The first inauguration of George Washington as the first president of the United States was held on Thursday, April 30, 1789, on the balcony of Federal Hall in New York City, New York. The inauguration was held nearly two months after the beginning of the first four-year term of George Washington as president. Chancellor of New York Robert Livingston administered the presidential oath of office. With this inauguration, the executive branch of the United States government officially began operations under the new frame of government established by the 1787 Constitution. The inauguration of John Adams as vice president was on April 21, 1789, when he assumed his duties as presiding officer of the United States Senate; this also remains the only scheduled inauguration to take place on a day that was neither January nor March.
Federal Hall, New York City, site of George Washington's first inauguration, April 30, 1789.
George Washington had to borrow money to travel to his first inauguration. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)
The Committee of Five of the Second Continental Congress was a group of five members who drafted and presented to the full Congress in Pennsylvania State House what would become the United States Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776. This Declaration committee operated from June 11, 1776, until July 5, 1776, the day on which the Declaration was published.
The Jefferson Memorial depicts the Committee of Five on a pediment sculpture by Adolph Alexander Weinman.
Congress Voting Independence, by Robert Edge Pine (1784–1788), depicts the Committee of Five in the center
Writing the Declaration of Independence, 1776, Jean Leon Gerome Ferris' idealized 1900 depiction of (left to right) Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson of the Committee of Five working on the Declaration.
The Committee of Five presents their work to the Continental Congress on June 28, 1776. Painting by John Trumbull (1819)