The moment was wrapped around 42 words and lasted 31 seconds, and when it was over the United States had a new president and a new history.

Barack Hussein Obama - the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas - completed an improbable journey to the White House on a brilliant, frigid noon on the west side of the U.S. Capitol.

And in that moment, he wrote the first words in a new chapter of America's complicated history of race relations, a history that stretches back to 1776 and before, a history that still, in some ways, confounds and confuses. But this was a powerful and poignant day of transformation, a day of hope, exuberance and tears.

A black man was president of the United States of America, a country founded, in part, on the labor of African slaves. A country ripped apart in a war waged over the question of whether blacks should be free. A country that grappled with long years of Jim Crow and the farce of separate but equal.

Obama was the 43rd man to raise his right hand and swear to uphold the Constitution.

His experience was unique in comparison with all those who came before.

I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear . . .

Tuesday arrived bitterly cold - a frozen-air kind of morning that chilled the legs and the nose and the lungs. Then a spectacular sun arced from behind the U.S. Capitol, as a throng estimated by some at more than 1 million streamed onto the National Mall, perhaps the largest number ever to assemble there. The flag-waving, sniffling crowd stretched west, from the Capitol steps to the Washington Monument and far beyond.

Just a wisp of a cloud brushed the sky here and there.

Maybe 30 yards from the stage where Obama would take the oath of office stood Tom Lehner, a 47-year-old white man from Alexandria, Va.

"It proves the fact that anyone can grow up to be president," Lehner said. "It's the beginning of a new day.

"For many people, it's the fulfillment of a dream. For many it represents a moment when optimism finally arrives."

There was, briefly at least, no politics, no partisanship. Introductions held steady for leaders of both parties, present and past.

There was silver-haired Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush, limping noticeably, and Bill Clinton. For a time, Clinton and the elder Bush broke protocol, walking side-by-side, chatting, smiling.

President George W. Bush arrived, appearing relaxed as he faced his final minutes in office.

The temperature rested at 27 degrees.

. . . that I will execute the office of President of the United States faithfully . . .

At noon Washington time - the exact minute the U.S. Constitution made him president - the carefully orchestrated ceremony fell off schedule. It was four minutes before Obama, a red necktie contrasting against his dark topcoat, stepped to the front of the stage with his wife, Michelle, and their smiling daughters, Sasha and Malia.

Throughout his unprecedented campaign, Obama had been keenly aware of history. He accepted the Democratic Party's nomination in Denver last Aug. 28 on the 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech and the 53rd anniversary of the murder of a young black man named Emmitt Till in Money, Miss., a lynching that poured fuel on the civil rights movement.

On Tuesday, Obama reached back into history again, placed his left hand gently on a burgundy Bible cradled in his wife's gloved hands. The Bible had been used by Abraham Lincoln at his first swearing-in ceremony in 1861, the country on the verge of the Civil War that would ultimately make blacks free.

"Are you prepared to take the oath, senator?" asked John Roberts Jr., chief justice of the United States Supreme Court.

"I am," Obama replied.

Despite some verbal gymnastics - Obama talked over Roberts at one point, and Roberts inserted the word "faithfully" in the wrong place - it was over quickly.

And with it came the end of George W. Bush's presidency.

. . . and will, to the best of my ability . . .

Obama, surrounded by bullet-proof glass, stepped to the microphone. At times sweeping, at times pointed, Obama nodded to the realities he faces in the White House. Two wars. A broken economy. A partisan divide.

"That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood," he said. "Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age."

He issued a call for action.

"What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility," he said, "a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task."

He spoke of both the future and the past and, in some measure, of his place in history.

"We remain a young nation, but in the words of scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things," Obama said. "The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness. . . . This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed - why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath."

Obama's speech lasted 18 minutes.

. . . preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Thirty-five minutes after taking the oath, just after the U.S. Navy Band's chorus, the "Sea Chanters," delivered a graceful rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner, Obama turned once more to the man he succeeded, shaking Bush's hand, patting him gently on the back.

Then, Obama made his way from the stage, shaking hands here and there, giving a hug and a kiss, heading back into the U.S. Capitol.

Heading toward a history yet to be written.

So help me God.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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