Beginning at 9:00 a.m. on April 30, 1789, church bells in New York City rang out for half an hour as part of the grand drama in which newly elected George Washington was about to become the nation’s first President. At about 2:00 p.m. while standing on the second-floor balcony of Federal Hall overlooking the crowds assembled on Wall and Broad Streets, Washington placed his hand on the Bible and took the oath. It was administered by New York Chancellor Robert Livingston, who had served on the Committee of Five that had drafted the Declaration of Independence. Washington then kissed the Bible, whereupon Livingston shouted, “Long live George Washington, President of the United States!” Washington bowed to the crowds and retired to the Senate chamber to deliver the inaugural address.
His presidential inauguration was but part of the great inauguration of religious liberty he accomplished for the country he loved. It began on June 19, 1775, with his courageous acceptance of the appointment to serve as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army. He was a prominent gentleman planter with everything to lose, but did not hesitate to lead the ill-equipped, rag-tag American forces in their seemingly reckless struggle against the might of the British Empire. “To take on the world’s great power in open war,” wrote historian Edmund Morgan, “must have looked like a foolhardy enterprise.”
What drove Washington to accept the appointment and persist during the next eight grueling years of sacrifice and privation? “The establishment of Civil & Religious Liberty was the Motive which induced me to the Field,” he would write shortly after the War, during which he had repeatedly witnessed the guiding hand of Providence. In his final address to the army on November 2, 1783, he reminded them of the miraculous assistance they had experienced.
[B]efore the Commander in Chief takes his final leave of those he holds most dear, he wishes to indulge himself a few moments in calling to mind a slight review of the past…. A contemplation of the compleat attainment (at a period earlier than could have been expected) of the object for which we contended, against so formidable a power, cannot but inspire us with astonishment and gratitude—The disadvantageous circumstances on our part, under which the War was undertaken, can never be forgotten—The singular interpositions of Providence in our feeble condition were such, as could scarcely escape the attention of the most unobserving, while the unparalleled perseverence of the Armies of the United States, through almost every possible suffering and discouragement, for the space of eight long years, was little short of a standing Miracle.
As adulation was heaped on the victorious general by grateful citizens, he deflected praise. “The illustrious and happy event, on which you are pleased to congratulate and welcome me to this City,” he wrote to a religious congregation in New York, “demands all our gratitude.”
Disposed, at every suitable opportunity, to acknowledge publicly our infinite obligations to the Supreme Ruler of the Universe, for rescuing our Country from the brink of destruction; I cannot fail at this time to ascribe all the honor of our late successes to the same glorious Being.
Having secured by the grace of God the liberty to worship Him, Washington finally turned for home. As described by historian Stephen Howard Browne,
Mount Vernon, the “vine and fig tree” of his imagination, had never ceased to call him home and had sustained him in the darkest hours and furthest reaches of battle for the better part of his adult life. At the end of the War of Independence, the general regained on Christmas Eve the ground lost to him for eight years, and there he aimed to stay. “I am retiring within myself,” he wrote the Marquis de Lafayette, “and shall be able to view the solitary walk, and tread the paths of private life with heartfelt satisfaction. Envious of none, I am determined to be pleased with all; and this my dear friend, being the order for my march, I will move gently down the stream of life, until I sleep with my Fathers.”
His much-longed-for retirement turned out to be short-lived when he agreed to preside at the 1787 convention that would produce the Constitution. Expressly designed to “secure the blessings of liberty,” it was immediately amended to clarify that the first of those blessings is the “free exercise” of religion. The Constitution would, according to Jefferson, render Americans “the happiest and the securest [people] on whom the sun has ever shown.”
But Washington’s inauguration of religious liberty was not over. Countering his reluctance to leave his beloved Mount Vernon, colleagues finally persuaded him to stand for election as the nation’s first president. He was elected unanimously, and used his inaugural address to speak again of America’s great Benefactor.
[It] would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect…. No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency…. [T]here is no truth more thoroughly established than that there exists in the economy and course of nature an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness… [T]he propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained.
Eight years later in his farewell address, published September 19, 1796, Washington capped his inauguration of religious liberty with a resounding appeal to his countrymen to guard the sacred legacy entrusted to them: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” He surely would have endorsed the insight offered two centuries later by First Lady Barbara Bush: “Our success as a society depends not on what happens inside the White House, but on what happens inside your house.”