ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT AT THE LINCOLN DINNER OF THE REPUBLICAN CLUB OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK [Illustration] WALDORF-ASTORIA HOTEL [Illustration] FEBRUARY 13, 1905 [Illustration] WASHINGTON GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 1905 MR. PRESIDENT, AND YOU, MY FELLOW-MEMBERS OF THE REPUBLICAN CLUB, AND YOU, MY FELLOW-GUESTS OF THE REPUBLICAN CLUB: In his second inaugural, in a speech which will be read as long as the memory of this nation endures, Abraham Lincoln closed by saying: “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; * * * to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.” Immediately after his reelection he had already spoken thus: “The strife of the election is but human nature practically applied to the facts of the case. What has occurred in this case must ever recur in similar cases. Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us, therefore, study the incidents of this as philosophy to learn wisdom from, and none of them as wrongs to be revenged. * * * May not all having a common interest reunite in a common effort to (serve) our common country? For my own part, I have striven and shall strive to avoid placing any obstacle in the way. So long as I have been here I have not willingly planted a thorn in any man’s bosom. While I am deeply sensible to the high compliment of a reelection, and duly grateful, as I trust, to Almighty God for having directed my countrymen to a right conclusion, as I think, for their own good, it adds nothing to my satisfaction that any other man may be disappointed or pained by the result. “May I ask those who have not differed with me to join with me in this same spirit toward those who have?” This is the spirit in which mighty Lincoln sought to bind up the nation’s wounds when its soul was yet seething with fierce hatreds, with wrath, with rancor, with all the evil and dreadful passions provoked by civil war. Surely this is the spirit which all Americans should show now, when there is so little excuse for malice or rancor or hatred, when there is so little of vital consequence to divide brother from brother. [Applause.]