hair of the dog (11. 397)

With aides believing he had been intoxicated for at least the week prior, drinking heavily throughout and downing at least three glasses of whisky or brandy the morning of the ceremony, vice president Andrew Johnson delivered his drunk inauguration speech on this day in 1865, witnesses describing it variously as rambling, repetitive and self-aggrandising. Kissing the Bible presented to him for the oath of office, Johnson was too incapacitated by the time in came to swear in the incoming class of senators. Upon the assassination of Abraham Lincoln forty-two days later during his second term, Johnson ascended to the presidency, his challenges foreshadowed by this incident. Picking the populist Johnson as his running-mate was a concession to secessionists—the choice turned out to be a rather grave political miscalculation, especially for the post-civil war period of reconciliation and Reconstruction with Lincoln’s own request that the ceremony be delayed until state governments of the readmitted polities were fully operational. Officially trying to cover up his sprees by confining Johnson to his quarters and issuing statements regarding an unspecified illness but the truth soon outed itself. Escorted to the Capitol to be sworn in by the outgoing vice president Hannibal Hamil, Johnson implored the officiator for a stimulant, begging off that he was unwell. Hamil offered that he had prohibited the serving of whisky in the senate cantina but offered to procure him a bottle from an establishment across the street, downing tumblerfuls until time for the event. Though there is no surviving, verbatim transcript of the speech, those present were incredulous at the spectacle as Johnson berated them with an incoherent lecture on the executive branch’s power and called out several present with insults. Hamil finally was successful in getting Johnson to stop when it was past due for the swearing in of Lincoln.