The needs of civilization and humanity are sufficiently met by protecting them from outside aggression.
Teddy Roosevelt
The Public Record
Theodore Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States, serving from 1901 to 1909. A member of the Republican Party, he was born on October 27, 1858, in New York. Roosevelt was a prominent leader of the Progressive Movement, advocating for domestic policies that included trust-busting, regulation of corporations, and conservation of natural resources. His administration is noted for significant reforms and the establishment of national parks and forests.
gutenberg.org
In such a State the people themselves guarantee stability, order, liberty, and protection for the rights of others.
Such a State is absolutely competent to preserve order within its own bounds, to execute substantial justice, and to secure the rights of foreigners.
The trouble is in the confusion of ideas which results in trying to apply the same principle to two totally different classes of cases.
If you abandon the contest, the voice of reason, now drowned in factious vociferation, will be listened to and heard.
This cannot be effected while political delusions array good men against each other.
We must endeavor, therefore, to save and benefit both.
Let us forget party and think of our country.
It is well indeed for our land that we of this generation have at last learned to think nationally, and, no matter in what state we live, to view our whole country with the pride of personal possession.
He thoroughly appreciated the marvelous future that lay before the race on this continent.
If you were to pass one autumn with us, you would not give it for the best six months to be found in any other country....
Compare these things, and then say how a man who prizes the charm of Nature can think of making the exchange.
Compare the uninterrupted warmth and splendor of America, from the first of May to the last of September, and her autumn, truly celestial, with your shivering June, your July and August sometimes warm but often wet, your uncertain…
He said: "The new judiciary bill may have, and doubtless has, many little faults, but it answers the double purpose of bringing justice near to men's doors, and of giving additional fibre to the root of government.
We are yet in but the seeding-time of national prosperity, and it will be well not to mortgage the crop before it is gathered....
We have committed plenty of faults, but we have seen and remedied them.
The one great reason for our having succeeded as no other people ever has, is to be found in that common sense which has enabled us to preserve the largest possible individual freedom on the one hand, while showing an equally remarkable…
Our true policy was admirably summed up by Jay in his letters to Livingston, where he says: "Let us be honest and grateful to France, but let us think for ourselves....
I am among the number who would be extremely ungrateful for the grant of a bad peace.
My argument, therefore, stands thus: As a connection with Great Britain cannot again exist without enslaving America, an independence is absolutely necessary.
For it never yet was known that, when men assume power, they will part with it again, unless by compulsion.
We do not claim liberty as a privilege, but challenge it as a right," said the men of New York, through their legislature, in 1764; and all Americans felt with them.
Whether their yoke bore heavily or bore lightly, whether it galled or not, mattered little; it was enough that it was a yoke to warrant a proud, free people in throwing it off.
The idea of desponding or giving up, for any cause whatever, simply never entered his head.
But once elected he turned out to have the very qualities we then most needed in a president,--a stout heart, shrewd common sense, and thorough-going devotion to the Union.
Politicians like Teddy Roosevelt
