Barack Obama first gained national attention with his talents as a public speaker.

While still a state senator from Illinois, Obama wowed the audience at the 2004 Democratic National Convention with a showcase speech that challenged Americans to remember that “There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America — there’s the United States of America.”

Then in the 2008 Democratic primaries, his “Yes We Can!” speeches inspired both audiences and a hit music video by singer Will.I.Am.

With such a track record, Obama’s inauguration speech was eagerly anticipated and will be the talk of the nation for the rest of this week.

For all our history, people have looked to inauguration speeches for messages that define a president’s goals and personality in office.

One of the most famous was delivered by President John F. Kennedy, when he took the oath of office as the second youngest president in 1961.

“Ask not what your country can do for you,” the 43-year-old Kennedy told the nation. “Ask what you can do for your country.”

That line has been repeated over and over by other presidents, along with Kennedy’s inaugural declaration to the world that “we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

Other presidents have used their inaugural speeches to inspire the country in times of crisis.

Taking over in 1933 during the economic collapse of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt used his first inaugural address to give the nation the famous words of encouragement that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

“This is … the time to speak the truth … frankly and boldly,” Roosevelt asserted.

And in words that could apply to economic challenges today, he declared: “In our progress toward a resumption of work, we require two safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order: There must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments [and] there must be an end to speculation with other people’s money. …”

No president faced greater challenges for an inauguration speech than Abraham Lincoln, when he took the oath of office a second time in March 1865, just a month before America’s Civil War ground to a close.

He acknowledged that neither side had expected “the magnitude or the duration” of the war, and he prayed “that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.”

At the same time, he used his second inaugural speech to offer one of history’s most eloquent calls for healing:

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace.”