(October 27, 1858–January 6, 1919), was the 26th President of the United States, 1901–09, the youngest man to hold the office; Vice-President under William McKinley, 1900, assuming the Presidency after McKinley’s assassination; began construction of the Panama Canal, 1906; established the U.S. Forest Service, 1906, and called a national conservation conference, 1908; awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his arbitration in the Russo-Japanese War, 1905; Governor of New York, 1898–1900; Lieutenant Colonel in the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry Regiment, known as the “Rough Riders,” becoming the hero of the Battle of San Juan Hill, Cuba, July 1, 1898, during the Spanish-American War; Assistant Secretary of the Navy, 1897–98; president of New York Board of Police Commissioners, 1895–97; U.S. Civil Service Commissioner, 1889–95; married Edith Kermit Carow, 1886; ranched cattle at the Elkhorn Ranch in the Dakota Territory, 1884–86, following the tragic death of both his mother and first wife on February 14, 1884; member of the New York State Assembly, 1881–84; married Alice Hathaway Lee, 1880; and graduated from Harvard, 1880.
On Saturday, September 14, 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt issued a Proclamation of a National Day of Mourning and Prayer:
A terrible bereavement has befallen our people. The President of the United States has been struck down; a crime not only against the Chief Magistrate, but against every law-abiding and liberty-loving citizen.
President McKinley crowned a life of largest love for his fellow men, of earnest endeavor for their welfare, by a death of Christian fortitude; and both the way in which he lived his life and the way in which, in the supreme hour of trial, he met death will remain forever a precious heritage of our people.
It is meet that we as a nation express our abiding love and reverence for his life, our deep sorrow for his untimely death.
Now, therefore, I, Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, do appoint Thursday next, September 19, the day in which the body of the dead President will be laid in its last earthly resting place, as a day of mourning and prayer throughout the United States. I earnestly recommend all the people to assemble on that day in their respective places of divine worship, there to bow down in submission to the will of Almighty God, and to pay out of full hearts the homage of love and reverence to the memory of the great and good President, whose death has so sorely smitten the nation.
In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the city of Washington, the fourteenth day of September, A.D. 1901, and of the Independence of the United States the one hundred and twenty-sixth. Theodore Roosevelt.
By the President: John Hay, Secretary of State.3006
On November 2, 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt issued a Proclamation of a National Day of Thanksgiving:
The season in nigh when, according to the time-hallowed custom of our people, the President appoints a day as the especial occasion for praise and thanksgiving to God.
This Thanksgiving finds the people still bowed with sorrow for the death of a great and good President. We mourn President McKinley because we so loved and honored him; and the manner of his death should awaken in the breasts of our people a keen anxiety for the country, and at the same time a resolute purpose not to be driven by any calamity from the path of strong, orderly, popular liberty which as a nation we have thus far safely trod.
Yet inspite of this great disaster, it is nevertheless true that no people on earth have such abundant cause for thanksgiving as we have. The past year in particular has been one of peace and plenty. We have prospered in things intellectual and spiritual. Let us remember that, as much has been given us, much will be expected from us; and that true homage comes from the heart as well as from the lips and shows itself in deeds. We can best prove our thankfulness to the Almighty by the way in which on this earth and at this time each of us does his duty to his fellow men.
Now, therefore, I, Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States, do hereby designate as a day of general thanksgiving Thursday, the 28th of this present November, and do recommend that throughout the land the people cease from their wonted occupations, and at their several homes and places of worship reverently thank the Giver of All Good for the countless blessings of our national life.
In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the city of Washington this second day of November, A.D. 1901, and of the Independence of the United States the one hundred and twenty-sixth. Theodore Roosevelt.
By the President: John Hay, Secretary of State.3007
On December 3, 1901, in his First Annual Message to Congress, President Theodore Roosevelt stated:
On the sixth of September, President McKinley was shot by an anarchist while attending the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo, and died in that city on the fourteenth of that month. … And this was the man at whom the assassin struck! That there might be nothing lacking to complete the Judas-like infamy of his act, he took advantage of an occasion when the President was meeting the people generally. … The shock, the grief of the country, are bitter in the minds of all who saw the dark days, while the President yet hovered between life and death. At last the light was stilled in the kindly eyes and the breath went from the lips that even in mortal agony uttered no words save of forgiveness to his murderer, of love for his friends, and of unfaltering trust in the will of the Most High. …
If the hand of the Lord is heavy upon any country, if flood or drought comes, human wisdom is powerless to avert the calamity. Moreover, no law can guard us against the consequences of our own folly. …
Each man must work for himself, and unless he so works no outside help can avail him; but each man must remember also that he is indeed his brother’s keeper. …
We need every honest and efficient immigrant fitted to become an American citizen, every immigrant who comes here to stay, who brings here a strong body, a stout heart, a good head, and a resolute purpose, to do his duty well in every way and to bring up his children as law-abiding and God-fearing members of the community. …
In the midst of our affliction we reverently thank the Almighty that we are at peace with the nations of mankind; and we firmly intend that our policy shall be such as to continue unbroken these international relations of mutual respect and good will.3008
On July 4, 1902, in a Proclamation of Amnesty to the inhabitants of the Philippines who were involved in an insurrection, President Theodore Roosevelt stated:
Now, therefore, be it known that I, Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the power and authority vested by the Constitution, do hereby proclaim and declare, without reservation or condition, except as hereinafter provided, a full and complete pardon and amnesty to all persons in the Philippine archipelago who have participated in the insurrections aforesaid. …
Every person who shall seek to avail himself of this proclamation shall take and subscribe the following oath before any authority in the Philippine archipelago authorized to administer oaths, namely: “I solemnly swear (or affirm) that I recognize and accept the supreme authority of the United States of America in the Philippine Islands and will maintain true faith and allegiance thereto; that I impose upon myself this obligation voluntarily without mental reservation or purpose of evasion, so help me God.”3009
On September 22, 1902, at a Banquet of Spanish War Veterans, Detroit, Michigan, President Theodore Roosevelt stated:
I preach the gospel of hope to you men of the West who in thought and life embody this gospel of hope. … No great destiny ever came to a people who feared the future, who feared failure more than they hoped for success. Stout of heart, we see across the dangers the great future that lies beyond, and we rejoice as a giant refreshed, as a strong man girt for the race; and we go down into the arena where the nations strive for mastery, our hearts lifted with the faith that to us and to our children and our children’s children it shall be given to make this Republic the mightiest among the peoples of mankind.3010
On October 29, 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt issued a Proclamation of a National Day of Thanksgiving:
According to the yearly custom of our people, it falls upon the President at this season to appoint a day of festival and thanksgiving to God.
