Part 3
One rather sad feature of the life of a President is the difficulty of making friends, because almost inevitably after a while the friend thinks there is some office he would like, applies for it, and when the President is obliged to refuse, feels that he has been injured. Those who were closest to Abraham Lincoln have said that this was one of the things which concerned him most in connection with his administration. It is hardly necessary to allude to the well-known fact that no President can gratify a hundredth part of the requests and demands made upon him for office, often by men who have rendered him real services and who are fit to fill the position they seek, but not so fit as somebody else. Of course the man does not realize that his successful rival was appointed because he really was more fit, and he goes away sour and embittered because of what he feels to be the President’s ingratitude.
Perhaps the two most striking things in the Presidency are the immense power of the President, in the first place; and in the second place, the fact that as soon as he has ceased being President he goes right back into the body of the people and becomes just like any other American citizen. While he is in office he is one of the half-dozen persons throughout the whole world who have most power to affect the destinies of the world.
He can set fleets and armies in motion; he can do more than any save one or two absolute sovereigns to affect the domestic welfare and happiness of scores of millions of people. Then when he goes out of office he takes up his regular round of duties like any other citizen, or if he is of advanced age retires from active life to rest, like any other man who has worked hard to earn his rest.
One President, John Quincy Adams, after leaving the Presidency, again entered public life as a Congressman, and achieved conspicuous successes in the Lower House. This, however, is a unique case. Many Presidents have followed the examples of Jefferson and Jackson, and retired, as these two men retired to Monticello and The Hermitage. Others have gone into more or less active work, as practicing lawyers or as lecturers on law, or in business, or in some form of philanthropy.
During the President’s actual incumbency of his office the tendency is perhaps to exaggerate not only his virtues but his faults. When he goes out he is simply one of the ordinary citizens, and perhaps for a time the importance of the rôle he has played is not recognized. True perspective is rarely gained until years have gone by.
Altogether, there are few harder tasks than that of filling well and ably the office of President of the United States. The labor is immense, the ceaseless worry and harassing anxiety are beyond description. But if the man at the close of his term is able to feel that he has done his duty well; that he has solved after the best fashion of which they were capable the great problems with which he was confronted, and has kept clean and in good running order the governmental machinery of the mighty Republic, he has the satisfaction of feeling that he has performed one of the great world-tasks, and that the mere performance is in itself the greatest of all possible rewards.
ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS
SPEECH OF PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT AT THE REUNION OF THE DEPARTMENT OF THE POTOMAC, G. A. R., AT THE NEW WILLARD HOTEL, WASHINGTON, D. C., FEB. 19, 1902
_Mr. Chairman, Commander-in-Chief, and you, my Comrades_:
I can say that there is nothing else of which I am quite so proud as having won, in a sense, the right to claim comradeship with you. And, gentlemen, I recollect speaking with a friend at the time of the Spanish War as to why we went, and it was agreed that it was simply because we could not stay away. We had taken to heart the great object-lesson that you gave. I am very glad to have the chance of seeing you this evening and of being with you. I would be but a poor American if I did not appreciate to the full the debt under which America rests to you, not alone for the lesson in war that you have given, but for what that lesson teaches as to peace. I meet you here and I see the general and the man from the ranks honor one another by the highest title either knows—comrade. I see you applying the great lesson of brotherhood—the lesson that must be applied in civil life no less than in military life if we are to work out, as we shall work out, aright the problems that face the Republic. The war in which I was engaged was a small affair; but it gave us an understanding of what you had done and of what you had been through. I know pretty well what kind of memories you have. I know what you did, what you risked, what you sacrificed. I know what it meant to you, and I know why you did it. There are two or three lessons that you taught that I hope this country will not only never forget, but will never cease applying. In the first place the motive—the tissue of motives that spurred you on—the love for liberty, love for union, and the love for the stable and ordered freedom of a great people. You braved nights in the freezing mud of the trenches in winter, and the marches under scorching midsummer suns; fever cots, wounds, insufficient food, exhausting fatigue of a type that those that have not tried it can not even understand. You did it without one thought of the trivial monetary reward at the moment; you did it because your souls spurred you on. And that is the reason why to this day, when any man speaks to a body of veterans he speaks to a body of men who are instant to respond to any call for adherence to a lofty ideal. In other words, you practiced, and by practicing preached, in the strongest manner, the ideal of doing your duty, of doing duty when duty calls, without thought of what the reward might be. In the days when the sad, kindly, patient Lincoln—mighty Lincoln—stood in the White House like a high priest of the people, between the horns of the altar, and poured out the blood of the bravest and best, it was because only by that sacrifice could the flag that had been rent in sunder once again be made without a seam. You taught the ideal of duty—duty, a word that stands above glory, or any other word. Glory is a good word, too, but duty is a better one.
