Our business prosperity has been great.

It is eminently fitting that once a year our people should set apart a day for praise and thanksgiving to the Giver of Good.

I now set apart Thursday, the thirtieth day of this November, as a day of thanksgiving for the past and of prayer for the future.

We live in easier and more plentiful times than our forefathers, the men who with rugged strength faced the rugged days; and yet the dangers to national life are quite as great now as at any previous time in our history.

The foes from whom we should pray to be delivered are our own passions, appetites, and follies; and against these there is always need that we should war.

We are not threatened by foes from without.

In rendering thanks unto the Most High for the manifold blessings of the past year, consecrate themselves to a life of cleanliness, honor and wisdom, so that this nation may do its allotted work on the earth in a manner worthy of those who…

The result as I see it in this ship is a triumph not only of organization and discipline, but of the ready zeal with which each individual performs his allotted task.

It is a privilege for any President to come aboard a squadron of American warships such as these.

The discipline, the ready subordination of each man, whether officer or enlisted man, to duty, the care taken of the men and in return the eager, intelligent, self-respecting zeal of each man in doing his work.

What must impress especially any observer is how essential it is that every individual on a ship like this should do his whole duty, and in any crisis more than his duty.

Any man in the whole ship's company who does his full duty can claim as his own the honor and repute of the ship and has a right to feel a personal pride in all she does.

At any time some emergency may arise in which the safety of the entire ship will depend upon the vigilance, intelligence, and cool courage of some one man among you.

The man who died this morning was an excellent seaman, who had done his duty faithfully, and who died in the performance of that duty.

Let each of you officers remember, in the event of war, that while a surrender may sometimes be justifiable, yet that surrender must always be explained, while it is never necessary to explain the fact that you don't surrender, no matter…

The Cumberland sank with her flags flying and her guns firing while her decks were awash.

Now think what it means in a nation for the President of that nation, forty years after one of the greatest wars of all time, to be able to come and speak as I spoke in the capital of the Southern Confederacy, and to feel that I was…

I thank you not only for the words which accompany it, but for the spirit which lies behind the words.

I accept it with pleasure.

As I said at Richmond, second only to the man who wore the blue, I hold the man who wore the gray.

Now we know but one rivalry—the rivalry to see which of us can do the most for the flag of a united country.

One thing that, as President of this country, I won't do, is to make a bluff that I can't make good.

I don't say anything unless I mean it.

No President of the United States could have been greeted as I have been greeted today and not go back to take up the duties of his office with a stronger and more earnest purpose to try to represent all the splendid people whom he serves.

I have no respect either for the nation or for the individual that brawls, that invites trouble.