Prologue: Pieces of History

Today’s post comes from Christopher Abraham at the Eisenhower Presidential Library. “I am a newspaper reporter and I would like to know if anything unusual happened during either of President Eisenhower’s inaugural ceremonies.” —Anonymous   Have you ever seen a U.S. President lassoed by a cowboy? It likely qualifies as “unusual!” General Eisenhower related this [...]

  George Washington As the first President, Washington set many inaugural precedents, but his inaugurations were also very different in ways that would not be repeated. The oath of office is usually administered the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court during the ceremony. The first President had not yet appointed any Supreme Court Justices, and [...]

On Monday, January 21, President Obama will be sworn in for a second term. It will be the 57th Presidential Inauguration. Beginning at 11:30 a.m., the President’s swearing-in ceremony will be shown live in the William G. McGowan Theater at the National Archives. If you are in Washington, DC, don’t miss this chance to see [...]

“My station is new; and, if I may use the expression, I walk on untrodden ground.” –George Washington in a letter, January 9, 1790 Today’s post comes to us from Michael Hussey, education and exhibition specialist at the National Archives. In  honor of the 2013 Inauguration, the first and last page of Washington’s first Inauguration [...]

In honor of Lady Bird Johnson’s 100th birthday on December 22, 2012, the Lyndon B. Johnson Library unveiled a newly redesigned space to give visitors a new look at the 36th president. The library houses 45 million pages of historical documents, 650,000 photos, one million feet of film, 2,000 oral histories, and 5,000 hours of recordings from [...]