The date on which this piece is intended for first posting on this website,
March 4th, is the date on which- for 140 years, from George Washington s Second Inauguration in 1793 through Franklin Delano Roosevelt s First in 1933- Presidents of the United States, every four years until the 20th Amendment to the United States Constitution first took effect (36 times in all)- took the Oath of Office prescribed in Article II, Section 1, clause 8 of Our Nation s fundamental legal document.
The use of this date was not based on any specific constitutional language but was, rather, an accident of History: for the outgoing Congress of the Confederation that the Federal Government under the then-new Constitution would be replacing took it upon itself- soon after it had learned that at least 9 of the 13 original States of the American Republic had, by mid-1788, ratified that document (thereby putting it into effect, per its own terms)- to set, for the Year 1789, the dates for the first appoi