On this day in 1789, George Washington was inaugurated, 57 days late, as the first President of the United States, in the downtown Wall Street area of New York City.
Washington was the right person to start the Presidency of a new Republic, and he knew that it was essential that he give up power, in order to insure the survival and stability of the nation in the long term future.
We cannot thank Washington enough, or all of the later Presidents who knew when to leave!
And we can also be thankful that even in hotly contested elections in the future, Presidents who lost reelection—John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H. W. Bush–followed the tradition Washington had set by leaving office.
Also, we have to be thankful that in close elections, such candidates as Samuel Tilden in 1876, Al Gore in 2000, and Hillary Clinton in 2016 were gracious in defeat, and that Vice Presidents who lost the succession to their President—Richard Nixon in 1960, Hubert Humphrey in 1968—also were gracious in defeat, as was Gore in 2000.
Sadly, the crisis today is due to the reality that Donald Trump would not accept defeat graciously, and provoked a violent mob on January 6, 2021, for which he must be held accountable!