bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Mediating Shakespeare
Authors: Erne Lukas
Published: November 2024

Editorial mediation is easily missed by readers, in particular by readers who have no expertise in editing themselves. The purchaser of a modern edition of what they simply take to be, say, Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost, will expect to get access to the results of Shakespeare’s authorial labour, not the results of Henry Woudhuysen’s editorial labour. Lack of awareness of the difficulty, nature, and repercussions of editing translates not only into naïve engagement with the editorially mediated text, but also into perverse institutional practices: the recognition bestowed on editions is rarely commensurate with the labour and expertise required from the editor. This chapter tries to make visible the often transparent editorial mediation of Shakespeare by distinguishing between and exploring the repercussions of thirteen different kinds of editorial intervention, including introductions, commentaries, act-and-scene divisions, modernization, and emendation. Collectively, these editorial interventions require a good deal of expertise and judgement from an editor and have a massive impact on a play’s legacy.
Editing Boswell’s Life of Johnson
Authors: Ashton Rosemary
Published: November 2024

In July 1831 John Wilson Croker, MP, published his most ambitious work, a five-volume edition of Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson, with Boswell and Johnson’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. The work excited great interest, but unfortunately for Croker, a determined opponent of reform, the first in the field to review his work was the young reformist Thomas Babington Macaulay. In his lengthy review Macaulay took ample and apt revenge on his political opponent, chiding Croker for not knowing things that ‘every school-girl’ and every ‘forward boy at any school in England’ knows. To make matters worse for Croker, Thomas Carlyle also reviewed the new edition, and like Macaulay’s his review was devastating. Like Macaulay’s, it is long and in places sprawling, but it is a rhetorical tour de force and an astute dissertation on the challenges of writing and editing biography: his review repays closer study than Macaulay’s. This chapter discusses those questions which Carlyle raises and which still beset those of us who undertake to write history and biography, and to prepare editions of the work of others in the hope that they will not be accused, as Croker was by Carlyle, of failing to elucidate what needs elucidating to a later generation of readers, while ‘punctually explain[ing] what is already sun-clear’.
Adaptive Memory Distortions
Authors: Sanders D. Merika W. , Schacter Daniel L.
Published: November 2024

Psychologists and neuroscientists have provided abundant evidence of an imperfect memory system. Memories can lack sufficient detail or include incorrect information, resulting in a variety of well-documented errors in laboratory paradigms as well as in everyday life. Although such memory errors can have severe negative consequences in some everyday settings (e.g. eyewitness misidentifications), and thus appear to be critical flaws in the architecture of memory, an alternative perspective argues that memory distortions are byproducts of useful cognitive processes and may even promote adaptive functions. Here we review emerging cognitive and fMRI research that supports an adaptive perspective on memory distortions resulting from schema-based, gist-based, and associative processes; post-event misinformation; future imagining, creativity, and problem solving; and processes that support associative inference. We argue that the converging evidence for an adaptive perspective on these memory errors from cognitive psychology and neuroscience provides important clues concerning the nature and function of human memory.
Useful and New
Authors: Avery Mary C. , Altarriba Jeanette
Published: November 2024

Though creativity is often thought of as a grand, genius-level attribute known only to the likes of Renaissance painters and famous musicians, at its core the ability to solve problems in new and dynamic ways has served humanity well in the current day and in our ancestral past. From this perspective, creativity can be thought of as a useful and adaptive skill. How exactly does creativity interact with and support memory, if at all? In what ways does creativity ultimately contribute to our continued survival, and what might be its trade-off? This chapter seeks to explore the relationship between creative processes and adaptive functioning by first reviewing and evaluating relevant literature, particularly as it relates to survival processing in memory. Creativity will also be examined as a possible evolutionary advantage, both in support of memory and problem solving more generally. Finally, based on an assessment of the field, key future directions will be identified to develop this field of research, with an eye toward new and emerging methodologies. As part of these aims, survival processing and cognition are discussed extensively, but interdisciplinary perspectives are also offered here as a critical next step in understanding the nature of creativity and its role in survival.
Developmental Considerations in Survival-Related Memory and Decision-Making Under Conditions of Risk and Uncertainty
Authors: McMillan Sarah J. , Venticinque Joseph S. , Toglia Michael P.
Published: November 2024

