As soon as President Barack Obama was done speaking Monday night, I grabbed my camera and coat and ran out the door.
I live just a few blocks from the White House, so it was easy for me to walk there and join the hundreds of people who had already arrived; at its peak the celebration included a few thousand people.
I could already hear the roar of the crowd as I approached and could see a dozen people heading the same way I was. Police lined both ends of the pedestrian street the White House sits on. As I passed, an ambulance arrived and joined the line of waiting police cars, ready in case the crowd got out of hand.
Some people were still in their pajamas. People had grabbed whatever red, white or blue colored objects they could find.
At Lafayette Square and on the plaza in front of the White House, people climbed trees, some to rally the crowd and some to see the view. At one point a person in a Spider-Man costume climbed a tree, too.
Then came the lamp posts. To the cheers of the crowd, people scaled the poles to affix flags at the top.
Flags were a constant of the night. There were hundreds waved of every size, and a group of people draped one over the fence in front of the White House. One person waved a Revolutionary War-era “Don’t Tread on Me” flag. Another person waved the flag of Pakistan.
Every song about America that anyone knew the words to was sung. Between the chants of “USA! USA!” people sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “America the Beautiful.”
People drank Champagne. People smoked cigars. People hugged. People cheered.
It was a moment of unity. A woman holding an “Obama-Biden” sign found herself next to a man holding a “Bush-Cheney” sign. Both were lifted onto the shoulders of the crowd to applause and cheers.
Lafayette Square, which lies directly north of the White House, was sort of the outside edge of the celebration. There, many people were simply standing, watching the seething mass of humanity before them, as if to soak in the historical moment.
Most statues in Lafayette Square are surrounded by fences, but people started jumping them and as the night progressed every statue soon had people hanging on it. People climbed onto the horse along with President Andrew Jackson. And the two large vase statues were prime territory to watch the masses from.
In a far corner of the park stands a statue of Thaddeus Kosciuszko, a Polish patriot who came to fight in the American Revolution. The statue is of special interest to me because my home county is named in honor of Kosciuszko. Already with a group of people sitting at its base, the figure of the freedom-fighter faces H Street, where a steady procession of cars was driving as if in a parade. People honked horns and leaned out of windows to wave flags.
The statue probably hadn’t seen such crowds since Obama’s Inauguration Day. I wondered what the real Kosciuszko would have thought of all this. More than 200 years after fighting against oppression, would he realize the country he fought for is still standing? And that for the people celebrating, Monday marked another historic day in American history? A day when people felt that justice had been done and freedom had prevailed.