"In Griswold We Trust"

6

David B. Parker, professor of history at

Kennesaw State University, is the author

of Alias Bill Arp: Charles Henry Smith

and the South's "Goodly Heritage"

(1993) and editor (with John D. Fowler)

of Breaking the Heartland: The Civil

War in Georgia (2011). He has written

numerous articles and essays on

American cultural history.

www.common-place.org · vol. 15 · no. 1 · Fall 2014

David B. ParkerIn Griswold We Trust

On April 30, 1789, George Washington was inaugurated asthe nation's first president. According to the traditional story,he added "so help me God" to the words of the oathprescribed by the Constitution. However, that "traditionalstory" goes back only to 1854, when Rufus Griswoldincluded it in a book titled The Republican Court. Griswold'sstory caught on, and by the 1860s, "so help me God" hadappeared in dozens of other biographies of Washington andwas well on its way to becoming the accepted account. Untilthe last decade or so, Washington's "so help me God" was astrue as anything else in our history.

This essay is not another tirade in what sometimes threatensto become a tedious debate over "Did he say it?" Rather, itsimply describes how a story first told sixty-five years afterthe fact became entrenched in America's public memory; ituses "so help me God" as a case study of Americanmyth-making.

Here are three typical examples of how Washington'sinauguration was described before 1854. The first is fromChief Justice John Marshall's Life of George Washington(1807). The title page notes that the book was "compiledunder the inspection of the Honourable BushrodWashington," nephew of the first president and himself anassociate justice on the Supreme Court. Marshall'sdescription of the first presidential inauguration is asfollows: "On the 30th of April, the president attended in thesenate chamber, in order to take, in the presence of bothhouses, the oath prescribed by the constitution. To gratify thepublic curiosity, an open gallery adjoining the senatechamber had been selected by congress, as the place inwhich the oath should be administered. Having taken it inthe view of an immense concourse of people, whose loudand repeated acclamations attested to the joy with which hisbeing proclaimed president of the United States inspiredthem, he returned to the senate chamber."

The second account, from Samuel George Arnold's The Life

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In these accounts Washington did not add "Sohelp me God" to the oath. In fact, no account of

his inauguration, either contemporaneous orlater, has Washington saying "So help me

God"—until 1854.

of GeorgeWashington,First Presidentof the UnitedStates (1840),is more explicitin the details ofthe oath-taking:"Havingentered theHall

[Washington] passed to a balcony in front of the house,where he was received with loud acclamations by theassembled multitudes. Here the oath was administered byChancellor Livingston. The Bible was raised, and his headbowed to kiss the sacred volume. The chancellor thengreeted him with, 'Long live George Washington, presidentof the United States,' and the assembled multitude respondedwith a tremendous burst of cheers."

The third account is from the September 1846 issue of TheGreen Mountain Gem: A Monthly Journal of Literature,Science, and the Arts: "In a short time Washington made hisappearance on the balcony, and loud and long-continuedcheers arose from the sea of faces that thronged Broad andWall streets… . Washington looked around upon the peoplebefore him, and then placed his right hand upon the openbible, as Chancellor Livingston administered the oath:—'I dosolemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of thePresident of the United States, and will, to the best of myability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of theUnited States.' Washington kissed the sacred volume, andChancellor Livingston pronounced in a loud tone—'LONGLIVE GEORGE WASHINGTON,—PRESIDENT OF THEUNITED STATES.' Shout upon shout rent the air."

A few notes about these accounts. First, "ChancellorLivingston" is Robert Livingston; Chancellor was thehighest judicial officer in the state of New York. Today thepresidential oath is administered by the chief justice of theU.S. Supreme Court, but that is not required by theConstitution. Second, the "open gallery" was an outdoorbalcony on New York's old Federal Hall, a building (razed in1812) that served as the first capitol of the U.S. Third, we donot know if Washington repeated the oath (phrase by phrase,as is currently done), or if he simply heard the oath andagreed to it (like the "I do" in modern weddings); again, theConstitution is silent on how the oath should be


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"The Inauguration of Washington," J. B. Chapin, artist, J. Rogers,engraver, vignette title page taken from The Illustrated Life of

George Washington: A Biography, Personal, Military, and Political(in three volumes), Vol. 3. by Benson J. Lossing (New York, 1860).

Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester,Massachusetts.

administered. Fourth, Washington kissed the Bible, an extra-Constitutional flourish many other presidents followed up tothe mid-twentieth century. (From Eisenhower on, nopresident has kissed the Bible following the oath.) Andfinally, in these accounts Washington did not add "So helpme God" to the oath. In fact, no account of his inauguration,either contemporaneous or later, has Washington saying "Sohelp me God"—until 1854.

Rufus Wilmot Griswoldwas a well-known literarycritic and editor. Author ofPoets and Poetry ofAmerica (first published in1842), in which hepromoted the idea of adistinctly American poetry,he is perhaps best knowntoday for his literary feudwith Edgar Allan Poe. Inthe last decade or so of hislife, Griswold becameinterested in historicalsubjects. He was especiallyenamored of the firstpresident, and in 1847 hepublished a work titledWashington and theGenerals of the AmericanRevolution in which hisbrief biography ofWashington (later widelyreprinted) read: "Hissuperiority was felt by allthese persons, and was feltby Washington himself, as asimple matter of fact, aslittle a subject of question,or a cause of vanity, as theeminence of his personalstature."

In the early 1850s,Griswold began collecting material for a book onWashington and the social scene of his day. Published in1854, The Republican Court: or, American Society in theDays of Washington was praised as "an accurate andscholarly production." In the prefatory note, Griswold wrote


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that while the book possessed "little merit of a purely literarycharacter, I can claim for it the far more importantexcellence of a most exact adherence to truth." (Griswoldhad a reputation for lying—"Mendacity seems chronic withhim," one critic wrote—so perhaps in his one attempt athistory he thought he should emphasize his "adherence tothe truth.")

Here is Griswold's telling of the inauguration: "A gesture ofthe Chancellor arrested the attention of the immenseassembly, and he pronounced slowly and distinctly thewords of the oath. The Bible was raised, and as the Presidentbowed to kiss its sacred pages, he said audibly, 'I swear,' andadded, with fervor, his eyes closed, that his whole soul mightbe absorbed in the supplication, 'So help me God!'"

Rufus Griswold was born in 1815, a quarter century afterWashington's first inauguration, so how did he get thisinformation? A possible answer comes three paragraphs laterin the text. "Few persons are now living who witnessed theinduction of the first president of the United States into hisoffice," Griswold writes, but on a recent night, he waswalking the streets of New York with his friend John Francisand the famous writer Washington Irving. It happens thatIrving was working on his own biography of Washington(for whom Irving was named, incidentally), so no doubtWashington was on his mind. During their stroll, Irving"related … his recollections [of the inauguration]… . He hadwatched the procession till the President entered FederalHall, and from the corner of New street and Wall street hadobserved the subsequent proceedings in the balcony."

Did Griswold get the story from Irving? Irving was only sixyears old at the time of Washington's inauguration, and wasstanding over 200 feet away (and we know that Washingtonspoke softly on this occasion). Perhaps Irving shared somegeneral recollections of the inauguration, but not the "so helpme God." Maybe Griswold got the story from someone else,or maybe he just made it up. In any case, this is the firsttime—sixty-five years after the event—that we have a"record" of Washington saying those words.

Griswold described the inauguration in the sentimentallanguage that was all the rage in both biographies and novelsof the time. Washington did not simply say "so help meGod," he added it "with fervor, his eyes closed, that hiswhole soul might be absorbed in the supplication." InInventing George Washington, Edward G. Lengel, currenteditor of the Papers of George Washington project, described


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Griswold's account as "a typical mid-nineteenth-century globof treacle." He was perhaps right, but we should add that itwas an influential glob of treacle; by the end of the decade,"so help me God" had become an unquestioned part of theWashington inauguration story.