Over a century and a quarter has passed since this country took its place among the nations of the earth, and during that time we have had on the whole more to be thankful for than has fallen to the lot of any people. Generation after generation has grown to manhood and passed away. Each has had to bear its peculiar burdens, each to face its special crises, and each has known years of grim trial, when the country was menaced by malice domestic or foreign levy, when the hand of the Lord was heavy upon it in drouth or flood or pestilence, when in bodily distress and anguish of soul it paid the penalty of folly and a froward heart. Nevertheless, decade by decade, we have struggled onward and upward; we now abundantly enjoy material well-being, and under the favor of the Most High we are striving earnestly to achieve moral and spiritual uplifting. The year that has just closed has been one of peace and of overflowing plenty. Rarely has any people enjoyed greater prosperity than we are now enjoying. For this we render heartfelt and solemn thanks to the Giver of Good; and we seek to praise Him not by words only but by deeds, by the way in which we do our duty to ourselves and to our fellow men.
Now, therefore, I, Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States, do hereby designate as a day of general thanksgiving Thursday, the twenty-seventh of the coming November, and do recommend that throughout the land the people cease from their ordinary occupations, and in their several homes and places of worship render thanks unto Almighty God for the manifold blessings of the past year.
In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington this 29th day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and two and of the independence of the United States the one hundred and twenty-seventh. Theodore Roosevelt.
By the President: John Hay, Secretary of State.3011
On December 2, 1902, in his Second Annual Message to Congress, President Theodore Roosevelt stated:
Ours in not a creed of the weakling and the coward; ours in the gospel of hope and of triumphant endeavor.3012
On March 3, 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt responded to the Senate concerning the dismissal of Captain Edward L. Bailey from the U.S. Army:
In September, 1893, [Captain Bailey] was tried and convicted of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman in borrowing money from a fellow-officer and not repaying it, although repeatedly promising to do so; in entering a private house in uniform, without permission, in the absence of the owner, beckoning to the owner’s wife with his hand; refusing to leave the house when requested so to do by her; and in going to a public saloon in Boise City, Idaho, and chasing a prostitute about the saloon, and going to a corner of the saloon, holding a conversation with her while in uniform of a commissioned officer.
It appears that pending his trial upon these charges, he being under arrest, he was authorized by his commanding officer to visit Boise City for four hours, exclusive of meal time, beginning at 11:30 a.m., for the purpose of attending to personal business; that in disregard of his arrest he went to Boise City in the night of April 15–16, and there visited a saloon and drank with citizens at the bar between 11:30 p.m. and 1 a.m., and also visited a house of prostitution and behaved in a boisterous and disorderly manner in company with the same prostitute whom he was charged with chasing about the saloon, being at the time in the uniform of a commissioned officer.
Upon these acts additional charges were made of conduct to prejudice of good order and military discipline and conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, and he was convicted upon these charges also. He was sentenced to be dismissed the service, and the sentence was approved and confirmed by the President.3013
On November 12, 1903, the Minister of the Republic of Panama addressed President Theodore Roosevelt:
Mr. President: In according to the minister plenipotentiary of the Republic of Panama the honor of presenting to you his letters of credence you admit into the family of nations the weakest and the last born of the republics of the New World. It owes its existence to the outburst of the indignant grief which stirred the hearts of the citizens of the Isthmus on beholding the despotic actions which sought to forbid their country from fulfilling the destinies vouchsafed to it by Providence. In consecrating its right to exist, Mr. President, you put an end to what appeared to be the interminable controversy as to the rival waterways.3014
On October 24, 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt issued a Proclamation of a National Day of Praise and Thanksgiving:
The season is at hand when according to the custom of our people it falls upon the President to appoint a day of praise and thanksgiving to God.
During the last year the Lord has dealt bountifully with us, giving us peace at home and abroad and the chance for our citizens to work for their welfare unhindered by war, famine or plague. It behooves us not only to rejoice greatly because of what has been given us, but to accept it with a solemn sense of responsibility, realizing that under Heaven it rests with us ourselves to show that we are worthy to use aright what has thus been entrusted to our care. In no other place and at no other time has the experiment of government of the people, by the people, for the people, been tried on so vast a scale as here in our own country in the opening years of the 20th Century. Failure would not only be a dreadful thing for us, but a dreadful thing for all mankind, because it would mean loss of hope for all who believe in the power and the righteousness of liberty. Therefore, in thanking God for the mercies extended to us in the past, we beseech Him that He may not withhold them in the future, and that our hearts may be roused to war steadfastly for good and against all the forces of evil, public and private. We pray for strength, and light, so that in the coming years we may with cleanliness, fearlessness, and wisdom, do our allotted work on the earth in such a manner as to show that we are not altogether unworthy of the blessings we have received.
In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington this 24th day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and three and of the independence of the United States the one hundred and twenty-eighth. Theodore Roosevelt.
