Historic

Obamas Head for D.C.

First family-to-be on whistle-stop tour.

Taking a page from Lincoln’s playbook, Obama and his wife, Michelle—whose 45th birthday is today—and daughters, Malia and Sasha, boarded a train in chilly Philadelphia this morning for a six-city whistle-stop tour to Washington. The soon-to-be first family was greeted by cheering crowds along the 137-mile route, then made a stop in Wilmington, Delaware, to pick up Joe Biden and his family, and did “slow rolls” through the towns of Claymont, Delaware, and Edgewood, Maryland, where viewers caught a glimpse Obama waving from the back balcony of the 80-year-old Georgia 300 rail car. He delivered a speech in Baltimore to a crowd of 40,000, in which he recalled the troops at Maryland's Fort McHenry who defeated the British in the War of 1812, before continuing on to Washington's Union Station, where the tour will conclude.