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"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Those are the words we expect to hear today as Joe Biden takes the oath of office as the 46th president of the United States.
We also will listen as he gives his inaugural address and lays out his vision for the nation.
These could be some of the most important words of his four-year term. The nation will look to the new president to unify an emotionally raw country, still grappling with the coronavirus pandemic and reeling from a divisive election cycle and siege at the Capitol.
We need to get past political differences and find a way forward. One such example is Rutherford B. Hayes in 1877.
Hayes, the third president after Abraham Lincoln, won the election of 1876 by a single Electoral College vote after Hayes and his allies alleged fraud in several states. The compromise was not without serious flaws, as it required the federal government to weaken reconstruction and the pursuit of racial equity.
"Fellow-citizens, we have reached the close of a political contest marked by the excitement which usually attends the contests between great political parties whose members espouse and advocate with earnest faith their respective creeds. The circumstances were, perhaps, in no respect extraordinary save in the closeness and the consequent uncertainty of the result," Hayes said in his inaugural address.
"For the first time in the history of the country it has been deemed best, in view of the peculiar circumstances of the case, that the objections and questions in dispute with reference to the counting of the electoral votes should be referred to the decision of a tribunal appointed for this purpose.
"The fact that two great political parties have in this way settled a dispute in regard to which good men differ as to the facts and the law no less than as to the proper course to be pursued in solving the question in controversy is an occasion for general rejoicing."
It almost seems as though history has been repeating itself. Almost.
As Hayes also said: "Upon one point there is entire unanimity in public sentiment -- that conflicting claims to the Presidency must be amicably and peaceably adjusted, and that when so adjusted the general acquiescence of the nation ought surely to follow.
"It has been reserved for a government of the people, where the right of suffrage is universal, to give to the world the first example in history of a great nation, in the midst of the struggle of opposing parties for power, hushing its party tumults to yield the issue of the contest to adjustment according to the forms of law."
Our prayer for today is that our great nation will amicably and peaceably adjust.