Teddy Roosevelt

The men who did this sane, wholesome political thinking were quite right in scorning and condemning the crude unreason, often silly, often vicious, which characterized so much of the political thought of their opponents.

The enemies of the Union were the enemies of America and of mankind, whose success would have plunged their country into an abyss of shame and misery, and would have arrested for generations the upward movement of their race.

It was the power to build a solid and permanent Union, the power to construct a mighty nation out of the wreck of a crumbling confederacy, which drew a sharp line between the Americans of the north and the Spanish-speaking races of the…

Seven years after the war ended, the Constitution went into effect, and the United States became in truth a nation.

It was the after result of the Revolution, not the Revolution itself, which gave to the governmental experiment inaugurated by the Second Continental Congress its unique and lasting value.

As yet the success had only been in tearing down; there remained the harder and all-important task of building up.

According as one or the other of these mutually hostile sets of sentiments prevailed, the acts of the Revolutionary leaders were to stand justified or condemned in the light of the coming years.

The Revolution had left behind it among many men love of liberty, mingled with lofty national feeling and broad patriotism; but to other men it seemed that the chief lessons taught had been successful resistance to authority, jealousy of…

Hence those who cause them must rightly be held guilty of the gravest wrong-doing unless they are not only pure of purpose, but sound of judgment, and unless the result shows their wisdom.

All civil wars loosen the bands of orderly liberty, and leave in their train disorder and evil.

But though the successful struggle had laid deep the foundations of a new nation, it had also of necessity stirred and developed many of the traits most hostile to assured national life.

They cherished in common the winged words of their statesmen, the edged deeds of their soldiers; they yielded to the spell of mighty names which sounded alien to all men save themselves.

Theirs was the history of all that had been done by the Continental Congress and the Continental armies; theirs the memory of the toil and the suffering and the splendid ultimate triumph.

Americans now held in common memories which they shared with no one else; for they held ever in mind the feats of a dozen crowded years.

The great struggle had been of incalculable benefit to all Americans.

They were apt to let liberty become mere anarchy and license, to talk extravagantly about their rights while ignoring their duties, and to rail at the weakness of the Central Government while at the same time opposing with foolish violence…

What is now regarded as inevitable and proper was then held as something abnormal, unnatural, and greatly to be dreaded.

Truths which all citizens have now grown to accept as axiomatic were then seen clearly only by the very greatest men, and by most others were seen dimly, if at all.

They were right also in their determination ultimately to acquire the control of the whole river, from the source to the mouth.

The Westerners were right in regarding as indispensable the free navigation of the Mississippi.

The conditions of commerce have changed much more in the last hundred years than in the preceding two thousand.

Steam, railroads, electricity, have worked a revolution so stupendous, that we find it difficult to realize the facts of the life which our forefathers lived.

Navigable rivers are of great importance to a country's trade now; but a hundred years ago their importance was relatively far greater.

While the Lake Posts were held by the garrisons of a foreign power, the work of settling the northwestern territory was bound to go forward slowly and painfully; but while the navigation of the Mississippi was barred, even the settlements…

It was important for the frontiersmen to take the Lake Posts from the British; but it was even more important to wrest from the Spaniards the free navigation of the Mississippi.