There is no other expression of American democracy than the exit of one President for another. Whether the President has served one term or two–or in the case of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, four–the inauguration ceremony is one of excitement, triumph and the bittersweet. The first inauguration was held on April 30, 1789, in New York City. The day was originally set for March 4, which gave electors from each state just about four months after Election Day to cast their ballots for president. This was changed in 1937 by the 20th Amendment, which changed Inauguration Day to noon on January 20, in time for Franklin D. Roosevelt’s second term. Thomas Jefferson became the first president to be sworn in at our nation’s capital, though D.C. did not official become the federal capital until 1801.

All inaugural ceremonies at the Capitol have been organized by the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies since 1901, and the U.S. military has participated in Inauguration Day ceremonies from the first president, as the president is commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Naturally, the proceedings for the inauguration of a new or continuing president were strictly regulated by etiquette.

It was customary for the President-elect to arrive in the city one or two days before the time designated for his formal induction into office. Upon the arrival of the President-elect at the Capital the national colors would be floated from all public buildings during each day between sunrise and sunset until after the inaugural ceremonies. As soon as practicable after his arrival the President-elect would call upon the President, having previously sent a messenger to ascertain his convenience as to time, to pay his respects and to exchange views with reference to the ceremonies attendant upon his succession and taking possession of the Executive office. The President returned the call of the President-elect on the same day. The President then invited the President-elect and members of his Cabinet and ladies to dinner before the expiration of his term of office. He also held a levee at a convenient time before his retirement.

The inauguration of the President was attended by more or less pomp. The order of arrangements for the inaugural procession was assigned to a military officer. The following is the official program adopted and promulgated for the inaugural ceremonies of March 4, 1881, from which point it was free to elaborate upon:

Two platoons of City Police (mounted)
Grand Marshal and Aids
First Division: Chief Officers, Aids, U.S. Artillery, Marine Battalion, Troops (if any) which accompany the President-elect to the seat of Government; The President and President-elect and party in carriages, attended by three aids; Calvary, Portion of the visiting military organizations
Second Division: the Chief Officer and Staff, Visiting Military designated
Third Division: the Chief Officer, Staff, Grand Army of the Republic, Misc military organizations from different states
Fourth Division: the Chief Officer, Staff, Misc military organizations
Fifth Division: the CO, Staff or Aids, Civic Societies, Political Organizations, Fire Department, etc
Salutes: The artillery will post a gun and detachment in the mall south of the Treasury, and another in the Capitol grounds to fire the signal guns when so required

The procession moved towards the Capitol at 10:15 am. At that hour, Pennsylvania Ave would be cleared of vehicles.

After arriving at the Capitol, the President and President-elect were escorted to the Senate Chamber, while the troops and civic organizations massed in front of the building. The ceremonies attending the administration of the oath of office to the President-elect were under the direction of the Senate. After the conclusion of the inauguration ceremony in the Senate, the President was conducted to his carriage and attended by the guard of honor, who drove him to the reviewing stand erected for the purpose on Pennsylvania Ave north of the White House. If the new President chose to take immediate possession of the White House, the retired President and his First Lady awaited his arrival there to welcome him into the mansion, and formally yielded up its possession. A lunch was usually prepared by the direction of the retired President, at which the new President presides. After this, the retired President and the First Lady withdrew from the mansion to their temporary residence in the city.

President Washington set the precedent for retiring from the Presidential office, when he published a farewell address, reviewing some of features of his administration. It then became customary for the retiring President to review principal acts of his administration in his last annual message to Congress, preceding the expiration of his term of office. His departure from the Capital was attended with no ceremony, other than the members of his late Cabinet and a few officials and personal friends. The President left the Capital as soon as practical after the inauguration.