Evolutionary processes have moulded human cognition, including memory and decision-making systems. Survival processing, in which participants rate words for survival relevance (e.g. rating the word ‘knife’ on its relevance for surviving in a desolate area), often leads to better memory than other types of processing, such as pleasantness (e.g. rating the word ‘knife’ on how pleasant it is). Survival utility also applies to creative thinking and problem solving, and risky decision-making has been linked to mortality salience; but less is known about its association with risky decision-making. In this chapter, we review empirical studies testing the effects of survival processing on false memory production and risky decision-making. Many studies exploring false memories have employed the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm that involves remembering thematic constructed word lists, whereas studies exploring decision-making have more varied methodology but often include written scenarios with two potential choices. What is needed is a fusing of these paradigms to examine survival in conjunction with risky decision-making. As a first step in this direction, we report a study revealing that survival-relevant decisions elicited slightly riskier decisions than non-survival decisions. Processing type, however, did not affect risk preference or memory accuracy. We contextualize findings within theoretical models of memory that incorporate both true and false recognition, while providing future directions for research on adaptive memory and risk-aversion from childhood to young adulthood, during which significant changes occur in decision-making systems.
Neurocognitive Mechanisms of the Survival Processing Effect
Authors: Kroneisen Meike , Forester Glen , Kamp Siri-Maria
Published: November 2024

Given the two main goals of evolution, survival and reproduction, and also given that reproduction is contingent on survival, it seems reasonable to hypothesize that our memory systems are engineered to retain information relevant to survival. In line with this, previous research has shown that survival processing—imagining being stranded in the grasslands of a foreign land without any basic survival material, and rating the relevance of words for survival in this situation—leads to better memory performance than other control scenarios. Several explanations of this survival processing effect proposed in the literature rely on efficient forms of encoding, storage, or retrieval that are domain-general in nature and thus are associated with good memory performance in general, not just in the survival context. Since an examination of behavioural performance on a memory test cannot disentangle mechanisms during encoding, consolidation, and retrieval from each other, capturing neural activity in real time at the different stages can yield important mechanistic insights. In this chapter, we review electrophysiological research suggesting that a survival context leads to greater high-level elaboration and long-range cortical communication during memory encoding, as well as more vivid recollection during memory retrieval. The limited number of neurocognitive studies available to date are thus generally in line with the idea that a survival processing context leads to richer encoding, and hence, improved memory performance.
Black Screens, White Frames
Authors: Shilina-Conte Tanya
Published: November 2024

Black Screens, White Frames offers a new understanding of cinematic blankness. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy, Tanya Shilina-Conte provides a detailed examination of non-images throughout film history. In different arts, including cinema, absence has often been understood in a negative way—as a lack or lacuna, a vacuum or void. To remedy this, Shilina-Conte advances the concept of the filmmaking machine as an abstract art machine in constant production, which shifts our understanding of absence in cinema from negative to generative theorization. In the course of machinic production, dissociation ceases to be a negative characteristic of failure or incapacity and becomes a creative and capacious gesture of artistic experimentation. Shilina-Conte’s approach is guided by a film-philosophical methodology and experimental modes of cinema rather than a thematic interpretation of its narrative forms. Further, she argues that blank screens (and their derivatives) function as points of deterritorialization within the filmmaking machine. In each chapter, she demonstrates that black or white screens either instigate relative deterritorializations or engender absolute escapes from narrative regimes in cinema. Blank screens in cinema, as machinic mutations and conditions of possibility, do not represent or symbolize but instead activate what has yet to appear and is still to become. This innovative reconsideration of non-images allows us to perform more nuanced analyses of cinematic modes often overlooked in traditional film criticism. The wide-ranging discussion of canonical and rare examples in Shilina-Conte’s book uncovers how absence as a productive process not only alters the ways in which we study cinema but also changes the questions we ask about its history.
Turning toward the One / Good
Authors: Robichaud Denis J.-J.
Published: November 2024

This chapter examines the fifteenth-century philosopher Marsilio Ficino’s (1433–1499) philosophy of love, especially his commentary on Plato’s Symposium, the De amore. It studies several of Ficino’s sources (Plato, the Corpus Dionysiacum, Plotinus, and Proclus) and demonstrates how Ficino conceives of love as a unified order that proceeds from the One Good beyond being and reverts to the Good. Further consideration is given to love’s relationship to beauty, pleasure, nature, and causality in Ficino’s philosophy.
A Metaphysical Basis for Love?
Authors: Frierson Patrick R.
Published: November 2024

This chapter investigates a Cartesian concept of love that is grounded in rationalist metaphysics, plays an important role in ethical life, and consists of a holistic attitude defined as joining oneself with another “in such a way that we imagine a whole of which we think ourselves to be only one part and the thing loved another” (IX:387). I argue that René Descartes articulates this notion of love but falls short because the unity constitutive of love is inconsistent with core features of his metaphysics. Baruch Spinoza develops a rationalist system within which metaphysical unity among finite substances is a fundamental reality, but once he individuates distinct ethical agents, Spinoza develops an even more egoist and less holist notion of love than Descartes.
Love in Kant and the Enlightenment
Authors: Seymour Fahmy Melissa
Published: November 2024

