Wilson delivers second inaugural address, March 5, 1917

On this day in 1917 — almost exactly a month before Congress voted to declare war on Germany to, in the words of President Woodrow Wilson, “make the world safe for democracy” — Wilson delivered an inaugural address that ushered in his second term.

Despite a legislative record that saw the creation of the Federal Reserve System and a graduated income tax, Wilson had been only narrowly reelected. By the time he repeated the oath of office on the East Portico of the U.S. Capitol, the campaign slogan that he had employed to retain power — “he kept us out of war” — would soon no longer apply.


An informal swearing-in ceremony had been held on March 4, a Sunday, in the President’s Room near the Senate chamber. On this day, it was repeated with Chief Justice Edward White once again presiding. For the ceremony, the nation’s 28th president wore a morning coat, striped trousers and a silk top hat.

“There are many things still to be done at home,” Wilson allowed in his 1,526-word speech, “to clarify our own politics and add new vitality to the industrial processes of our own life, and we shall do them as time and opportunity serve.

“But we realize that the greatest things that remain to be done must be done with the whole world for stage and in cooperation with the wide and universal forces of mankind, and we are making our spirits ready for those things.

“We are provincials no longer. The tragic events of the 30 months of vital turmoil through which we have just passed have made us citizens of the world. There can be no turning back. Our own fortunes as a nation are involved whether we would have it so or not.

“And yet we are not the less Americans on that account. We shall be the more American if we but remain true to the principles in which we have been bred. They are not the principles of a province or of a single continent. We have known and boasted all along that they were the principles of a liberated mankind.”

SOURCE: WWW.INAUGURAL.SENATE.GOV/SWEARING-IN/ADDRESS/ADDRESS-BY-WOODROW-WILSON-1917

