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While this may be true, my irrelevant take on the matter is this: just as skiguy said it might be simply that no one at the time saw it as noteworthy. You correctly state that lack of evidence against isn't proof of nor is lack of evidence for disproof. History is often the best guess based on what we have… changes when (if) new info. sufaces. Hope this answers your question.
Of course, no can disprove XYZ was said because it may not have been recorded, much like we cannot prove that there are no Leprechauns because they may be very good at hiding and leaving no evidence. But an inability to prove that XYZ was not said cannot reasonably justify the Senate Historical Office or the JCCIC asserting that XYZ was said anymore than we can justify asserting that Leprechauns are historical facts. This is so obvious that I didn't think there was a need to respond to skiguy.
I guess that in your zeal to make history 100% correct you assumed I was making an insinuation about what Adams said; not so. While Adams was there and far closer than Irving I meant that [it was] the author that indicated shmG was said.
Then your assertion that Adams was there and far closer than Irving is both true and entirely irrelevant. Why you inserted that irrelevancy is still an unanswered question.I have made some sweeping statements about the evidence which, if not true, could be proven to be incorrect simply by showing evidence otherwise. Did any contemporary of GW claim that GW, or for that matter any other president, appended shmG to their oath of office? Did any 18th or early 19th century newspaper, letter, manuscript, government document, etc. claim that GW, or for that matter any other 18th or early 19th century president, appended shmG to their oath of office? I say no, none did. Of course, I could be wrong, but what is so odd is that, given that so many 20th century people, including historians, are asserting and have asserted that 18th and early 19th century presidents starting with GW appended that phrase, why is it that it appears that no one has any supporting evidence from the 18th century or the first half of the 19th century?I don't really care if McCullough got some details wrong, but since you cited him as support for the claim that GW (and maybe the other presidents?) appended that phrase it seems to me that I responded appropriately by pointing out that he got some of his facts about the inauguration wrong and that he fails to support this claim about GW. This isn't about McCullough per se, its about Congress, the Senate, the Senate Historical Office, and the JCCIC web site making this GW and every other president appended that phrase assertion. They are supposed to be authorities on Inaugural history, and are no doubt regarded as such by many U.S. citizens, yet they are failing miserably regarding this detail with their "so help me God" video. If my determination to expose this makes me sound zealous to you or other people then so be it. We have repeatedly tried to get the Senate Historical Office and also the Senate Rules Committee to respond to our concerns since they first put out the video over a year ago and they directly both refuse to provide supporting evidence and refuse to acknowledge that they have any obligation to not misrepresent legend as historical fact.
I said “As far as we have been able to determine, there was no newspaper named “New York Gazette” that published in 1789.” and we got this reply:
Simple research would show you otherwise.[/QUOTE]So tell us, please, who has a copy, we want to know. Who published a "New York Gazette" on May 1 1789? If we can get a copy of it then we will find out what it said.
Are you going to try to revise history, I mean remove this reference to God as well?[/QUOTE]You are the historical revisionist here, you are falsely accusing me of claiming that no president has referenced God in their inaugural speech. I don't take very kindly to being falsely accused of saying things that I have never said, in fact I resent it as you would resent it if someone did that to you, so cut the crap. The inauguration speech you cite doesn't claim that any president appended "so help me God" to their oath of office recitation so its irrelevent. Can't someone question a government historical fact claim about shmG without the questioner being accused of tryng to revise history and exhibiting inappropriate certainty? This isn't about inauguration speeches or about me, its about a Congressional web site's inappropriate certainty and apparent effort to revise history with their wild claim that every president appended "so help me God" to their oath of office. Since we are all opposed to inappropriate certainty andor attempts to promote false historical revisionism then we are all troubled by this shmG assertion on the JCCIC website, right?
In other words, they intentionally left out many phrases that Washington made in his speech.
I think it's possible to say "so help me God" was so common, it was not necessary to write it down. The speech itself is what was important, therefore recorded.
