Presidential Documents

7003 

Federal Register 

Vol. 86, No. 14 

Monday, January 25, 2021 

Title 3— 

The President 

Proclamation 10140 of January 20, 2021 

A National Day of Unity 

By the President of the United States of America 

A Proclamation 

I am humbled before God and my fellow Americans to take the sacred 

oath of President of our beloved country. 

Today, we celebrate the triumph of democracy after an election that saw 

more Americans voting than ever before in our Nation’s history, and where 

the will of the people has been heard and heeded. 

We do so at a moment of great peril and promise for our Nation. A oncein-a-century deadly pandemic. A historic and deepening economic crisis. 

Calls for racial justice some 400 years in the making. A climate crisis 

with force and fury. We also feel the rise in political extremism and domestic 

terrorism—unleashed just days ago on our Capitol, the citadel of freedom, 

but brewing long before—that we must confront and defeat. 

Yet in this dire moment, democracy prevailed. On this day, we set our 

sights on the Nation we know we can and must be. I am honored to 

do so alongside Vice President Kamala Harris, the first woman who has 

taken the oath to serve in elected national office, and who will not be 

the last. Together, we know that to overcome the challenges before all 

of us, to restore the soul of America, requires the beating heart of a democracy: 

Unity. 

With unity, we can save lives and beat this pandemic. We can build our 

economy back better and include everyone. We can right wrongs and root 

out systemic racism in our country. We can confront the climate crisis 

with American jobs and ingenuity. We can protect our democracy by seeing 

each other not as adversaries but as fellow Americans. For the world to 

see, with unity we can lead not just by the example of our power, but 

by the power of our example. 

As we start the hard work to be done, I pray this moment gives us the 

strength to rebuild this house of ours upon a rock that can never be washed 

away. And, as in the Prayer of St. Francis, for where there is discord, 

union; where there is doubt, faith, where there is darkness, light. 

On this Inauguration Day I swear an oath to be a President for all Americans 

and ask every American to join me in this cause of democracy. May this 

be the story that unites us as fellow Americans and as the United States 

of America. 

NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States 

of America, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the 

laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim January 20, 2021, a National 

Day of Unity and call upon the people of our Nation to join together 

and write the next story of our democracy—an American story of decency 

and dignity, of love and of healing, and of greatness and of goodness. 


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7004 Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 14 / Monday, January 25, 2021 / Presidential Documents 

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twentieth day 

of January, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-one, and of the 

Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and fortyfifth. 

[FR Doc. 2021–01748 

Filed 1–22–21; 11:15 am] 

Billing code 3295–F1–P 


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