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Whose inaugural speech was the longest? A side-by-side comparison

Presidential Inauguration of William Henry Harrison, in Washington D.C., on March 4, 1841.
Lithograph, Charles Fenderich/Education Images
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Universal History Archive/Getty Images
Presidential Inauguration of William Henry Harrison, in Washington D.C., on March 4, 1841.

Most presidents give a public speech after being sworn in, known as the inaugural address.

Only five did not: John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Chester Arthur and Gerald Ford.

All of the other speeches have ranged considerably in length, according to POTUS.com and the American Presidency Project.

George Washington's second inaugural address was the shortest — he delivered a mere 135 words in March 1793, in a speech lasting less than two minutes.

William Henry Harrison's 1841 speech was the longest, clocking in at 8,460 words and taking 1 hour and 45 minutes to deliver on a particularly blustery day. He died exactly a month into his presidency of pneumonia, the result of a cold that many believed he caught outside on the day of his swearing-in.

Harrison's speech was some 3,000 words longer than that of the runner-up, William Taft — who, incidentally, is the only person who has both taken and administered the presidential oath.

Trump's first inaugural address in 2017 came out to 1,433 words. Here's a look at how past presidents' speeches stack up:

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Rachel Treisman (she/her) is a writer and editor for the Morning Edition live blog, which she helped launch in early 2021.