Washington Irving may or may not have told the story toRufus Griswold, but he included it in his own biography ofthe first president. Irving, who made a name for himself withsuch tales as "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of SleepyHollow," had also written historical works, such as a life ofChristopher Columbus (which contained the myth thatEuropeans in Columbus's day thought the Earth was flat).Irving hoped his five-volume biography of GeorgeWashington would be the greatest achievement of his career.He described the inauguration in the fourth volume,published in 1857: "The chancellor advanced to administerthe oath prescribed by the constitution… . The oath was readslowly and distinctly; Washington at the same time layinghis hand on the open Bible. When it was concluded, hereplied solemnly, 'I swear—so help me God!'"

Three others writers put "So help me God" in GeorgeWashington's mouth in 1857. Caroline Matilda Kirkland,best known for a trilogy of books on life on the Westernfrontier (she and her husband lived several years in Detroit),dedicated her biography of Washington "to all my youngfriends, known and unknown, and particularly to my ownsons and daughters … , to make his goodness and patriotismirresistibly inspiring to them." Here is how she described theinauguration: "In kissing the book as he took the oath, hewas observed to say audibly, 'I swear!' adding, with closedeyes, as if to collect all his being into the momentousact—'So help me God.'"

John Frederick Schroeder was an Episcopalian priest whohad already published Maxims of Washington, with over 400pages of quotations attributed to Washington on (in thewords of the subtitle) "Political, Social, Moral, andReligious" topics. Schroeder's Life and Times of Washington(1857) recorded the inauguration as follows: "While the oathwas being administered, Washington laid his hand on theBible. As its conclusion he said, 'I swear—so help me God.'"

On March 14, 1857, just after the inauguration of JamesBuchanan, Harper's Weekly ran a three-page articlecomparing that ceremony to the first inauguration.Washington "exclaimed, with closed eyes and muchemotion, 'I swear, so help me God!'" Buchanan, on the other


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Illustrated title page, wood engraving signed by John Andrew,taken from Life of George Washington. Written for Children, by E.

Cecil (Boston, 1859). Courtesy of the American AntiquarianSociety, Worcester, Massachusetts.

hand, was not reported tohave used the phrase. Ayear later, J. A. Spencer,who ended his History ofthe United States withBuchanan's inauguration,wrote that Washington,"reverently appealing toHeaven," added "So helpme God!" to the end of theoath.

This was just the beginning.John N. Norton's Life ofBishop Provoost, of NewYork (1859) and his Life ofGeorge Washington (1860)both included "so help meGod" in their accounts ofWashington's inauguration.

E. Cecil compiled his (orher) Life of GeorgeWashington. Written forChildren (1859) "with thehope of giving Americanchildren some knowledge ofWashington's character." Acouple pages at the end ofthe book summarize someof the lessons childrenmight learn from

Washington's life: "How could he thus resist temptation?How did he succeed in controlling his passions? There is butone answer. Washington was a religious man." E. Cecil—thename is possibly pseudonymous, but the writer was certainlyVictorian, what with the emphasis on resistingtemptation—had Washington saying "so help me God" at theend of the oath.

In 1859, the Mount Vernon Ladies Association, a groupformed several years earlier to preserve Washington'sVirginia home, had worked out an arrangement with JohnWashington, George's great-grandnephew, to purchase theestate. Benson J. Lossing, a popular historian (in both sensesof the phrase) known for his Pictorial Field Book of the[American] Revolution, wrote a history of Mount Vernon tosupport the MVLA. Mount Vernon and Its Associations,Historical, Biographical, and Pictorial, published in


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numerous versions with various titles over the years, wasdedicated "to his patriotic countrywomen, by whose effortsthe home and tomb of Washington have been rescued fromdecay." Lossing described the inauguration: "ChancellorLivingston then waved his hand for the multitude to besilent, and in a clear voice, read the prescribed oath. ThePresident said 'I swear,' then bowed his head and kissed thesacred volume, and with his eyes closed as he resumed hiserect position, he continued with solemn voice anddevotional attitude, 'So help me God!'"

So, before 1854, we have no written record of Washingtonadding "so help me God" to the oath. Then Griswold wroteit, and by the end of the decade, at least eight other booksand magazines recorded the same phrase. "So help me God"quickly became the traditional story. This was not quite thesame as Mason "Parson" Weems's fanciful story of the boyGeorge chopping down the cherry tree with his hatchet, afable that represented a great Truth about Washington'scharacter but was not to be understood as literally true.Unlike "I cannot tell a lie," "so help me God" becamegospel. "In Griswold we trust," we might say, although by1860, Griswold's role in creating the myth had beenforgotten.

