Video: 'Inaugural address of Thomas Woodrow Wilson after he is named President of the Uni...HD Stock Footage'

(Tuesday, March 4, 1913, 1:37 p.m. EST) — Former Governor Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey took the oath of office today as the 28th President of the United States at the East Portico of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.

Wilson, a Democrat, succeeded President William Howard Taft, ending a 16-year era of Republican rule at the White House.

63 minutes earlier, at 12:34 p.m. EST, former Governor Thomas R. Marshall of Indiana was sworn in as the 28th vice president of the United States, an office that had remained vacant since the Oct. 30, 1912, death of Vice President James S. Sherman.

Video: 'Woodrow Wilson American Experience Disc One' (March 4, 1913, at 33:44)

The Democratic ticket of Wilson-Marshall had defeated the Progressive ticket of former President Theodore Roosevelt-Hiram Johnson and the Republican ticket of Taft and Nicholas M. Butler in the 1912 election by 435-88-8 votes in the Electoral College.

In his inaugural address, Wilson made clear his vision of the United States and its people as an exemplary moral force: “Nowhere else in the world have noble men and women exhibited in more striking forms the beauty and the energy of sympathy and helpfulness and counsel in their efforts to rectify wrong, alleviate suffering, and set the weak in the way of strength and hope.”

Video: 'President Woodrow Wilson - 1st Inaugural Address - 1913 - Hear and Read the Speech'

Following the inauguration, former President Taft took a train to Augusta, Georgia, where he would spend the remainder of March.

No inaugural balls were held to celebrate the occasion, as Wilson found them inappropriate for the occasion.