On this day in New York · September 20, 1881
A President Sworn In at Two in the Morning on Lexington Avenue
Hours after an assassin's bullet finally killed James Garfield, his vice president took the oath of office in his own front parlor because the country could not wait for daylight.
The facts
- Time and place
- 2:15 a.m., September 20, 1881, in the front parlor of Arthur's home at 123 Lexington Avenue, Manhattan
- Officiant
- Justice John R. Brady of the New York Supreme Court
- Second oath
- Arthur repeated the oath on September 22, 1881, before Chief Justice Morrison Waite in the Capitol's Vice President's Room
James Garfield died just before eleven at night on September 19, 1881, eleven weeks after being shot at a Washington train station. Vice President Chester A. Arthur got the news at his brownstone at 123 Lexington Avenue in Manhattan and, by his own account, hoped it was a mistake. It was not. Just after two in the morning on September 20, New York Supreme Court Justice John R. Brady arrived at the house and administered the presidential oath in the front parlor, reading from a scrap of paper on which the oath had been copied out by hand, since nobody on hand had a printed copy. Two days later Arthur repeated the oath in Washington before Chief Justice Morrison Waite, this time in front of former Presidents Hayes and Grant and a room full of witnesses, closing off any doubt about whether a state judge could properly swear in a federal president.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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I hope, my God, I do hope it is a mistake
Chester A. Arthur, on being told Garfield had died, the night of September 19, 1881
Source: Wikipedia -
reading off of a scrap of paper on which the oath was handwritten
Wikipedia's account of the September 20 ceremony at Arthur's home
Source: Wikipedia
Why it still matters
It is the strangest peaceful transfer of power New York ever hosted: a president sworn in on Lexington Avenue in the middle of the night because Washington was three hours away and the country could not go a minute without a chief executive. Two oaths in three days shows how seriously the office's continuity was taken, even when nobody in the room had a copy of the oath on hand.
Sources
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