April 30 · This Day in America
On the second-floor balcony of Federal Hall in lower Manhattan, before ten thousand people packed into the streets below, George Washington places his hand on a borrowed Bible. He is six foot three, in a plain brown American-made suit, visibly nervous. He repeats the oath the Constitution prescribes, bends and kisses the book, and the chancellor turns to the crowd and shouts that the United States has a president. Thirteen cannon fire. There is no script for any of this — no precedent on Earth for a head of state chosen by the people and bound by a written law. Washington knows every step he takes becomes the path. He could have been a king; men wanted him to be. He chose instead to be the first of many, and then, astonishingly, to leave. The republic begins on a balcony, in a borrowed coat, with a quiet man keeping his word.
Source: history.house.gov
Also on this day · 1803
In Paris, American envoys Robert Livingston and James Monroe sign a treaty with France. They had been sent to buy a city — New Orleans — and instead Napoleon offered the whole of Louisiana, 828,000 square miles, for fifteen million dollars. They had no authority to say yes. They said yes anyway. With one signature the country doubles, gaining the land that becomes fifteen states. Jefferson, a strict reader of the Constitution, swallowed his doubts and took the continent.
Source: www.archives.gov
“The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered, perhaps, as deeply, as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”George Washington, First Inaugural Address, 1789