The excitement of the day didn’t end there. It was customary to close the ceremonies of Inauguration with a grand ball, which was generally conducted under the auspices of a citizens committee of arrangements, appointed at a public meeting. Arousing much comment and curiosity was the costliness of the ball and more importantly, what the new First Lady was to wear. Mrs. McKinley dazzled with a gown made of silver cloth. The groundwork was of white satin, heavily woven with silver thread in a lily design. The full, sweeping train was plain, but measured two and a half yards in length. The left side was open over a panel of seed pearls, embroidered on satin, and at the bottom, a flounce of Venetian point lace cascaded, partially concealed beneath the train. The right side of the skirt was also slashed open half way up and under that was also am embroidered petticoat of pearls. Special silk was woven for Mrs Roosevelt’s inaugural gown, and it was shipped from New Jersey to Washington days before March 4. Of heavy brocade, with a background of blue, through which, at intervals, was woven the figure of a dove. The filling was of gold tinsel. Appropriately, given the occasion and the wearer, the pattern was destroyed, allowing Edith Roosevelt a one-of-a-kind ballgown. 1909 saw Mrs. Helen Taft in “one of the handsomest models ever seen in Washington.” A severely plain underdress of heavy white satin formed the foundation. Over this was draped with white chiffon, on which a pattern of goldenrod, the National flower, was embroidered in silver. The design was repeated in the embroidery of the long Court train, and point lace formed the sleeves and served to trim the decolletage. In her hair was a diamond aigrette, and around her neck, a pearl dog collar.

The inaugural ball was considered by many the quadrennial tribute paid by politics to society. There had only been but two intermission in the series of inaugural balls to commemorate the accession of a newly-elected President. The earlier balls were held on sites then deemed fashionable. Martin Van Buren had two balls given in his honor, William Henry Harrison gave three, James K. Polk had two, one of which was charged $10 a ticket and the other $2, Zachary Taylor had three balls given in his honor, and President Pierce would up being inaugurated in a snowstorm, and had no ball given him. By the 1880s, the Pension Building was staked as the official ballroom for the inauguration ball. Tickets to President Cleveland’s ball cost $5 apiece, and fully 12,000 guests were provided for in the committees plans. The ball was catered to meet vigorous appetites: over 60,000 oysters, 10,000 chicken croquettes, 7,000 sandwiches, 150 gallons of lobster salad, 300 gallons of stewed terrapin, 150 boned turkeys, 300 gallons of chicken salad, 1,300 quarts of ice cream and hundreds of pounds of pate de foie gras.

With all this hustle and bustle, one can imagine the sentiments of the day when President Woodrow Wilson canceled plans for an inaugural ball in 1913. In the midst of societal outrage, the milliners, caterers, dressmakers, tailors, chauffeurs, and any other person who provided services and goods for ball attendees were devastated. The New York Times reported a glut of white gloves on the market, citing their obscenely cheap prices as a result of glovers overstocking their wares in anticipation of the inauguration. After the frenzy died down, it was revealed that President Wilson canceled the ball fearing the dancing of the turkey trot! He instead opted for a safe, turkey-trot-free reception.

Read the Inaugural Addresses of America’s Presidents from George Washington to George W. Bush

Watch:

The Inauguration of President McKinley, 1897

President McKinley’s Second Inauguration, 1901

President Roosevelt’s Inauguration, 1905

First Lady Fashion: 200 Years

Photographs courtesy of Library of Congress

More photos of First Lady inaugural gowns: Past Perfect

Since next year brings a new interest in Washington D.C. and the inner workings of the American government, I thought it best to deviate from my emphasis on Edwardian Britain and swing the focus to Washington D.C. of the 1880s to 1910s. Regardless of personal views on the outgoing President, or the President-Elect, not only do I believe that no one can possibly be immune to the excitement and emotional charge of witnessing yet another process of America’s democracy. Stay tuned for posts about the White House, our past Presidents, famous Congressmen, social and etiquette proceedings, D.C. society, and so on!

Check out Scandalous Women for witty and erudite musings on those women, famous and infamous, who have characterized the history of Washington D.C.

Here’s a brief breakdown of the major political parties in Edwardian Britain:

Conservative Party

Tracing its origins to a faction, rooted in the 18th century Whig Party, that coalesced around William Pitt the Younger, it was originally known as “Independent Whigs”, “Friends of Mr. Pitt”, or “Pittites”, but after Pitt’s death the term “Tory” came into use. George Canning first used the term ‘Conservative’ in the 1820s and it was suggested as a title for the party by John Wilson Croker in the 1830s, but it was Sir Robert Peel who adopted the name and is credited with founding the party. After the expansion of the franchise, the party widened its appeal under the aegis of Lord Derby and Benjamin Disraeli, who supported the Reform Act of 1867, which enfranchised working class men. In 1886, the Conservative Party formed an alliance with Lord Hartington (8th Duke of Devonshire) and Sir Joseph Chamberlain’s Liberal Unionist Party, which was comprised of the Liberals who opposed their party’s support for Irish Home Rule and the combined party held office for all but three of the following twenty years. The Conservatives suffered a large defeat when the party split over the issue of free trade in 1906, and in 1912, the two parties amalgamated into the Unionist party.

