[Vision2020] Otter Plans Closed-Door Oath Taking

[Chasuk]

On 12/25/06, Pat Kraut <pkraut at moscow.com> wrote:

>From http://www.wash.org/wlmay06_3_1.html:

"So help me God" was first appended to a presidential oath in 1881.
The claims that George Washington added that phrase all appear to be
repetitions of the dubious second hand contents of a single book about
George Washington's 1789 inaugural that was published 67 years after
the fact.

And, from http://jonrowe.blogspot.com/2006/11/did-george-washington-say-so-help-me.html:

Ongoing research has found the earliest statements that Washington
added "So help me God" after taking his presidential oath of office
date from the late 1850s, almost seventy years after the event.

    This is in reply to Barbara Clark Smith's very interesting inquiry
about Smithsonian NMAH [National Museum of American History] curators'
attempts to find out when and by whom the phrase "so help me, God" was
added the presidential oath of office prescribed by the Constitution.

    Reference specialists on the Library of Congress's Digital
Reference Team have done some research on this topic. In particular,
my colleague Kenneth Drexler reports the following information:

    "The question was whether or not there is primary-source evidence
that Washington said 'so help me, God' in 1789. The short answer is
that I could find no evidence that he did.

    [Also,] according to a Washington Post article from [January 20,]
2001,'Whether Washington actually added "So help me God" to the oath
is not supported by any eyewitness accounts, according to Philander D.
Chase, editor of the Papers of George Washington project at the
University of Virginia. "He may have said those words," Chase said.'

    During my research I did obtain a copy of a letter by Tobias Lear
to George Augustine Washington dated May 3, 1789 in which he described
the inauguration.

    I got the letter from Duke University. The letter makes no mention
of 'so help me, God.'"

It's likely that the "so help me God" tradition didn't originate until
Chester A. Arthur.