THE INAUGURAL The Honourable J. Carter Plains, Georgia
Dr Sir. I applaud your triumph with the Publick and gladly express the Esteem that must naturally flow from one Man of the People to another. There is more on my Mind than Salutations. "Experience should teach us wisdom," I once told Congress. Altho' that body remains steadfastly untutored, I have better hope of you. May not, after all, there be things the Young Peanut can learn from the Old Hickory?
To be blunt. Reports have reached me of yr. plans to invite 300,000 to 400,000 campaign troopers to Washington, D.C., for the Inauguration. Furthermore, I am told that all citizens of our vastly enlarged Nation are being urged to "feel that they are welcome in Washington" during the swearing-in celebrations. That, Sir, is Jacksonian Democracy with a vengeance! And whilst I endorse the Sentiment, I cannot easily imagine how even our august Capital could bear the arrival of 220 million noble and hungry souls. It is true that I issued a similar Invitation to all the People back in 1829 (and I am honored that you and your Adjutants should choose to emulate me). However, the means of Publick convayence were decidedly inferior then to what they have become today. I do certify that, to travel from the Hermitage to Washington, I myself had to board a flatboat and then a steamboat, disembarking at Pittsburgh to complete another arduous journey by overland stagecoach. Even the lure of a day in the capital could not persuade more than a Fraction of my ardent partisans to undergo weeks of such travail.
Even so, some 30,000 of Nature's noblemen did shew up on the 4th. of March, the appointed day. I will take the liberty of saying that they were not entirely as Diciplined as my Democratic boosoom could have wished. I clearly recall asking in my Inaugural Address for "the indulgence ... of my fellow-citizens." Scarce an hour had elapsed before I saw verry much more Indulgence than I had anticipated.
As I rode on horseback from the Capitol to the President's house, I could not help but notice that a joyous Throng was both following and Preceding me to our Destination. Buoyant as were the massed Hurrahs and diverse expostulations of admiration (many honeyed with the familiar accents of our South and West), it was only with the greatest difficulty that I forced myself into the Executive Manse. Obstructed from the front, shoved from the rear, I was immediately engulfed in an unreguarding tide of high-spirited Humanity. Ultimately, I was literally pressed against a Wall. Further retreat seemed impossible untill a small band of Stalwarts encircled me and escorted me to an obscure egress in the rear.
Many details of this clamorous scene I learned later. It was said that one gentle old lady, in her Passion to enter, smashed in a front window with her Umbrella. Much was made of the muddy boots that tramped over damask-covered sofas, of the unrelenting drumroll of breaking crockery and crystal, of bloody Noses, hysterical Women, ram pant gluttony. I have always resented the Contumelies ("rabble," "Mob") heaped on the 20,000 Neighbors who called on me in my new dwelling-place that brisk March day. Yet I freely allow that the shattered windows and ruined Carpets that greeted me when I dared return were enough to make this Old Genl flinch.