During the past three centuries the spread of the English-speaking peoples over the world's waste spaces has been not only the most striking feature in the world's history, but also the event of all others most far-reaching in its effects…
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.
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The same forces, the same types of men, stood for and against the cause of national growth, of national greatness, at the end of the century as at the beginning.
At bottom the question of expansion in 1898 was but a variant of the problem we had to solve at every stage of the great western movement.
Like every really strong people, ours is stirred by the generous ardor for daring strife and mighty deeds, and now with eyes undimmed looks far into the misty future.
Hitherto America has gone steadily forward along the path of greatness, and has remained true to the policy of her early leaders who felt within them the lift towards mighty things.
In each case, in the end, the believers in the historic American policy of expansion have triumphed.
The taking of Texas and of California was complicated by the slave question, but much of the opposition to both was simply the general opposition to expansion--that is, to national growth and national greatness.
It was expansion which made us a great power; and at every stage it has been bitterly antagonized, not only by the short-sighted and the timid, but even by many who were neither one nor the other.
Our people as a whole went into the war, primarily, it is true, to drive out the Spaniard once for all from America; but with the fixed determination to replace his rule by a government of justice and orderly liberty.
But in 1898 the United States, while having gained in strength, showed that there had likewise been gain in justice, in mercy, in sense of responsibility.
The backwoodsmen had pushed the Spaniards from the Mississippi, had set up a slave-holding republic in Texas, and had conquered the Californian gold-fields, in the sheer masterful exercise of might.
It is moreover a matter for just pride that while there was no falling off in the vigor and prowess shown by our fighting men, there was a marked change for the better in the spirit with which the deed was done.
We of this generation were but carrying to completion the work of our fathers and of our fathers' fathers.
The ties that unite Germany and the United States are many and close, and it must be a prime object of our statesmanship to knit the two nations ever closer together.
If a man is a good son he is apt to make a good husband; and the quality that makes a man reverence the country of his birth is apt to be the quality that makes him a good citizen in the country of his adoption.
The reverence a man preserves for his native land, so far from standing in the way of his loving and doing his full duty by the land of his adoption, should help him toward this love and the performance of this duty.
I welcome you here, my fellow-Americans; for among the many strains that go to make up our composite race stock in this country, no strain has given us better Americans than those who are of German birth or blood.
As far as possible let the children work out their own salvation in their own way; simply exercise such supervision as to see that they do not do harm.
Laws should be enacted to keep out all immigrants who do not show that they have the right stuff in them to enter into our life on terms of decent equality with our own citizens.
We must not let our national sentiment for succoring the oppressed and unfortunate of other lands lead us into that warped moral and mental attitude of trying to succor them at the expense of pulling down our own people.
I will do all in my power for the laboring man except to do what is wrong; and I will not do that for him or for any one else.
Not one of you can go farther than I will go in the effort steadily to raise the status of the American wage-worker, so long as, while doing it, I can retain a clear conscience and the certainty that I am doing what is right.
I have a right to challenge you as good American citizens to support that policy; and in any event I shall stand unflinchingly for it; and no man can say with sincerity that on this, or indeed on any other point, he has any excuse for…
But I will do everything in my power to make it easy and desirable for the Chinese of the business and professional classes, the Chinese travelers and students, to come here, and I will do all I can to secure their good treatment when they…
It is my deep conviction that we must keep out of this country every Chinese laborer, skilled or unskilled—every Chinaman of the coolie class.
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