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FIRST
INAUGURAL ADDRESS
James
Madison
March
4, 1809
In
this address, President Madison eloquently and humbly
expresses his commitment to the office of President
and to his country. Although burdened with feelings
of inadequacy, Madison finds support in his principles,
and thereby confidently expresses his purposes, including
that of preserving without the slightest of interferences,
the rights of conscience and religion. In closing, President
Madison followed the advice he gave to William Bradford
36 years earlier, and publicly expressed his gratitude
to Almighty God for the blessings bestowed upon the
young nation, as well as its dependence upon Him for
a continuation of those blessings.
RJ&L
Religious Institutions Group
Unwilling
to depart from examples of the most revered authority, I
avail myself of the occasion now presented to express the
profound impression made on me by the call of my country
to the station to the duties of which I am about to pledge
myself by the most solemn of sanctions. So distinguished
a mark of confidence, proceeding from the deliberate and
tranquil suffrage of a free and virtuous nation, would under
any circumstances have commanded my gratitude and devotion,
as well as filled me with an awful sense of the trust to
be assumed. Under the various circumstances which give peculiar
solemnity to the existing period, I feel that both the honor
and the responsibility allotted to me are inexpressibly
enhanced.
*
* * *
Assuring
myself that under every vicissitude the determined spirit
and united councils of the nation will be safeguards to
its honor and its essential interests, I repair to the post
assigned me with no other discouragement than what springs
from my own inadequacy to its high duties. If I do not sink
under the weight of this deep conviction it is because I
find some support in a consciousness of the purposes and
a confidence in the principles which I bring with me into
this arduous service.
To
cherish peace and friendly intercourse with all nations
having correspondent dispositions; to maintain sincere neutrality
toward belligerent nations; to prefer in all cases amicable
discussion and reasonable accommodation of differences to
a decision of them by an appeal to arms; . . . to
avoid the slightest interference with the rights of conscience
or the functions of religion, so wisely exempted from civil
jurisdiction; to preserve in their full energy the other
salutary provisions in behalf of private and personal rights,
and of the freedom of the press; . . . —
as far as sentiments and intentions such as these can aid
the fulfillment of my duty, they will be a resource which
can not fail me.
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* * *
But
the source to which I look for the aids which alone can
supply my deficiencies is in the well-tried intelligence
and virtue of my fellow-citizens, and in the counsels of
those representing them in the other departments associated
in the care of the national interests. In these my confidence
will under every difficulty be best placed, next to that
which we have all been encouraged to feel in the guardianship
and guidance of that Almighty Being whose power regulates
the destiny of nations, whose blessings have been so conspicuously
dispensed to this rising Republic, and to whom we are bound
to address our devout gratitude for the past, as well as
our fervent supplications and best hopes for the future.
James
Madison, First Inaugural Address (Mar. 4, 1809), in 8 The
Writings of James Madison, 1808-1819, at 47 (Gaillard Hunt
ed., 1908).
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