An updated edition of the second volume of Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States. Volume Two contains the speeches of Grover Cleveland (1885) through George W. Bush (2001).

The essays in Halford Ryan's The Inaugrual Addresses of Twentieth-Century American Presidents explore how presidents have used their addresses to empower themselves in office. The volume's construct holds that the president delivers persuasive speeches to move the Congress and the people, and to move the people to move the Congress if it is intransigent. Even on Inauguration Day, a largely ceremonial occasion, the president seeks acquiescence and action from Congress and the people in his first rhetorical deed as the nation's chief executive officer. Since scholars agree that the rhetorical presidency arose in the twentieth century with Theodore Roosevelt, the book commences with Roosevelt's address, followed by all subsequent presidents' inaugurals--including that of Bill Clinton. The authors' methodology applies classical rhetoric to the nexus of political discourse--the interrelationships between the speaker, the speech, and the audience--discussing vox populi, elocutio, inventio, and actio. Each of the chapters analyzes the political situation with regard to political purpose, giving special attention to genre criticism and to the themes of campaign rhetoric that were or were not carried forth into the inaugural address. The essayists explicate the evolution of each inaugural's preparation, criticize its delivery, and evaluate its persuasive strengths and weaknesses by accounting for its reception by the media and by the American people. Recommended for scholars of political communication and rhetoric, political science, history, and presidential studies.

Features compelling, powerful, and often inspiring remarks from such presidents as Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Reagan, and 6 other commanders-in-chief.

This collection of the inaugural addresses of the Presidents of the United States was published in commemoration of the Bicentennial Presidential Inauguration that was observed on January 20, 1989. These addresses, in which the Presidents articulate their hopes and dreams for the nation, chronicle the course the United States from its earliest days to the present. Each address is preceded by a brief note with information on the date, location, the party affiliation, details of the election, other circumstances, such as death or resignation of the predecessor, and the administration of the oath of office. S/N 052-071-00879-9: $16.00 (For use only in the library).

Shines a light on the constitutional issues that confronted and shaped each presidency from George Washington to the Progressive Era Drawing from the monumental The Presidents and the Constitution: A Living History, published in 2016, the nation’s foremost experts in the American presidency and the US Constitution join together to tell the intertwined stories of how the first twenty-seven distinctive American presidents have confronted and shaped the Constitution and thus defined the most powerful office in human history. From George Washington to William Howard Taft, The Presidents and the Constitution, Volume 1 illuminates the evolving American presidency in a unique way—through the lens of the Constitution itself. Arranged chronologically by president, the book examines the constitutional issues confronting each president in the context of the personalities driving historical events.The contributors illustrate the extensive powers of the American presidency in domestic and foreign affairs, showing how they have been used by the men who were granted them, and brings to light the overarching constitutional themes that span this country’s history and tie each presidency to the other branches of government.

Henry Watterson, editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal during the tumultuous decades between the Civil War and World War I, was one of the most influential and widely read journalists in American history. At the height of his fame in the early twentieth century, Watterson was so well known that his name and image were used to sell cigars and whiskey. A major player in American politics for more than fifty years, Watterson personally knew nearly every president from Andrew Jackson to Woodrow Wilson. Though he always refused to run, the renowned editor was frequently touted as a candidate for the U.S. Senate, the Kentucky governor's office, and even the White House. Shortly after his arrival in Louisville in 1868, Watterson merged competing interests and formed the Courier-Journal, quickly establishing it as the paper of record in Kentucky, a central promoter of economic development in the New South, and a prominent voice on the national political stage. An avowed Democrat in an era when newspapers were openly aligned with political parties, Watterson adopted a defiant independence within the Democratic Party and challenged the Democrats' consensus opinions as much as he reinforced them. In the first new study of Watterson's historical significance in more than fifty years, Daniel S. Margolies traces the development of Watterson's political and economic positions and his transformation from a strident Confederate newspaper editor into an admirer of Lincoln, a powerful voice of sectional reconciliation, and the nation's premier advocate of free trade. Henry Watterson and the New South provides the first study of Watterson's unique attempt to guide regional and national discussions of foreign affairs. Margolies details Watterson's quest to solve the sovereignty problems of the 1870s and to quell the economic and social upheavals of the 1890s through an expansive empire of free trade. Watterson's political and editorial contemporaries variously advocated free silverism, protectionism, and isolationism, but he rejected their narrow focus and maintained that the best way to improve the South's fortunes was to expand its economic activities to a truly global scale. Watterson's New Departure in foreign affairs was an often contradictory program of decentralized home rule and overseas imperialism, but he remained steadfast in his vision of a prosperous and independent South within an American economic empire of unfettered free trade. Watterson thus helped to bring about the eventual bipartisan embrace of globalization that came to define America's relationship with the rest of the world in the twentieth century. Margolies's groundbreaking analysis shows how Watterson's authoritative command of the nation's most divisive issues, his rhetorical zeal, and his willingness to stand against the tide of conventional wisdom made him a national icon.

“Among the vicissitudes incident to life, no event could have filled me with greater anxieties than that of which the notification was transmitted by your order, and received on the fourteenth day of the present month.” With these words to the assembled members of the Senate and House of Representatives on April 30, 1789, George Washington inaugurated the American experiment. It was a momentous occasion and an immensely important moment for the nation. Never before had a people dared to invent a system of government quite like the one that Washington was preparing to lead, and the tensions between hope and skepticism ran high. In this book, distinguished scholar of early America Stephen Howard Browne chronicles the efforts of the first president of the United States of America to unite the nation through ceremony, celebrations, and oratory. The story follows Washington on his journey from Mount Vernon to the site of the inauguration in Manhattan, recounting the festivities—speeches, parades, dances, music, food, and flag-waving—that greeted the president-elect along the way. Considering the persuasive power of this procession, Browne captures in detail the pageantry, anxiety, and spirit of the nation to arrive at a more nuanced and richly textured perspective on what it took to launch the modern republican state. Compellingly written and artfully argued, The First Inauguration tells the story of the early republic—and of a president who, by his words and comportment, provides a model of leadership and democratic governance for today.