The next day, the outgoing president, Ulysses S. Grant, invited Hayes to the White House and made him take an oath secretly without the nation knowing, avoiding any last effort by Tilden or the Democrats to reverse the result and avoiding any possible violence by offended southerners. The inauguration was repeated later for the public, who did not know that Hayes had already taken an oath.
[1945[1945
After Franklin D. Roosevelt won an unprecedented fourth term, he opted for a lean inauguration in deference to a country’s sacrifices fighting a world war abroad and enduring austerity measures at home – and reflecting his own weakness in less than three months. to live.
Instead of taking an oath at the Capitol, Roosevelt, with shaking hands and a weak voice, swore an oath on the South Porch of the White House in front of a relatively small crowd. The ceremony lasted only 15 minutes. There was no inaugural parade, no gala dance, just a relatively shallow lunch. “The dog-catchers took over with more pomp and ceremony,” noted the president’s secret service chief.
1969
Richard M. Nixon took an oath for the first time in the midst of a very different foreign war, without domestic popular support. Activists protesting the conflict in Vietnam gathered at several key points along the route of the inaugural parade, while uniformed soldiers watched.
Aiming at the passing Nixon limo, the protesters threw stones, sticks, bottles, cans, fireworks, smoke bombs, forks, spoons, tomatoes, dung, burning miniature American flags and an inked Christmas ornament. “Two, four, six, eight – organize to destroy the state,” they shouted. At one point, protesters launched a foil ball that was mistaken for a possible bomb, and Nixon’s driver abruptly accelerated to avoid it, causing a jolt to presidential passengers.
Nixon, who sometimes stood in the open car, came out unscathed and paid little attention to the audience as he went on for the rest of a festive day. But the police arrested 81 people and it was a bitter start to a tumultuous term.