A ceremony built around history
The 56th inaugural ceremonies arrived during the bicentennial year of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. Organizers chose “A New Birth of Freedom” as the theme, echoing the Gettysburg Address and placing the peaceful transfer of power in conversation with the nation’s unfinished history of equality.
Barack Obama’s election made him the first African American to become president. The setting—the Capitol constructed in part by enslaved laborers—gave the oath an additional historical weight that was widely understood by those gathered on the platform and across the National Mall.
The oath and the Lincoln Bible
Chief Justice John Roberts administered the constitutional oath shortly before noon. Michelle Obama held the small, burgundy velvet Bible used at Lincoln’s first inauguration in 1861, borrowed from the Library of Congress for the occasion.
The wording was briefly transposed during the public ceremony. Obama and Roberts repeated the oath the next evening in the White House Map Room out of what counsel described as an abundance of caution; the Constitution had already made the presidential term begin at noon on January 20.
Music, poetry, prayer, and address
The program joined civic ritual with American cultural expression. Aretha Franklin sang “My Country, ’Tis of Thee.” A quartet performed John Williams’s “Air and Simple Gifts,” Elizabeth Alexander delivered the poem “Praise Song for the Day,” and the Reverend Joseph Lowery gave the benediction.
Obama’s inaugural address confronted recession, war, and distrust in institutions. Its central argument paired collective action with personal responsibility and framed renewal as work shared by government and citizen alike.
- Invocation by the Reverend Rick Warren
- Vice-presidential oath administered to Joseph R. Biden Jr.
- Presidential oath using the Lincoln Bible
- Inaugural address followed by poetry and benediction
The public day
Crowds filled the National Mall from the Capitol toward the Washington Monument and beyond. Transit systems opened early, bridges and streets were restricted, and visitors endured below-freezing conditions to witness the ceremony.
After the congressional luncheon, the presidential party traveled the Pennsylvania Avenue parade route. The day concluded with ten official inaugural balls, where the president and first lady’s first dance was set to “At Last,” performed by Beyoncé.