Table of Contents
George Washington’s First Inaugural Address
Overview
Context
About the Author
Explanation and Analysis of the Document
Audience
Impact
Document Text
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Abstract
Believing that he would be elected the first president under the Constitution of 1787, George Washington asked his close friend David Humphreys to draft an inaugural address. Washington discarded Humphreys’s seventy-three-page draft, however, and asked James Madison to write a more appropriate address. Washington delivered his address on April 30, 1789, to a joint session of Congress in the Senate chambers in New York City’s Federal Hall.
Book contents
- John Rolfe’s Letter to Sir Edwin Sandys about Enslaved Africans
- Mayflower Compact
- Virginia’s Act XII and III
- Jonathan Edwards: “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”
- Proclamation of 1763
- Quartering Act
- Declaration of Rights of the Stamp Act Congress
- Boston Non-Importation Agreement
- Intolerable Acts
- Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress
- Patrick Henry’s “Liberty or Death” Speech
- Proclamation by the King for Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition
- Common Sense
- Abigail Adams: “Remember the Ladies” Letter to John Adams
- Virginia Declaration of Rights
- Declaration of Independence
- Articles of Confederation
- Treaty of Fort Pitt
- Pennsylvania: An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery
- James Madison’s Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments
- Northwest Ordinance
- Constitution of the United States
- Federalist Papers 10, 14, and 51
- George Washington’s First Inaugural Address
- George Washington’s First Annual Message to Congress
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- Bill of Rights
- Fugitive Slave Act of 1793
- George Washington’s Farewell Address
- Alien and Sedition Acts
- Thomas Jefferson’s First Inaugural Address
- Thomas Jefferson’s Message to Congress about the Lewis and Clark Expedition
- Marbury v. Madison
- Act to Prohibit the Importation of Slaves
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- Monroe Doctrine
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- Andrew Jackson: On Indian Removal
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- Joint Resolution of Congress for the Annexation of Texas
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- Frederick Douglass’s “Fourth of July” Speech
- Kansas-Nebraska Act
- Dred Scot v. Sandford
- Abraham Lincoln’s “House Divided” Speech
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- Homestead Act
- Morrill Act
- Emancipation Proclamation
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- Gettysburg Address
- Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address
- Articles of Agreement Relating to the Surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia
- Black Code of Mississippi
- Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
- Civil Rights Act of 1866
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- Interstate Commerce Act
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- Andrew Carnegie: “Wealth”
- Sherman Antitrust Act
- Immigration Act of 1891
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- Griswold v. Connecticut
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- Loving v. Virginia
- Kerner Commission Report Summary
- Equal Rights Amendment
- Richard Nixon’s Smoking Gun Tape
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