To be sure, not every description of Washington'sinauguration published after 1854 used the phrase.Nonetheless, the post-Griswold inclusion of "so help meGod" in Washington biographies was both widespread andpersistent. Benjamin Lossing became one of the phrase'smost prolific promulgators; after the Mount Vernon book, hetold the "so help me God" story in the three-volume Life ofWashington: A Biography, Personal, Military, and Political(1860); in Our Country: A Household History of the UnitedStates for All Readers (1877); in Harpers' PopularCyclopedia of United States History, from the AboriginalPeriod (1881); in Mary and Martha: The Mother and theWife of George Washington (1886); and in two pieces forpopular magazines for the centennial of Washington's firstinaugural (The Independent and Century IllustratedMagazine, 1889).

From the 1860s on, Lossing was joined by dozens of otherwriters in spreading the gospel of "so help me God." Amongthem was Woodrow Wilson, a professor of political scienceat Princeton, who in his George Washington (1896) wrotethat after the oath, the president "bowed his head and said'So help me God!' in tones no man could mistake, so deepwas their thrill of feeling." Seventeen years later, when he


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Page citing the phrase, "I swear; so help me, God!" p. 225, takenfrom Life of George Washington. Written for Children, by E. Cecil

(Boston, 1859). Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society,Worcester, Massachusetts.

was himself taking thepresidential oath of office,Wilson did not use thatphrase.

Some of these other effortswere aimed (like Kirklandand Cecil, in the late 1850s)at children. Biographies ofWashington for childrenwere everywhere in themid-nineteenth century,ranging from SamuelGoodrich's Lives ofBenefactors in 1844 to anillustrated Heroes of theRevolution in 1846 toChild's Life of Washingtonin 1860. DifferentWashingtons were offeredfor different genders.Women of Worth: A Bookfor Girls (1860) republishedGeorge W. P. Custis'sbiography of MaryWashington, while Mrs.Anna M. Hyde offered TheAmerican Boy's Life ofWashington in 1868. Mrs.E. B. (ElizabethBreckenbrough) Phelps wasmotivated to write herMemoir of Washington:Written for Boys and Girls

and Dedicated to the Pupils, Past and Present (1874) by"observing how little interest the pupils of our chargeseemed to take in the history of their own country, andconsequently how little knowledge they possessed."

Josephine Pollard's Life of George Washington: In Words ofOne Syllable (1893) was part of a fad in the late nineteenthcentury of one-syllable books—books aimed at youngreaders and written using words of only one syllable. Hersection on the inauguration begins: "On the last day ofA-pril, 1789, Wash-ing-ton took the oath of office in front ofthe hall where the wise men of the land had been wont tomeet in New York." This sentence shows that the authors ofone-syllable books often used proper nouns, regardless of


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syllabification, and that "one syllable" does not necessarilymean easy (unless most children of the late nineteenthcentury could be expected to understand "had been wont tomeet").

Hyde, Phelps, and Pollard all used the identical phrase intheir descriptions of the inauguration for their juvenilereaders: "I swear—so help me God!"

Not surprisingly, histories told with a religious bent often putthe "so help me God" into Washington's inaugural. Suchworks include Benjamin Franklin Morris's Christian Lifeand Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States(1864), written to show that the United States "ispre-eminently the land of the Bible, of the Christian Church,and of the Christian Sabbath." Rev. J. A. M. Chapman's "AChristian Republic: Its Grounds, Functions, and Claims," inChristian Advocate (Dec. 7, 1876) ("I say a ChristianRepublic, for such I claim ours to be in the design of itsfounders, in the opinion of the wisest expounders of ournational law, and as a recognized fact in our actual history"),and Bishop A. Cleveland Coxe's "Christianity and theConstitution," in The Independent (April 5, 1880) ("Thespirit of the Constitution speaks for itself, and proclaimsitself Christian in all that it implies and presupposes"), bothquote "so help me God."

