Presidential addresses and state papers, Volume 3 (of 7)Roosevelt, Theodore
History
Presidential addresses and state papers, Volume 3 (of 7)
Roosevelt, Theodore
Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919; United States -- Politics and government -- 1901-1909
liberty and responsibility in every domain of human thought and action.
It was essentially the view taken by Abraham Lincoln, and by all those
who, when the Civil War broke out, realized that in a self-governing
democracy those who desire to be considered fit to enjoy liberty must
show that they know how to use it with moderation and justice in peace,
and how to fight for it when it is jeoparded by malice domestic or
foreign levy.
The lessons they taught us are lessons as applicable in our everyday
lives now as in the rare times of great stress. The men who made this
field forever memorable did so because they combined the power of
fealty to a lofty ideal with the power of showing that fealty in hard,
practical, common-sense fashion. They stood for the life of effort, not
the life of ease. They had that love of country, that love of justice,
that love of their fellow-men, without which power and resourceful
efficiency but make a man a danger to his fellows. Yet, in addition
thereto, they likewise possessed the power and the efficiency; for
otherwise their high purpose would have been barren of result. They
knew each how to act for himself, and yet each how to act with his
fellows. They learned, as all the generation of the Civil War learned,
that rare indeed is the chance to do anything worth doing by one sudden
and violent effort. The men who believed that the Civil War would be
ended in ninety days, the men who cried loudest “On to Richmond,” if
they had the right stuff in them speedily learned their error; and the
war was actually won by those who settled themselves steadfastly down
to fight for three years, or for as much longer as the war might last,
and who gradually grew to understand that the triumph would come, not
by a single brilliant victory, but by a hundred painful and tedious
campaigns. In the East and the West the columns advanced and recoiled,
swayed from side to side, and again advanced; along the coasts the
black ships stood endlessly off and on before the hostile forts;
generals and admirals emerged into the light, each to face his crowded
hour of success or failure; the men in front fought; the men behind
supplied and pushed forward those in front; and the final victory was
due to the deeds of all who played their parts well and manfully, in
the scores of battles, in the countless skirmishes, in march, in camp,
or in reserve, as commissioned officers, or in the ranks—wherever and
whenever duty called them. That is why the title that most appeals to
you now is the title of comrade, by which the private in the ranks
and the lieutenant-general address one another, because each did his
duty and asks no more than recognition of that fact. Just so it must
be for us in civil life. We can make and keep this country worthy of
the men who gave their lives to save it, only on condition that the
average man among us on the whole does his duty bravely, loyally, and
with common-sense, in whatever position life allots to him. Exactly
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