Teddy Roosevelt

During a century and a third we here on this continent—more completely than anywhere else at any other time—have actually realized the democratic principle, the principle of popular government.

It is our boast that in our political affairs we have combined genuine political equality with high distinction in individual service.

It must be made a democracy economically as well as politically.

Our whole experiment is meaningless unless we are to make this a democracy in the fullest sense of the word, in the broadest as well as the highest and deepest significance of the word.

Lincoln set before us forever our ideal when he stated that this country was dedicated to a government of, by, and for the people.

Fundamentally, our chief problem may be summed up as the effort to make men, as nearly as they can be made, both free and equal; the freedom and equality necessarily resting on a basis of justice and brotherhood.

These problems have to do with securing a more just and generally widespread welfare, so that there may be a more substantial measure of equality in moral and physical well-being among the people whom the men of Lincoln’s day kept…

It represents not progress, but retrogression, to propose to destroy capital because the power of unrestrained capital is abused.

The better distribution of property is desirable, but it is not to be brought about by the anarchic form of Socialism which would destroy all private capital and tend to destroy all private wealth.

The liberty of the slave was desirable, but it was not to be brought about by a slave insurrection.

But for this very reason I feel concern when progressives act with heedless violence, or go so far and so fast as to invite reaction.

To my mind the failure resolutely to follow progressive policies is the negation of democracy as well of progress, and spells disaster.

I am a progressive; I could not be anything else; indeed, as the years go by I become more, and not less, radically progressive.

I think such study is especially necessary for the extremists among the very men with whom my own sympathy is especially keen.

In our struggle to-day we can study Lincoln’s career purely as an example to emulate; we can study John Brown’s career partly as such an example, but partly also as a warning.

John Brown prepared the way; but if the friends of freedom and union had surrendered themselves to his leadership, the cause of freedom and union would have been lost.

Here again, in meeting the problems of to-day, let us profit by, and welcome, and co-operate with the John Browns; but let us also remember that the problems can really be solved only if we approach them in the spirit of Abraham Lincoln.

Valor, energy, disinterestedness, idealism—all these were his; and his also was that lofty and far-seeing wisdom which alone could make the valor, the disinterestedness, the energy, the idealism, of service to the Republic.

Of that generation of men to whom we owe so much, the man to whom we owe most is, of course, Lincoln.

They alone, of all our people since we became a nation, rendered to us and to all who come after us a service literally indispensable.

John Brown’s work was brought to completion, was made perfect, by the men who bore aloft the banner of the Union during the four terrible years which intervened between Sumter and Appomattox.

He did much in his life and more in his death; he embodied the inspiration of the men of his generation; his fate furnished the theme of the song which most stirred the hearts of the soldiers.

A great debt is owed to John Brown because he is one of the most striking figures in the mighty struggle which was to keep us forever a free and united nation, which was to secure the continuance of the most tremendous democratic…

He stood for heroic valor, grim energy, fierce fidelity to high ideals.

John Brown stands to us now as representing the men and the generation who rendered the greatest service ever rendered this country.