be ever present in our minds the fundamental truth
that in a repubHc such as ours the only safety is
to stand neither for nor against any man because he
is rich or because he is poor, because he is engaged
in one occupation or another, because he works with
his brains or because he works with his hands. We
must treat each man on his worth and merits as a
man. We must see that each is given a square
deal, because he is entitled to no more and should
receive no less. Finally we must keep ever in mind
that a republic such as ours can exist only by virtue
of the orderly li1>erty which comes through the
equal domination of the law over all men alike,
and through its administration in such resolute and
fearless fashion as shall teach all that no man is
above it and no man below it.
AT RICHMOND HILL. N. Y., SEPTEMBER 8, 1903
Dr. Kimball, and you, Men, Women, and Children
of Richmond Hill:
I wish I could talk better to all of you ; but I will
ask you to have a little patience for one moment
while I thank you for having come out to greet me,
I am glad to see all of you, and allow me to say that
I am most glad to see those who carry small folks in
their arms.
You know I am very fond of Mr. Riis; and the
reason why is because when I preach about decent
citizenship I can turn to him and think he has prac-
ticed just what I have been preaching. The worth
482 Presidential Addresses
of any sermon lies in the way in which that sermon
can be and is applied in practice. Of course I am
glad to have the chance of being with a man who
shows by his life that he knows how practically to
apply the spirit of decency unaccompanied by mourn-
fulness or false pretences of any kind, or by weak-
ness, I want to see men decent ; I want to see them
act squarely; I want to see them work. That does
not mean that I want to see them have sour faces. I
want to see all enjoy themselves, men, women, and
children. I believe in play; I believe in happiness,
and in the joy of Hving; and I do not believe in the
life that is nothing but play. I believe that you have
a thousand-fold more enjoyment if work comes first;
but get time to play also. I believe in cheerfulness
as well as in decency and honesty. Finally, I be-
lieve in always combining strength with the sweet-
ness. I want to say how deeply touched I am at
your coming out to greet me, and I want you to
understand that you give me strength of heart when
you come in this way. I greet you all ; I am glad to
see the grown up people of Richmond Hill, and I am
even more glad to see the children.
AT ANTIETAM, MD., SEPTEMBER 17, 1903
Governor Murphy, Veterans of Nezv Jersey, Men
of the Grand Army:
I thank you of New Jersey for the monument
to the troops of New Jersey who fought at Antie-
tam, and on behalf of the Nation I accept the gift.
And State Papers 483
We meet to-day upon one of the great battle-fields
of the Civil War. No other battle of the Civil
War lasting but one day shows as great a per-
centage of loss as that which occurred here upon
the day on which Antietam was fought. Moreover,
in its ultimate effects this battle was of momentous
and even decisive importance, for when it had ended
and Lee had retreated south of the Potomac, Lin-
coln forthwith published that immortal paper, the
preliminary declaration of emancipation; the paper
which decided that the Civil War, besides being
a war for the preservation of the Union, should be
a war for the emancipation of the slave, so that
from that time onward the cause of Union and of
Freedom, of national greatness and individual lib-
erty, were one and the same.
Men of New Jersey, I congratulate your State be-
cause she has the right to claim her full share in
the honor and glory of that memorable day; and
I congratulate you, Governor Murphy, because on
that day you had the high good fortune to serve
as a lad with credit and honor in one of the five
regiments which your State sent to the battle. Four
of those regiments, by the way, served in the divi-
sion commanded by that gallant soldier, Henry W.
Slocum, whom we of New York can claim as our
own. The other regiment, that in which Governor
Murphy served, although practically an entirely
new regiment, did work as good as that of any vet-
eran organization upon the field, and suffered a pro-
portional loss. This regiment was at one time or-
484 Presidential Addresses
dered to the support of a division commanded by
another New York soldier, the gallant General
Greene, whose son himself served as a major-gen-
eral in the war with Spain and is now, as Police
Commissioner of New York, rendering as signal
service in civil life as he had already rendered in
military life.
