several feet before the
And
podium.
the
made
had been carved out of the extension of the
to
East Front of the Capitol, while Executive
represent as authentically as possible the very
Director Fred Schwengel, explained the ap-
podium was
in itself a stage setting
tone and color of the
beams, and the modest
wooden boards and little
white
constituted the total furniture
table, that
proximate positions each was to take in cordance with Committee protocol.
The group moved through
when President
the
ac-
Capitol
on schedule.
Lincoln spoke. Out front crowds had begun to assemble hours before, and soon school-
corridors to the platform almost
children by the thousands filled the periphery
right or Senate side of the Capitol, the United States Marine Band, Lt. Col. Albert F.
of the Plaza, the inner area of
which had
Below and out front on the concrete
USMC
conducting, had already Schoepper, begun a concert of mostly Civil War music and tunes of the period, that helped to estab-
been carefully arranged with hundreds of chairs for members of Congress — the
House
on the right facing the Capitol, the Senate
on the
left,
precisely in relation to the
House
lish
and the Senate wings of the Capitol edifice. The Supreme Court of the United States found
it
impossible to attend in a
President
Lyndon
speechmaking up to a few days before the event, also found the pressure
dressing tables, for changing into their cos-
War makeup. Sandwiches had been provided while trucks arrived and were unloaded with the paratumes and
and
these
exceptions the mass before the inauguration stand was a long catalog of the most dis-
m
and professional
legal,
of celebrated statesmen
known
By day
program, not the players
set
proceeded from
to begin at 12
through the corridors of the East Front extension, into the sunlight down the broad steps
—both
the
inside the Capitol edifice,
on the inaugural stand. The Committee had divided the program exactly
in 1965 as in 1865.
— prearrangement
in the reenactment,
and diplomats
the world over.
The program had been noon
and the
life,
Civil
coffee
phernalia and costumes of their art. Then, the audience waiting, the distinguished participants in the contemporary portion of the
Ameritinguished and the foremost names can politics and government, in the city's
names
bowels of the Capitol, Dore
formers in especially set-aside rooms, complete with quickly assembled mirrors and
B. Johnson, expected to
social,
in the
Schary, the producer, had collected his per-
body and
With
the atmosphere of 10 decades before.
Deeper
participate in the
of the public business too great.
to the
to their places this
being
a
Thurs-
House and the Senate
ad-
in half so that the
journed for the
contemporary portion, pre-
approximate period of the The Joint Committee on Arrange-
ceding the reenactment of the Lincoln second inauguration, would come first, followed by
ments, the guests and speakers, the two Chap-
the play that would reproduce the historical circumstance all were anticipating.
exercises.
with reservations on the inaugural stand. Speaker McCormack and Vice President Humphrey, and Chairman Melvin Price, lains, all
gathered in one of the great
new rooms
The prelude
that
[4]
to the
reenactment that
now
began was
in itself a historic event of the first
magnitude
for the
contemporary
light
it
shed