Immanuel Kant wrote that love and respect are the two great moral forces that bind together rational beings on Earth. This chapter articulates the various types of love we find in Kant’s practical philosophy—self-love, practical love, pathological love, duties of love, love of nature, and love of other human beings—as well as the roles they play. This chapter argues that we do Kant a serious disservice if we assume that he took a hostile attitude toward all sensible feelings. Despite his explicit rejection of moral sentimentalism, Kant regards love, even felt love, as morally indispensable for human beings. While Kant insists upon an exclusively a priori foundation for morality, his normative ethics takes seriously human neediness, vulnerability, and interdependency, and in doing so acknowledges the importance of both love and respect.
Love and Desire in Nietzsche and Levinas
Authors: Ellis Fiona
Published: November 2024

This chapter begins with a sketch of some of the general philosophical and theological issues that arise in discussions of love and desire, situating Nietzsche and Levinas within the relevant disputes. A key dispute concerns two very different ways of thinking about desire, namely as lack or abundance; this chapter clarifies what these positions could amount to. The conception of desire as abundance is endorsed by both of the protagonists, but Nietzsche (and some contemporary Nietzscheans) imply that it demands the rejection of theism. This chapter considers the merits of the relevant opposing arguments, finds significant common ground between the disputants, and makes explicit the implications for an understanding of love, desire, and God.
Introduction
Authors: Calloway Colin G.
Published: November 2024

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the experiences, encounters, and humanity of Scotch-Irish people who dominated frontier societies. It introduces the Paxton Massacre correlated to the cutting edge of the colonial dispossession of Native people. Although the Scotch-Irish fought Indian wars and shaped the frontier, they were shaped by their experiences living near and fighting against Indians. The chapter highlights that the relations between the Scotch-Irish and Indigenous peoples add depth and diversity to the story of America’s beginnings. It considers the dispute of whether Scotch-Irish people placed themselves in borderland spaces, where they grated against Indian country and Indian communities.
We Are Now the Frontier
Authors: Calloway Colin G.
Published: November 2024

This chapter examines how a war created an enduring history of the Scotch-Irish in America as a beleaguered and embattled people. It explains that Britain and France attempted to assert their power in the Ohio country through the Native proxies. Moreover, the Scotch-Irish people were also at the forefront of the Seven Years War as it was being fought in northern New England and the southern backcountry. The French and Indian War was the great war for America that established the nation. The chapter cites the war shaped the Scotch-Irish people's identity as a people in conflict with Indians and at odds with the government.
Black Boys and White Savages
Authors: Calloway Colin G.
Published: November 2024

This chapter introduces the notion of Black Boys and white savages. It cites how the war shattered patterns of peaceful coexistence between Indian people and colonists. A group of vigilantes calling themselves the Black Boys disputed the legitimacy of a government that appeared to do more for Indians than it did for them, although they demanded a renegotiation of political power on the frontier. The chapter provides an overview of the extent of Scotch-Irish murders of Indian people. Meanwhile, British attempts to restrict access to Indian land pushed many colonists to embrace revolution, and fears of the “white savages” who constantly invaded their lands pushed many Indians into the British.
Fighting Landlords, Indians, and Taxes
Authors: Calloway Colin G.
Published: November 2024

This chapter considers the conflict regarding landlords, Indians, and taxes. It explains that the American Revolution on the frontier had involved conflicts over lands between Indian peoples and Scotch-Irish colonists. According to some historians, the Scotch-Irish in America ceased to be Scotch-Irish after the Revolution and easily took their place as Americans in the new nation they helped create. Moreover, the national government lacked the power to enforce its will over unruly citizens on distant frontiers. The chapter also looks into the significance of the Indian War and the Whiskey Rebellion, before discussing how frontier violence in the 1780s and 1790s fueled Indian-hating and a racialized white identity.
Andrew Jackson and the Triumph of Scotch-Irish Indian Policy
Authors: Calloway Colin G.
Published: November 2024

This chapter discusses the significance of Andrew Jackson and the victory of the Scotch-Irish Indian Policy. Following Jackson's rise to power, Scotch-Irish frontiersmen became less aggressive disrupters of U.S. policy than embodiments of aggressive U.S. policies of dispossession and removal. Jackson harnessed and represented concerns, advocated and executed removal practices, and rendered them less distinctively Scotch-Irish by incorporating them into the nation’s Indian policy. The chapter notes that Jackson was the driving force behind Indian removal. It highlights white supremacy as an essential part of Jacksonian democracy, referring to the expansion of white males at the expense of Indians and other peoples.
To Texas and Beyond
Authors: Calloway Colin G.
Published: November 2024