If the issue of Antietam had been other than
it was, it is probable that at least two great Eu-
ropean powers would have recognized the indepen-
dence of the Confederacy; so that you who fought
here forty-one years ago have the profound satis-
faction of feeling that you played well your part
in one of those crises big with the fate of all man-
kind. You men of the Grand Army by your vic-
tory not only rendered all Americans your debtors
for evermore, but you rendered all humanity your
debtors. If the Union had been dissolved, if the
great edifice built with blood and sweat and tears
by mighty Washington and his compeers had gone
down in wreck and ruin, the result would have been
an incalculable calamity, not only for our people —
and most of all for those who, in such event would
have seemingly triumphed — but for all mankind.
The great American Republic would have become a
memory of derision; and the failure of the experi-
ment of self-government by a great people on a
great scale would have delighted the heart of every
foe of republican institutions. Our country, now so
great and so wonderful, would have been split into
little jangling rival nationalities, each with a his-
And State Papers 485
tory both bloody and contemptible. It was because
you, the men who wear the button of the Grand
Army, triumphed in those dark years, that every
American now holds his head high, proud in the
knowledge that he belongs to a Nation whose glo-
,rious past and great present will be succeeded by
an even mightier future; whereas had you failed
we would all of us. North and South, East and
West, be now treated by other nations at the best
with contemptuous tolerance; at the worst with
overbearing insolence.
Moreoverj every friend of liberty, every believer
in self-government, every idealist who wished to
see his ideals take practical shape, wherever he
might be in the world, knew that the success of
all in which he most believed was bound up with
the success of the Union armies in this great strug-
gle. I confidently predict that when the final judg-
ment of history is recorded it will be said that in
no other war of which we have written record was
it more vitally essential for the welfare of mankind
that victory should rest where it finally rested.
There have been other wars for individual free-
dom. There have been other wars for national
greatness. But there has never been another war
in which the issues at stake were so large, looked
at from either standpoint. We take just , pride in
the great deeds of the men of 1776, but we must
keep in mind that the Revolutionary War would
have been shorn of well-nigh all its results had
the side of union and liberty been defeated in the
486 Presidential Addresses
Civil War. In such case we should merely have
added another to the lamentably long list of cases
in which peoples have shown that after winning
their liberty they are wholly unable to make good
use of it.
It now rests with us in civil life to make good by
our deeds the deeds which you who wore the blue
did in the great years from '61 to '65. The pa-
triotism, the courage, the unflinching resolution
and steadfast endurance of the soldiers whose tri-
umph was crowned at Appomattox must be sup-
plemented on our part by civic courage, civic hon-
esty, cool sanity, and steadfast adherence to the
immutable laws of righteousness. You left us a
reunited country; reunited in fact as well as in
name. You left us the right of brotherhood with
your gallant foes who wore the gray; the right to
feel pride in their courage and their high fealty
to an ideal, even though they warred against the
stars in their courses. You left us also the most
splendid example of what brotherhood really
means; for in your careers you showed in prac-
tical fashion that the only safety in our Ameri-
can life lies in spurning the accidental distinctions
which sunder one man from another, and in paying
homage to each man only because of what he essen-
tially is ; in stripping off the husks of occupation, of
position, of accident, until the soul stands forth
revealed, and we know the man only because of his
worth as a man.
There was no patent device for securing victory
• - B»
<r2 <
§3*
^ o g -^ -.
^ s « 3
■2 5" «*•
= 3 «» o
•-^ 2 I.
T^/JKWSSi.J
And State Papers 487
by force of arms forty years ago; and there is no
patent device for securing victory for the forces of
righteousness in civil life now. In each case the
all-important factor was and is the character of the
individual man. Good laws in the State, like a
good organization in an army, are the expressions
of national character. Leaders will be developed
in military and in civil life alike; and weapons and
tactics change from generation to generation, as
methods of achieving good government change in
civic affairs; but the fundamental qualities which
make for good citizenship do not change any more
than the fundamental qualities which make good
soldiers. In the long run in the Civil War the
thing that counted for more than aught else was
the fact that the average American had the fighting
edge; had within him the spirit which spurred him
on through toil and danger, fatigue and hardship,
to the goal of the splendid ultimate triumph. So
in achieving good government the fundamental fac-
tor must be the character of the average citizen;
that average citizen's power of hatred for what is
mean and base and unlovely; his fearless scorn of
cowardice and his determination to war unyield-
ingly against the dark and sordid forces of evil.