By the President: John Hay, Secretary of State.3015
On September 24, 1904, in his International Peace Movement address given at the Reception of the Interparliamentary Union, President Theodore Roosevelt stated:
I again greet you and bid you welcome in the name of the American people, and wish you God-speed in your efforts for the common good of mankind.3016
On Tuesday, November 1, 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt issued a Proclamation of a National Day of Thanksgiving:
It has pleased Almighty God to bring the American people in safety and honor through another year, and, in accordance with the long unbroken custom handed down to us by our forefathers, the time has come when a special day shall be set apart in which to thank Him who holds all nations in the hollow of His hand for the mercies thus vouchsafed to us. During the century and a quarter of our national life we as a people have been blessed beyond all others, and for this we owe humble and heartfelt thanks to the Author of all blessings. The year that has closed has been one of peace within our own borders as well as between us and all other nations. The harvests have been abundant, and those who work, whether with hand or brain, are prospering greatly. Reward has waited upon honest effort. We have been enabled to do our duty to ourselves and to others. Never has there been a time when religious and charitable effort has been more evident. Much has been given to us and much will be expected from us. We speak of what has been done by this nation in no spirit of boastfulness or vainglory, but with full and reverent realization that our strength is as nothing unless we are helped from above.
Hitherto we have been given the heart and the strength to do the tasks allotted to us as they severally arose. We are thankful for all that has been done for us in the past, and we pray that in the future we may be strengthened in the unending struggle to do our duty fearlessly and honestly, with charity and goodwill, with respect for ourselves and with love toward our fellow-men. In this great republic the effort to combine national strength with personal freedom is being tried on a scale more gigantic than ever before in the world’s history. Our success will mean much not only for ourselves, but for the future of all mankind; and every man or woman in our land should feel the grave responsibility resting upon him or her, for in the last analysis this success must depend upon the high average of our individual citizenship, upon the way in which each of us does his duty by himself and his neighbor.
Now, therefore, I, Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States, do hereby appoint and set apart Thursday, the twenty-fourth of this November, to be observed as a day of festival and thanksgiving by all the people of the United States at home or abroad, and do recommend that on that day they cease from their ordinary occupations and gather in their several places of worship or in their homes, devoutly to give thanks unto Almighty God for the benefits he has conferred upon us as individuals and as a nation, and to beseech Him that in the future His Divine favor may be continued to us.
In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington this 1st day of November, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and four and of the independence of the United States the one hundred and twenty-ninth. Theodore Roosevelt.
By the President: John Hay, Secretary of State.3017
On Tuesday, December 6, 1904, in his Fourth Annual Message to Congress, President Theodore Roosevelt stated:
The slum exacts a heavy total of death from those who dwell therein; and this is the case not merely in the great crowded slums of Washington. In Washington people can not afford to ignore the harm that this causes. No Christian and civilized community can afford to show a happy-go-lucky lack of concern for the youth of to-day; for, if so, the community will have to pay a terrible penalty of financial burden and social degradation in the to-morrow. There should be severe child-labor and factory-inspection laws. It is very desirable that married women should not work in factories.
The prime duty of the man is to work, to be the breadwinner; the prime duty of the woman is to be the mother, the housewife. All questions of tariff and finance sink into utter insignificance when compared with the tremendous, the vital importance of trying to shape conditions so that these two duties of the man and of the woman can be fulfilled under reasonably favorable circumstances. …
It is equally true that among the men of whom we are most proud as Americans no distinction whatever can be drawn between those who themselves or whose parents came over in sailing ships or steamer from across the water and those whose ancestors’ stepped ashore into the wooded wilderness at Plymouth or at the mouth of the Hudson, the Delaware, or the James nearly three centuries ago. No fellow-citizen of ours is entitled to any peculiar regard because of the way in which he worships his Maker. …
There is no enemy of free government more dangerous and none so insidious as the corruption of the electorate. No one defends or excuses corruption, and it would seem to follow that none would oppose vigorous measures to eradicate it. I recommend the enactment of a law directed against bribery and corruption in Federal elections. … and provisions for the publication not only of the expenditures for nomination and elections of all candidates but also of all contributions received and expenditures made by political committees. …
The steady aim of this Nation, as of all enlightened nations, should be to strive to bring ever nearer the day when there shall prevail throughout the world the peace of justice. There are kinds of peace which are highly undesirable, which are in the long run as destructive as any war. Tyrants and oppressors have many times made a wilderness and called it peace. Many times peoples who were slothful or timid or shortsighted, who had been enervated by ease or by luxury, or misled by false teachings, have shrunk in unmanly fashion from doing duty that was stern and that needed self-sacrifice, and have sought to hide from their own minds their shortcomings, their ignoble motives, by calling them love of peace. The peace of tyrannous terror, the peace of craven weakness, the peace of injustice, all these should be shunned as we shun unrighteous war. …
One of our great poets has well and finely said that freedom is not a gift that tarries long in the hands of cowards. Neither does it tarry long in the hands of those too slothful, too dishonest, or too unintelligent to exercise it. The eternal vigilance which is the price of liberty must be exercised, sometimes to guard against outside foes; although of course far more often to guard against our own selfish or thoughtless shortcomings. …
Yet it is not to be expected that a people like ours, which in spite of certain very obvious shortcomings, nevertheless as a whole shows by its consistent practice its belief in the principles of civil and religious liberty. … It is inevitable that such a nation should desire eagerly to give expression to its horror on an occasion like that of the massacre of the Jews in Kishenef, or when it witnesses such systematic and long-extended cruelty and oppression as the cruelty and oppression of which the Armenians have been the victims, and which have won for them the indignant pity of the civilized world. …
