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(Saturday, March 4, 1865, early afternoon local time; during the American Civil War) — President Abraham Lincoln, 56, was inaugurated today for a second term of office on the East Portico of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., with Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase administering oath of office.

Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, who had been drinking to offset the pain of typhoid fever (as he explained later), gave a rambling address in the Senate chamber and appeared obviously intoxicated minutes after he sworn in as vice president, escorted by his predecessor Hannibal Hamlin.

Lincoln and Johnson, who ran on a National Union ticket, had defeated Democrats George B. McClellan-George H. Pendleton in the November 1864 general election.

Lincoln’s inaugural address is considered one of the finest speeches in American history: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds.”

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