The Continental troops who followed Washing-
ton were clad in blue and buff, and were armed
with clumsy, flintlock muskets. You, who followed
Grant, wore the famous old blue uniform, and your
weapons had changed as had your uniform ; and
now the men of the American Army who uphold
488 Presidential Addresses
the honor of the flag in the far tropic lands are yet
differently armed and differently clad and differ-
ently trained; but the spirit that has driven you all
to victory has remained forever unchanged. So it
is in civil life. ,x\s you did not win in a month
or a year, but only after long years of hard and
dangerous work, so the fight for governmental
honesty and efficiency can be won only by the dis-
play of similar patience and similar resolution and
power of endurance. We need the same type of
character now that was needed by the men who with
Washington first inaugurated the system of free
popular government, the system of combined liberty
and order here on this Continent; that was needed
by the men who under Lincoln perpetuated the gov-
ernment which had thus been inaugurated in the
days of Washington. The qualities essential to good
citizenship and to good public service now are in
all their essentials exactly the same as in the days
when the first Congresses met to provide for the es-
tablishment of the Union; as in the days seventy
years later, when the Congresses met which had to
provide for its salvation.
There are many qualities which we need ahke
in private citizen and in public man, but three above
all — three for the lack of which no brilliancy and
no genius can atone — and those three are courage,
honesty, and common sense.
And State Papers 489
AT THE UNVEILING OF THE SHERMAN
STATUE, WASHINGTON, D. C,
OCTOBER 15, 1903
General Dodge, Veterans of the Four Great Armies,
and you, iny F ellozv-Citisens :
To-day we meet together to do honor to the
memory of one of the great men whom, in the
hour of her agony, our Nation brought forth for
her preservation. The Civil War was not only in
the importance of the issues at stake and of the out-
come the greatest of modern times, but it was also,
taking into account its duration, the severity of the
fighting, and the size of the armies engaged, the
greatest since the close of the Napoleonic struggles.
Among the generals who rose to high position as
leaders of the various armies in the field are many
who will be remembered in our history as long as
this history itself is remembered. Sheridan, the in-
carnation of fiery energy and prowess; Thomas,
farsighted, cool-headed, whose steadfast courage
burned ever highest in the supreme moment of the
crisis; McClellan, with his extraordinary gift for
organization; Meade, victor in one of the decisive
battles of all time ; Hancock, type of the true fight-
ing man among the regulars; Logan, type of the
true fighting man among the volunteers — the names
of these and of many others will endure so long as
our people hold sacred the memory of the fight for
union and for liberty. High among these chiefs
rise the figures of Grant and of Grant's great lieu-
490 Presidential Addresses
tenant, Sherman, whose statue here in the national
capital is to-day to be unveiled. It is not necessary
here to go over the long roll of Sherman's mighty
feats. They are written large throughout the his-
tory of the Civil War. Our memories would be
poor indeed if we did not recall them now, as we
look along Pennsylvania Avenue and think of the
great triumphal march which surged down its length
when at the close of the war the victorious armies
of the East and of the West met here in the capital
of the Nation they had saved.
There is a peculiar fitness in commemorating the
great deeds of the soldiers who preserved this Na-
tion, by suitable monuments at the National Capital.
I trust we shall soon have a proper statue of Abra-
ham Lincoln, to whom more than to any other one
man this Nation owes its salvation. Meanwhile, on
behalf of the people of the Nation, I wish to con-
gratulate all of you who have been instrumental in
securing the erection of this statue to General
Sherman.
The living can best show their respect for the
memory of the great dead by the way in which they
take to heart and act upon the lessons taught by the
lives which made these dead men great. Our hom-
age to-day to the memory of Sherman comes from
the depths of our being. We would be unworthy
citizens did we not feel profound gratitude toward
him, and those like him and under him, who, when
the country called in her dire need, sprang forward
with such gallant eagerness to answer that call.