If it was "so common" then why do no newspapers or magazines or books or letters or diaries, etc. quote "so help me God" during a presidential oath recitation until 1854? Almost everyone here seems to be missing the point. The point is that the U.S. Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies is claiming as a "historical fact" that George Washington and all other presidents appended that phrase to their oath even though there is nothing even approaching sufficient evidence to support such a claim.
Having just finished McCullough's bio of John Adams, I found that he too indicates SHMG was part of the Oath (taken by GW). Two points here... Adams was far closer and more dependable than the six year old Irving and I doubt McCullough puts anything in any of his works because it is conventional wisdom (w/o checking).Wally
You are being irresponsible here, Wally, by insinuating falsely that Adams claimed that GW appended that phrase. John Adams did not claim that GW said those words, it is McCullough and only McCullough who is atttributing those words to GW. No contemporary of GW, none, attributes shmG to GW, and McCullough never says otherwise, so I don't understand on what basis you attribute this claim to Adams.Page 403 of David McCullough's Pulitzer winning "John Adams" describes the Inauguration scene.'In a low voice Washington solemnly swore to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." Then, as not specified in the Constitution, he added, "So help me God," and kissed the Bible, thereby establishing his own first presidential tradition.'The footnotes for that page make reference to:1. "Many persons in the crowd"....."Gazette of the United States,"April 25, 17892. "Long live George Washington"....."New York Gazette," May 1, 1789Gazette of the United States April 25, 1789 was five days before the event. That paper mentions/describes the Inauguration twice, in the April 29 - May 2, 1789 & May 9 - May 13, 1789 issues. No mention of SHMG in either of the descriptions.As far as we have been able to determine, there was no newspaper named "New York Gazette" that published in 1789. In any case, no 1789 newspaper article is known to have reported that GW appended shmG.David MCCullough also wrote in his John Adams biography:'On the day of his inauguration, Thursday, April 30 1789, Washington rode to Federal Hall in a canary-yellow carriage pulled by six white horses [actually four, Irving said "two"] and followed by a long column of New York militia in full dress. The air was sharp, the sun shone brightly, and with all work stopped in the city, the crowds along his route were the largest ever seen. It was as if all New York had turned out and more besides. "Many persons in the crowd," reported the Gazette of the United States "were heard to say they should now die contented ? nothing being wanted to complete their happiness ? but the sight of the savior of his country."'Not only does David McCullough get the number of horses wrong, and cite a newspaper apparantly under an incorrect name in his footnotes, he also describes the inaugural ceremony crowd using a quote from the April 25th issue Gazette of the United States article that described a different crowd at Washington's first arrival in NYC. With sleight of hand like that, maybe you too can write a best selling biography that becomes a popular TV movie and wins a Pulitzer prize.
"Contrary to what you say, that unquestionably and absolutely really is evidence that he didn't append any such phrase to the oath. Even the other letters that don't quote the oath but still detail what happened are evidence that no phrases were appended, but they are weaker evidence."I'm a bit confused about your references to someone saying "I swear".As for the other points, I cannot see how the failure to mention that someone said a particular phrase is evidence that the person did not say it when another source does say that the phrase was said. I don't see how a positive can be necessarily concluded by a few negatives.[/QUOTE]Its simple. When an eyewitness quotes the oath recitation as he heard it and the quotation doesn't include words X Y and Z then that is evidence that words X Y and Z were not spoken. More generally, if multiple eyewitenesses describe what was said and done during the oath ceremony, and none of them mention that he added the words X Y and Z to the constitutional oath, then that is evidence that he didn't add the words X Y and Z to the constitutional oath. No one can help you see that if you willfully refuse to see it.