It has proved very difficult to secure from Russia the right for our Jewish fellow-citizens to receive passports and travel through Russian territory. Such conduct is not only unjust and irritating toward us, but it is difficult to see its wisdom from Russia’s standpoint. No conceivable good is accomplished by it. If an American Jew or an American Christian misbehaves himself in Russia he can at once be driven out; but the ordinary American Jew, like the ordinary American Christian, would behave just about as he behaves here. …
In the Philippine Island there has been during the past year a continuation of the steady progress. … Above all they should remember that their prime needs are moral and industrial, not political. … If they are safeguarded against oppression, and if their real wants, material and spiritual, are studied intelligently and in a spirit of friendly sympathy, much more good will be done.3018
On January 30, 1905, in a message to Congress, President Theodore Roosevelt stated:
The institution of marriage is, of course, at the very foundation of our social organization, and all influences that affect that institution are of vital concern to the people of the whole country. There is a widespread conviction that the divorce laws are dangerously lax and indifferently administered in some of the States, resulting in the diminishing regard for the sanctity of the marriage relation. The hope is entertained that co-operation amongst the several States can be secured to the end that there may be enacted upon the subject of marriage and divorce uniform laws, containing all possible safeguards for the security of the family.3019
On Saturday, March 4, 1905, in his Inaugural Address, President Theodore Roosevelt stated:
My fellow-citizens, no people on earth have more cause to be thankful than ours, and this is said reverently, in no spirit of boastfulness in our own strength, but with gratitude to the Giver of Good who has blessed us with the conditions which have enabled us to achieve so large a measure of well-being and happiness. …
Under a free government a mighty people can thrive best, alike as regards the things of the body and the things of the soul. Much has been given us, and much will rightfully be expected from us. We have duties to others and duties to ourselves; and we can shirk neither. …
We wish peace, but we wish the peace of justice, the peace of righteousness. … If we fail, the cause of free self-government throughout the world will rock to its foundations, and therefore our responsibility is heavy, to ourselves, to the world as it is today, and to the generations yet unborn. …
We know that no people needs such high traits of character as that people which seeks to govern its affairs aright through the freely expressed will of the freemen who compose it. But we have faith that we shall not prove false to the memories of the men of the mighty past. They did their work, they left us the splendid heritage we now enjoy. We in our turn have an assured confidence that we shall be able to leave this heritage unwasted and enlarged to our children and our children’s children.3020
On November 2, 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt issued a Proclamation of a National Day of Thanksgiving and Prayer:
When nearly three centuries ago the first settlers came to the country which has now become this great Republic, they fronted not only hardships and privation, but terrible risk to their lives. In those grim years the custom grew of setting apart one day in each year for a special service of thanksgiving to the Almighty for preserving the people through the changing seasons. The custom has now become national and hallowed by immemorial usage. We live in easier and more plentiful times than our forefathers, the men who with rugged strength faced the rugged days; and yet the dangers to national life are quite as great now as at any previous time in our history. It is eminently fitting that once a year our people should set apart a day for praise and thanksgiving to the Giver of Good, and, at the same time that they express their thankfulness for the abundant mercies received, should manfully acknowledge their shortcomings and pledge themselves solemnly and in good faith to strive to overcome them. During the past year we have been blessed with bountiful crops. Our business prosperity has been great. No other people has ever stood on as high a level of material well-being as ours now stands. We are not threatened by foes from without. The foes from whom we should pray to be delivered are our own passions, appetites, and follies; and against these there is always need that we should war.
Therefore, I, now set apart Thursday, the thirtieth day of this November, as a day of thanksgiving for the past and of prayer for the future, and on that day I ask that throughout the land the people gather in their homes and places of worship, and in rendering thanks unto the Most High for the manifold blessings of the past year, consecrate themselves to a life of cleanliness, honor and wisdom, so that this nation may do its allotted work on the earth in a manner worthy of those who founded it and of those who preserved it.
In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington this 2nd day of November in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and five and of the Independence of the United States the one hundred and thirtieth. Theodore Roosevelt.
By the President: Elihu Root, Secretary of State.3021
On Tuesday, December 5, 1905, in his Fifth Annual Message to Congress, President Theodore Roosevelt stated:
Against the wrath of the Lord the wisdom of man cannot avail; in time of flood or drought human ingenuity can but partially repair the disaster. …
The Department of Justice has for the last four years devoted more attention to the enforcement of the anti-trust legislation than to anything else. Much has been accomplished, particularly marked has been the moral effect of the prosecutions. …
Business success, whether for the individual or for the Nation, is a good thing only so far as it is accompanied by and develops a high standard of conduct—honor, integrity, civic courage. …
There is need of full knowledge on which to base action looking toward State and municipal legislation for the protection of working women. The introduction of women into industry is working change and disturbance in the domestic and social life of the Nation. The decrease in marriage, and especially in the birth rate, has been coincident with it. We must face the accomplished facts, and the adjustment of factory conditions must be made, but surely it can be made with less friction and less harmful effects on family life than is now the case. The whole matter in reality forms one of the greatest sociological phenomena of our time; it is a social question of the first importance, of far greater importance than any merely political or economic question can be. …
Unless we continue to keep a quick and lively sense of the great fundamental truth that our concern is with the individual worth of the individual man, this Government cannot permanently hold the place which it has achieved among the nations. … It is the man’s moral quality, his attitude toward the great questions which concern all humanity, his cleanliness of life, his power to do his duty toward himself and towards others, which really count. …
The noblest of all forms of government is self-government; but it is also the most difficult. We who possess this priceless boon, and who desire to hand in on to our children and our children’s children, should ever bear in mind the thought so finely expressed by Burke: “Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as they are disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be place somewhere, and the less of it there be within the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.” …