Leaders between 1880-1914: Benjamin Disraeli, Marquess of Salisbury, Lord Hartington, Lord Randolph Churchill, Arthur Balfour, Sir Stafford Northcote, Sir Michael Hicks Beach.

Liberal Party

The Liberal Party grew out of the Whigs, which had its origins as an aristocratic faction in the reign of Charles II. The Whigs were in favor of reducing the power of the Crown and increasing the power of the Parliament. As early as 1839 Russell had adopted the name Liberal Party, but in reality the party was a loose coalition of Whigs in the House of Lords and Radicals in the Commons. The formal foundation of the Liberal party is traditionally traced to 1859 and the formation of Palmerston’s second government, but it was after Palmerston’s death that the Liberal Party reached its zenith. For the next thirty years Gladstone and Liberalism were synonymous. The “Grand Old Man”, as he became known, was Prime Minister four times and the powerful flow of his rhetoric dominated British politics even when he was out of office. The Liberals however, languished during the 1880s and 1890s due to infighting and the coalition of the Conservatives and Liberal Unionists. They rose again after the unpopular Boer War, and were led by Herbert Henry Asquith and David Lloyd George. The Liberals pushed through much legislation in the 1906-1911 period, including the regulation of working hours, national insurance and welfare. It was at this time that a political battle over the so-called People’s Budget resulted in the passage of an act ending the power of the House of Lords to block legislation. World War One splintered the group, and it quickly disintegrated after 1918.

Leaders between 1880-1914: William Gladstone, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, David Lloyd George, Herbert Henry Asquith, Winston Churchill (after famously crossing the floor in 1904)

Liberal Unionists

Splitting away from the Liberals in 1886, the party was led by Lord Hartington (later the Duke of Devonshire) and Joseph Chamberlain, and formed a political alliance with the Conservatives in opposition to Irish Home Rule. The two parties formed a coalition government in 1895 but kept separate political funds and their own party organizations until a complete merger was agreed in May 1912. The political impact of the Liberal Unionist breakaway marked the end of the long nineteenth century domination by the Liberal party of the British political scene. From 1830 to 1886 the Liberals (the name the Whigs, Radicals and Peelites accepted as their political label after 1859) had been managed to become almost the party of permanent government with just a couple of Conservative interludes. After 1886 it was the Conservatives who enjoyed this position and they received a huge boost with their alliance with a party of disaffected Liberals.

Leaders between 1880-1914: Marquess of Hartington, Joseph Chamberlain

Irish Parliamentary Party

Commonly called the Irish Party or the Home Rule Party, the IPP was formed in 1882 by Charles Stewart Parnell, the leader of the Nationalist Party, replacing the Home Rule League, as official parliamentary party for Irish nationalist Members of Parliament until 1918. The IPP evolved out of the Home Government Association founded by Isaac Butt after he defected from the Irish Conservative Party in 1870, to gain a limited form of freedom from Britain in order to protect and control Irish domestic affairs in the interest of the Protestant landlord class, when William E. Gladstone and his Liberal Party came to power in 1868 under his slogan “Justice for Ireland” and Irish Liberals gained 65 of the 105 Irish seats at Westminster. The party lost its hold when its ardent Catholicism frightened the Protestants, and Butt reorganized the party as the Home Rule League. But no other man is as synonymous with the IPP than Charles Stewart Parnell. Parnell resurrected it in October as the Irish National League (INL). It combined moderate agrarianism, a Home Rule program with electoral functions, was hierarchical and autocratic in structure with Parnell wielding immense authority and direct parliamentary control. Parliamentary constitutionalism was the future path. The informal alliance between the new, tightly disciplined National League and the Catholic Church was one of the main factors for the revitalization of the national Home Rule cause after 1882. Parnell saw that the explicit endorsement of Catholicism was of vital importance to the success of this venture. At the end of 1882 the organization already had 232 branches, in 1885 increased to 592 branches. The INL grew to become a formidable political machine built in the traditional political culture of rural Ireland, for it was an alliance of tenant-farmers, shopkeepers and publicans. The party lost its footing when the scandal of Parnell’s relationship with the very married Katherine O’Shea was revealed, and despite the loyalty of his party and friends, Parnell was disgraced. He married Katherine after her divorce, but died soon after. After his death, the Irish Party put pressure on its traditional ally, the Liberal Party, which culminated in a series of Home Rule bills that tore British opinion apart. The outbreak of WWI distracted everyone from the “Irish Question,” but Ireland took matters into its own hands, resulting in the Easter Rising (1916), the war of independence (1919-1921), civil war (1922-1923) and the eventual partition of Ireland into Northern Ireland (Ulster was anti-Home Rule), and the Republic of Ireland.

