The well-wishers hoped not just for a glimpse of the 44th president-in-waiting but for a cameo role in history.

Joan Schiff, 47, a small business owner who campaigned for Obama, turned out for his departure from Philadelphia.

"At some point, you look up and think, 'I am in a moment,'" she said.

Carolyn Tyson, 55, came from Medford, N.J. to catch Obama's stop in Wilmington. She arrived a good seven hours early, at 6:30 a.m., to see the new president. "It's unreal, it's surreal," she said of Obama's election. Tyson, who is black, said she never thought she'd see a president of color.

The heady, celebratory air was tempered, however, by the tumult of the times, and Obama was quick to acknowledge them.

"Only a handful of times in our history has a generation been confronted with challenges so vast," he said. "An economy that is faltering. Two wars, one that needs to be ended responsibly, one that needs to be waged wisely. A planet that is warming from our unsustainable dependence on oil."

"There will be false starts and setbacks, frustrations and disappointments," he said, "and we will be called to show patience even as we act with fierce urgency."

While talking about the future, Obama reflected on the past, echoing the words of the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln and President John F. Kennedy. He cited the founding fathers who risked everything with no assurance of success in Philadelphia in the summer of 1776:

"They were willing to put all they were and all they had on the line — their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor — for a set of ideals that continue to light the world: That we are equal. That our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness come not from our laws, but from our maker. And that a government of, by, and for the people can endure."

The president-elect's triumphant day started with a sober discussion of the country's future with 41 people he met during his long quest for the White House. Preparing to board the train, Obama said that "what's required is a new declaration of independence — from ideology and small thinking, prejudice and bigotry."

Obama left the train briefly in Baltimore to address a frozen-but-hearty crowd of more than 40,000, echoing his earlier remarks and alluding to the men who defended nearby Fort McHenry.

"We are here today not simply to pay tribute to those patriots who founded our nation in Philadelphia or defended it in Baltimore, but to take up the cause for which they gave so much," he said.

Back in Washington, members of his administration looked beyond the inauguration to the details of governing.

Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett addressed the U.S. Conference of Mayors and asked for help pushing through legislation to jump-start the moribund economy.

Although Obama's path tracked Lincoln's and took on the same overtone of high security, it wasn't the journey of virtual secrecy that the 16th president-elect took so long ago on the eve of the Civil War. Lincoln was smuggled under cover of darkness from one train station to another to avoid a feared assassination attempt.