Today in History: March 4, Abraham Lincoln's final inauguration

Boston Globe

04-03-2025

In 1776, under the cover of darkness and as rebel gun batteries from Cambridge distracted British troops besieged in Boston, hundreds of militia soldiers transported the cannons of Fort Ticonderoga to the summits of Dorchester Heights. The threat posed by the cannons prompted the British to abandon Boston about two weeks later on March 17, which is celebrated to this day in the city as Evacuation Day.
In 1789, the Constitution of the United States went into effect as the first Federal Congress met in New York.
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In 1801, Thomas Jefferson became the first president to be inaugurated in Washington, D.C.
In 1865, President Lincoln was inaugurated for a second term of office. With the end of the Civil War in sight, and just six weeks before his assassination, Lincoln declared: 'With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the fight 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, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan — to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.'
In 1872, The Boston Globe, at 4 cents a copy, began publication. After initially foundering, the paper, under the leadership of Eben Jordan and Charles H. Taylor, would become a dominant newspaper in New England by the turn of the century.
In 1931, work started on the William H. Sumner Tunnel, connecting East Boston to the North End; it opened June 30, 1934.
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In 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated for his first term as president; he was the last US president to be inaugurated on this date. In his inaugural speech, Roosevelt stated, 'The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.'
In 1966, John Lennon of The Beatles was quoted in the London Evening Standard as saying, 'We're more popular than Jesus now,' a comment that caused an angry backlash in the United States.
In 1987, President Ronald Reagan addressed the nation on the Iran-Contra affair, acknowledging that his overtures to Iran had 'deteriorated' into an arms-for-hostages deal.
In 1998, the US Supreme Court ruled that workplace sexual harassment laws are applicable when the offender and victim are of the same sex.
In 2015, the Justice Department cleared Darren Wilson, a white former Ferguson, Mo., police officer, in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, a Black 18-year-old, but also issued a scathing report calling for sweeping changes in city law enforcement practices, which it called discriminatory and unconstitutional.
In 2017, President Trump wrote a series of Twitter posts accusing former president Obama of tapping his telephones during the 2016 election; an Obama spokesperson declared that the assertion was 'simply false.'
In 2019, King Boston, a group established to memorialize the relation of Martin Luther and Coretta King to the city, announced it had selected as a monument to the civil rights leader 'The Embrace,' by artist Hank Willis Thomas and MASS Design Group.