When I said that Washington Irving's information provided "direct evidence" (though hearsay as you point out) I mean it because it is a direct reference to George Washington saying the phrase at hand. In other words we do not have to make any inferences to arrive at the conclusion. The evidence - whether trustworthy or not - is directly given to us in the form of the written word.[/QUOTE]You appear to be confusing direct assertions with direct evidence and they are very different concepts. Ahmadinejad directly states that the attempted Nazi genocide against Jews is "a myth" but just because he directly make this assertion that doesn't elevate his assertion into "direct evidence" that the attempted Nazi genocide really is a myth. Do you understand the difference between direct "evidence" and a direct "assertion"? Washington Irving's direct assertion is hearsay, and thus not direct evidence, because no eyewitness or document is identified as the source for his assertion.
Now it is entirely possible that other letters/accounts were written and have long since been lost to history but nevertheless provided Irving with a source for his information. This is of course conjecture but well within the realm of possibility, and something to explore further. I would be puzzled as to how the phrase "So help me God" would be invented by Irving in the mid-19th century, though I admit I do not know much about the man at all. Is there a particular reason why you think that Irving may have stated what he did about Washington's inauguration?In the end your conclusion about the phrase may be correct but I differ on the certainty of it.
Its easy to invent a phrase like that. People imagine things, people recall things that didn't actually happen, authors have incentive to tell potential readers what those readers will want to hear to make their book more popular and sell more copies. I don't know what you are talking about when you say "I differ on the certainity it". I am certain that the Senate Historical Office is wrong when they say "every" president appended that phrase to the Oath because we don't any evidence that every president appended that phrase. I am also certain that the Senate is wrong to assert as a historical fact that GW appended that phrase because, again, we don't have enough evidence to justify such an assertion. I have no problem with people conjecturing that GW may have appended that phrase, as long as they identify their speculation as conjecture.
I don't mean to nitpick here but I question what you mean by "We have multiple primary source documents, one contradicts the claim that GW appended that phrase, and none of the others support the claim that GW appended that phrase."From what I pointed out before, the letter from the Comte de Moustier is really not evidence that Washington did not say the phrase since it was a summarization of the inaugural address and it did not attempt to recite every word spoken by Washington. Second, I just looked at the original Tobias Lear letter regarding the inauguration and see that it too was a summarization - one which seems to be even broader and more informal than the Comte de Moustier's letter. Neither says that Washington used the phrase "So help me God", and neither says that he didn't say it (to my recollection of the letters). I don't think this is a contradiction that Washington said it, but it merely is a lack of evidence that he said it.[/QUOTE]That letter indicates he didn't say "I swear" or any of millions of other possible phrases. That letter therefore contradicts assertions that he said "I swear" or any of millions of other possible phrases. Contrary to what you say, that unquestionably and absolutely really is evidence that he didn't append any such phrase to the oath. Even the other letters that don't quote the oath but still detail what happened are evidence that no phrases were appended, but they are weaker evidence.
On the other hand we have, as already discussed, Washington Irving's claim in the mid-19th century that Washington used the phrase. This is direct evidence that Washington said it (I use "direct" in the sense that it was not circumstantial evidence even though it is not necessarily conclusive).[/QUOTE]Since Irving never claimed to have heard the oath recitation and reported this after the eyewitness who stood on the balcony with GW were long dead it isn't direct evidence at all, its hearsay. If Washington Irving had said he heard the oath recitation and reported it shortly after the event then we would have direct evidence, albeit even then it would be considered unreliable because Washington Irving was 6 years old and there were many other witnesses standing between George Washington and Washington Irving who all failed to report this. Indeed, we don't even know for sure that Irving Washington was present during the oath ceremony because the only source for this claim appears to be Rufus Griswold. Neither Washington Irving himself nor his nephew wrote that Washington Irving was present in the crowd during the Oath ceremony.
I am not saying this all means that Washington did in fact utter the phrase, but that we can't only use the negative evidence of the letters of the Comte de Moustier and Tobias Lear to conclude that it was not said. These letters provide support to your argument but are not conclusive in themselves.[/QUOTE]Of course it isn't conclusive, just like it isn't conclusive that he didn't say "I swear". But the Senate Historical Office doesn't claim that George Washington said "I swear" despite Rufus Griswold and Caroline Matilda Kirkland both claiming in their books that George Washington said "I swear". Again, that is hearsay.