This chapter explains that people with varying degrees of Scotch-Irish ancestry and identity spread across Texas and beyond. It introduces the notion of Anglo-Americans revolving around people presumed to be of English or British descent before it gradually includes non-Hispanic white people in a region. Moreover, a steady stream of people headed to Texas, hoping to get out of debt, acquire land, and prosper. The chapter also notes how the Texas Revolution upended Mexico's policy of enlisting eastern Indians to curtail Plains Indian raids while disarraying the lives of immigrant Indian people in Texas. It notes that violence against Native people accompanied the notion of the West winning.
Honor among Spies
Authors: Rahman Smita A.
Published: November 2024

This chapter examines the conceptual nexus between honor, espionage, and the formation of identity through a close narrative reading of the FX drama The Americans, a drama set in the 1980s during the Cold War. The chapter complicates the often uncontested linkage between honor and espionage by examining the show’s portrayal of motherhood within the context of Cold War discourse of mothers as a source of corruption. Such a reading of the complex issues of motherhood, identity, and the challenges of family in The Americans reveals a deeper anxiety at the core of the need to sustain such simple narratives of patriotic honor.
ConclusionThe Agonism of Honor
Authors: Rahman Smita A.
Published: November 2024

This concluding chapter argues that honor is an inherently agonistic concept and that its place in the political imagination remains both complex and contested. It defines agonism by drawing on its classical Greek origins, the foundational role it plays in Nietzschean philosophy, and its significance in contemporary political theory in the work of William E. Connolly. It argues that honor is agonistic around two dimensions. First, honor is in tension with itself as a source of both heroic inspiration and destructive rage. Second, honor is central to the idea of the contest itself and plays a key role in democratic agonism.
How to Be an Anti-Ableist Clinician
Authors: Johnson Janelle A.
Published: November 2024

An exploration of critical disability theory as it relates to Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) individuals in mental health care, “How to Be an Anti-ableist Clinician: Addressing Intersectionality of Race and Ability in Mental Health Care” is a call to identify and challenge ableism in oneself as well as the systems of mental health care and higher education. While defining ableism more broadly, it specifically delves into its impact on the intersectionality of race and ability. Using core tenants of the interdisciplinary field of critical disability theory, specifically DisCrit, a clear framework is suggested and outlined as a guide to continued self-exploration as well as to systemic change for the Black disabled person and their allies. Using examples from historic accounts and narratives of Black people with mental health disabilities, this chapter suggests the centrality of this often overlooked facet of equity and inclusion for clinicians, encouraging further analysis of universal design for learning and multicultural therapy modalities as possible methods to catalyze systemic change in mental health care and beyond.
The Impact of Systemic Racism on Mental Health Care
Authors: Wigfall Delbert R.
Published: November 2024

“The Impact of Systemic Racism on Mental Health Care” examines multiple factors that exacerbate mental health disease in communities of color and inhibit access to care. Adequate health care, especially in provision of mental health services, is dependent on having well-trained, compassionate providers and inclusion of providers who share commonality in culture and community. Poverty, housing discrimination, mental health disparities, community violence, low levels of educational attainment, and anti-immigrant sentiment are some ways that racism continues to impact communities of color today and contribute to the persistent disparities of care. This chapter provides a picture of the contradictory factors that result in disparate or dysfunctional mental health care in communities of color.
Introduction
Authors: Widmer Ted
Published: November 2024

This introduction provides an overview of the inaugural addresses of the presidents of the United States. It begins by looking at the establishment of the office of the “President of the United States of America.” When the first presidential election was held, in the winter of 1788–1789, George Washington won unanimously. Washington’s inaugural address was not incidental to his presidency—it defined it. By declaring his intentions before his constituents, he showed an instinctive understanding of the new office and breathed life into it. With time, presidents began to understand that the inaugural address offered a rare opportunity to frame the nation’s political agenda. When assembled together, the inaugural addresses of the presidents thus constitute an essential record of American history, offering important insights into the forty-six individuals who have held the highest elected office, and the circumstances that shaped each of their individual moments on America’s grandest stage.
George Washington’s First Inaugural Address
Authors: Singh Yuvraj
Published: November 2024

This chapter presents George Washington’s first inaugural address on April 30, 1789. Addressing his “fellow-citizens of the Senate and of the House of Representatives,” Washington begins by acknowledging his anxieties with the magnitude of trust that the country has given him. He then asks for the blessing of the “Almighty Being” so that he may execute his duties to the people of the United States with success. Washington also pledges that “no local prejudices or attachments, no separate views nor party animosities, will misdirect the comprehensive and equal eye which ought to watch over this great assemblage of communities and interests.” Moreover, he vows “that the foundation of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality, and the preeminence of free government be exemplified by all the attributes which can win the affections of its citizens and command the respect of the world.”
George Washington’s Second Inaugural Address
Authors: Singh Yuvraj
Published: November 2024