You taught, in addition to that, brotherhood. In the ranks, as you stood there shoulder to shoulder, little any one of you cared what the man next to you was as regarded wealth, trade, or education, if he was in very truth a man. And, friends, short would have been our shrift if in our army as a whole there had been any failure to exercise just that type of judgment—to exercise the judgment on the man as a man; short would have been our shrift if we had failed to do justice to the bricklayer on the one hand, or to the banker on the other; if we had shown either contempt of the one, or the no less mean emotion of envy for the other. If we are to go on, as we shall and must go on in our national career, we must apply in the civic life of our nation exactly the principles which obtained in the Grand Army of the Republic. There are plenty of foes to fight and we can not afford to have honest men betrayed into hostility toward one another; betrayed into acting toward one another in a way that will permanently deteriorate the standard of our national character. We can afford to disagree on questions of proper political difference. There are plenty such. But we can not afford, if we are to remain true to the ideals of the past, to differ about those ideals. We can not afford to do less than justice to any man. We can not afford to shrink from seeing that the right obtains; nor, on the other hand, to rebuke any effort to stir up those dark and evil forces which lurk in each man’s breast, and which need to be kept down, not excited.
The Commander-in-Chief spoke of the great and good President—of President McKinley—who died for the people exactly as Abraham Lincoln died. You who wore the blue in the early sixties warred against that spirit of disunion which, if successful, would have meant widespread governmental anarchy throughout this land. You warred for orderly liberty. So now it behooves each of us so to conduct his civil life, so to do his duty as a citizen, that we shall in the most effective way war against the spirit of anarchy in all its forms. You did mighty deeds, and you leave us more than mighty deeds, for you leave us the memory of how you did them. You leave us not only the victory, but the spirit that lay behind it and shone through it. You leave us not only the triumph, but the memory of the patient resolution, of the suffering, of the dogged endurance and heroic daring through which that triumph came to pass. You in your youth and early manhood took up the greatest task which fell to the lot of any generation of our people to perform. You did it well. We have lesser tasks, and yet tasks of great and vital importance. Woe to us if we do not show ourselves worthy to be your successors, by doing our lesser tasks with the same firm determination for right that you displayed when you fought to a finish the great Civil War, when you upheld the arms of Abraham Lincoln, and followed to victory the flag of Ulysses S. Grant.
AT THE CHARLESTON EXPOSITION, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 9, 1902
_Mr. President, Mr. Mayor, and you, the Men and Women of the Palmetto State, Men and Women of the South; my Fellow-citizens of the Union_:
It is indeed to me a peculiar pleasure to have the chance of coming here to this Exposition held in your old, your beautiful, your historic city.
My mother’s people were from Georgia; but before they came to Georgia, before the Revolution, in the days of Colonial rule, they dwelt for nearly a century in South Carolina; and therefore I can claim your State as mine by inheritance no less than by the stronger and nobler right which makes each foot of American soil in a sense the property of all Americans.
Charleston is not only a typical Southern city; it is also a city whose history teems with events which link themselves to American history as a whole. In the early Colonial days Charleston was the outpost of our people against the Spaniard in the South. In the days of the Revolution there occurred here some of the events which vitally affected the outcome of the struggle for Independence, and which impressed themselves most deeply upon the popular mind. It was here that the tremendous, terrible drama of the Civil War opened.
