No evidence suggests that any early president—John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams—added pious words to the oath. The first reliable, contemporaneous account of a president adding these words comes nearly a century after the founding, at Chester A. Arthur’s public inauguration in 1881.17 Arthur was assuming what had become a dangerous office, taking the oath after James Garfield was assassinated, the second president gunned down in sixteen years. This public oath was actually Arthur’s second presidential oath. He had already taken the official oath and
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