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New York Architecture Images-Gramercy Park Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace |
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28 East 20th St. |
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1919 |
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Federal |
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House |
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notes |
This brownstone structure may be a 1919 replica of the house in which Theodore Roosevelt was born in 1858 and lived until 1872. Like Fraunces Tavern, this building is a reconstruction. Its artificiality is emphasized by its overly crisp detailing and the adjacent modern extension. This building reminds the viewer that prior to the 1870s the area was a thriving residential district. As Ladies' Mile grew into a booming commercial area, the district's wealthy residents moved further uptown. |
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Theodore Roosevelt
Birthplace NHS is located at 28 East 20th Street, between Broadway and
Park Avenue South.
Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States, lived at this site from his birth on October 27, 1858 until he was 14 years old. The reconstructed house contains five period rooms, two museum galleries and a bookstore. Teedie, as young Roosevelt was nicknamed, was a sickly but bright boy, from a wealthy family. To improve his health, Teedie began an exercise program at the house's outdoor gymnasium that started a lifelong passion for the "strenuous life." After graduating from Harvard, Roosevelt pursued his boyhood dreams, as a rancher, naturalist, explorer, author and Colonel of the Rough Riders. His political service included reforming the U.S. Civil Service Commission and New York City Police Department, and terms as Governor of New York and Vice President of the U.S. This site was the home of Theodore Roosevelt for the first thirteen years of his life. The building on the site is a 1923 reconstruction of the house in which Roosevelt was born on October 27, 1858.
Theodore Roosevelt became president when William McKinley was assassinated in September 1901. As President, Roosevelt pushed progressive reforms, such as conservation of public lands and trust busting, and negotiated an end to the war between Russia and Japan, for which he won a Nobel Peace Prize. Roosevelt's original birthplace was demolished in 1916. After Roosevelt's death in 1919, the site was purchased by the Women's Roosevelt Memorial Association, rebuilt and decorated with many of its original furnishings by Roosevelt's sisters and wife. |
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A finer body of men has never been gathered by
any nation than the men who have done the work of building the Panama
Canal; the conditions under which they have lived and have done their
work have been better than in any similar work ever undertaken in the
tropics; they have all felt an eager pride in their work; and they have
made not only America but the whole world their debtors by what they
have accomplished. – Theodore Roosevelt A man who is good enough to shed his blood
for his country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards. A stream cannot rise larger than its
source. A typical vice of American politics is the
avoidance of saying anything real on real issues. All the resources we need are in the mind. Americanism is a question of principle, of
purpose, of idealism, or character; it is not a matter of birthplace or
creed or line of descent. Americans learn only from catastrophe and
not from experience. An effort on my part to become a
conservative man, in touch with the influential classes. As a matter of personal conviction, and
without pretending to discuss the details or formulate the system, I
feel that we shall ultimately have to consider the adoption of some such
scheme as that of a progressive tax on all fortunes, beyond a certain
amount, either given in life or devised or bequeathed upon death to any
individual – a tax so framed as to put it out of the power of the owner
of one of these enormous fortunes to hand on more than a certain amount
to any one individual; the tax of course, to be imposed by the national
and not the state government. Such taxation should, of course, be aimed
merely at the inheritance or transmission in their entirety of those
fortunes swollen beyond all healthy limits. At the risk of repetition let me say again
that my plea is not for immunity to, but for the most unsparing exposure
of, the politician who betrays his trust, of the big business man who
makes or spends his fortune in illegitimate or corrupt ways. There
should be a resolute effort to hunt every such man out of the position
he has disgraced. Expose the crime, and hunt down the criminal; but
remember that even in the case of crime, if it is attacked in
sensational, lurid, and untruthful fashion, the attack may do more
damage to the public mind than the crime itself. Avoid the base hypocrisy of condemning in
one man what you pass over in silence when committed by another. Courtesy is as much a mark of a gentleman
as courage. Cowardice in a race, as in an individual,
is the unpardonable sin. Do what you can, with what you have, where
you are. Don't hit at all if it is honorably
possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft. Envy is as evil a thing as arrogance. Every immigrant who comes here should be
required within five years to learn English or leave the country. Every man holds his property subject to the
general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree
the public welfare may require it. Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe. Far and away the best prize that life
offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. Far better it is to dare mighty things, to
win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take
rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much,
because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor
defeat. Freedom from effort in the present merely
means that there has been effort stored up in the past. Germany has reduced savagery to a science,
and this great war for the victorious peace of justice must go on until
the German cancer is cut clean out of the world body. Get action. Seize the moment. Man was never
intended to become an oyster. I am as strong as a bull moose. You may use
me as you will. I am only an average man but, by George, I
work harder at it than the average man. 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. I believe that the officers, and,
especially, the directors, of corporations should be held personally
responsible when any corporation breaks the law. I care not what others think of what I do,
but I care very much about what I think of what I do. That is character! I don’t pity any man who does hard work
worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who does not work, at
whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being. I have always been fond of the West African
proverb: "Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far." I have not been able to think out any
solution of the terrible problem offered by the presence of the Negro on
this continent, but of one thing I am sure, and that is that in as much
as he is here and can neither be killed nor driven away, the only wise
and honorable and Christian thing to do is to treat each black man and
each white man strictly on his merits as a man. I keep my good health by having a very bad
temper, kept under good control. I think there is only one quality worse
than hardness of heart and that is softness of head. I want to see you shoot the way you shout. I wish to preach not the doctrine of
ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life. If a man continually blusters, if he lacks
civility, a big stick will not save him from trouble, but neither will
speaking softly avail, if back of the softness, there does not lie
strength, power. If an American is to amount to anything he
must rely upon himself, and not upon the State; he must take pride in
his own work, instead of sitting idle to envy the luck of others. He
must face life with resolute courage, win victory if he can, and accept
defeat if he must, without seeking to place on his fellow man a
responsibility which is not theirs. If elected, I shall see to it that every
man has a square deal, no less and no more. If I have erred, I err in company with
Abraham Lincoln. If I must choose between righteousness and
peace, I choose righteousness. If I were an employee, a working man ... or
a wage-earner of any sort, I undoubtedly would join a union of my
trade... I believe in the union and I believe that all men are morally
bound to help to the extent of their powers in the common interests
advanced by the union. If our political institutions were perfect,
they would absolutely prevent the political domination of money in any
part of our affairs. We need to make our political representatives more
quickly and sensitively responsive to the people whose servants they
are. More direct action by the people in their own affairs under proper
safeguards is vitally necessary. The direct primary is a step in this
direction, if it is associated with a corrupt-practices act effective to
prevent the advantage of the man willing recklessly and unscrupulously
to spend money over his more honest competitor. It is particularly
important that all moneys received or expended for campaign purposes
should be publicly accounted for, not only after election, but before
election as well. Political action must be made simpler, easier, and
freer from confusion for every citizen. I believe that the prompt
removal of unfaithful or incompetent public servants should be made easy
and sure in whatever way experience shall show to be most expedient in
any given class of cases. In any moment of decision, the best thing
you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing. In every wise struggle for human betterment
one of the main objects, and often the only object, has been to achieve
in large measure equality of opportunity. In the struggle for this great
end, nations rise from barbarism to civilization, and through it people
press forward from one stage of enlightenment to the next. One of the
chief factors in progress is the destruction of special privilege. The
essence of any struggle for healthy liberty has always been, and must
always be, to take from some one man or class of men the right to enjoy
power, or wealth, or position, or immunity, which has not been earned by
service to his or their fellows. That is what you fought for in the
Civil War, and that is what we strive for now. In name we had the Declaration of
Independence in 1776; but we gave the lie by our acts to the words of
the Declaration of Independence until 1865; and words count for nothing
except in so far as they represent acts. In this country we have no place for
hyphenated Americans. It behooves every man to remember that the
work of the critic is of altogether secondary importance, and that, in
the end, progress is accomplished by the man who does things. It is better to be faithful than famous. It is both foolish and wicked to teach the
average man who is not well off that some wrong or injustice has been
done him, and that he should hope for redress elsewhere than in his own
industry, honesty, and intelligence. It is difficult to make our material
