So here we are in route to the inauguration. You may not believe it but, just driving down the N.J. Turnpike the excitement is building. As we stopped at the Walt Whitman Plaza, a rest strop, I noticed people were gathered around the TV’s. My first thought was, “Oh no, another crisis!” Instead, everyone was watching the President-elect Obama arrive in Baltimore on his train ride into D.C. A number of the people present were also in route to D.C. Everyone I have met or know who is coming into D.C. has a sense that we are going to be a part of history.
On January 20th, the United States will witness an historic event. The first African-American president will take his oath of office.
As you may or may not know, President-elect Barack Obama has chosen to be sworn in on the same bible on which Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office in 1861. This is, of course, a tribute to Lincoln and a nod to his role in ending slavery in the U.S.
Significantly, 2009 is the official celebration of Abraham Lincoln’s bicentennial. Cultural organizations across the country are planning performances, exhibitions and ceremonies to mark the Feb. 12, 2009 bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth which will be celebrated on a national and state level through 2010.
Abraham Lincoln himself took the oath of office on March 1861 after arriving in town secretly in late February due to very real assassination fears.
To get myself ready for the event, I set up news alerts in Nexis for myself so I could track coverage pre and post-event.
The other man whose history is tied to the bible chosen for Obama’s inauguration is Justice Roger B. Taney. Taney presided over Lincoln’s swearing in, as is tradition for the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
Taney is probably best know in legal circles for penning the 1857 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Dred Scott v. Sanford, widely regarded as one of the catalysts for the Civil War.