Address of President Roosevelt at the Lincoln dinner of the Republican club of the city of New York, Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, February 13, 1905Roosevelt, Theodore
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Address of President Roosevelt at the Lincoln dinner of the Republican club of the city of New York, Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, February 13, 1905
Roosevelt, Theodore
Lincoln Day addresses; Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 -- Anniversaries, etc.; Speeches, addresses, etc.
The problem is so to adjust the relations between two races of
different ethnic type that the rights of neither be abridged nor
jeoparded; that the backward race be trained so that it may enter into
the possession of true freedom, while the forward race is enabled to
preserve unharmed the high civilization wrought out by its forefathers.
The working out of this problem must necessarily be slow; it is not
possible in offhand fashion to obtain or to confer the priceless boons
of freedom, industrial efficiency, political capacity, and domestic
morality. Nor is it only necessary to train the colored man; it is
quite as necessary to train the white man, for on his shoulders rests
a well-nigh unparalleled sociological responsibility. It is a problem
demanding the best thought, the utmost patience, the most earnest
effort, the broadest charity, of the statesman, the student, the
philanthropist; of the leaders of thought in every department of our
national life. The church can be a most important factor in solving it
aright. But above all else we need for its successful solution the
sober, kindly, steadfast, unselfish performance of duty by the average
plain citizen in his everyday dealings with his fellows. [Applause.]
The ideal of elemental justice meted out to every man is the ideal we
should keep ever before us. It will be many a long day before we attain
to it, and unless we show not only devotion to it, but also wisdom and
self-restraint in the exhibition of that devotion, we shall defer the
time for its realization still further. In striving to attain to so
much of it as concerns dealing with men of different colors, we must
remember two things.
In the first place, it is true of the colored man, as it is true of the
white man, that in the long run his fate must depend far more upon his
own effort than upon the efforts of any outside friend. [Applause.]
Every vicious, venal, or ignorant colored man is an even greater foe to
his own race than to the community as a whole. [Applause.] The colored
man’s self-respect entitles him to do that share in the political
work of the country which is warranted by his individual ability and
integrity and the position he has won for himself. But the prime
requisite of the race is moral and industrial uplifting.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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