Really happy to have you here. You know, it was a tough inauguration, a really bad inauguration.

The drunk vice president inauguration was a really bad one.

Abraham Lincoln was president. He'd just been reelected to his second term.

Now, Abraham Lincoln had had a perfectly fine vice president in his first term. It was a guy

from Maine who was an abolitionist. But when Lincoln was going to run for a second term, he decided

it might be a good strategic decision to trade in the guy from Maine for a southerner instead. And so

Lincoln ran with a different vice president in his second term. And Lincoln won

that election and he got himself a second term. But when it came time for Lincoln and his new

running mate to be inaugurated for them to be sworn in, Lincoln's new vice president was almost too drunk to stand up at the inauguration.

His name was Andrew Johnson.

He apparently went to the outgoing vice president, the guy from Maine.

He went to him on the day of the inauguration and begged him for a bottle of whiskey, please.

The outgoing vice president fetched him a bottle of whiskey,

and then Andrew Johnson apparently drank most of it that morning before the inauguration.

Some accounts from the time suggest that Johnson had actually been drunk for the better part of two weeks

by the time the inauguration rolled around that morning.

Before he himself was due to be sworn in as the new vice president,

Andrew Johnson gave a caterwauling, slurring, screaming speech that no one could understand.

When it came time for him to put his hand on the Bible and swear the oath of

office, he instead grabbed the Bible and swung it around over his head and then made a big

show of kissing it. He kissed the Bible. It was expected that the newly inaugurated

vice president would finish out the day by swearing in

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