Hello and welcome to Whistle Stop, formerly a podcast of presidential campaign curiosities, and now a curious podcast about the presidency.

I'm John Dickerson of Face the Nation.

The town of Washington was a ball of nervous anticipation, a man with no experience, extravagant personal behaviors, had been carried aloft

to Washington to reform its wicked ways in the name of the people. The clouds were dark. The previous

election had set new standards for ugliness and low behavior by the virtuous people who were

asking to be entrusted with the care of the nation.

The powerful in Washington were undone. Their candidate had lost. The teacups were rattling it everywhere,

and journals, quill pens were quivering, with quiet prayers for a republic, which was to see its first president inaugurated,

who was neither from Virginia

or a member of the Adams family. As the president, the new president, took the oath, the comfortable

worry that norms would drop during his presidency. They were already dropping in little

symbolic ways from the location of the swearing end, the lack of the hat on the new

president's head. What would happen later on that March day of inauguration when Andrew Jackson

opened his new White House to the people who had elected him would set the tone for one of the

most transformative and unpredictable presidencies in the country's history.

Our whistle stop today is March 4th, 1829.

It's 11 o'clock on inauguration day in Washington, D.C.

It's clear, but it's a little chilly, though not as cold as it had been in the previous week.

The weather had been so cold, the Potomac River is still frozen.

Though six presidents had been sworn in before, the ceremony for the seventh was new.

It was taking place outdoors on the east portico of the capital instead of inside.

That morning, a national salute was fired.

...