Work record

First Inaugural Address

Ulysses S. Grant

Also known as: Grant First Inaugural

1869 · 19th Century · Oratory · English

Public domainGreat Poems & Speeches · Speech Read full text Download EPUB Five-minute digest

Abstract

Written: Delivered 4 March 1869
Setting: The moment of Reconstruction unfinished; national debt and currency questions pending; East Portico of the Capitol
Author: Ulysses S. Grant
Country: United States
Language: English
Genre: Presidential inaugural address
Form: Plain, relatively short Reconstruction inaugural
Recommended: Grades 9–12

Background. Reconstruction remained unfinished and the wartime debt hung over policy. The general who had accepted Lee's surrender now took the civilian oath. Classroom cue for Grant 1869: Ask which paragraph a Federalist and a Republican would underline. Classroom cue for Grant 1869: Mark appeals to fear, hope, and duty in three colors.

Occasion. His East Portico remarks were notably plain after years of ornate political speech. Classroom cue for Grant 1869: Test the central claim against a single contrary historical fact. Classroom cue for Grant 1869: Invite a student to paraphrase the hinge without using the famous words.

Argument. Pay what is owed, secure freedom's results, and avoid a personal program against the people's will—these are the short pledges. Classroom cue for Grant 1869: Read the last sentence first, then see whether the speech earns it. Classroom cue for Grant 1869: Ask what a foreign diplomat in the crowd might have reported home.

Close. Calm debate of unsettled questions is requested under divine guidance. Classroom cue for Grant 1869: Count how often the Constitution is named or only assumed. Classroom cue for Grant 1869: Compare indoor versus outdoor ceremony as a meaning-making choice. Plain style after civil war becomes part of the civic medicine he offers.

Key figures

Ulysses S. Grant: Eighteenth President in the 1869 inaugural scene (Grant)
Schuyler Colfax: Vice President in the 1869 inaugural scene (Grant)

Summary

Ulysses S. Grant's first inaugural (4 March 1869) sounds like the soldier who wrote it: plain, short, and practical. Reconstruction was unfinished; the wartime debt hung over policy; the freedpeople's rights remained contested. Grant pledged to have no personal program against the people's will, to pay what the nation owed, and to secure the war's results. Equal rights, calm discussion of unsettled questions, and a request for divine guidance replace ornate ideology. The style itself is the argument against rhetorical inflation after years of crisis oratory. Debt is treated as a moral claim; freedom won in battle is to be secured by law rather than relitigated by violence. Classical schools can pair this text with Lincoln's second inaugural and with Grant's later Personal Memoirs. The inaugural shows the general translating Appomattox's magnanimity into civilian prose—imperfectly in the years that followed, but clearly in the charge he accepted on day one.txt.txt.txt.txt.txt.txt. Grant's plainness after years of crisis oratory is itself a civic claim: that soldiers' blunt honesty belongs in civilian rule. Students can weigh that claim against the corruption that later stained parts of his administration. Seminar readers should also note how 1869 ceremony and argument shape one another without repeating the abstract's section labels. Finally, ask whether the closing softens or intensifies the middle: many inaugurals end in petition precisely where the argument has been sharpest.

Virtues in this work

Prudence: The address weighs Reconstruction unfinished; national debt and currency questions pending without pretending the hard choices are simple.
Justice: It ties executive power to law and to fair dealing in the setting of East Portico of the Capitol.
Humility: Grant treats the office as a trust under the oath rather than a personal prize.

Plot or Argument

Setting the 1869 scene
The speaker greets the audience on 4 March 1869 at East Portico of the Capitol and situates the oath within Reconstruction unfinished; national debt and currency questions pending.
Core claim of the Grant address
The argument turns on soldierly brevity: pay the debt, secure the results of the war, treat all citizens equally, crystallized in the strain that I shall have no policy of my own to interfere against the will of the people.
Law and limits in the 1869 Grant address
In the 1869 middle movement, Authority, virtue, and threat are weighed together lest force outrun consent. (Grant at East Portico of the Capitol).
Final charge (4 March 1869)
Finally the address asks calm discussion of unsettled questions and divine guidance, sending hearers out under a shared obligation.

