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Clinton wistful as White House turns 200

WASHINGTON, Nov 1 (Reuters) -- President Bill Clinton on Wednesday took a wistful look back at his term in the White House as he commemorated the arrival of the building's first occupant 200 years ago.

"It is still a thrill every time I drive up in a car, or land on the back lawn in the helicopter, just to look at this magnificent place, and to feel the honour of sharing its history for the past eight years," Clinton said.

The president was speaking 200 years, almost to hour, after President John Adams arrived at the uncompleted White House to take up residence.

Clinton spoke from the balcony over the White House south entrance as he addressed a small crowd that included Adams' descendants. He watched as an actor portraying the nation's second president rode up to the entrance in a black carriage pulled by four white horses and escorted by a U.S. Army fife and drum corps.

The president was joined at the ceremony by his daughter, Chelsea. First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton was campaigning in her race for a U.S. Senate seat in New York.

"Hillary, Chelsea and I love this house. We have loved living here," Clinton said. "We are profoundly grateful to the American people for letting it be our home for these eight years."

It was in the White House, he said, that President Thomas Jefferson planned the Lewis and Clark expedition, that Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves -- "some of whose ancestors have quarried the very stone from which the White House was built" -- and Franklin Roosevelt held his "fireside chat" radio addresses through the Depression and the Second World War.

"These walls carry the story of America," Clinton said.

The recreation of Adams' arrival took some historical liberties. The real Adams showed up unannounced in 1800 with "no entourage of any kind," historian David McCullough said at the ceremony.

Inside, the walls were still wet with plaster and only a few rooms were ready.

The only picture hanging, McCullough said, was a Gilbert Stuart portrait of the first president, George Washington, that remains in the White House today.

On his first morning in the White House, Adams wrote a letter to his wife, Abigail, that contained a passage now engraved on a fireplace mantle in the building's State dining room.

"May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof," Adams wrote, his words recalled by McCullough in Wednesday's ceremony.

Adams' stay in the White House was short. Defeated for reelection, he moved out after less than four months to be succeeded by Jefferson.

However, Adams lived to see his son, John Quincy Adams, live in the White House as president. John Quincy Adams was the only president's son ever to be elected to the highest office. American voters on Wednesday were less than a week away from deciding whether George W. Bush would be the second.

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.


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Wednesday, November 1, 2000


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