This chapter presents George Washington’s Second Inaugural Address on March 4, 1793. Addressing his “fellow citizens,” Washington acknowledges that he is “again called upon by the voice of my country to execute the functions of its Chief Magistrate.” He expresses his appreciation for “this distinguished honor, and of the confidence which has been reposed in me by the people of united America.” Washington then mentions that “previous to the execution of any official act of the President the Constitution requires an oath of office.” Finally, he pledges “that if it shall be found during my administration of the Government I have in any instance violated willingly or knowingly the injunctions thereof, I may (besides incurring constitutional punishment) be subject to the upbraidings of all who are now witnesses of the present solemn ceremony.”
The American Cincinnatus
Authors: Butterfield Kevin
Published: November 2024

This chapter examines George Washington’s Second Inaugural Address. Using just 135 words, Washington focused directly on the key element of the inaugural ceremony—the oath of office, and the responsibilities that the oath imposes—and said little else. Nonetheless, Washington’s Second Inaugural merits close attention. That it happened at all is itself important, the result of a thoughtful assessment by Washington and his Cabinet. In his focus upon the oath, Washington underscored an element of the presidency that can be overlooked: that the occupant of the office, while vested with substantial power, is also bound to adhere to the specific terms of an oath found in the Constitution itself. Indeed, his Second Inaugural Address had one point to make, and it made it well: in a constitutional order full of checks, balances, and structural limitations on arbitrary power, the presidential oath was yet another safeguard to protect the American republic.
The Colossus of Independence
Authors: Barlow R. M.
Published: November 2024

This chapter evaluates the inaugural address of John Adams. In his address, Adams needed to acknowledge the status of George Washington, reassure listeners that he took the French threat to American shipping seriously, and attempt to unite the High Federalists and the Jeffersonian Republicans. His call for a system of neutrality appears at first glance to be support for George Washington’s Neutrality Proclamation. However, Adams’s commitment to an independent foreign policy predated the Washington administration by more than a decade. Accordingly, Adams’s speech was an overview of American history that began with the struggle for independence during the American Revolution. By drawing attention to the overreach of the British Parliament, he suggested that the French Directory was attempting a similar tyranny. He warned that political factions invited foreign meddling in American politics. By recounting the nation’s history, he highlighted his own role in that history.
The Last Cocked Hat
Authors: Moats Sandra
Published: November 2024

This chapter examines the Second Inaugural Address of James Monroe. Monroe discussed his first-term accomplishments, emphasizing foreign affairs. He focused on the need to build fortifications to defend the nation’s Atlantic coastline and to raise a navy capable of supporting and protecting these military facilities. With regard to the warfare between Spain and its colonies in South America, Monroe renewed the nation’s long-standing commitment to neutrality. Closer to home, he discussed the unauthorized invasion of Spanish Florida by a “band of adventurers” in 1817–1818, known officially as the First Seminole War, which was led by General Andrew Jackson. Although receiving much less attention than foreign affairs, Monroe’s inaugural address highlighted two domestic issues. One was the Panic of 1819, in which Americans experienced the loss of jobs, homes, and lands. The second domestic issue concerned Native Americans; Monroe was advocating what would become known as an “assimilationist” approach.
The Corrupt Bargain
Authors: Taylor C. James
Published: November 2024

This chapter discusses the Inaugural Address of John Quincy Adams. Adams launched the address with a brief overview of the growth and success of the nation. However, sectional differences and disagreements over the proper response to the French Revolution and subsequent European wars created a twenty-five-year period of political unrest, which ended with the War of 1812 and presidency of James Monroe. Adams then reviewed the “promise and performance” of the Monroe administration. In foreign affairs, he highlighted the peaceful expansion of the national boundaries and recognition of the independence of countries in the Southern Hemisphere from European colonial control. In the domestic realm, he listed reduction of the national debt, reorganization of the postwar army, improvements in the nation’s fortifications and navy, suppression of the African slave trade, and the encouragement of the Native American population to evolve from hunters to farmers as accomplishments during Monroe’s two terms.
Calm before the Storm
Authors: Watson Harry L.
Published: November 2024

This chapter evaluates the First Inaugural Address of Andrew Jackson. Short, vague, and almost inaudible, Jackson’s First Inaugural Address belied the general’s stormy personality and the tumultuous path that took him to the White House in 1829. He came to the presidency with a victorious military record but limited experience in civilian government and a vivid reputation for flouting established laws, procedures, and authorities. His winning presidential campaign had stirred an uproar of lies, distortions, and bitter recriminations, and his administration followed an equally stormy path that featured discharges of experienced civil servants, forced removal of American Indians, a threatened civil war with South Carolina, doom for a national transportation policy, a “Bank War” that destroyed the nation’s largest financial institution, and a revival of cutthroat political partisanship. Nevertheless, Jackson betrayed few signs of these developments when he addressed the nation on March 4, 1829.
The Little Magician
Authors: Gerhardt Michael J.
Published: November 2024

