The blood of some ancestral Scotch covenanter or of some Dutch reformed preacher facing the tyranny of Philip of Spain was in his veins, and with his large opportunities and his vast audiences he was always ready to appeal for justice and righteousness.
Lodge traces the historical influences in Roosevelt's lineage that shaped his advocacy for justice and righteousness.
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One was the conviction that the struggle must be fought out to the bitter end, and must bring either subjugation or complete independence.
It is a hard thing to beat an opposing army, but it is equally hard to bring human jealousies and ambitions into the narrow path of self-sacrifice and subordination.
He fought to free the colonies from England, and make them independent, not to play the part of a Cæsar or a Cromwell in the wreck and confusion of civil war.
But they were dangerous then, and Washington, with his honest hatred of all that seemed to him to partake of meanness or treason, proposed to put them down and render them harmless, being well convinced, after his clear-sighted fashion…