Our aim is righteousness. Peace is normally the hand-maiden of righteousness; but when peace and righteousness conflict then a great and upright people can never for a moment hesitate to follow the path which leads toward righteousness, even though that path also leads to war. There are people who advocate peace at any price; there are others who, following a false analogy, think that because it is no longer necessary in civilized countries for individuals to protect their rights with a strong hand, it is therefore unnecessary for nations to be ready to defend their rights. …
At the present there could be no greater calamity than for the free peoples, the enlightened, independent, and peace-loving peoples, to disarm. … Only that nation is equipped for peace that knows how to fight, and that will not shrink from fighting if ever the conditions become such that war is demanded in the name of the highest morality. …
The Golden Rule should be, and as the world grows in morality it will be, the guiding rule of conduct among nations as among individuals. …
There seems to be no statute of the United States which provides for the punishment of a United States Attorney or other officer of the Government who corruptly agrees to wrongfully do or wrongfully refrain from doing any act when the consideration for such corrupt agreement is other than one possessing money value. This ought to be remedied by appropriate legislation. …
It is unwise to depart from the old American tradition and to discriminate for or against any man who desires to come here and become a citizen, save on the ground of that man’s fitness for citizenship. It is our right and duty to consider his moral and social quality. … If the man who seeks to come here is from the moral and social standpoint of such a character as to bid fair to add value to the community he should be heartily welcomed. We cannot afford to pay heed to whether he is of one creed or another, of one nation, or another. We cannot afford to consider whether he is Catholic or Protestant, Jew or Gentile; whether he is Englishman or Irishman, Frenchman or German. …
The income of the Philippine Government has necessarily been reduced by reason of the business and agricultural depression in the islands. … Negotiations and hearings for the settlement of the amount due to the Roman Catholic Church for rent and occupation of churches and rectories by the army of the United States are in progress.3022
On April 14, 1906, in an address given at the laying of the Cornerstone of the office building of the House of Representatives, President Theodore Roosevelt stated:
In Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress” you may recall the description of the man with the muck-rake, the man who could look no way but downward, with the muck-rake in his hand, who was offered a celestial crown for his muck-rake, but who would neither look up nor regard the crown he was offered, but continued to rake to himself the filth of the floor.3023
On December 3, 1906, in his Sixth Annual Message to Congress, President Theodore Roosevelt stated:
A great many white men are lynched, but the crime is peculiarly frequent in respect to black men. The greatest existing cause of lynching is the perpetration, especially by black men, of the hideous crime of rape—the most abominable in all the category of crimes, even worse than murder. Mobs frequently avenge the commission of this crime by themselves torturing to death the man committing it; thus avenging in bestial fashion a bestial deed, and reducing themselves to a level with the criminal.
Lawlessness grows by what it feeds upon; and when mobs begin to lynch for rape they speedily extend the sphere of their operations and lynch for many other kinds of crimes, so that two-thirds of the lynchings are not for rape at all; while a considerable proportion of the individuals lynched are innocent of all crime. Governor Candler, of Georgia, stated on one occasion some years ago: “I can say of a verity that I have, within the last month, saved the lives of half a dozen innocent negroes who were pursued by the mob, and brought them to trial in a court of law in which they were acquitted.” As Bishop Galloway, of Mississippi, has finely said: “When the rule of a mob obtains, that which distinguishes a high civilization in surrendered. The mob lynches a negro charged with rape will in a little while lynch a white man suspected of crime. Every Christian patriot in America needs to lift up his voice in loud and eternal protest against the mob spirit that is threatening the integrity of this Republic.” …
Moreover, where any crime committed by a member of one race against another race is avenged in such a fashion that it seems as if not the individual criminal, but the whole race, is attacked, the result is to exasperate to the highest degree race feeling. There is but one safe rule in dealing with black men as with white men; it is the same rule that must be applied in dealing with rich men and poor men; that is, to treat each man, whatever his color, his creed, or his social position, with even-handed justice on his real worth as a man.
White people owe it quite as much to themselves as to the colored race to treat well the colored man who shows by his life that he deserves such treatment; for it is surely the highest wisdom to encourage in the colored race all those individuals who are honest, industrious, law-abiding, and who therefore make good and safe neighbors and citizens. Reward or punish the individual on his merits as an individual. Evil will surely come in the end to both races if we substitute for this just rule the habit of treating all the members of the race, good and bad, alike. …
Moreover, in my judgement, the crime of rape should always be punished with death, as is the case with murder; assault with intent to commit rape should be made a capital crime. …
The members of the white race on the other hand should understand that every lynching represents by just so much a loosening of the bands of civilization; that the spirit of lynching inevitably throws into prominence in the community all the foul and evil creatures who dwell therein. No man can take part in the torture of a human being without having his own moral nature permanently lowered. Every lynching means just so much moral deterioration in all the children who have any knowledge of it, and therefore just so much additional trouble for the next generation of Americans. …
The white man, if he is wise, will decline to allow the negroes in a mass to grow to manhood and womanhood without education. Unquestionably education such as is obtained in our public schools does not do everything towards making a man a good citizen; but it does much. The lowest and most brutal criminals, those for instance who commit the crime of rape, are in the great majority men who have had either no education or very little; just as they are almost invariably men who own no property; for the man who puts money by out of his earnings, like the man who acquires education, is usually lifted above mere brutal criminality. Of course the best type of education for the colored man, taken as a whole, is such education as is conferred in schools like Hampton and Tuskegee; where the boys and girls, the young men and young women, are trained industrially as well as in the ordinary public school branches. The graduates of these schools turn out well in the great majority of cases, and hardly any of them become criminals. … Every graduate of these schools—and for the matter of that every other colored man or woman—who leads a life so useful and honorable as to win the good will and respect of those whites whose neighbor he or she is, thereby helps the whole colored race as it can be helped in no other way. …
