While the votes for president were being counted in the senate, Mr. Clay
remarked to Mr. Van Buren with courteous significance:—
“It is a cloudy day, sir!”
“The sun will shine on the fourth of March!” was the confident reply.
True to his augury, the sun shone out of heaven without a cloud on the
inaugural morning. The air was cold, but clear and life-giving; and the
broad avenues of Washington for once seemed not too large for the
thronging population. The crowds who had been pouring in from every
direction for several days before, ransacking the town for but a shelter
from the night, were apparent on the spacious sidewalks; and the old
campaigners of the winter seemed but a thin sprinkling among the
thousands of new and strange faces. The sun shone alike on the friends
and opponents of the new Administration, and, as far as one might
observe in a walk to the capitol, all were made cheerful alike by its
brightness. It was another augury, perhaps, and may foretell a more
extended fusion under the light of the luminary new risen. In a whole
day passed in a crowd composed of all classes and parties, I heard no
remark that the president would have been unwilling to hear.
I was at the capitol a half hour before the procession arrived, and had
leisure to study a scene for which I was not at all prepared. The noble
staircase of the east front of the building leaps over three arches,
under one of which carriages pass to the basement-door; and, as you
approach from the gate, the eye cuts the ascent at right angles, and the
sky, broken by a small spire at a short distance, is visible beneath.
Broad stairs occur at equal distances, with corresponding projections;
and from the upper platform rise the outer columns of the portico, with
ranges of columns three deep extending back to the pilasters. I had
often admired this front with its many graceful columns, and its superb
flight of stairs, as one of the finest things I had seen in the world.
Like the effect of the assembled population of Rome waiting to receive
the blessing before the font of St. Peter’s, however, the assembled
crowd on the steps and at the base of the capitol heightened
inconceivably the grandeur of the design. They were piled up like the
people on the temples of Babylon, in one of Martin’s sublime
pictures—every projection covered, and an inexpressible soul and
character given by their presence to the architecture. Boys climbed
about the base of the columns, single figures stood on the posts of the
surrounding railings in the boldest relief against the sky; and the
whole thing was exactly what Paul Veronese would have delighted to draw.
I stood near an accomplished artist who is commissioned to fill one of
the panels of the rotunda, and I can not but hope he may have chosen
this magnificent scene for his subject.
The republican procession, consisting of the Presidents and their
families, escorted by a small volunteer corps, arrived soon after
twelve. The General and Mr. Van Buren were in the “constitution phæton,”
drawn by four grays, and as it entered the gate, they both rode
uncovered. Descending from the carriage at the foot of the steps, a
passage was made for them through the dense crowd, and the tall white
head of the old Chieftain, still uncovered, went steadily up through the
agitated mass, marked by its peculiarity from all around it.
I was in the crowd thronging the opposite side of the court, and lost
sight of the principal actors in this imposing drama, till they returned
from the Senate Chamber. A temporary platform had been laid, and railed
in on the broad stair which supports the portico, and, for all
preparation to one of the most important and most meaning and solemn
ceremonies on earth—for the inauguration of a chief magistrate over a
republic of fifteen millions of freemen—the whole addition to the open
air, and the presence of the people, was a volume of holy writ. In
comparing the impressive simplicity of this consummation of the wishes
of a mighty people, with the tricked-out ceremonial, and hollow show,
which embarrass a corresponding event in other lands, it was impossible
not to feel that the moral sublime was here—that a transaction so
important, and of such extended and weighty import, could borrow nothing
from drapery or decoration, and that the simple presence of the sacred
volume, consecrating the act, spoke more thrillingly to the heart than
the trumpets of a thousand heralds.
The crowd of diplomatists and senators in the rear of the columns made
way, and the Ex-President and Mr. Van Buren advanced with uncovered
heads. A murmur of feeling rose up from the moving mass below, and the
infirm old man, emerged from a sick-chamber, which his physician had
thought it impossible he should leave, bowed to the people, and, still
uncovered in the cold air, took his seat beneath the portico. Mr. Van
Buren then advanced, and with a voice remarkably distinct, and with
great dignity, read his address to the people. The air was elastic, and
the day still; and it is supposed that near twenty thousand persons
heard him from his elevated position distinctly. I stood myself on the
outer limit of the crowd, and though I lost occasionally a sentence from
the interruption near by, his words came clearly articulated to my ear.
When the address was closed, the chief justice advanced and administered
the oath. As the book touched the lips of the new President, there arose
a general shout, and expression of feeling common enough in other
countries but drawn with difficulty from an American assemblage. The
sons, and the immediate friends of Mr. Van Buren, then closed about him;
the Ex-President, the chief justice, and others, gave him the hand of
congratulation, and the ceremony was over. They descended the steps, the
people gave one more shout as they mounted the constitution carriage
together, and the procession returned through the avenue, followed by
the whole population of Washington.
Mr. Van Buren held a levee immediately afterward, but I endeavored in
vain to get my foot over the threshold. The crowd was immense. At four,
the diplomatic body had an audience; and in replying to the address of
Don Angel Calderon, the President astonished the gold coats, by
addressing them as the _democratic corps_. The representatives of the
crowned heads of Europe stood rather uneasily under the epithet, till it
was suggested that he possibly meant to say _diplomatic_.