Today in History: March 4, Abraham Lincoln’s final inauguration
Today is Tuesday, March 4, the 63rd day of 2025. There are 302 days left in the year.
Today in history:
On March 4, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated for a second term of office. With the end of the Civil War in sight, and just six weeks before his assassination, Lincoln declared:
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the fight as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan — to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
Also on this date:
In 1789, the Constitution of the United States went into effect as the first Federal Congress met in New York.
In 1801, Thomas Jefferson became the first president to be inaugurated in Washington, D.C.
In 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated for his first term as president; he was the last U.S. president to be inaugurated on this date. In his inaugural speech, Roosevelt stated, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
In 1966, John Lennon of The Beatles was quoted in the London Evening Standard as saying, “We’re more popular than Jesus now,” a comment that caused an angry backlash in the United States.
In 1987, President Ronald Reagan addressed the nation on the Iran-Contra affair, acknowledging that his overtures to Iran had “deteriorated” into an arms-for-hostages deal.
In 1998, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that workplace sexual harassment laws are applicable when the offender and victim are of the same sex.
In 2015, the Justice Department cleared Darren Wilson, a white former Ferguson, Missouri, police officer, in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, a Black 18-year-old, but also issued a scathing report calling for sweeping changes in city law enforcement practices, which it called discriminatory and unconstitutional.
In 2017, President Donald Trump wrote a series of Twitter posts accusing former President Barack Obama of tapping his telephones during the 2016 election; an Obama spokesman declared that the assertion was “simply false.”
Today’s birthdays: Film director Adrian Lyne is 84. Author James Ellroy is 77. Musician-producer Emilio Estefan is 72. Actor Catherine O’Hara is 71. Actor Mykelti (MY’-kul-tee) Williamson is 68. Actor Patricia Heaton is 67. Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., is 67. Actor Steven Weber is 64. Rock musician Jason Newsted is 62. Author Khaled Hosseini is 60. Author Dav Pilkey is 59. Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., is 57. NBA forward Draymond Green is 35.