And State Papers 491
Their blood and their toil, their endurance and pa-
triotism, have made us and all who come after us
forever their debtors. They left us not merely a
reunited country, but a country incalculably greater
because of its rich heritage in the deeds which thus
left it reunited. As a Nation we are the greater, not
only for the valor and devotion to duty displayed
by the men in blue, who won in the great struggle
for the Union, but also for the valor and the loy-
alty toward what they regarded as right of the men
in gray; for this war, thrice fortunate above all
other recent wars in its outcome, left to all of us
the right of brotherhood alike with valiant victor
and valiant vanquished.
Moreover, our homage must not only find expres-
sion on our lips ; it must also show itself forth in
our deeds. It is a great and glorious thing for a
nation to be stirred to present triumph by the splen-
did memories of triumphs in the past. But it is a
shameful thing for a nation, if these memories stir
it only to empty boastings, to a pride that does not
shrink from present abasement, to that self-satis-
faction which accepts the high resolve and unbend-
ing effort of the father as an excuse for effortless
ease or wrongly directed effort in the son. We
of the present, if we are true to the past, must
show by our lives that we have learned aright the
lessons taught by the men who did the mighty
deeds of the past. We must have in us the spirit
which made the men of the Civil ^^^ar what they
were; the spirit which produced leaders such as
49^ Presidential Addresses
Sherman ; the spirit which gave to the average sol-
dier the grim tenacity and resourcefuhiess that
made the armies of Grant and Sherman as formi-
dable fighting machines as this world has ever seen.
We need their ruggedness of body, their keen and
vigorous minds, and above all their dominant qual-
ity of forceful character. Their lives teach us in
our own lives ^o strive after, not the thing which is
merely pleasant, but the thing which it is our duty
to do. The life of duty, not the life of mere ease
or mere pleasure — that is the kind of life which
makes the great man as it makes the great nation.
We can not afford to lose the virtues which made
the men of '6i to '65 great in war. No man is
warranted in feeling pride in the deeds of the Army
and Navy of the past if he does not back up the
Army and the Navy of the present. If we are far-
sighted in our patriotism, there will be no let up in
the work of building, and of keeping at the highest
point of efficiency, a navy suited to the part the
United States must hereafter play in the world,
and of making and keeping our small Regular
Army, which in the event of a great war can
never be anything but the nucleus around which
our volunteer armies must form themselves, the
best army of its size to be found among the nations.
So much for our duties in keeping unstained the
honor roll our fathers made in war. It is of even
more instant need that we should show their spirit
of patriotism in the affairs of peace. The duties
of peace are with us always; those of war are but
And State Papers 493
occasional; and with a nation as with a man, the
worthiness of Hfe depends upon the way in which
the everyday duties are done. The home duties are
the vital duties. The nation is nothing but the
aggregate of the families within its border; and if
the average man is not hard-working, just, and
fearless in his dealings with those about him, then
our average of public life will in the end be low;
for the stream can rise no higher than its source.
But in addition we need to remember that a pecu-
liar responsibility rests upon the man in public life.
We meet in the capital of the Nation, in the city
which owes its existence to the fact that it is the
seat of the National Government. It is well for us
in this place, and at this time, to remember that
exactly as there are certain homely qualities the lack
of which will prevent the most brilliant man alive
from being a useful soldier to his country, so there
are certain homely qualities for the lack of which
in the public servant no shrewdness or ability can
atone. The greatest leaders, whether in war or in
peace, must of course show a peculiar quality of
genius; but the most redoubtable armies that have
ever existed have been redoubtable because the aver-
age soldier, the average officer, possessed to a high
degree such comparatively simple qualities as loy-
alty, courage, and hardihood. And so the most
successful governments are those in which the aver-
age public servant possesses that variant of loyalty
which we call patriotism, together with common
sense and honesty. We can as little ajfford to tol-
494 Presidential Addresses
erate a dishonest man in the pubHc service as a
coward in the army. The murderer takes a single
life; the corruptionist in public life, whether he be
bribe giver or bribe taker, strikes at the heart of the
commonwealth. In every public service, as in every
army, there will be wrongdoers, there will occur
misdeeds. This can not be avoided; but vigilant
watch must be kept, and as soon as discovered the
wrongdoing must be stopped and the wrongdoers
punished. Remember that in popular government
we must rely on the people themselves, alike for
the punishment and the reformation. Those upon
whom our institutions cast the initial duty of bring-
ing malefactors to the bar of justice must be diligent
in its discharge; yet in the last resort the success
of their efforts to purge the public service of cor-
ruption must depend upon the attitude of the courts
and of the juries drawn from the people. Leader-
ship is of avail only so far as there is wise and
resolute public sentiment behind it.