Leaders between 1880-1914: Charles Stewart Parnell, John Redmond, Justin McCarthy, John Dillon

Labour Party

The Labour Party’s origins lie in the late 19th century numeric increase of the urban proletariat and the extension of the franchise to working-class males, when it became apparent that there was a need for a political party to represent the interests and needs of those groups. after the extensions of the franchise in 1867 and 1885, the Liberal Party endorsed some trade-union sponsored candidates. In addition, several small socialist groups had formed around this time with the intention of linking the movement to political policies. Among these were the Independent Labour Party, the intellectual and largely middle-class Fabian Society, the Social Democratic Federation and the Scottish Labour Party. In the 1892 General Election, held in July, three working men were elected without support from the liberals, Keir Hardie in South West Ham, John Burns in Battersea, and Havelock Wilson in Middlesbrough who faced Liberal opposition. Concurrently Hardie adopted a confrontational style and increasingly emerged as parliamentary spokesman for independent labour. At the Trade Union Conference meeting in September a meeting of advocates of independent labour organization was called, and chaired by Hardie, an arrangements committee was established and a conference called for the following January. This conference, held in Bradford 14-16 January 1893, was the foundation conference of the Independent Labour Party. The object of the party should be ‘to secure the collective and communal ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange’. The party’s program called for a range of reforms, with much more stress on the social – an eight hour working day, provision for sick, disabled aged, widows and orphans and free ‘unsectarian’ education ‘right up to the universities’ – than on the political reforms which were standard in Radical organizations. In the 1906 election, the party won 29 seats, during their first meeting after the election, the group’s MPs decided to adopt the name “The Labour Party”. Keir Hardie, who had taken a leading role in getting the party established, was elected as Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party. The Fabian Society provided much of the intellectual stimulus for the party.

Leaders between 1880-1914: Keir Hardie, Bruce Glasier, Philip Snowden, Ramsay MacDonald, Frederick William Jowett, William Crawford Anderson

sources: wikipedia

A bicameral parliament, with an upper house, the House of Lords, and a lower house, the House of Commons, the Parliament of Great Britain is the supreme legislative body in the United Kingdom. When the Founding Fathers of America worked to construct the government, they looked to British Parliament for structure, creating the Senate (comparable to the House of Lords) as the province of ostensibly unbiased wealthy elites, and the House of Representatives (like the House of Commons), as the voice of the people. However, the British Parliament didn’t achieve relative equality with the House of Lords until the mid-19th century, until after the reforms of the 19th century, when, beginning with the Reform Act of 1832, the electoral system in the lower House was much more regularized. Freed from corruption of “rotten boroughs” and antiquated electoral systems, members of the House of Commons, no longer dependent on the upper House for their seats, began to grow more assertive.

A popular maxim of the 1830s to 1860s was “the House is the best club in London.” Prior to the Third Reform Act of 1884, it could be said the House of Commons was akin to a traditional gentleman’s club, being filled with gentlemen of means and of gentle birth. In that year, the franchise was given to the laborers in the country, and constituencies were subdivided in view of a redistribution of seats throughout the country in order that electors in every locality might make their wishes more immediately and directly felt. Another law fixed the maximum expense of a candidate to £700 in boroughs to £1800-2000 in counties, leading many to predict a deterioration in the quality of Members and in the personnel of the House.