It is exactly as true of the farmer, as it is of the business man and the wageworker, that the ultimate success of the Nation of which he forms a part must be founded not alone on material prosperity but upon high moral, mental, and physical development. …
I am well aware of how difficult it is to pass a constitutional amendment. Nevertheless in my judgement the whole question of marriage and divorce should be relegated to the authority of the National Congress. … There is nothing so vitally essential to the welfare of the nation, nothing around which the nation should so bend itself to throw every safeguard, as the home life of the average citizen. … When home ties are loosened; when men and women cease to regard a worthy family life, with all its duties fully performed, and all its responsibilities lived up to, as the life best worth living; then evil days for the commonwealth are at hand. …
Surely it should need no demonstration to show that wilful sterility is, from the standpoint of the nation, from the standpoint of the human race, the one sin for which the penalty is national death, race death; a sin for which there is no atonement; a sin which is the more dreadful exactly in proportion as the men and women guilty thereof are in other respects, in character, and bodily and mental powers, those whom for the sake of the state it would be well to see the fathers and mothers of many healthy children, well brought up in homes made happy by their presence. No man, no woman, can shirk the primary duties of life, whether for love of ease and pleasure, or for any other cause, and retain his or her self-respect. …
So far our action in the Philippines has been abundantly justified. … In these islands we are steadily introducing both liberty and order, to a greater degree than their people have ever before known. We have secured justice. We have provided an efficient police force, and have put down ladronism. Only in the islands of Leyte and Samar is the authority of our Government resisted and this by wild mountain tribes under the superstitious inspiration of fakirs and pseudo-religious leaders. …
Not only must we treat all nations fairly, but we must treat with justice and good will all immigrants who come here under the law. Whether they are Catholic or Protestant, Jew or Gentile; whether they come from England or Germany. …
It would be both foolish and an evil thing for a great and free nation to deprive itself of the power to protect its own rights and even in exceptional cases to stand up for the rights of others. Nothing would more promote iniquity, nothing would further defer the reign upon earth of peace and righteousness, than for the free and enlightened peoples which, tho with much stumbling and many shortcomings, nevertheless strive toward justice, deliberately to render themselves powerless while leaving every despotism and barbarism armed and able to work their wicked will. The chance for the settlement of disputes peacefully, by arbitration, now depends mainly upon the possession by the nations that mean to do right of sufficient armed strength to make their purpose effective.3024
On December 3, 1907, in his Seventh Annual Message to Congress, President Theodore Roosevelt stated:
There are, of course, foolish people who denounce any care of the Army or Navy as “militarism,” but I do not think that these people are numerous. This country has to contend now, and has had to contend in the past, with many evils, and there is ample scope for all who would work for reform. But there is not one evil that now exists, or that ever has existed in this country, which is, or ever has been, owing in the smallest part to militarism. Declamation against militarism has no more serious place in an earnest and intelligent movement for righteousness in this country than declamation against the worship of Baal or Astaroth. It is a declamation against a non-existent evil, one which never has existed in this country, and which has not the slightest chance of appearing here.3025
On January 31, 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt wrote from the White House:
The attacks by these great corporations on the Administration’s actions have been given a wide circulation throughout the country, in the newspapers and otherwise, by those writers and speakers who, consciously or unconsciously, act as the representatives of predatory wealth—of the wealth accumulated on a giant scale by all forms of iniquity, ranging from the oppression of wageworkers to unfair and unwholesome methods of crushing out competition, and to defrauding the public by stock jobbing and the manipulation of securities.
Certain wealthy men of this stamp, whose conduct should be abhorrent to every man of ordinary decent conscience, and who commit the hideous wrong of teaching our young men that phenomenal business success must ordinarily be based on dishonesty, have during the last few months made it apparent that they have banded together to work for a reaction.
Their endeavor is to overthrow and discredit all who honestly administer the law, to prevent any additional legislation which would check and restrain them, and to secure if possible a freedom from all restraint which will permit every unscrupulous wrongdoer to do what he wishes unchecked provided he has enough money. The only way to counteract the movement in which these men are engaged is to make clear to the public just what they have done in the past and just what they are seeking to accomplish in the present. …
We attack only the corrupt men of wealth, who find in the purchased politician the most efficient defender of corruption. Our main quarrel is not with these agents and representatives of the interests. They derive their chief power from the great sinister offenders who stand behind them. They are but puppets who move as the strings are pulled. It is not the puppets, but the strong cunning men and the mighty forces working for evil behind and through the puppets, with whom we have to deal. We seek to control law-defying wealth; in the first place to prevent its doing dire evil to the Republic, and in the next place to avoid the vindictive and dreadful radicalism which, if left uncontrolled, it is certain in the end to arouse. Sweeping attacks upon all property, upon all men of means, without regard to whether they do well or ill, would sound the death-knell of the Republic; and such attacks become inevitable if decent citizens permit those rich men whose lives are corrupt and evil to domineer in swollen pride, unchecked and unhindered, over the destinies of this country. We act in no vindictive spirit, and we are no respecters of persons. …
There are ample material rewards for those who serve with fidelity the mammon of unrighteousness; but they are dearly paid for by the people who permit their representatives, whether in public life, in press, or in the colleges where their young men are taught, to preach and to practice that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor.
The amount of money the representatives of certain great moneyed interests are willing to spend can be gauged by their recent publication broadcast throughout the papers of this country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, of hugh advertisements attacking with envenomed bitterness the Administration’s policy of warring against successful dishonesty, and by their circulation of pamphlets and books prepared with the same object; while they likewise push the circulation of the writings and speeches of men who, whether because they are misled, or because, seeing the light, they are willing to sin against the light, serve these masters of great wealth to the cost of the plain people.
