President George Washington’s First Inaugural Speech
As a follow up to the previous post about the eyewitness account of George Washington’s 1789 inauguration, below are excerpts from the May 6, 1789 Massachusetts Centinel, which contains descriptions of the inauguration as well as the full text of Washington’s first inaugural speech, one of America’s 100 milestone documents.
Griswold’s Only Eyewitness Account of George Washington’s 1789 Inauguration
A lot has been written about George Washington’s 1789 inauguration and whether he actual said “So help me God” at the conclusion of his oath. John Bell of Boston 1775 has a great piece on the inauguration. And so does Ben Edwards of Teach History. In 1854, Rufus Wilmot Griswold first published The Republican Court; ...
The War of the Gazettes and the Dark Ages of the American Newspaper
“From the vantage point of the twentieth century, journalism historians look back on the period between 1789 and 1808 as the ‘dark ages’ of the American newspaper.” This great line leads the third chapter — titled Weapons in the Great Debate — of John Tebbel’s Compact History of the American Newspaper. “The golden age of ...