Nonetheless, there had been a gradual lessening of social exclusiveness apparent at the general parliamentary as well as at the cabinet level since the mid-19th century, with a steady decline in the number of MPs drawn from the aristocratic and landed interest (fewer than a quarter of the total by 1900) and a corresponding increase in middle- and upper-middle-class MPs with incomes derived from industry, finance or the professions. Solicitors and barristers were the largest single professional group in the 1906 parliament, but also remarkable after 1906, was the substantial rise in the number of working-class MPs, accounted for largely by the success of the Labour Party during that year’s General Election.

By law, the life of the House of Commons was limited by law to seven years. In practice it rarely extended much beyond four. Until 1911, when a formal salary of £400 a year was introduced, Members of Parliament did not receive a salary or allowance of any kind from public funds, and were not granted any traveling expenses unless they held a Cabinet office. Each member represented about 10,000 electors, who in their turn represented about 100,000 of the population. Whenever the births exceeded deaths, leading to over-representation of some and the under-representation of others, a Redistribution Act became necessary every 20 or 25 years.

Except on Wednesdays, when it met at noon, or when special forenoon sittings were ordered on Tuesdays and Fridays, when it met at two, or on occasional Saturdays at the end of the Session when there was no set hour for either beginning or ending–the House of Commons met at a quarter to four. The first business accomplished is the brief religious service conducted by the chaplain during which the doors to the Commons were closed to the public; as soon as they ended, strangers were admitted into the galleries. After this, members proceeded with Public Business after dealing with Private Business, which, except by resolution of the House, had to be commenced before half past four. This rule however, only held good until Easter, after which Private Business was reduced to fifteen minutes. The term “private business” meant all Bills promoted by railway companies, gas companies, water company, municipal corporations or private individuals, and all measures of a purely local character.

Despite photographs and other renderings, the chambers belonging to the House of Commons were small, allowing no more than 430 seats–those in the galleries included! As such, there was a distinct difficulty in seating 670 gentlemen, who were in constant attendance throughout a Session of six months. As there are not 670 seats in the chamber, it was essential to create a self-adjusting rule, and this was done by the promulgation of the simple decree that members who desired to secure a seat for the evening could do so by being in attendance at prayertime. To this end, a small brass slide was been affixed to the back of each seat and cards were provided on which a member could write his name and secure that particular seat. This done, the seat was secured for the rest of the night. Nearly every member of the Commons had his particular seat, but none except the Ministers and ex-Ministers had a right to continue to use that seat. No doubt that during rousing, controversial debates, such as those held during the height of the struggle for Home Rule, the Commons was packed to the brim with MPs, ladies, and journalists swept away in the excitement of it all.

London immediately conjures images of Almack’s, Buckingham Palace, or Hyde Park, and most famously, the Houses of Parliament (or to be more correct, the Palace of Westminster, and the Clock Tower, which is colloquially known as “Big Ben”.) Oddly enough, our perception of Westminster Palace, whose spiky spires jabbed the skyline beside the Thames, was unknown prior to 1834, the year of the fire which consumed most of the Palace and the adjoining St. Stephen’s Chapel. Also, the reconstruction of the Palace was not completed until 1870, leading me to assume our lords and MPs thundered and raged debates in the midst of hammers and trolleys until then.

The history of the British Parliament is a unique one as it traces its roots back to the early medieval period. It was under the Tudor monarchies that Britain’s Parliament began to take the shape of what we now recognized, and through a series of developments, Parliament became the government of England as the role of the monarch swiftly diminished. After the Act of Union 1707, English Parliament merged with the Parliament of Scotland to form the Parliament of Great Britain, and later the Parliament of the United Kingdom. As such, the British Parliament is one of the oldest legislative bodies in the world, and, for this reason, it is sometimes referred to as the “Mother of all Parliaments”.

To familiarize you with the daily workings of Parliament, I have commenced with a (hopefully) bi-weekly peek from behind the grille of the Reporter’s Gallery. Among the future topics to be addressed include: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, THE HOUSE OF LORDS, WHEN PARLIAMENT SAT?, WHO SAT IN PARLIAMENT?, HOW DID ONE GET ELECTED TO PARLIAMENT?, GIVING A MAIDEN SPEECH, BYE-ELECTIONS, POLITICAL PARTIES, WOMEN IN POLITICS, WHAT DID THE PRIME MINISTER DO? and so on and so forth. If anyone has any topic they’d like me to elaborate on, drop me an email.

First however, here is a map of the Houses of Parliament.