This chapter explores the Inaugural Address of Martin Van Buren. He launched into a long disquisition—comprising twelve of the addresses’ eighteen long paragraphs—underscoring his humility by retelling the story of America up until that moment. The longest paragraph of the entire address is the thirteenth, which addressed “the institution of domestic slavery.” The chapter then considers how Van Buren echoed Andrew Jackson’s commitment to what has become known as original meaning as the touchstone of constitutional law. Ultimately, the address sounded many of the right notes for Van Buren, but it sowed more doubts than confidence that Van Buren could ever be as tough as Jackson in opposing the forces preying on the common people who were his supporters. His résumé, loyalty to Jackson, and humility could not save him from political disaster when, just weeks after his address, the nation confronted its first great depression.
Dark Horse
Authors: Borneman Walter R.
Published: November 2024

This chapter reviews the Inaugural Address of James K. Polk. According to Polk’s secretary of the navy and would-be biographer, George Bancroft, Polk summarized his inaugural address when he confided to Bancroft “the four great measures” of his administration. First, the joint occupation of Oregon with Great Britain had to be settled; second, the American continent must be rounded out by acquiring California from Mexico; third, the protectionist tariff burdening Southern states had to be reduced to a revenue basis; and finally, an independent treasury had to be established. Polk also gave strong measure to his model of constitutional government. Even if Texas had not yet assented, the new president left no doubt about his view of its status to the United States. However, Polk defended the institution of slavery without mentioning it by name. The second half of his inaugural was then devoted to foreign affairs and expansionist affairs.
Zachary Taylor’s Inaugural Address
Authors: Singh Yuvraj
Published: November 2024

This chapter presents Zachary Taylor’s Inaugural Address on March 5, 1849. Taylor begins by declaring that the Constitution will be his guide. With regard to the Army and Navy, he says that “care shall be taken to insure the highest condition of efficiency, and in furtherance of that object the military and naval schools . . . shall receive the special attention of the Executive.” Taylor also maintains neutrality in all disputes between conflicting governments, while cultivating peaceful and friendly relations. Finally, he focuses on his duty to “recommend such constitutional measures to Congress as may be necessary and proper to secure encouragement and protection to . . . agriculture, commerce, and manufactures, to improve our rivers and harbors, to provide for the speedy extinguishment of the public debt, to enforce a strict accountability on the part of all officers of the Government and the utmost economy in all public expenditures.”
Millard Fillmore’s Announcement to Congress of the Death of President Taylor
Authors: Singh Yuvraj
Published: November 2024

This chapter presents Millard Fillmore’s announcement to Congress of the death of President Zachary Taylor on July 10, 1850. Taylor deceased at half-past 10 o’clock of July 9, 1850, “in the midst of his family and surrounded by affectionate friends, calmly and in the full possession of all his faculties.” Fillmore says that among Taylor’s last words were these: “I have always done my duty. I am ready to die. My only regret is for the friends I leave behind me.” Fillmore also expresses how Taylor’s death “has penetrated no heart with deeper grief than mine.” He then proposes “this day at 12 o’clock, in the Hall of the House of Representatives, in the presence of both Houses of Congress, to take the oath prescribed by the Constitution, to enable me to enter on the execution of the office which this event has devolved on me.”
A Strict Constitutionalist
Authors: Welch Claude
Published: November 2024

This chapter examines Millard Fillmore’s announcement to Congress of the death of President Zachary Taylor. His first major address to Congress, delivered on December 2, 1850, may likely be one of the longest speeches ever delivered by a president to this body. Fillmore broke with the expansionist policies of his predecessor James K. Polk. In his first annual address to Congress, Fillmore also praised the treaty reached by the United States with Great Britain. He personally opposed slavery, but, as chief executive, he believed himself bound to support the “peculiar institution.” Ultimately, Fillmore did not stray from Whig orthodoxy. His support for significant domestic infrastructure improvements and industrial development, funded by tariff walls, remained constant. Moreover, he viewed America's international role as largely an outgrowth of domestic policies, as experienced by the stress upon guano imports or his concern about Hispaniola, where boundary disputes threatened U.S. interests.
James Buchanan’s Inaugural Address
Authors: Singh Yuvraj
Published: November 2024