The centennial year witnessed an outpouring of literaryaccounts of the first inauguration, almost all of whichincluded Washington taking the oath and adding "so help meGod." In addition to Lossing's contributions, books by HenryCabot Lodge (later a five-term senator from Massachusetts)and Horace Elisha Scudder (editor of The Atlantic Monthlythrough most of the 1890s), as well as articles in TheAmerican Magazine, The Cambrian (subtitled A Magazinefor the Welsh in America), Century Magazine, TheChautauquan, The Churchman, The Cosmopolitan, TheHome-Maker, Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly, The NewYork Tribune, and Zion's Herald, were among the workspublished in 1889 that included "so help me God."

As the nineteenth century came to an end, "so help me God"had been firmly entrenched in the nation's historic memoryfor four decades. (The works cited above are just a fractionof what would be a very long list.) The phrase was soimbedded that no one in the twentieth century, not evenacademic scholars with PhDs, thought to question it.Douglas Southall Freeman won a (posthumous) PulitzerPrize for his six-volume biography of Washington. In the


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final volume (1954), he recorded the events of inaugurationday in great detail (beginning with "When Washington hadeaten breakfast…."). Washington took the oath of office,then "reverently he added, 'So help me God.'" In GeorgeWashington: A Biography (1984), John R. Alden, one of thepremier academic historians of the American Revolution acouple generations ago, wrote: "Washington repeated theoath, adding solemnly, 'So help me God.'"

David McCullough won a Pulitzer Prize for his John Adams(2001), a book in which he described the first presidentialinauguration: "In a low voice Washington solemnly swore toexecute the office of the President of the United States and,to the best of his ability, to 'preserve, protect, and defend theConstitution of the United States.' Then, as not specified inthe Constitution, he added, 'So help me God,' and kissed theBible, thereby establishing his own first presidentialtradition." It was Griswold, not Washington, who started thetradition, but McCullough and others have certainlycontinued it. When HBO based a miniseries on John Adams(in 2008, with Paul Giamatti in the title role), viewers couldsee the inauguration and actually hear George Washington(actor David Morse) say "So help me God."

So if it was not Washington, who was the first Americanpresident to say "so help me God" as part of the oath ofoffice? Perhaps it was Jefferson Davis, who according to theMacon Daily Telegraph used the phrase when he wasinaugurated president of the Confederate States of Americaon February 18, 1861. The first president of the UnitedStates of America for whom there is convincingcontemporary evidence was Chester A. Arthur, who took theoath following the death of James Garfield in September1881. Following Arthur, we know that William Howard Taft(1909), Warren G. Harding (1921), Calvin Coolidge (1923),and Franklin Roosevelt (1933) said "so help me God." From1933 to the present, every president has used the term. Priorto that, however, the list is short.

In the years after World War II, the story of "so help meGod" in American historical memory took another turn. Astensions increased between the United States and the"godless communists" of the Soviet Union, Americansbegan to use religion as a weapon in the Cold War. "The fateof the world rests with the clash between the atheism ofMoscow and the Christian spirit throughout other parts ofthe world," said Senator Joe McCarthy, and J. Edgar Hooveradded, "Since Communists are anti-God, encourage yourchild to be active in the church." The 1950s was the decade


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"Portrait of Rufus W. Griswold," painted by J.B. Read, engraved byG. Parker, from Graham's Magazine (June 1845). Courtesy of the

American Portrait Prints Collection, the American AntiquarianSociety, Worcester, Massachusetts.

that "under God" was added to the Pledge of Allegiance and"In God we trust" became our national motto. And it was inthe 1950s that the tradition was established that allpresidents, not just Washington, had said "so help me God"as part of their oath.

Frank C. Waldrop, editor of the Washington Times-Herald,led the way in 1948, in response to the Supreme Court'sdecision in McCollum v. Board of Education. In that case,the Court ruled that it was unconstitutional for publicschools to aid in purely religious instruction. "EveryPresident from Washington down to Harry Truman hasalways taken that oath [the Constitutionally prescribedpresidential oath] with his hand on the Bible, a religiousbook," Waldrop wrote in response to the decision, "and morethan that, every President so far as this writer can learn hasalso added the undeniably religious phrase, 'So help me,God,' as an unofficial element of his promise."

