Walt Whitman, arguably the American poet of the 19th century, reported on the inauguration for the Republican-aligned New York Times.

Historian Mark Noll has deemed it "among the handful of semisacred texts by which Americans conceive their place in the world.

At the ceremony Johnson, who had been drinking to offset the pain of typhoid fever (as he explained later), gave a rambling address in the Senate chamber and appeared obviously intoxicated.

[5] There is no independent evidence of typhoid but Johnson did most definitely go out drinking the night before the ceremony and then drank several glasses of whiskey in Hannibal Hamlin's office the next morning.

[6] In the course of the ceremony Johnson asked to be reminded of the name of the Secretary of the Navy and theatrically kissed the Bible on which he was to swear the oath of office.