↩ the History · a speech, filed

The First Inaugural Address

Thomas Jefferson · the Capitol, Washington · March 4, 1801
text: The American Presidency Project, UC Santa Barbara · a work of the United States government, in the public domain
colour carries the act's function; a dashed underline marks a predicted misfire; hover or focus any span for its filing

Friends and Fellow-Citizens:

CALLED upon to undertake the duties of the first executive office of our country, I avail myself of the presence of that portion of my fellow-citizens which is here assembled to express my grateful thanks for the favor with which they have been pleased to look toward me, to declare a sincere consciousness that the task is above my talents, and that I approach it with those anxious and awful presentiments which the greatness of the charge and the weakness of my powers so justly inspire. A rising nation, spread over a wide and fruitful land, traversing all the seas with the rich productions of their industry, engaged in commerce with nations who feel power and forget right, advancing rapidly to destinies beyond the reach of mortal eye—when I contemplate these transcendent objects, and see the honor, the happiness, and the hopes of this beloved country committed to the issue, and the auspices of this day, I shrink from the contemplation, and humble myself before the magnitude of the undertaking. Utterly, indeed, should I despair did not the presence of many whom I here see remind me that in the other high authorities provided by our Constitution I shall find resources of wisdom, of virtue, and of zeal on which to rely under all difficulties. To you, then, gentlemen, who are charged with the sovereign functions of legislation, and to those associated with you, I look with encouragement for that guidance and support which may enable us to steer with safety the vessel in which we are all embarked amidst the conflicting elements of a troubled world.

During the contest of opinion through which we have passed the animation of discussions and of exertions has sometimes worn an aspect which might impose on strangers unused to think freely and to speak and to write what they think; but this being now decided by the voice of the nation, announced according to the rules of the Constitution, all will, of course, arrange themselves under the will of the law, and unite in common efforts for the common good. All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression. Let us, then, fellow-citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions. During the throes and convulsions of the ancient world, during the agonizing spasms of infuriated man, seeking through blood and slaughter his long-lost liberty, it was not wonderful that the agitation of the billows should reach even this distant and peaceful shore; that this should be more felt and feared by some and less by others, and should divide opinions as to measures of safety. But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. I know, indeed, that some honest men fear that a republican government can not be strong, that this Government is not strong enough; but would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm on the theoretic and visionary fear that this Government, the world's best hope, may by possibility want energy to preserve itself? I trust not. I believe this, on the contrary, the strongest Government on earth. I believe it the only one where every man, at the call of the law, would fly to the standard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern. Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation; entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter—with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens—a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.

About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its Administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations. Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies; the preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of election by the people—a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism; a well disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war, till regulars may relieve them; the supremacy of the civil over the military authority; economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burthened; the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith; encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid; the diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason; freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety.

I repair, then, fellow-citizens, to the post you have assigned me. With experience enough in subordinate offices to have seen the difficulties of this the greatest of all, I have learnt to expect that it will rarely fall to the lot of imperfect man to retire from this station with the reputation and the favor which bring him into it. Without pretensions to that high confidence you reposed in our first and greatest revolutionary character, whose preeminent services had entitled him to the first place in his country's love and destined for him the fairest page in the volume of faithful history, I ask so much confidence only as may give firmness and effect to the legal administration of your affairs. I shall often go wrong through defect of judgment. When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground. I ask your indulgence for my own errors, which will never be intentional, and your support against the errors of others, who may condemn what they would not if seen in all its parts. The approbation implied by your suffrage is a great consolation to me for the past, and my future solicitude will be to retain the good opinion of those who have bestowed it in advance, to conciliate that of others by doing them all the good in my power, and to be instrumental to the happiness and freedom of all.

Relying, then, on the patronage of your good will, I advance with obedience to the work, ready to retire from it whenever you become sensible how much better choice it is in your power to make. And may that Infinite Power which rules the destinies of the universe lead our councils to what is best, and give them a favorable issue for your peace and prosperity.

The divergences

"We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists" — the winners file a Declaration: the parties are dissolved by the saying, and the men who lost are readmitted on the spot. The losers file an Assertion, a claim about shared principle that can be checked, and the next sentence of the address checks it — "if there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form." They part on function: a state brought into being, or a proposition offered for assent. Jefferson's manuscript carries the words in lowercase; the printed text, including the one on this page, capitalizes them. Lowercase, the sentence says everyone present holds two ordinary commitments, a republic and a federal union, and files as an Assertion nobody would dispute. Capitalized, it performs a reclassification on two organized parties and files as a Declaration no office has the power to make. The men in the chamber heard it spoken, where the difference does not exist.

"The minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression" — the Federalists file a Promise, the winner committing himself against the thing their own sedition law had done to his printers; the speaker files a Frame-set, a rule about what the law must do, in which he takes no part. They part on function, commissive or declaration, and the sentence's verbs settle it: the majority prevails, the minority possess, equal law protects, and no clause in it is in the first person. A promise needs a promiser. What one side heard as a bond, the other had entered as a description of the legal order — and three paragraphs later the creed reads "absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority," with the reasonableness condition dropped.

"Equal and exact justice to all men ... freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus" — the country files the enumerated principles as a Frame-set that fixes what the administration may afterwards do, on the authority of the sentence that calls them "the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust." The administration files them under the flag raised in the sentence immediately before the list: "stating the general principle, but not all its limitations." They part on scope. It matters because the two filings cannot both govern a test: a creed whose terms were declared incomplete before it was recited cannot be failed on its face, only departed from in circumstances the speaker reserved and never specified. The limitations are not supplied anywhere in the address.

"To declare a sincere consciousness that the task is above my talents" — the chamber files a Counter-signal, the refusal the genre requires, performed by a man whose fitness the election had settled; a reader taking the words at their face files an Assertion, and gets a President telling Congress he cannot do the job. They part on orientation: standing, or the world. The archive's other instance is Washington's — "inheriting inferior endowments from nature and unpracticed in the duties of civil administration" — spoken by a man who had been drafted and had no rival. The same act, twelve years apart, with the method of filling the office changed underneath it: the second is spoken by the winner of a contest he had spent four years conducting, which is what lets the assertive filing survive in a way it never did for the first.

"This being now decided by the voice of the nation, announced according to the rules of the Constitution" — the incoming party files an Assertion: the election is over and the country has spoken. The outgoing party files a Palter: the voice of the nation had produced a tie between two men of the same ticket, and the choice was made by a lame-duck House that its own side controlled, over thirty-six ballots, a fortnight earlier. Every word is true. They part on motive. The filing matters because this clause is the premise of the command riding on it — "all will, of course, arrange themselves under the will of the law" — and an order to submit is only as strong as the mandate in the clause before it.

"Let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated" — a New England Federalist who had spent two years reading about prosecutions files a Promise of protection from the man now holding the prosecuting power; the speaker files an Order whose addressee is nowhere in the sentence. They part on function, commissive or directive, and the difference appears the first time somebody is disturbed, because the third-person imperative told no one in particular to refrain. The clause also names what it protects: "error of opinion." Toleration is granted and the verdict is entered in the same breath.

"Possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation" — the assembly files an Assertion, one item in a list of things given rather than got: an ocean, a climate, a benign religion, an overruling Providence. The nations then holding the ground those descendants would need file a Declaration — title asserted by being placed among the gifts of nature. They part on orientation: what is the case, or who stands where. The list's other members are things nobody had to be dispossessed of, which is what makes this member of it conspicuous, and the clause is the only place in the address where the republic says what it will require.