Presidential addresses and state papers, Volume 2 (of 7)Roosevelt, Theodore
History
Presidential addresses and state papers, Volume 2 (of 7)
Roosevelt, Theodore
Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919; United States -- Politics and government -- 1901-1909
And here in this city I would be unwilling to let an occasion like
this pass without recalling the part of incalculable importance
played by the members of the Turn Verein of Baltimore in saving
Baltimore to the Union. In congratulating every man here to whom it
was given to fight in the great Civil War, in congratulating the men
of Baltimore who in these dark days followed the lead of Sigel, Rapp,
and Blumenberg in playing well and nobly their part in upholding the
hands of Abraham Lincoln, I congratulate them thrice over because it
was given to them to fight in a contest where the victors and the
vanquished alike have bequeathed to us as a heritage the memory of
the valor and the loyalty to the right as to each it was given to see
the right, shown alike by the men who wore the blue and the men who
wore the gray, in the great days of the Civil War. Terrible though
that contest was, in which with blood and tears and sweat, with the
suffering of men and the sorrow of women, the generation of Lincoln
and Grant purchased for us peace and union, it paid for itself over
and over again by what it left to us—not merely a reunited land, not
merely a land in which freedom was a fact instead of only a boast, but
above all the right as Americans to feel within us the lift toward
lofty things which must come to those who know that their fathers and
forefathers have in the supreme crisis entirely shown themselves fit
to rank among the men of all time.
I want to say just one thing more. I feel that the men of this
Association and of kindred associations are not only adding to the
common fund of pleasure, but are doing genuine missionary work
of a needed kind when they hold such a festival as this. I wish
that everywhere in our country we could see clubs and associations
including all our citizens, similar in character to that Society
which has furnished the reason for the assembling of this great
audience to-night. No greater contribution to American social life
could possibly be made than by instilling into it the capacity for
Gemüthlichkeit. No greater good can come to our people than to
encourage in them a capacity for enjoyment which shall discriminate
sharply between what is vicious and what is pleasant. Nothing can
add more to our capacity for healthy social enjoyment than, by force
of example no less than by precept, to encourage the formation of
societies which by their cultivation of music, vocal and instrumental,
give great lift to the artistic side, the æsthetic side of our nature;
and especially is that true when we remember that no man is going to
go very far wrong if he belongs to a society where he can take his
wife with him to enjoy it.
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA., JUNE 16, 1903
_Mr. Chairman; my Fellow-Americans_:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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