Lessons

A soldier's economy of words
Grant answers Reconstruction unfinished; national debt and currency questions pending through soldierly brevity: pay the debt, secure the results of the war, treat all citizens equally. Naming the real problem before remedies is the first civic lesson of the 1869 text.
- Which detail of 4 March 1869 at East Portico of the Capitol most shapes this lesson?
- Where does the address earn—or fail to earn—the line about I shall have no policy of my own to interfere against the wi?
- What happens to the argument if the closing had been only self-congratulation? (1869).
Related across the library
- The Story of King Arthur and His Knights, Book I, Part II, Chapter Second
  two knights uplifted each his horse with his own spirit and so completed his course in safety And indeed King Arthur was very much amazed that he had not overthrown his opponent for at that time as aforesaid he was considered to be the very best knight and the one best approved in deeds of arms that lived in all of Britain Wherefore he marvelled at the power and the address of that knight against whom he had driven that he had not been overthrown by the greatness of the blow that had been delivered against his d...
- King Solomon's Mines, Lesson: Treasure and its worth
  Treasure and its worth. The heroes reach a chamber holding more wealth than they can carry and immediately find it useless, sealed in the dark without food or water. Haggard gives Quatermain the reflection that wealth is valueless at the last, and gives Ignosi the reproach that his friends love the stones more than him.
- The Underdogs, Lesson: Revolution needs more than grievance
  Revolution needs more than grievance. Demetrio's reasons for rebellion are real, but the movement around him lacks durable moral direction. The novel teaches that just anger can be absorbed by violence unless political purpose remains accountable.
- The Fall of Constantinople, 1453: Eyewitness Accounts, Lesson: Holding a post to the end
  Holding a post to the end. Constantine XI was offered terms and the chance to leave, but the sources agree he stayed with his city and died in the final assault. His conduct, told by Greek and Latin witnesses alike, made him a lasting figure of loyalty. Ottoman writers in turn praised the courage and planning of Mehmed, a ruler of twenty-one who carried out what earlier sultans had attempted.
- The War of the Worlds, Full Text
  their mathematical learning is evidently far in excess of ours and to have carried out their preparations with a well-nigh perfect unanimity Had our instruments permitted it we might have seen the gathering trouble far back in the nineteenth century Men like Schiaparelli watched the red planet it is odd by-the-bye that for countless centuries Mars has been the star of war but failed to interpret the fluctuating appearances of the markings they mapped so well All that time the Martians must have been getting read...
Debt as a moral claim
Test whether the rest of the speech earns the claim that I shall have no policy of my own to interfere against the will of the people. Quotation without argument is not yet persuasion.
- Which detail of 4 March 1869 at East Portico of the Capitol most shapes this lesson?
- Where does the address earn—or fail to earn—the line about I shall have no policy of my own to interfere against the wi?
- Name one rival cadence that would have undercut the charge of this address. (1869).
Related across the library
- First Inaugural Address, Lesson: Virtue as public architecture
  Virtue as public architecture. Test whether the rest of the speech earns the claim that no people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States. Quotation without argument is not yet persuasion.
- The French Revolution: A History, Lesson: Forms that have ceased to work
  Forms that have ceased to work. Carlyle's diagnosis of 1789 is that King, nobility and Church still wore their robes but no longer did their duties, so that authority had become a 'sham' that hunger and debt eventually exposed. The argument is moral rather than economic: rulers who live by appearances lose the right and the power to rule. Students should test this claim against the episodes Carlyle chooses and against what he leaves out.
- Past and Present, Lesson: Wealth that no one can touch
  Wealth that no one can touch. Carlyle's opening image is a land full of harvests and workshops whose people sit idle in workhouses or starve in cellars, as if under a curse. He does not deny England's productivity; he denies that productivity alone makes a nation healthy. The Midas fable becomes a judgment on a society that has measured success in gold and forgotten justice.
- Chartism, Lesson: Prejudice inside a plea for justice
