Chancellor Livingston administered the oath with slow and distinct enunciation, while Washington's hand was laid upon the Bible held by Mr. Otis. When it was concluded, the president said, in a distinct voice, "I swear." He then bowed his head, kissed the sacred volume, and as he assumed an erect posture, he with closed eyes said, with solemn supplicating tone, "So help me God!"
"It is done!" said the chancellor; and, turning to the multitude, he waved his hand, and shouted: "Long live George Washington, president of the United States!" The exclamation was echoed and re-echoed, long and loud, by the people. "The scene," wrote an eye-witness, "was solemn and awful beyond description.... The circumstances of the president's election, the impression of his past services, the concourse of spectators, the devout fervency with which he repeated the oath, and the reverential manner in which he bowed down and kissed the sacred volume--all these conspired to render it one of the most august and interesting spectacles ever exhibited." It seemed, from the number of witnesses, to be a solemn appeal to Heaven and earth at once.
At the close of the ceremonies, Washington bowed to the people and retired to the senate chamber, where he read his inaugural address to both houses of Congress there assembled. It was short, direct, and comprehensive. He alluded in a most touching manner to the circumstances which placed him in the position he then held. "On the one hand," he said, "I was summoned by my country, whose voice I can never hear but with veneration and love, from a retreat which I had chosen with the fondest predilection, and, in my flattering hopes, with an immutable decision, as the asylum of my declining years.... On the other hand, the magnitude and difficulty of the trust to which the voice of my country called me, being sufficient to awaken in the wisest and most experienced of her citizens a distrustful scrutiny into his qualifications, could not but overwhelm with despondence one who, inheriting inferior endowments from nature, and unpractised in the duties of civil administration, ought to be peculiarly conscious of his own deficiencies. In this conflict of emotions, all I dare aver is, that it has been my faithful study to collect my duty from a just appreciation of every circumstance by which it might be affected."