This chapter presents James Buchanan’s Inaugural Address on March 4, 1857. Buchanan begins by announcing the settlement of the question of domestic slavery in the Territories. He declares that Congress is neither “to legislate slavery into any Territory or State nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions.” When the Territory of Kansas shall be admitted as a State, it “shall be received into the Union with or without slavery, as their constitution may prescribe at the time of their admission.” Buchanan highlights free trade and “preserving the Government free from the taint or even the suspicion of corruption.” He also addresses the financial condition of the country; the modification of the tariff; the administration of public money and public lands; and the war-making power, under which “Congress may appropriate money toward the construction of a military road.”
Abraham Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address
Authors: Singh Yuvraj
Published: November 2024

This chapter presents Abraham Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address on March 4, 1861. Lincoln acknowledges that “apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that by the accession of a Republican Administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered.” He declares that he has “no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists.” Lincoln then considers the “controversy about the delivering up of fugitives from service or labor.” He also notes that “no State upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union; that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void, and that acts of violence within any State or States against the authority of the United States are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances.” Finally, Lincoln addresses the proposed amendment of the Constitution and the issue of civil war.
Trying to Stave off War
Authors: Reynolds David S.
Published: November 2024

This chapter explores the First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln. Between November 6, 1860, when Lincoln won the presidency, and March 4, 1861, when he gave the Inaugural Address, seven Southern states seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. In the inaugural address, Lincoln repeated several points he had made in previous speeches: secession was impossible, because a minority cannot overrule the majority; the North would not invade the South without provocation; his administration would leave slavery alone where it existed and would enforce the Fugitive Slave Act as long as the suspected runaways received due process. Lincoln’s answer to Southerners who used states’ rights to defend secession was that there is a “fundamental law of all national governments.” While emphasizing the broader law of nations, Lincoln in the inaugural did not lose sight of the moral law that motivated him and other anti-slavery reformers.
Ulysses S. Grant’s First Inaugural Address
Authors: Singh Yuvraj
Published: November 2024

This chapter presents Ulysses S. Grant’s First Inaugural Address. It indicates how suffrages elected Grant to the office of president of the United States in conformity with the Constitution. Grant assures that he will do the best of his ability to satisfy the people and ensure that all laws are faithfully executed. The chapter indicates that security of person, property, and free religious and political opinion are required in every part of the common country, without regard to local prejudice. It also highlights the peculiar interests of young men in maintaining national honor before considering the handling of nations as equitable law requires in correlation with foreign policy.
Ulysses S. Grant’s Second Inaugural Address
Authors: Singh Yuvraj
Published: November 2024

This chapter presents Ulysses S. Grant’s Second Inaugural Address. Grant mentions how the United States has yet to recover from the effects of great internal revolutions, and three former states of the Union had not been restored to their federal relations. According to Grant, the past four years of his tenure were spent on restoring harmony, public credit, commerce, and all the arts of peace and progress. Grant assures that his efforts for the future include the restoration of good feelings between the different sections of our common country. The speech also indicates that social equality must be considered after the effects of the late civil strife freed the slave and made him a citizen.
“A Fine Man, a Grand Man”
Authors: Summers Mark W.
Published: November 2024

This chapter discusses the First Inaugural Address of Grover Cleveland. It notes that the speech was shorter than expected since he would not propose a list of desirable legislation as specifics would stir controversy. Additionally, Cleveland needed to reassure Republicans that the change in the White House did not mean a Democratic ascendancy. The chapter explains that Cleveland’s inaugural did give hints of where his administration meant to go, such as the action against the land-grabbers out west. It notes that Cleveland’s administrative restraint and modest promises gave the country a sense of security and the Democrats the respectable reputation they needed.
Grover Cleveland’s Second Inaugural Address
Authors: Singh Yuvraj
Published: November 2024

This chapter presents Grover Cleveland’s Second Inaugural Address. It provides an overview of the key concept of paternalism, which is the bane of republican institutions and the constant peril of the government by the people. Paternalism undermines the self-reliance of the people, while stifling the spirit of true Americanism. Cleveland indicates that the misappropriation of public funds can be avoided when appointments to the office are awarded to those whose efficiency promises a fair return of work for the compensation paid to them. The address explains that equality before the law guarantees every citizen just and good faith regardless of race and color.
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address
Authors: Singh Yuvraj
Published: November 2024

This chapter presents the First Inaugural Address of Franklin D. Roosevelt. In the address, Roosevelt contends that the measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which people apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit. Moreover, Roosevelt indicates how restoration calls for ethics and action, so his priority primarily revolves around putting people to work. In the inauguration speech, Roosevelt puts international trade relations secondary to the establishment of a sound national economy. The address indicates Roosevelt’s determination to follow through on his promises and constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation amid a stricken world may require.
Fear Itself
Authors: Koch Cynthia M.
Published: November 2024