The books and pamphlets, the controlled newspapers, the speeches by public or private men to which I refer, are usually and especially in the interest of the Standard Oil Trust and certain notorious railroad combinations, but they also defend other individuals and corporations of great wealth that have been guilty of wrongdoing. It is only rarely that the men responsible for the wrongdoings themselves speak or write. Normally they hire others to do their bidding, or find others who will do it without hire. From the railroad-rate law to the pure-food law, every measure for honesty in business that has been passed during the last six years has been opposed by these men on its passage and in its administration with every resource that bitter and unscrupulous craft could suggest and the command of almost unlimited money secure. … The man making this assault is usually either a prominent lawyer or an editor who takes his policy from the financiers and his arguments from their attorneys. …
There has been in the past grave wrong done innocent stockholders by overcapitalization, stock-watering, stock jobbing, stock-manipulation. … A repetition of the successful effort by the Standard Oil people to crush out every competitor, to overawe the common carriers, and to establish a monopoly which treats the public with a contempt. … Corrupt business and corrupt politics act and react with ever increasing debasement, one on the other. … The rebate taker, the franchise trafficker, the manipulator of securities, the purveyor and protector of vice, the blackmailing ward boss, the ballot-box stuffer, the demagogue, the mob leader, the hired bully, and mankiller—all work at the same web of corruption. … It is the kind of business which has tended to make the very name “high finance” a term of scandal. … It is due to the speculative folly and flagrant dishonesty of a few men of great wealth, who seek to shield themselves from the effects of their own wrongdoing by ascribing it results to the actions of those who have sought to put a stop to the wrongdoings. …
On behalf of all our people, on behalf no less of the honest man of means than of the honest man who earns each day’s livelihood by that day’s sweat of his brow, it is necessary to insist upon honesty in business and politics alike, in all walks of life, in big things and in little things; upon just and fair dealing as between man and man. Those who demand this are striving for the right in the spirit of Abraham Lincoln when he said:
“Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsmen’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, ‘The judgements of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’ With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in.”
In the work we of this generation are in, there is, thanks be to the Almighty, no danger on bloodshed and no use for the sword; but there is grave need of those stern qualities shown alike by the men of the North and the men of the South in the dark days when each valiantly battled for the light as it was given each to see the light. Their spirit should be our spirit, as we strive to bring nearer the day when greed and trickery and cunning shall be trampled under foot by those who fight for the righteousness that exalteth a nation.3026
On October 31, 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt issued a Proclamation of a National Day of Thanksgiving and Prayer:
Once again the season is at hand when, according to the ancient custom of our people, it becomes the duty of the President to appoint a day of prayer and of thanksgiving to God.
Year by year this Nation grows in strength and worldly power. During the century and a quarter that has elapsed since our entry into the circle of independent peoples we have grown and prospered in material things to a degree never known before, and not now know in any other country. The thirteen colonies which straggled along the seacoast of the Atlantic and were hemmed-in but a few miles west of tidewater by the Indian haunted wilderness, have been transformed into the mightiest republic which the world has ever seen. Its domains stretch across the continent from one to the other of the two greatest oceans, and it exercises dominion alike in the arctic and tropic realms. The growth in wealth and population has surpassed even the growth in territory. Nowhere else in the world is the average of individual comfort and material well-being as high as in our fortunate land.
For the very reason that in material well-being we have thus abounded, we owe it to the Almighty to show equal progress in moral and spiritual things. With a nation, as with the individuals who make up a nation, material well-being is an indispensable foundation. But the foundation avails nothing by itself. That life is wasted, and worse than wasted, which is spent piling, heap upon heap, those things which minister merely to the pleasure of the body and to the power that rests only on wealth. Upon material well-being as a foundation must be raised the structure of the lofty life of the spirit, if this Nation is properly to fulfil its great mission and to accomplish all that we so ardently hope and desire. The things of the body are good; the things of the intellect better; the best of all are the things of the soul; for, in the nation as in the individual, in the long run it is character that counts. Let us, therefore, as a people set our faces resolutely against evil, and with broad charity, with kindliness and good-will toward all men, but with unflinching determination to smite down wrong, strive with all the strength that is given us for righteousness in public and private life.
Now, therefore, I, Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States, do set apart Thursday, the 26th day of November, next, as a day of general thanksgiving and prayer, and on that day I recommend that the people shall cease from their daily work, and, in their homes or in their churches, meet devoutly to thank the Almighty for the many and great blessings they have received in the past, and to pray that they may be given the strength so to order their lives as to deserve a continuation of these blessings in the future.
In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington this thirty-first day of October in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and eight, and of the Independence of the United States the one hundred and thirty-third. Theodore Roosevelt.
By the President: Alvey A. Adee, Acting Secretary of State.3027
In 1909, President Theodore Roosevelt, who was a member of the Dutch Reformed Church, stated:
After a week on perplexing problems … it does so rest my soul to come into the house of The Lord and to sing and mean it, “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty”. … (my) great joy and glory that, in occupying an exalted position in the nation, I am enabled, to preach the practical moralities of The Bible to my fellow-countrymen and to hold up Christ as the hope and Savior of the world.3028
In 1909, with grave intuition, President Roosevelt gave this ominous warning:
Progress has brought us both unbounded opportunities and unbridled difficulties. Thus, the measure of our civilization will not be that we have done much, but what we have done with that much. I believe that the next half century will determine if we will advance the cause of Christian civilization or revert to the horrors of brutal paganism. The thought of modern industry in the hands of Christian charity is a dream worth dreaming. The thought of industry in the hands of paganism is a nightmare beyond imagining. The choice between the two is upon us.3029
In 1910, President Theodore Roosevelt gave his message on The New Nationalism:
The material progress and prosperity of a nation are desirable chiefly so far as they lead to the moral and material welfare of all citizens.
Just in proportion as the average man and woman are honest, capable of sound judgement and high ideals, active in public affairs—but, first of all, sound in their home life, and the father and mother of healthy children whom they bring up well—just so far, and no further, we may count our civilization a success.