condition better by the best law, but it is easy enough to ruin it by
bad laws. It is essential that there should be
organization of labor. This is an era of organization. Capital organizes
and therefore labor must organize. It is hard to fail, but it is worse never
to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort. It is impossible to win the great prizes of
life without running risks, and the greatest of all prizes are those
connected with the home. It is no limitation upon property rights or
freedom of contract to require that when men receive from government the
privilege of doing business under corporate form ... they shall do so
under absolutely truthful representations ... Great corporations exist
only because they were created and safeguarded by our institutions; and
it is therefore our right and duty to see that they work in harmony with
these institutions. It is not the critic who counts, not the
man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of
deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is
actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood;
who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who
knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in
a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high
achievement; and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring
greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid
souls who know neither victory nor defeat. It is not what we have that will make us a
great nation; it is the way in which we use it. It is the duty of all citizens,
irrespective of party, to denounce, and, so far as may be, to punish
crimes against the public on the part of politicians or officials. But
exactly as the public man who commits a crime against the public is one
of the worst of criminals, so, close on his heels in the race for
iniquitous distinction, comes the man who falsely charges the public
servant with outrageous wrongdoing; whether it is done with foul-mouthed
and foolish directness in the vulgar and violent party organ, or with
sarcasm, innuendo, and the half-truths that are worse than lies, in some
professed organ of independence. It is true of the Nation as well as the
individual, that the greatest doer must also be the great dreamer. It may be that at some time in the dim
future of the race the need for war will vanish: but that time is yet
ages distant. As yet no nation can hold its place in the world, or can
do any work really worth doing, unless it stands ready to guard its
right with an armed hand. It [the Civil War] was a heroic struggle;
and, as is inevitable with all such struggles, it had also a dark and
terrible side. Very much was done of good, and much also of evil; and,
as was inevitable in such a period of revolution, often the same man did
both good and evil. For our great good fortune as a nation, we, the
people of the United States as a whole, can now afford to forget the
evil, or, at least, to remember it without bitterness, and to fix our
eyes with pride only on the good that was accomplished. Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet
on the ground. Let individuals contribute as they desire;
but let us prohibit in effective fashion all corporations from making
contributions for any political purpose, directly or indirectly. ... looked at from the standpoint of the
ultimate result, there was little real difference to the Indian whether
the land was taken by treaty or by war. ... No treaty could be
satisfactory to the whites, no treaty served the needs of humanity and
civilization, unless it gave the land to the Americans as unreservedly
as any successful war. Materially we must strive to secure a
broader economic opportunity for all men, so that each shall have a
better chance to show the stuff of which he is made. Nine-tenths of wisdom consists in being
wise in time. No man can be a good citizen unless he has
a wage more than sufficient to cover the bare cost of living, and hours
of labor short enough so that after his day's work is done he will have
time and energy to bear his share in the management of the community, to
help in carrying the general load. We keep countless men from being good
citizens by the conditions of life with which we surround them. We need
comprehensive workmen's compensation acts, both State and national laws
to regulate child labor and work for women, and, especially, we need in
our common schools not merely education in booklearning, but also
practical training for daily life and work. We need to enforce better
sanitary conditions for our workers and to extend the use of safety
appliances for our workers in industry and commerce, both within and
between the States. No man can do both effective and decent
work in public life unless he is a practical politician on the one hand,
and a sturdy believer in Sunday-school politics on the other. He must
always strive manfully for the best, and yet, like Abraham Lincoln, must
often resign himself to accept the best possible. No man is above the law and no man is below
it; nor do we ask any man's permission when we require him to obey it.
Obedience to the law is demanded as a right; not asked as a favor. No man is justified in doing evil on the
ground of expediency. No man is worth his salt who is not ready
at all times to risk his body, to risk his well-being, to risk his life
in a great cause. No man should receive a dollar unless that
dollar has been fairly earned. Every dollar received should represent a
dollar's worth of service rendered – not gambling in stocks, but service
rendered. The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact
of its size acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as
in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means.
Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in
another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective –
a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded
against evasion and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the
estate. No people is wholly civilized where a
distinction is drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse. Nothing in the world is worth having or
worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty ... I have never in
my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great
many people who led diffcult lives and led them well. Now, it is very necessary that we should
not flinch from seeing what is vile and debasing. There is filth on the
floor, and it must be scraped up with the muck rake; and there are times
and places where this service is the most needed of all the services
that can be performed. But the man who never does anything else, who
never thinks or speaks or writes, save of his feats with the muck rake,
speedily becomes, not a help but one of the most potent forces for evil
... Old age is like everything else. To make a
success of it, you've got to start young. One of our defects as a nation is a
tendency to use what have been called "weasel words." When a weasel
sucks eggs the meat is sucked out of the egg. If you use a "weasel word"
after another there is nothing left of the other. One of the fundamental necessities in a
representative government such as ours is to make certain that the men
to whom the people delegate their power shall serve the people by whom
they are elected, and not the special interests. I believe that every
national officer, elected or appointed, should be forbidden to perform
any service or receive any compensation, directly or indirectly, from
interstate corporations; and a similar provision could not fail to be
useful within the States. One seemingly very necessary caution to
utter is, that a man who goes into politics should not expect to reform
everything right off, with a jump. I know many excellent young men who,
when awakened to the fact that they have neglected their political
duties, feel an immediate impulse to form themselves into an
organization which shall forthwith purify politics everywhere, national,
State, and city alike; and I know of a man who having gone round once to
a primary, and having, of course, been unable to accomplish anything in
a place where he knew no one and could not combine with anyone, returned
saying it was quite useless for a good citizen to try to accomplish
anything in such a manner. To these too hopeful or too easily
discouraged people I always feel like reading Artemus Ward's article
upon the people of his town who came together in a meeting to resolve
that the town should support the Union and the Civil War, but were
unwilling to take any part in putting down the rebellion unless they
could go as brigadier-generals. Old age is like everything else. To make a
success of it, you've got to start young. Only those who are fit to live do not fear
to die. And none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and
the duty of life. Both life and death are parts of the same great
adventure. Our country offers the most wonderful
example of democratic government on a giant scale that the world has
ever seen; and the peoples of the world are watching to see whether we
succeed or fail. Peace is normally a great good, and
normally it coincides with righteousness, but it is righteousness and
not peace which should bind the conscience of a nation as it should bind
the conscience of an individual; and neither a nation nor an individual
can surrender conscience to another’s keeping. People ask the difference between a leader
and a boss ... The leader works in the open, and the boss in covert. The
leader leads, and the boss drives. Practical equality of opportunity for all
citizens, when we achieve it, will have two great results. First, every
man will have a fair chance to make of himself all that in him lies; to
reach the highest point to which his capacities, unassisted by special
privilege of his own and unhampered by the special privilege of others,
can carry him, and to get for himself and his family substantially what
he has earned. Second, equality of opportunity means that the
commonwealth will get from every citizen the highest service of which he
is capable. No man who carries the burden of the special privileges of
another can give to the commonwealth that service to which it is fairly
entitled. Probably the greatest harm done by vast
wealth is the harm that we of moderate means do ourselves when we let
the vices of envy and hatred enter deep into our own natures. So they have: and so have all others. The
weak and the stationary have vanished as surely as, and more rapidly
than, those whose citizens felt that within them the lift that impels
generous souls to great and noble effort. This is only another way of
stating the universal law of death, which is itself part of the
universal law of life... Speak softly and carry a big stick. Success, the real success, does not depend
upon the position you hold but upon how you carry yourself in that
position. The absence of effective State, and,
especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to
create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful
men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. The prime
need is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate
power which is not for the general welfare that they should hold or
exercise. We grudge no man a fortune which represents his own power and
sagacity, when exercised with entire regard to the welfare of his
fellows. The American people abhor a vacuum. The American people are right in demanding
