The cavalry was, perhaps, one of the smartest, most attractive sections in the procession, mostly young society women who were superbly mounted.
The floats, particularly significant, showed the progress of the suffrage movement since its beginning in 1840. Later, tableaux and allegorical dances were given upon the steps of the Treasury, interpreting the dreams and ambitions of modern womanhood. Many distinguished and prominent women participated, while hundreds of others were interested spectators. The demonstration called forth unstinted praise from every intelligent source. Unfortunate indeed was the outrageous lack of police protection given the marching women; they suffered insults and physical injury at the hands of hoodlums. Their flags and banners were spat upon, lighted cigars and cigarettes were thrown upon them, and the crowding in upon the line here and there caused more than a hundred persons to be so trampled and bruised as to require hospital treatment. The contrast between the calm orderliness of March 4th and the extreme disorder of the day previous was so marked that the matter became subject for presidential appeal.
The heads of the various suffrage organizations returned to New York at once, and the next morning, the following telegram was sent to Mr. Wilson so that he should receive it before leaving for the Capitol:
President-elect Wilson
The Shoreham, Washington, D. C.
As you ride to-day in comfort and safety to the Capitol to be inaugurated President of the United States, we beg that you will not be unmindful that yesterday the government which is supposed to exist for the good of all, left women, while passing in peaceful procession in their demand for political freedom, at the mercy of a howling mob on the very streets which are this very moment being so efficiently officered for the protection of men.
Harriet Stanton Blatch,
For the Women’s Political Union.
Promptly at ten-fifty on the morning of March 4th, Woodrow Wilson and Thomas Marshall, President-elect and Vice President-elect, left the Shoreham Hotel after several hours of cheering ovations by their respective Princeton and Culver students, and made their way to the White House, where the President-elect was serenaded by the Princeton boys with the Princeton anthem, “Old Nassau.” The University of Virginia students also felt a special claim upon Mr. Wilson and added their strength of numbers to the student delegation which totalled three thousand.
There were no particularly distinguishing features in the administering of the oath to either the new President by Chief Justice White, or to the Vice President by Senator Gallinger. The drama of the great political struggle was reflected in the picture presented in the little group when President Wilson had completed his address. While the crowd was shouting its enthusiastic approval, Mr. Taft, the retiring leader of the party, defeated after sixteen years of supremacy, congratulated his successor thus: “Mr. President, I wish you a successful administration and the carrying out of your aims. We are all behind you.” William Jennings Bryan stood at hand, the persistent prophet of progressive democracy, thrice defeated, and once more possessing his soul in patience as he accepted a commission from the new President who was claiming to be mustering forces of humanity, not forces of party.
The long procession of forty thousand marching men which had been forming while the ceremonies were in progress, followed the President to the White House. The Essex Troop, made up of college graduates and young men of means, all of whom owned their handsome mounts, wheeled into line in full strength to honour their former governor, while the sixty mounted Culver cadets that composed the famous Black Horse Troop of that institution found their location as escort to Vice President Marshall.
Twenty-five hundred Tammany Braves also made the air ring.