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 assumed the office of president two days earlier, immediately on Garfield’s death. In that private ceremony, he did not edit the oath. The second oath, the
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