a particularly historic day in American history.