On January 20, 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated for his second term, becoming the first president to be inaugurated on January 20. Every president before him had been inaugurated on March 4th (save for the handful who were sworn in on March 5th because the 4th had fallen on a Sunday and those who received no inaugural because they were sworn in following the death of their predecessor), but Roosevelt’s second inaugural was bumped up because of the new Twentieth Amendment, which ended a century and a half of political tradition that had become largely meaningless and impractical.
Why was the original inauguration date set as March 4th? The constitution lays out no specific dates of the beginnings or endings of the president’s term, and the only date it mentions says that Congress must convene on the first Monday in December. March 4th as a special date goes back to the very beginnings of our constitutional government when, after the requisite nine states had ratified the new document, this date was decreed as the transition from the Articles of Confederation to the new system. When it came time to select a day for the transition of the President and Vice President, it only made sense to have it happen on the same day the government had commenced. George Washington, due to the irregularities of the first election, wasn’t sworn in until April 30th, but beginning with his second inaugural in 1793, all presidents would be sworn in on the 4th of March.
In the early days of the republic, when news traveled more slowly and government worked at a glacial pace compared with today, having a four-month lame duck period was not such a bad thing. It gave time for the president-elect to make the sometimes long journey to Washington, and to assemble his government and call for cabinet members and staffers. As our world shrank with the introduction of faster communication and transportation, this lame duck period felt like it was getting longer and longer. It got to the point where this this long gap in governments, where the current president was no longer empowered as the executive by a vote of the people but was still technically in charge, began to impede the progress of the nation.
Responding to this growing need, Congress drafted an amendment to the constitution that would alter the election calendar for both the president and Congress. Congress, who had earlier only been constitutionally mandated to meet once in December, would now move their new session (featuring new members) to the January following the election, eliminating a lengthy lame duck session. For the president, the inaugural was moved up from March 4th to January 20th (or 21st if the 20th should fall on a Sunday.) The amendment was ratified by all 48 states and went into effect in April of 1933, meaning the first presidential inauguration on January 20 would follow the 1936 election, one ultimately won by Franklin D. Roosevelt.