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Obama arrives in Washington for inauguration
AFP - 28 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (AFP) - - Feted by thousands and invoking history to steel the United States against crises at home and abroad, Barack Obama rode a hope-fuelled inaugural train to Washington Saturday, three days before he is sworn in as president.
Rejoicing supporters braved knifing cold to cheer Obama along the train tracks from Philadelphia to Washington, as he paid homage to his hero Abraham Lincoln who took the same route to the White House a century and a half ago.
Along the way, Obama urged his countrymen to unite in a new "Declaration of Independence" from bigotry, small thinking, prejudice and ideology.
In Philadelphia, the cradle of US independence, and again before a shivering 40,000-strong crowd in Baltimore, Obama told Americans to draw strength from US independence heroes at a time of rare national peril.
"Let's make sure this election is not the end of what we do to change America, but the beginning," the president-elect said.
"Only a handful of times in our history has a generation been confronted with challenges so vast," said Obama, 47, highlighting the diving economy and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"And yet while our problems may be new, what is required to overcome them is not," he told around 300 supporters in a flag-draped station waiting room.
"What is required is a new declaration of independence, not just in our nation, but in our own lives -- from ideology and small thinking, prejudice and bigotry -- an appeal not to our easy instincts but to our better angels."
Exuberant supporters gathered to glimpse the ceremonial train, dubbed the Inaugural Express.
"Hallelujah, we did it!" read one poster held up by a supporter, while another declared "Hail to the Chief" as Obama's train did a "slow roll" through the Delaware town of Claymont.
A beaming Obama stood at the back of a 1930s Pullman caboose, waving to the crowds, recalling the "whistle stop" campaign tours used by the presidents of yesteryear.
Dyone Watson, 20, waited for hours to see Obama in a war memorial plaza in frigid Baltimore.
"I'm starving, cold and my feet are numb," said Watson. "But it's definitely worth it."
"It's just beautiful. It just makes me want to do more with my life," said Will Moore, 22, as he stood with his two-year-old niece.
"It's just a joy for everybody. It's about time that we needed change ... He (Obama) is showing us we can do whatever we put our minds to. Just keep on trying, never give up."
There were signs of overt security. Police cars and officers along the route patrolled crowds and areas of scrubby woodland, and a Chinook helicopter hovered protectively overhead while black-clad sharpshooters perched on city rooftops.
In Wilmington, Obama stepped off the train to be greeted by his vice president-to-be Joseph Biden, before the pair fired up a large crowd in the station parking lot.
"At our most difficult moments, our nation has always chosen a leader that times demand, and I believe that's why this nation has turned to Barack Obama," Biden told a big crowd which had earlier sung "Happy Birthday" to the next US First Lady Michelle Obama, who turned 45 Saturday.
Obama lauded his vice presidential pick as a middle-class hero, after his 36 years of commuting to his Senate seat from his hometown in Wilmington.
"Together, we know that there's work to be done. Together we know that America faces its own crossroads, a nation at war, and an economy in turmoil, an American dream that feels like it's slipping away," Obama said.
"Together, we know that the American people are facing adversity, and that the time has come to pick ourselves up once again."
The Obama express rumbled into the gritty Maryland port city of Baltimore , where tens of thousands of people waited for hours in freezing temperatures and endured intense security precautions to see the incoming president address the crowd at about 4:15 pm (2115 GMT).
The train arrived in Washington in the early evening at the end of the first of four days of inaugural celebrations.
The journey was the last stage of a quest for the presidency that took Obama from the declaration of his candidacy in the snows of early 2007 in Springfield, Illinois -- where, like Lincoln, he served as a state legislator -- across the length and breadth of the United States, and even to Europe and the Middle East.
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Barack Obama exhorted Americans Saturday to unite in a "new declaration of independence" from bigotry, small thinking and ideology, as he set off by train to Washington to take power. Duration: 00:49
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