This chapter examines the First Inaugural Address of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The address was delivered in one of the nation’s darkest hours as the nation faced its third year of the worst economic depression in history. Aside from horrible food and housing conditions, violence was in the air, and desperate World War I veterans called for early payment of bonuses after their military service. Moreover, Roosevelt dismissed Herbert Hoover’s focus on international trade as secondary, and he aimed to dedicate the nation to the policy of the good neighbor. The chapter also notes that Roosevelt introduced the notion of interdependence.
Cold Warrior
Authors: Busch Andrew E.
Published: November 2024

This chapter analyzes the Inaugural Address of Harry S. Truman, who took the oath of office on January 20, 1949, after having been elected in one of the most dramatic political upsets in American history. It mentions the labor unrest, inflation, shortages, and remaining wartime restrictions that added up to a challenging environment for Truman. Truman worked closely with Republicans to obtain passage of the Marshall Plan to rebuild Western Europe, aid to Greece and Turkey, and the National Security Act of 1947 creating the Defense Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Council. The chapter reviews Harry Truman’s Inaugural Address, which contained historically typical features such as the appeal to unity after a contentious campaign. What made Truman’s address unique was the fact that it focused almost entirely on the world.
Richard M. Nixon’s First Inaugural Address
Authors: Singh Yuvraj
Published: November 2024

This chapter presents Richard M. Nixon’s First Inaugural Address, in which he wrote his own epitaph about the title of peacemaker as the greatest honor history can bestow. Nixon hoped to create an international framework to work out international differences without war. It details how Nixon laid out the terms by which history would judge his presidency in his First Inaugural. The chapter discusses the détente and rapprochement that eased international tensions and improved relations with China and Russia but were tainted by Nixon’s secret assurances to both Communist powers. Nixon emphasized his plan for when the day came that wealth can be transferred from the destruction of war abroad to the urgent needs of the American people at home.
The Peanut Farmer
Authors: Lawrence Mark Atwood
Published: November 2024

This chapter scrutinizes the Inaugural Address of Jimmy Carter, which is hardly considered a masterpiece of the genre. The speech earned dutiful applause and respectful coverage at the time, but it has seldom garnered favorable comments from historians and biographers. It mentions historian Randall Balmer, who described Carter’s speech as a workmanlike mélange of well-worn themes from the campaign. The chapter explains the speech’s tepidness, which owed much to the very modesty that had enabled Carter to win the White House and underlay his most memorable gestures on Inauguration Day. To have asked Carter for something grander would have meant asking him to be a different sort of leader and to have understood the national mood in a different way.
Ronald Reagan’s First Inaugural Address
Authors: Singh Yuvraj
Published: November 2024

This chapter presents Ronald Reagan’s First Inaugural Address, in which he paints the horizons and defines the limits of what would be known as the Reagan Revolution. Reagan suggests that the answer to America’s malaise could be found in a patriotic renewal by returning to core principles and the irrepressible confidence that had propelled Americans forward since the American Revolution. It stresses faith in the past as a solution to present problems and the key to a proud, prosperous, and peaceful future. The address includes the reaffirmation of Reagan’s faith in freedom and the dignity of the individual. Reagan insists that the troubles at the time were parallel and proportionate to the intervention and intrusion in people’s lives that result from unnecessary and excessive growth of government.
Ronald Reagan’s Second Inaugural Address
Authors: Singh Yuvraj
Published: November 2024

This chapter presents Ronald Reagan’s Second Inaugural Address, delivered on January 21, 1985, which referenced America’s recent progress in advancing African-American civil rights. Reagan acknowledges that more needed to be done to build a country rich in dignity and abundant with opportunity for all American citizens. Reagan’s 1985 Inaugural Address focused mainly on domestic issues and gave attention to foreign and defense issues. Reagan looked forward to the total elimination one day of nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth. The address includes Reagan’s plans for research into the development of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) to construct a space-based security shield that could prevent incoming missiles from reaching America in the event of a nuclear attack.
“A Thousand Points of Light”
Authors: Cary Mary Kate
Published: November 2024

This chapter discusses George H. W. Bush’s Inaugural Address, which he delivered on the 200th anniversary of George Washington’s Inauguration. Bush was one of only three presidents to open his address with a prayer. It details how Bush referred to the theme of unity, diversity, and generosity when he turned dramatically to face the assembled House and Senate leadership next to him on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. The biggest legacy of Bush’s speech was its foreshadowing of the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet empire. The chapter notes Bush’s awareness that the great nations dominated by the Soviets were moving toward democracy as their citizens knew how to secure a more just and prosperous life for themselves. The world events that took place soon after Bush’s Second Inaugural Address changed the lives of millions of people around the globe.