Snipers, protesters, a secret train journey



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The next day, outgoing President Ulysses S. Grant invited Hayes to the White House and had him sworn in secretly without the knowledge of the nation, preventing any last-ditch effort by Tilden or the Democrats to reverse the outcome and guard against it. against all possible. violence by the injured southerners. The inauguration was repeated later for the public, who were unaware that Hayes had already taken the oath.

After Franklin D. Roosevelt won an unprecedented fourth term, he opted for a lightened inauguration out of respect for the sacrifices of a country fighting a world war abroad and enduring austerity measures at home – and reflecting its own strength failing in less than three months. live.

Rather than being sworn in on Capitol Hill, Roosevelt, with trembling hands and a weak voice, was sworn in on the South Portico of the White House in front of a relatively small crowd. The ceremony lasted only 15 minutes. There was no inaugural parade, no gala ball, just a relatively shallow lunch. “The dog hunters took up their duties with more pomp and ceremony,” observed the head of the president’s secret service.

Richard M. Nixon was first sworn in in the midst of a very different foreign war, without popular support at home. Activists protesting the conflict in Vietnam gathered at several key points along the route of the inaugural parade as uniformed troops kept watch.

Targeting Nixon’s passing limousine, protesters threw stones, sticks, bottles, cans, firecrackers, smoke bombs, forks, spoons, tomatoes, dung, burning miniature American flags and a Christmas ornament filled with paint. “Two, four, six, eight – organize yourself to crush the state,” they chanted. At one point, protesters threw a ball of aluminum foil that was mistaken for a possible bomb, and Nixon’s driver abruptly accelerated to avoid it, causing the presidential passengers to jerk.

Nixon, who occasionally stood up in the open car, was uninjured and hardly publicly noticed the disturbance as he spent the remainder of a day partying. But police arrested 81 people, and it was a bitter start to a tumultuous tenure.

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