that New Nationalism, without which we cannot hope to deal with new
problems. The New Nationalism puts the national need before sectional or
personal advantage. It is impatient of the utter confusion that results
from local legislatures attempting to treat national issues as local
issues. It is still more impatient of the impotence which springs from
overdivision of governmental powers, the impotence which makes it
possible for local selfishness or for legal cunning, hired by wealthy
special interests, to bring national activities to a deadlock. This New
Nationalism regards the executive power as the steward of the public
welfare. It demands of the judiciary that it shall be interested
primarily in human welfare rather than in property, just as it demands
that the representative body shall represent all the people rather than
any one class or section of the people. The American people are slow to wrath, but
when their wrath is once kindled it burns like a consuming flame. The best executive is the one who has sense
enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint
enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it. The country needs and, unless I mistake its
temper, the country demands bold, persistent, experimentation. It is
common sense to take a method and try it, if it fails, admit it frankly
and try another. But above all, try something. The effort to make financial or political
profit out of the destruction of character can only result in public
calamity. Gross and reckless assaults on character, whether on the stump
or in newspaper, magazine, or book, create a morbid and vicious public
sentiment, and at the same time act as a profound deterrent to able men
of normal sensitiveness and tend to prevent them from entering the
public service at any price. The eighth commandment reads, "Thou shalt
not steal." It does not read, "Thou shalt not steal from the rich man."
It does not read, "Thou shalt not steal from the poor man." It reads
simply and plainly, "Thou shalt not steal." The first requisite of a good citizen in
this republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his
weight. The government is us; we are the
government, you and I. The liar is no whit better than the thief,
and if his mendacity takes the form of slander he may be worse than most
thieves. It puts a premium upon knavery untruthfully to attack an honest
man, or even with hysterical exaggeration to assail a bad man with
untruth. The man who does not think it was America’s
duty to fight for her own sake in view of the infamous conduct of
Germany toward us stands on a level with a man who wouldn’t think it
necessary to fight in a private quarrel because his wife’s face was
slapped. The man who loves other countries as much
as his own stands on a level with the man who loves other women as much
as he loves his own wife. The men and women who have the right ideals
... are those who have the courage to strive for the happiness which
comes only with labor and effort and self-sacrifice, and those whose joy
in life springs in part from power of work and sense of duty. The men of wealth who today are trying to
prevent the regulation and control of their business in the interest of
the public by the proper government authorities will not succeed, in my
judgment, in checking the progress of the movement. But if they did
succeed they would find that they had sown the wind and would surely
reap the whirlwind, for they would ultimately provoke the violent
excesses which accompany a reform coming by convulsion instead of by
steady and natural growth. The most important single ingredient in the
formula of success is knowing how to get along with people. The most ultimately righteous of all wars
is a war with savages, though it is apt to be also the most terrible and
inhuman. The rude, fierce settler who drives the savage from the land
lays all civilized mankind under a debt to him. ...[I]t is of
incalculable importance that America, Australia, and Siberia should pass
out of the hands of their red, black, and yellow aboriginal owners, and
become the heritage of the dominant world races. The nation behaves well if it treats the
natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next
generation increased, and not impaired, in value. The old parties are husks, with no real
soul within either, divided on artificial lines, boss-ridden and
privilege-controlled, each a jumble of incongruous elements, and neither
daring to speak out wisely and fearlessly on what should be said on the
vital issues of the day. The one thing I want to leave my children
is an honorable name. The only man who never makes a mistake is
the man who never does anything. The only tyrannies from which men, women
and children are suffering in real life are the tyrannies of minorities. The pacifist is as surely a traitor to his
country and to humanity as is the most brutal wrongdoer. The things that will destroy America are
prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of
duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of
life. The true friend of property, the true
conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and
not the master of the commonwealth; who insists that the creature of
man's making shall be the servant and not the master of the man who made
it. The citizens of the United States must effectively control the
mighty commercial forces which they have themselves called into being. The vast individual and corporate fortunes,
the vast combinations of capital which have marked the development of
our industrial system, create new conditions, and necessitate a change
from the old attitude of the state and the nation toward property...
