UNITED STATES:AS HILLARY Clinton stood before four giant, Corinthian columns at the final rally of her presidential campaign, the mood in the Great Hall of Washington's National Building Museum was one of deepest melancholy.
She arrived on stage to the strains of Better Days, a gloomy dirge by the Goo Goo Dolls, and waved to the staff, the fundraisers and the supporters who had seen their dream die with hers last week.
"It's like a death in the family," said Patricia Lengermann, a supporter from Maryland, as she wiped her eyes.
Built in the late 19th century to receive thousands of wounded Civil War soldiers claiming their pensions, the venue itself seemed to be a metaphor for Saturday's event, as battle-weary campaign workers hugged one another and muttered words of comfort.
After 16 months spent trying to bury Barack Obama, Clinton now came to praise him, offering the Democratic presumptive nominee the unequivocal support she had withheld for almost a week after his victory. "Today, as I suspend my campaign, I congratulate him on the victory he has won and the extraordinary race he has run. I endorse him, and throw my full support behind him.
"And I ask all of you to join me in working as hard for Barack Obama as you have for me," she said. "We may have started on separate journeys - but today, our paths have merged. And we are all heading toward the same destination, united and more ready than ever to win in November and to turn our country around because so much is at stake."
Before Saturday's speech, some Democrats feared that Clinton would be grudging or ambiguous in her support for Obama, hoping quietly perhaps that he would lose in November so she could run again in 2012.
There was no trace of equivocation, however, as she went through the policies that matter most to Democrats, from economic justice to healthcare reform and withdrawal from Iraq, repeating again and again: "That's why we have to help elect Barack Obama our president".
Every time Clinton mentioned Obama, most of her supporters cheered, but many booed, among them Lengermann and her friend Jill Brantley.
"We will not vote for him," Brantley said.
"He stole the nomination." Lengermann said they wouldn't vote for Republican John McCain but would write in Clinton's name on the ballot, adding that Obama is "really, really not qualified to be president".
During the primary campaign, Clinton won support from 18 million voters, including older people, Catholics and the white working-class, but the core of her support was among women, many of whom saw her candidacy as emblematic of their struggle for equal opportunity.
"As we gather here today in this historic magnificent building, the 50th woman to leave this earth is orbiting overhead. If we can blast 50 women into space, we will someday launch a woman into the White House," Clinton said.
"Although we weren't able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it's got about 18 million cracks in it," she said.
"And the light is shining through like never before, filling us all with the hope and the sure knowledge that the path will be a little easier next time."
Bruised by defeat and bitter about what they saw as a biased media campaign against their candidate, many Clinton supporters are struggling to move on from the primary campaign.
Clinton herself needed a few days to adjust to the reality of losing to a first-term senator who was unknown outside Illinois four years ago, but on Saturdayshe counselled her supporters against looking back.
"Life is too short, time is too precious, and the stakes are too high to dwell on what might have been.
"We have to work together for what still can be.
"And that is why I will work my heart out to make sure that Senator Obama is our next president and I hope and pray that all of you will join me in that effort," she said.
Jerry Stein, a campaign volunteer from Virginia, said that Clinton supporters should get behind Obama and accept that they lost the nomination contest fair and square.
"I was a Hillary fan. I think she would have made a better president. But I have no problem supporting Obama," he said.
"I don't really think there was a conspiracy against her. She went in with a bad attitude, that she was inevitable."