Presidents
Scholarship
Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Historic First Inauguration
Franklin Delano Roosevelt won his first presidential campaign with messages of optimism and hope. At the Chicago Democratic Convention in June of the previous year, “Happy Days are Here Again” had become the campaign song, inspiring voters to support a candidate who promised a way out of the country’s worsening economic depression.1Roosevelt had won the election handily, but by Mar
Scholarship
Inauguration of 1861
On December 20, 1860, South Carolina seceded from the United States. Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas followed soon after. In the midst of an unprecedented sectional crisis, President Abraham Lincoln entered office on March 4, 1861, to assume leadership of an anxious and worried nation. The Baltimore Sun commented that the “close of an old and the beginning of a new administration of