More and more it is evident that the Stateand if necessary the nation,
has got to possess the right of supervision and control as regards the
great corporations which are its creatures. The worst of all fears is the fear of
living. There can be no effective control of
corporations while their political activity remains. To put an end to it
will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done ...
Corporate expenditures for political purposes, and especially such
expenditures by public-service corporations, have supplied one of the
principal sources of corruption in our political affairs. There has never yet been a man in our
history who led a life of ease whose name is worth remembering. There is no room in this country for
hyphenated Americanism. The one absolutely certain way of bringing this
nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a
nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling
nationalities. There is nothing more distressing ... than
the hard, scoffing spirit which treats the allegation of dishonesty in a
public man as a cause for laughter. Such laughter is worse than the
crackling of thorns under a pot, for it denotes not merely the vacant
mind, but the heart in which high emotions have been choked before they
could grow to fruition. There is quite enough sorrow and shame amd
suffering and baseness in real life, and there is no need for meeting it
unnecessarily in fiction. There is something to be said for
government by a great aristocracy which has furnished leaders to the
nation in peace and war for generations; even a Democrat like myself
must admit this. But 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. Those who oppose all reform will do well to
remember that ruin in its worst form is inevitable if our national life
brings us nothing better than swollen fortunes for the few and the
triumph in both politics and business of a sordid and selfish
materialism. To announce that there must be no criticism
of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or
wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable
to the American public. To educate a man in mind and not in morals
is to educate a menace to society. To waste, to destroy, our natural
resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to
increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our
children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to
them amplified and developed. Toward all other nations, large and small,
our attitude must be one of cordial and sincere friendship. We must show
not only in our words, but in our deeds, that we are earnestly desirous
of securing their good will by acting toward them in a spirit of just
and generous recognition of all their rights. Unrestrained greed means the ruin of the
great woods and the drying up of the sources of the rivers. War with evil; but show no spirit of
malignity toward the man who may be responsible for the evil. Put it out
of his power to do wrong. We are fighting in the quarrel of
civilization against barbarism, of liberty against tyranny. Germany has
become a menace to the whole world. She is the most dangerous enemy of
liberty now existing. We can no more and no less afford to
condone evil in the man of capital than evil in the man of no capital. We demand that big business give the people
a square deal; in return we must insist that when anyone engaged in big
business honestly endeavors to do right he shall himself be given a
square deal. We must have complete and effective
publicity of corporate affairs, so that people may know beyond
peradventure whether the corporations obey the law and whether their
management entitles them to the confidence of the public. It is
necessary that laws should be passed to prohibit the use of corporate
funds directly or indirectly for political purposes; it is still more
necessary that such laws should be thoroughly enforced. Corporate
expenditures for political purposes, and especially such expenditures by
public-service corporations, have supplied one of the principal sources
of corruption in our political affairs. We need the iron qualities that go with
true manhood. We need the positive virtues of resolution, of courage, of
indomitable will, of power to do without shrinking the rough work that
must always be done. When great nations fear to expand, shrink
from expansion, it is because their greatness is coming to an end. Are
we, still in the prime of our lusty youth, still at the beginning of our
glorious manhood, to sit down among the outworn people, to take our
place with the weak and the craven? A thousand times no! When they call the roll in the Senate, the
Senators do not know whether to answer "Present" or "Not guilty." When you play, play hard; when you work,
don't play at all. Whenever you are asked if you can do a job,
tell 'em, "Certainly, I can!" Then get busy and find out how to do it. Whether the whites won the land by treaty,
by armed conflict, or, as was actually the case, by a mixture of both,
mattered comparatively little so long as the land was won. It was
all-important that it should be won, for the benefit of civilization and
in the interests of mankind. It is, indeed, a warped, perverse, and
silly morality which would forbid a course of conquest that has turned
whole continents into the seats of mighty and flourishing civilized
nations. ... It is as idle to apply to savages the rules of
international morality which obtain between stable and cultured
communities, as it would be to judge the fifth-century English conquest
of Britain by the standards of today. Willful 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. ... 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.
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http://www.nps.gov/thrb/index.htm |