In the long run, then, it depends uix)n us ourselves,
upon us the people as a whole, whether this Govern-
ment is or is not to stand in the future as it has
stood in the past ; and my faith that it will show no
falling off is based upon my faith in the character
of our average citizenship. The one supreme duty
is to try to keep this average high. To this end it
is well to keep alive the memory of those men who
are fit to serve as examples of what is loftiest and
best in American citizenship. Such a man was
General Sherman. To very few in any generation
And State Papers 495
is it given to render such services as he rendered;
but each of us in his degree can try to show some-
thing of those quahties of character upon which, in
their sum, the high worth of Sherman rested — his
courage, his kindHness, his clean and simple living,
his sturdy good sense, his manliness and tenderness
in the intimate relations of life, and finally, his in-
flexible rectitude of soul and his loyalty to all that
in this free Republic is hallowed and symbolized by
the national flag.
AT THE PAN-AMERICAN MISSIONARY SER-
VICE, CATHEDRAL OF ST. PETER AND ST.
PAUL, MOUNT ST. ALBAN, WASHINGTON,
D. C, OCTOBER 25, 1903
Bishop Sattcrlec; and to yon representatives of the
Church both at Jiome and abroad; and to all of
you, my friends and fellozv-citizens:
I extend greeting, and in your name I especially
welcome those who are in a sense the guests of the
nation to-day. In what I am about to say to you,
I wish to dwell upon certain thoughts suggested by
three different quotations : In the first place, "Thou
shalt serve the Lord with all thy heart, with all thy
soul, and with all thy mind;" the next, "Be ye
therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves ;"
and finally, in the Collect which you, Bishop Doane,
just read, that "we being ready both in body and
soul may cheerfully accomplish those things which
thou commandest."
49^ Presidential Addresses
To an audience such as this I do not have to say
anything as to serving the cause of decency with
heart and with soul. I want to dwell, however,
upon the fact that we have the right to claim from
yoii not merely that you shall have heart in your
work, not merely that you shall put your souls into
it, but that you shall give the best that your minds
have to it also. In the eternal, the unending war-
fare for righteousness and against evil, the friends
of what is good need to remember that in addition
to being decent they must be efificient; that good in-
tentions, high purposes, can not be in themselves
effective, that they are in no sense a substitute for
power to make those purposes, those intentions felt
in action. Of course we must first have the pur-
pose and the intention. If our powers are not
guided aright it is better that we should not have
them at all; but we must have the power itself be-
fore we can guide it aright.
In the segond text we are told not merely to be
harmless as doves, but also to be wise as serpents.
One of our American humorists who veils under
jocular phrases much deep wisdom — one of those
men has remarked that it is much easier to be a-
harmless dove than a wise serpent. Noav, we are
not to be excused if we do not show both qualities.
It is not very much praise to give a man to say
that he is harmless. We have a right to ask that
in addition to the fact that he does no harm to
any one he shall possess the wisdom and the strength
to do good to his neighbor; that together with in-
And State Papers 497
nocence, together with purity of motive, shall be
joined the wisdom and strength to make that purity
effective, that motive translated into substantial re-
sult.
Finally, in the quotation from the Collect' we
ask that we may be made ready both in body and
in soul, that we may cheerfully accomplish those