On today’s date, Washington became the first president to swear to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution."

The oath an American president recites upon taking office includes the famous promise to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Interestingly, one of the first decisions a new president makes is which version of the presidential oath to take.

That’s because the paragraph in the Constitution that includes the presidential oath gives the president a simple, but potentially significant, choice of words.

That paragraph, in Article II, Section 1, says:

Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation: — “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

The option to either “swear” or “affirm” partly reflects the fact that some Founding Fathers were devout Christians and some weren’t. Thus, if the religious term “swear” didn’t fit a president's philosophy, he could say “affirm.”

On April 30, 1789, at his inauguration ceremony in New York City, George Washington became the first person to take the presidential oath.

Washington was a Christian. He chose to use the word “swear,” as every president except one has since then.

The exception was Franklin Pierce, who decided to say “affirm.”

Most presidents have also taken their oath while placing their hand on a Bible. However, nothing in the U.S. Constitution requires that.

It’s a tradition started by George Washington, who recited the oath with his hand on a Masonic Bible at his inauguration.

Although Masonic Bibles have since gone out of style, most presidents have sworn their oath with their hand on a Bible. I suspect this is partly to honor tradition and partly to avoid any controversy.

However, there have been some notable non-traditionalists.

John Quincy Adams took the oath with his hand on a book of law.

Theodore Roosevelt decided not to use a Bible or any other book when he recited the oath at his inauguration.

There has long been a debate about whether George Washington also started the tradition of saying “So help me God” after reciting the presidential oath.

Prof. Peter R. Henriques, author of the book Realistic Visionary: A Portrait of George Washington, wrote an interesting article about this debate that’s posted on the History News Network.

He concluded there’s no proof Washington actually said “So help me God.” 

Apparently, the first American president to do so was Chester A. Arthur, at his inauguration in 1881.

That’s essentially the only thing Arthur ever said that might be considered a famous quotation. Unfortunately for him, Washington is the one who usually (and probably wrongly) gets credit for it.

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“Like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning.”

The British stage actor Edmund Kean was like the James Dean of his time.

He gained celebrity and fame at a young age.

His performances were fiery and highly innovative at the time, especially the new twists he gave to well-known characters in plays by Shakespeare.

For example, instead of playing Shylock in The Merchant of Venice the traditional way, as a comic villain, Kean’s Shylock seemed intelligent, intense and dignified.

Almost every biography of Kean mentions a famous quote about him by the British poet, critic and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

On April 27, 1823, Coleridge said in a conversation:

       “To see him act, is like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning.”

This comment, recorded by Coleridge’s son-in-law, was included in the book Table Talk, a collection of spoken remarks by Coleridge that was published in 1835, the year after he died.

The “flashes of lightning” line is usually the only part of the what Coleridge said about Kean that is quoted and it is generally assumed to be a complimentary remark about Kean’s electrifying acting style.

In fact, if you read the rest of what Coleridge said about Kean, you realize that he wasn’t actually giving Kean a glowing review.

“Kean is original,” Coleridge acknowledged, “but he copies from himself. His rapid descents from the hyper-tragic to the infra-colloquial, though sometimes productive of great effect, are often unreasonable. To see him act, is like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning. I do not think him thorough-bred gentleman enough to play Othello.”

It’s hard to know with certainty what Coleridge meant by the analogy “like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning.” But in context, it seems to suggest that he thought Kean’s acting was not consistently illuminating or fathomable.

By the time the quote was published in Table Talk in 1835, Kean was beyond caring about Coleridge’s opinion or anyone else’s.

He died in 1833 at age 46, apparently burnt out by a rock star lifestyle that involved mass quantities of alcohol and wild sex.

According to legend, when Kean was on his deathbed someone asked him how he felt and he responded: “Dying is easy; comedy is hard.”

He may not have actually said that. But it sure is a great exit line.

[Another famous quote by Samuel Taylor Coleridge from Table Talk is “Prose = words in their best order; — poetry = the best words in the best order.” Click this link to read the backstory on that quote.]

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Related reading and viewing…

 

“Old soldiers never die, they just fade away.”

On April 19, 1951, General Douglas MacArthur made a high-profile “farewell address” to a joint meeting of Congress.

Eight days earlier, he’d been fired as the top commander of American forces in the Korean War by President Harry S. Truman, for publicly criticizing Truman’s denial of his request to nuke Red China (in retaliation for sending troops to fight against the U.S. in Korea).

Truman later famously explained: “I fired him because he wouldn’t respect the authority of the President…I didn’t fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was.”

Today, in hindsight, most people might appreciate Truman’s decision to avoid World War III and affirm the authority of the Commander in Chief.

But in 1951, Truman’s firing of MacArthur was highly controversial and unpopular with the public. MacArthur was well-known and well-liked by most Americans and many believed strongly that the spread of Communism had to be stopped to prevent a domino effect.