We must have—I believe we have already—a genuine and permanent moral awakening, without which no wisdom of legislation or administration really means anything.3030
On June 17, 1912, in a speech at the Progressive Party Convention in Chicago, Theodore Roosevelt said:
Just beyond man’s narrow daily vision stand the immortals. “And Jehovah opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw; and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots about Elisha.” At the front of this culture’s way ride the strong guards of our own past, their authority immortalized by faithfulness. In the hour of decision we see them; their grave eyes watch us, the keepers of our standards, the builders of our civilization. They came from God to do his bidding and returned. The future we cannot see; nor what the next imperious task; nor who its strong executant. But for this generation, in a time charged with disintegrating forces, the challenge is clear: to uphold our legacy with faith, valor, and truth. …
Now to you men who in your turn have come together to spend and be spent in the endless crusade against wrong, to you who gird yourselves for this great fight in the never-ending warfare for the good of mankind, I say in closing, “We stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord.”3031
On November 15, 1913, in a letter to Sir Edward Grey, Theodore Roosevelt declared:
There is absolutely nothing to be said for government by a plutocracy, for government by men very powerful in certain lines and gifted with “the money touch,” but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers.3032
In 1916, Theodore Roosevelt wrote Fear God and Take Your Own Part as the situation in Europe was getting serious:
Fear God, in the true sense of the word, means love God, respect God, honor God; and all this can be done by loving our neighbor treating him justly and mercifully, and in all ways endeavoring to protect him from injustice and cruelty.3033
In 1917, as the nation was contemplating entering World War I, Theodore Roosevelt urged:
The world is at this moment passing through one of those terrible periods of convulsion when the souls of men and of nations are tried as by fire.
Woe to the man or to the nation that at such a time stands as once Laodicea stood; as the people of ancient Meroz stood, when they dared not come to the help of the Lord against the mighty.
In such a crisis the moral weakening is the enemy of right, the enemy of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.3034
On October 1917, in the Ladies Home Journal, Theodore Roosevelt stated:
In this actual world, a churchless community, a community where men have abandoned and scoffed at, or ignored their religious needs, is a community on the rapid down-grade.3035
President Theodore Roosevelt stated:
The true Christian is the true citizen, lofty of purpose, resolute in endeavor, ready for a hero’s deeds, but never looking down on his task because it is cast in the day of small things; scornful of baseness, awake to his own duties as well as to his rights, following the higher law with reverence, and in this world doing all that in his power lies, so that when death comes he may feel that mankind is in some degree better because he lived. 3036
A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education. 3037
Almost every man who has by his life work added to the sum of human achievements of which the race is proud, almost every such man has based his life work largely upon the teachings of the Bible.3038
We have faith that we shall not prove false to the memories of the men of the mighty past. They did their work. They left us the splendid heritage we now enjoy.
We in our turn have an assured confidence that we shall be able to leave this heritage unwasted and enlarged to our children’s children.
To do so we must show, not merely in great crisis, but in the everyday affairs of life, the qualities of practical intelligence, of courage, of hardiness, and endurance, and above all the power of devotion to a lofty ideal, which made great the men who founded this Republic in the days of Washington, which made great the men who preserved this Republic in the days of Abraham Lincoln.3039
The churchgoer may not hear a good sermon at church, but unless he is very unfortunate, he will hear a sermon by a good man … and, besides, even if he does not hear a good sermon, the probabilities are that he will listen to and take part in reading some beautiful passages from the Bible. …
Moreover, he will probably take part in singing some good hymns. He will meet and nod to or speak to good quiet neighbors.
Church attendance and church work of some kind mean both the cultivation of the habit of feeling some responsibility for others and the sense of braced moral strength which prevents the relaxation of one’s fiber.3040
Every thinking man, when he thinks, realizes that the teachings of the Bible are so interwoven and entwined with our whole civic and social life that it would be literally impossible for us to figure ourselves what that life would be if these standards were removed. We would lose almost all the standards by which we now judge both public and private morals; all the standards towards which we, with more or less resolution, strive to raise ourselves.3041
If ever there lived a President who, during his term of service, needed all the consolation and strength that he could draw from the Unseen Power above him, it was President Lincoln—sad, patient, mighty Lincoln, who worked and suffered for the people and, when he had lived for them at good end, gave up his life.
If there ever was a man who practically applied what was taught in our churches, it was Abraham Lincoln.3042
In the pioneer days of the West we found it an unfailing rule that after a community has existed for a certain length of time either a church was built or else the community began to go downhill.
In those old communities in the Eastern States which have gone backward, it is noticeable that the retrogression has been both marked by and accentuated by a rapid decline in church membership and work; the two facts being so interrelated that each stands to the other partly as a cause and partly as an effect.3043
There are those who believe that a new modernity demands a new morality. What they fail to consider is the harsh reality that there is no such thing as a new morality.
There is only one morality. All else is immorality. There is only true Christian ethics over against which stands the whole of paganism. If we are to fulfill our great destiny as a people, then we must return to the old morality, the sole morality. …
All these blatant sham reformers, in the name of a new morality, preach the old vice of self-indulgence which rotted out first the moral fiber and then even the external greatness of Greece and Rome.3044
On January 7, 1919, President Woodrow Wilson issued a Proclamation announcing the death of former President Theodore Roosevelt:
It becomes my sad duty to announce officially the death of Theodore Roosevelt. … In his death the United States has lost one of its most distinguished and patriotic citizens. … In the War with Spain, he displayed singular initiative and energy and distinguished himself among the commanders of the army in the field. As President he awoke the Nation to the dangers of private control which lurked in our financial and industrial systems. …
I hereby direct that the flags of the White House and the several Departmental Buildings be displayed at half staff for a period of thirty days, and that suitable military and naval honors under the orders of the Secretaries of War and of the Navy may be rendered on the day of the funeral.
Done this seventh day of January, in the year of Our Lord one thousand nine hundred and nineteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and forty-third. Woodrow Wilson.
By the President: Robert Lansing, Secretary of State.3045