The evidence of Irving should also be examined for reliability. I am still uncertain about his sources for his information and I have yet to hear someone say that his sole source was from his eyewitness account as a boy.
Irving doesn't identify his source for this particular detail. His book has no footnotes or citations. His biography was based on the previously published biography of George Washington by Mr. Sparks, from George Washington's manuscripts in the Department of State, and for the inauguration ceremony he apparantly copied (without acknowledgement or permission) from Memoir of the life of Eliza S. M. Quincy, ed. E S Quincy, Boston [Printed by J. Wilson] 1861.
It seems to me that this is a non-issue being turned into an issue. Negative evidence is not evidence. NAProject has admitted that there are no contemporary sources that claim whether it was said or not. I still fail to comprehend the nature of his objection. As Phid has pointed out there are a couple of sources other than Irving that indicate the phrase was used, and NAP's source fails to clear the issue up. I would argue that the historical record thus far is ambiguous enough that the non-use of the phrase has been seriously cast into doubt and the Senate Historical Office should be considered correct. It would appear that Washington did indeed use the phrase "so help me God" or some similar usage, at least from the extant sources.
First of all, the Senate Historical Office has turned this into an issue by asserting that every president has appended the phrase "so help me God" to their oath of office in their video that is on the Joint Congressional Committee for Inaugural Ceremonies web site. That is an astonishing claim for which there is no evidence and significant contrary evidence, in fact the audio of Hoover's inaguration proves that he did not append that phrase. Secondly, you are also reversing the role of evidence here, it is the Senate Historical Office that has the obligation to limit their historical fact claims to what is supported by primary source document evidence. We have multiple primary source documents, one contradicts the claim that GW appended that phrase, and none of the others support the claim that GW appended that phrase. Since we don't have adequate evidence, or as you put the evidence is ambiguous, our ethical obligation is to not assert a historical fact. We can conjecture, as you are doing, but then we should call it a conjecture, which is not what the Senate is doing in the video or on their web site.
Nor do I; nor object to them not appending same.[/QUOTE]The oath taker can say anything before the recitation of the law specified oath begins and after the legal oath recitation is completed. However, I do object to any oath giver adding phrases (in some cases small substitutions or omissions on the prior written request of the oath taker are justified) to any legal oath. For most of the 20th century presidential inaugurations the Chief Justices appended that phrase which is an extralegal modification to the constitutional oath.
I wonder what agenda NAProject has? Is he truly interested in setting the historical record straight or does he object to any president using the phrase "so help me God" and is trying to prove that it is a tradition that started after Washington so that the claim that the phrase is not original and should be banned can be pushed.[/QUOTE]It began sometime after the Civil War began, not after George Washington. I don't object to any oath taker saying those words after the oath is completed.
Not sure... that was the gist of the first post, as I made it, that of a recollection of irving. I might be all wet though.... 😉
Rufus Griswold said that Washington Irving claimed to witness the inauguration ceremony from the corner of New Street and Wall Street. Oddly, neither Washington Irving himself nor his nephew, who wrote a biography of Washington Irving, wrote that Washington Irving witnessed the inauguration ceremony.
Having just finished McCullough's bio of John Adams, I found that he too indicates SHMG was part of the Oath (taken by GW). Two points here... Adams was far closer and more dependable than the six year old Irving and I doubt McCullough puts anything in any of his works because it is conventional wisdom (w/o checking).Wally
I say McCullough probably did put that in his book because it is conventional wisdom, not because he verified that it is true. All anyone needs to do to convince me otherwise is provide a citation for a primary source document for George Washington or John Adams inaugurals or for any other pre-Civil War president's inaugural that claims shmG was appended to the oath.
