The United States Capitol. Six weeks before Lincoln was shot, he stood right here — on the East Portico — and took the oath of office for the second time.
March fourth, eighteen sixty-five. It had been raining all day. The streets were rivers of mud. Fifty thousand people stood in the muck waiting. And then — right as Lincoln stepped to the podium — the clouds broke and the sun came through. The planet Venus appeared in the afternoon sky, visible in broad daylight. A journalist for the New York Tribune called it the most extraordinary omen he had ever witnessed.
Lincoln delivered seven hundred words. One of the shortest inaugurals in history. With malice toward none, with charity for all. The crowd didn't know it, but they were hearing the most famous second inaugural address ever written — from a man with six weeks to live.
The part nobody talks about: the new Vice President, Andrew Johnson, showed up DRUNK. He'd been recovering from typhoid fever and downed three glasses of what h
e called medicinal whiskey before the ceremony. He then rambled for twenty minutes about Tennessee while Lincoln waited. Senator Zachariah Chandler wrote his wife that night. The Vice President Elect was too drunk to perform his duties — and disgraced himself and the Senate by making a drunken foolish speech.
Lincoln's response to an aide was three words. Do not let Johnson speak outside.
But th
