The inauguration of Herbert Hoover as the 31st

president of the United States The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States ...

was held on Monday, March 4, 1929, at the East Portico of the

United States Capitol The United States Capitol, often called The Capitol or the Capitol Building, is the seat of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, which is formally known as the United States Congress. It is located on Capitol Hill ...

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

This was the 36th inauguration and marked the commencement of the only term of both

Herbert Hoover Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964) was an American politician who served as the 31st president of the United States from 1929 to 1933 and a member of the Republican Party, holding office during the onset of the Gr ...

as president and

Charles Curtis Charles Curtis (January 25, 1860 – February 8, 1936) was an American attorney and Republican politician from Kansas who served as the 31st vice president of the United States from 1929 to 1933 under Herbert Hoover. He had served as the Sena ...

vice president A vice president, also director in British English, is an officer in government or business who is below the president (chief executive officer) in rank. It can also refer to executive vice presidents, signifying that the vice president is on ...

. Chief Justice and former President

William Howard Taft William Howard Taft (September 15, 1857March 8, 1930) was the 27th president of the United States (1909–1913) and the tenth chief justice of the United States (1921–1930), the only person to have held both offices. Taft was elected pr ...

administered the presidential oath of office to Hoover. This was the first presidential inauguration to be recorded by sound

newsreel A newsreel is a form of short documentary film, containing news stories and items of topical interest, that was prevalent between the 1910s and the mid 1970s. Typically presented in a cinema, newsreels were a source of current affairs, inform ...

s. Following the second inauguration of Calvin Coolidge, overseen by Taft exactly four years earlier, it was also the second (and most recent) time that a former president administered the oath of office to a new president. The

Constitution of the United States The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, in 1789. Originally comprising seven articles, it delineates the natio ...

gives the president the option either to swear or to affirm the oath. Hoover is often listed as having said "affirm" due to being a Quaker, but the newsreel taken of the ceremony indicates that he said "solemnly swear." Franklin Pierce was the only president known to say "affirm" rather than "swear" when taking the oath of office. In administering the oath, Taft erroneously recited the phrase "preserve, protect and defend" as "preserve, maintain and defend". Helen Terwilliger, a 13-year-old eighth-grade student in

Walden, New York Walden is the largest of three villages of the town of Montgomery in Orange County, New York, United States. The population was 6,818 at the 2020 census. It has the ZIP Code 12586 and the 778 telephone exchange within the 845 area code. Walden ...

, caught the error and wrote to the Chief Justice to tell him. Taft conceded that he had made an error, attributing it to "the defect of an old man's memory", but asserted that he had made a different error, misquoting the words as "preserve, maintain and protect". Terwilliger did not back down from her claim; Fox Film,

Pathé News Pathé News was a producer of newsreels and documentaries from 1910 to 1970 in the United Kingdom. Its founder, Charles Pathé, was a pioneer of moving pictures in the silent era. The Pathé News archive is known today as British Pathé. Its col ...

and

Paramount News Paramount News is the name on the newsreels produced by Paramount Pictures from 1927 to 1957. History The Paramount newsreel operation began in 1927 with Emanuel Cohen as an editor. It typically distributed two issues per week to theaters across ...

, the companies that had prepared newsreels of the inauguration, examined their recordings and jointly confirmed Terwilliger's account.

References

External links

Video of Hoover's Inauguration (Reel 1) (via YouTube)Text of Hoover's Inaugural Address
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hoover, Herbert United States presidential inaugurations 1929 in Washington, D.C. 1929 in American politics Inauguration March 1929 events in the United States

See also

References

External links