  Prejudice inside a plea for justice. Chapter IV pleads for the starving and admits England's long guilt toward Ireland, yet it describes the Irish in degrading terms and even writes that they must be 'improved a little, or else exterminated.' Teach the passage directly: an argument for justice can carry contempt for the very people it concerns, and readers must notice both. Measure Carlyle's words against his own claim that every 'Sanspotatoe' has an immortal soul.
- Henry VI, Part 1, Lesson: Reading Joan through hostile eyes
  Reading Joan through hostile eyes. The play's Joan is first brave and persuasive, then a conjurer whose fiends desert her and a daughter who disowns her father. This portrait follows English chronicles written by her enemies. Students should study it as Elizabethan wartime drama, distinguishing what the play claims, what her trial records show, and how later Christian readers came to honor her; the Church declared her a saint in 1920.
Securing freedom by law
When Grant asks calm discussion of unsettled questions and divine guidance, responsibility returns to hearers. Ask what citizens owe after such a ceremonial charge.
- Which detail of 4 March 1869 at East Portico of the Capitol most shapes this lesson?
- Where does the address earn—or fail to earn—the line about I shall have no policy of my own to interfere against the wi?
- If the speaker had chosen celebration instead, what civic meaning would vanish? (1869).
Related across the library
- Oroonoko, Oroonoko
  altered from the play of Oroonoko and adapted to the circumstances of the present times Manchester It must be confessed that all this tinkering with an original which does not require from any point of view the slightest alteration or omission is most uncalled for crude and unsuccessful In William Walker a lad nineteen years old the son of a wealthy Barbadoes planter wrote in three weeks a tragedy entitled Victorious Love to which is confessedly a close imitation of Southerne's theme It was produced at Drury Lan...
- The Provincial Letters, Lesson: Probability as a road around conscience
  Probability as a road around conscience. The Jesuit father explains that any opinion supported by one grave doctor is probable and may be followed, even when the opposite is more probable and safer. Pascal presents this as making the confessor's library, not God's law, the judge of action. Readers should know that probabilism had serious defenders as a way to guide doubtful consciences; the letters attack its abuse, and their summary of the casuists is polemical.
- Phaedrus and Letters VII and VIII, Phaedrus 251a–252b
  The lover's symptoms: shuddering, sweating, fever, sleeplessness and obsessive longing as the wings regrow.
- Love's Labour's Lost, Summary
  Love's Labour's Lost opens with a young king making a promise he cannot keep. Ferdinand of Navarre persuades three lords, Berowne, Longaville and Dumaine, to sign a statute turning his court into "a little academe": for three years they will study, fast one day a week, sleep three hours a night, and see no woman. Berowne signs under protest, warning that the oath forgets the nature of youth, and within the same scene it is discovered that the Princess of France is on her way to Navarre on a diplomatic errand abo...
- The Subjection of Women, Full Text
  all men now require to be eminently original it will be time enough to begin judging by experience of their capacity for originality It no doubt often happens that a person who has not widely and accurately studied the thoughts of others on a subject has by natural sagacity a happy intuition which he can suggest but cannot prove which yet when matured may be an important addition to knowledge but even then no justice can be done to it until some other person who does possess the previous acquirements takes it in...

Context

In 1869, American politics were marked by Reconstruction unfinished; national debt and currency questions pending. The inaugural at East Portico of the Capitol answered that pressure in public.

Composition

The text stored here follows the Project Gutenberg transcription (#4938) of the address delivered 4 March 1869. Spelling and punctuation follow that source.

Reception

Later anthologies of American oratory regularly include this inaugural for its focus on soldierly brevity: pay the debt, secure the results of the war, treat all citizens equally.

Power / Politics Leadership Virtue Ethics Justice Law War Violence

Comparisons

Second Inaugural Address
Read with Grant's 1869 inaugural to contrast how each handles pressure and civic duty amid Reconstruction unfinished; national debt and currency questions pending.
Personal Memoirs
Read with Grant's 1869 inaugural to contrast how each handles pressure and civic duty amid Reconstruction unfinished; national debt and currency questions pending.
First Inaugural Address
Read with Grant's 1869 inaugural to contrast how each handles pressure and civic duty amid Reconstruction unfinished; national debt and currency questions pending.