With delicate and thoughtful courtesy you originally asked me to come to this Exposition on the birthday of Abraham Lincoln. The invitation not only showed a fine generosity and manliness in you, my hosts, but it also emphasized as hardly anything else could have emphasized how completely we are now a united people. The wounds left by the great Civil War, incomparably the greatest war of modern times, have healed; and its memories are now priceless heritages of honor alike to the North and to the South. The devotion, the self-sacrifice, the steadfast resolution and lofty daring, the high devotion to the right as each man saw it, whether Northerner or Southerner—all these qualities of the men and women of the early sixties now shine luminous and brilliant before our eyes, while the mists of anger and hatred that once dimmed them have passed away forever.
All of us, North and South, can glory alike in the valor of the men who wore the blue and of the men who wore the gray. Those were iron times, and only iron men could fight to its terrible finish the giant struggle between the hosts of Grant and Lee, the struggle that came to an end thirty-seven years ago this very day. To us of the present day, and to our children and children’s children, the valiant deeds, the high endeavor, and abnegation of self shown in that struggle by those who took part therein will remain for evermore to mark the level to which we in our turn must rise whenever the hour of the Nation’s need may come.
When four years ago this Nation was compelled to face a foreign foe, the completeness of the reunion became instantly and strikingly evident. The war was not one which called for the exercise of more than an insignificant fraction of our strength, and the strain put upon us was slight indeed compared with the results. But it was a satisfactory thing to see the way in which the sons of the soldier of the Union and the soldier of the Confederacy leaped eagerly forward, emulous to show in brotherly rivalry the qualities which had won renown for their fathers, the men of the great war. It was my good fortune to serve under an ex-Confederate general, gallant old Joe Wheeler, who commanded the cavalry division at Santiago.
In my regiment there were certainly as many men whose fathers had served in the Southern, as there were men whose fathers had served in the Northern, army. Among the captains there was opportunity to promote but one to field rank. The man who was singled out for this promotion because of conspicuous gallantry in the field was the son of a Confederate general and was himself a citizen of this, the Palmetto State; and no American officer could wish to march to battle beside a more loyal, gallant, and absolutely fearless comrade than my former captain and major, your fellow-citizen, Micah Jenkins.
A few months ago, owing to the enforced absence of the Governor of the Philippines, it became necessary to nominate a Vice-Governor to take his place—one of the most important places in our Government at this time. I nominated as Vice-Governor an ex-Confederate, General Luke Wright, of Tennessee. It is therefore an ex-Confederate who now stands as the exponent of this Government and this people in that great group of islands in the eastern seas over which the American flag floats. General Wright has taken a leading part in the work of steadily bringing order and peace out of the bloody chaos in which we found the islands. He is now taking a leading part not merely in upholding the honor of the flag by making it respected as the symbol of our power, but still more in upholding its honor by unwearied labor for the establishment of ordered liberty—of law-creating, law-abiding civil government—under its folds.
The progress which has been made under General Wright and those like him has been indeed marvelous. In fact, a letter of the General’s the other day seemed to show that he considered there was far more warfare about the Philippines in this country than there was warfare in the Philippines themselves! It is an added proof of the completeness of the reunion of our country that one of the foremost men who have been instrumental in driving forward the great work for civilization and humanity in the Philippines has been a man who in the Civil War fought with distinction in a uniform of Confederate gray.
If ever the need comes in the future the past has made abundantly evident the fact that from this time on Northerner and Southerner will in war know only the generous desire to strive how each can do the more effective service for the flag of our common country. The same thing is true in the endless work of peace, the never-ending work of building and keeping the marvelous fabric of our industrial prosperity. The upbuilding of any part of our country is a benefit to the whole, and every such effort as this to stimulate the resources and industry of a particular section is entitled to the heartiest support from every quarter of the Union. Thoroughly good national work can be done only if each of us works hard for himself, and at the same time keeps constantly in mind that he must work in conjunction with others.
You have made a particular effort in your Exhibition to get into touch with the West Indies. This is wise. The events of the last four years have shown us that the West Indies and the Isthmus must in the future occupy a far larger place in our national policy than in the past. This is proved by the negotiations for the purchase of the Danish Islands, the acquisition of Porto Rico, the preparation for building an Isthmian canal, and, finally, by the changed relations which these years have produced between us and Cuba. As a Nation we have especial right to take honest pride in what we have done for Cuba. Our critics abroad and at home have insisted that we never intended to leave the island. But on the 20th of next month Cuba becomes a free republic, and we turn over to the islanders the control of their own government. It would be very difficult to find a parallel in the conduct of any other great State that has occupied such a position as ours. We have kept our word and done our duty, just as an honest individual in private life keeps his word and does his duty.