You are right – that is a good question, and as an outsider I really don't know the answer to why the SHO makes the claim in the video. If I focus on George Washington and Washington Irving it is because I find historical research and attempts at reconciling conflicting information interesting.
Conflicting information doesn't reconcile. The point here is that if we have information from multiple independent eyewitness accounts that is consistent then we can assert a historical fact. If we don't have such information then we don't have a historical fact and shouldn't claim otherwise as the JCCIC web site is incorrectly doing here. In this case, Washington Irving doesn't even qualify as an eyewitness to hearing the oath because he was physically too far away in a large crowd to hear it. Furthermore, a six year old witness is a dubious source particularly when he is first writing about the event over 60 years later. I think that is common sense. Does that answer your question?
NAProject, you make a good case for what you are stating. When it comes to battling historical sources, I'm not sure how it is settled. Is Irving held as a more trustworthy source than the Comte de Moustier? Or is it the other way around? Normally eye witness accounts would be considered to be more trustworthy. The question I have, then, is why Irving included it. I don't think that we can necessarily say that Irving had an “agenda” in saying what he did. Why, then, did he do it?[/QUOTE]We don't know why Mr. Irving included that, just like we don't know why Mr. Irving wrote that the President's coach "was drawn by a single pair of horses" while the "New York Packet" of May 1, 1789, the day after the ceremony, said that "the President joined the procession in his carriage and four" or why Irving claimed that Columbus had difficulty obtaining support for his plan because Europeans believed that the earth was flat in his biography of Christopher Columbus. The better question is why so many historians all jumped on this bandwagon of claiming that George Washington appended so help me God on the basis of nothing more than an assertion in a book published in 1854 that cites Washington Irving as saying so. It is noteworthy that a few George Washington biographers continued the half century, pre-Washington Irving, tradition of not claiming that GW appended those words apparantly because they were committed to being carefull about following the evidence instead of just following the crowd. For example, Abridgment of the Debates of Congress from 1789 to 1856, Volume I, by Thomas Hart Benton, and Joseph Gales and William Winston Seaton and John C Rives, D. Appleton, New York, 1857 and Reminiscences of an Old New Yorker, by William A. Duer, 1867, W.L. Andrews, New York, pp. 68-70 and Washington and His Masonic Compeers, by Sidney Hayden, 1867, New York, Masonic publishing and manufacturing co., pages 124-5.
I think that arguing with the Senate Historical Office might be an uphill battle, if only because of the bureaucratic nature of government. Think about people who might tell the SHO that the Sixteenth Amendment was never fully ratified, or something to that effect. The SHO might just dismiss them because it doesn't want to get into a battle over certain key events/decisions in history. For the case of the inaugural quote, I wonder if this is something that needs to be disclosed by historians in published books or journal articles before the SHO would be more open to modifying its position on the matter. Just a thought.
The SHO are aware of this problem and have been for a long time. I believe that they could edit the video and remove the statement that "everyone has since said 'so help me God' at the end of the oath." relatively easily. The video with that assertion was placed on the JCCIC web site about six months after Raymond Soller corresponded with Donald A. Ritchie, Associate Historian, Senate Historical Office, several times on August 28, 2006 about the lack of evidence that George Washington appended that phrase. You keep focusing on George Washington and Washington Irving, but what about that assertion in the video? How about asking this question: Why does the SHO still have that nonsense in their historical video that they are clearly presenting as factual?
Not (I'm sure) our gov't has pulled something from their collective behind and likely not the last. Glad you've cleared this one up for us; I can now debunk another history myth for my students.
Many citizens, probably the large majority, consider the Congress to be an authoritative source of information on presidential inaugural history. I do not and will not accept this with equanimity, I am determined to expose it. Generally speaking, the JCCIC web site and the Senate Historical Office are in fact accurate, this is a major and unusually blatant exception. I think this illustrates a tendency for politics and religion to corrupt each other when they mix.Good for your students.