Much of MacArthur’s farewell address focused on “the Communist threat.” He ominously warned that if Communism were allowed to spread in Southeast Asia it would “threaten the freedom of the Philippines and the loss of Japan and might well force our western frontier back to the coast of California, Oregon and Washington.”

But it’s the end of MacArthur’s speech that is now most remembered. It includes his famous quote: “Old soldiers never die, they just fade away.”

In the poignant closing of his address, MacArthur said:

“When I joined the Army, even before the turn of the century, it was the fulfillment of all of my boyish hopes and dreams. The world has turned over many times since I took the oath on the plain at West Point, and the hopes and dreams have long since vanished, but I still remember the refrain of one of the most popular barrack ballads of that day which proclaimed most proudly that ‘old soldiers never die, they just fade away.’ And like the old soldier of that ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Good-bye.”

As MacArthur noted, the line “old soldiers never die, they just fade away” is not something he coined. It comes from a song that was popular with British soldiers during World War I, called “Old Soldiers Never Die.”

The barracks room song was a parody of the hymn “Kind Words Never Die.” And, unlike the ending of MacArthur’s farewell address, the lyrics of this old Army song are more humorous than schmaltzy.

There are several different versions. Here are the lyrics recorded by the late, great quote and phrase maven Eric Partridge in his Dictionary of Catch Phrases :

       “Old soldiers never die, 
       Never die, never die, 
       Old soldiers never die —
       They simply fade away. 

       Old soldiers never die, 
       Never die, never die,
       Old soldiers never die —
       Young ones wish they would.”

Ironically, that and other early versions of the song poked fun at Army life and at career soldiers and officers like MacArthur.

However, after MacArthur cited the song in his farewell speech, Gene Autry rewrote the lyrics to create a more respectful version that specifically praised the general. The last verse of Autry’s revision gushes:

       “Now somewhere, there stands the man
       His duty o’er and won
       The world will ne’er forget him
       To him we say, “Well done.’”

President Truman had a different reaction to MacArthur’s farewell speech.

When asked about it in one of the interviews recorded in Merle Miller’s biography, Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman (1974), Truman said it was “nothing but a bunch of damn bullshit!”

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Related reading and viewing…

Wayne LaPierre vs. “jack-booted government thugs”

For many decades after the National Rifle Association was founded in 1871, a main focus of the group was on urging and teaching gun safety, to help reduce gun-related accidents.

In fact, the famous slogan associated with the NRA — “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” — was once used as a cautionary safety warning, rather than as defensive response in the debate over gun control.

In recent decades, the NRA’s primary public focus has been on protecting and expanding Americans’ right to own and carry guns.

Your position on the controversial issue of gun control probably determines how you view another famous (and infamous) gun-related quote that’s linked to today’s date.

In a fundraising letter to NRA members, dated April 13, 1995, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre called the federal officials who enforce U.S. gun laws “jack-booted government thugs.”

LaPierre tied the phrase to a Clinton-administration law that banned certain semi-automatic weapons. He wrote:

“…the semiauto-auto ban gives jack-booted government thugs more power to take away our constitutional rights, break in our doors, seize our guns, destroy our property, and even injure or kill us.”

The last part of that sentence conjured up images of the fatal confrontations between officials from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Randy Weaver’s family at Ruby Ridge, Idaho in 1992 and with the Branch Davidians at Waco, Texas in 1993.

LaPierre’s use of the phrase “jack-booted government thugs” was his metaphorical way of likening BATF officials to Nazis.

During World War II, German soldiers wore distinctive military “jack boots.” Since then, the name of those high leather boots has been commonly used as a reference to totalitarian governments, especially Adolph Hitler’s Nazi regime.

On April 19, 1995, just six days after the NRA’s fundraising letter was sent out, the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City was destroyed by a bomb, killing 168 people.

It was later discovered that the conspirators behind the Oklahoma City bombing, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, shared an anger over gun control laws and the federal government’s role in the Ruby Ridge and Waco tragedies.

Gun control advocates suggested that the inflammatory rhetoric in LaPierre’s letter had encouraged the bombing.

NRA officials denied that there was any link.

However, LaPierre did publicly apologize for calling federal officials “jack-booted government thugs,” saying: “If anyone thought the intention was to paint all federal law enforcement officials with the same broad brush, I’m sorry.”

Nonetheless, the group’s 1995 fundraising letter and LaPierre’s use of the phrase “jack-booted government thugs” in that letter remain notorious among critics of the NRA.

Recently, for example, liberal groups harshly criticized Fox News for using LaPierre as a commentator in a March 10, 2011 segment about the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

An opinion piece on the liberal website Media Matters opined that “LaPierre is the last person a responsible media outlet should have on its airwaves to comment on the Bureau…because LaPierre once referred to ATF agents as ‘jack-booted government thugs.’”

Of course, in the view of NRA members, guns and ill-advised words don’t kill people — ill people do.

It’s a debate that is likely to continue for many decades to come.

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Related reading about the gun control debate...