Bruce Catton, the famousCivil War historian,solidified this "new"tradition in January 1957,just in time forEisenhower's secondinauguration. "GeorgeWashington was a maninspired," Catton wrote inone of his occasional"Words America Lives By"pieces, "and his inspirationhas come down to all of us,coloring the environment inwhich we live… . Afterreciting the formal oath, heput in a short sentence ofhis own: 'So help me God.'Every President since hasadded those words. Theyhave now become part ofthe ritual; and it is a goodpart, an essential part,pledging more than wasoriginally intended whenthe oath was written… .[Washington] spoke not

only for all future Presidents, but for the rest of us too." Andso a century after Rufus Griswold had George Washington


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saying "so help me God," Bruce Catton and others made it apart of every presidential oath. It joined "one nation, underGod" and "In God we trust" to create a trinity of Cold Warreligious phrases.

In 2001, the first year of the twenty-first century, PhilanderChase, editor of the Papers of George Washington project(1999-2004), was cited in a Washington Post article assaying that the "so help me God" story "is not supported byany eyewitness accounts." Others had perhaps doubted thestory, but Chase's statement was, according to Ray Soller,"the first public announcement that flat out challenged whathistorians and pundits … had come to treat as anunchallenged matter of fact." Newdow v. Roberts, a lawsuitaimed at prohibiting Chief Justice John Roberts fromprompting Barack Obama to add the non-Constitutionalphrase at the end of the oath in 2009, certainly raisedawareness of the issue. Professor Peter R. Henriques, ofGeorge Mason University, submitted an amicus brief in thecase outlining the historical background, including the lackof contemporaneous account of "so help me God" and therole of Griswold and others in starting the tradition decadeslater. A shortened version of Henriques's brief, published as"'So Help Me God': A George Washington Myth ThatShould Be Discarded" by History News Network in January2009, became perhaps the most-cited scholarly discussion ofthe issue.

Ron Chernow's Washington: A Life (2010), one of the latestWashington biographies and another Pulitzer Prize winner,addressed the issue this way: "Legend has it that he added'So help me God,' though this line was first reportedsixty-five years later. Whether or not Washington actuallysaid it, very few people would have heard him anyway, sincehis voice was soft and breathy." Chernow's gentle handlingof the phrase contrasts with Edward Lengel's, in InventingGeorge Washington (2011): "Any attempt to prove thatWashington added the words 'so help me God' requiresmental gymnastics of the sort that would do credit to thefinest artist of the flying trapeze." The contrast is one of toneonly; Chernow and Lengel, in questioning the traditionalstory and acknowledging that it lacks an evidentiaryfoundation, signal a change in our historic memory, almostas sudden as was the diffusion of the "so help me God" storya century and a half earlier.

Scholarly debunking does not always equal popularacceptance, of course. The current debate—Did Washingtonsay "so help me God" or not?—often has little to do with


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historical accuracy and much to do with particular politicaland religious agendas. But that aside, the post-1854 ubiquityof "so help me God" tells us something about how easily"facts" can become part of our shared historic memory.

Further Reading

Most of the nineteenth-century works listed above areavailable through Google Books or Internet Archive. Forother discussions of "so help me God" in the presidentialoath of office, see Frederick B. Jonassen, "Kiss the Book,You're President: 'So Help Me God' and Kissing the Book inthe Presidential Oath of Office," William & Mary Bill ofRights Journal, 20 (2012): 853-953, and Mathew Goldsteinand the Nonbeliever Antidiscrimination Project, "So HelpMe God in Presidential Oaths." Ray Soller's unsurpassedwork on "so help me God" often appears in the AmericanCreation blog. Peter Henriques's "'So Help Me God': AGeorge Washington Myth That Should Be Discarded" isavailable at History News Network. Edward G. Lengelwrites about this and other Washington myths in InventingGeorge Washington: America's Founder, in Myth andMemory (New York, 2011).


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"In Griswold We Trust"

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