Be it remembered, moreover, that after our four years’ occupation of the island we turn it over to the Cubans in a better condition than it ever has been in all the centuries of Spanish rule. This has a direct bearing upon our own welfare. Cuba is so near to us that we can never be indifferent to misgovernment and disaster within its limits. The mere fact that our administration in the island has minimized the danger from the dreadful scourge of yellow fever, alike to Cuba and to ourselves, is sufficient to emphasize the community of interest between us. But there are other interests which bind us together. Cuba’s position makes it necessary that her political relations with us should differ from her political relations with other powers. This fact has been formulated by us and accepted by the Cubans in the Platt amendments. It follows as a corollary that where the Cubans have thus assumed a position of peculiar relationship to our political system they must similarly stand in a peculiar relationship to our economic system.
We have rightfully insisted upon Cuba adopting toward us an attitude differing politically from that she adopts toward any other power; and in return, as a matter of right, we must give to Cuba a different—that is, a better—position economically in her relations with us than we give to other powers. This is the course dictated by sound policy, by a wise and far-sighted view of our own interest, and by the position we have taken during the past four years. We are a wealthy and powerful country, dealing with a much weaker one; and the contrast in wealth and strength makes it all the more our duty to deal with Cuba, as we have already dealt with her, in a spirit of large generosity.
This Exposition is rendered possible because of the period of industrial prosperity through which we are passing. While material well-being is never all-sufficient to the life of a nation, yet it is the merest truism to say that its absence means ruin. We need to build a higher life upon it as a foundation; but we can build little indeed unless this foundation of prosperity is deep and broad. The well-being which we are now enjoying can be secured only through general business prosperity, and such prosperity is conditioned upon the energy and hard work, the sanity and the mutual respect, of all classes of capitalists, large and small, of wage-workers of every degree. As is inevitable in a time of business prosperity, some men succeed more than others, and it is unfortunately also inevitable that when this is the case some unwise people are sure to try to appeal to the envy and jealousy of those who succeed least. It is a good thing when these appeals are made to remember that while it is difficult to increase prosperity by law, it is easy enough to ruin it, and that there is small satisfaction to the less prosperous if they succeed in overthrowing both the more prosperous and themselves in the crash of a common disaster.
Every industrial exposition of this type necessarily calls up the thought of the complex social and economic questions which are involved in our present industrial system. Our astounding material prosperity, the sweep and rush rather than the mere march of our progressive material development, have brought grave troubles in their train. We can not afford to blink these troubles, any more than because of them we can afford to accept as true the gloomy forebodings of the prophets of evil. There are great problems before us. They are not insoluble, but they can be solved only if we approach them in a spirit of resolute fearlessness, of common-sense, and of honest intention to do fair and equal justice to all men alike. We are certain to fail if we adopt the policy of the demagogue who raves against the wealth which is simply the form of embodied thrift, foresight, and intelligence; who would shut the door of opportunity against those whose energy we should especially foster, by penalizing the qualities which tell for success. Just as little can we afford to follow those who fear to recognize injustice and to endeavor to cut it out because the task is difficult or even—if performed by unskilful hands—dangerous.
This is an era of great combinations both of labor and of capital. In many ways these combinations have worked for good; but they must work under the law, and the laws concerning them must be just and wise, or they will inevitably do evil; and this applies as much to the richest corporation as to the most powerful labor union. Our laws must be wise, sane, healthy, conceived in the spirit of those who scorn the mere agitator, the mere inciter of class or sectional hatred; who wish justice for all men; who recognize the need of adhering so far as possible to the old American doctrine of giving the widest possible scope for the free exercise of individual initiative, and yet who recognize also that after combinations have reached a certain stage it is indispensable to the general welfare that the Nation should exercise over them, cautiously and with self-restraint, but firmly, the power of supervision and regulation.