Teddy Roosevelt

The custom has now become national and hallowed by immemorial usage.

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…

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.

We are not threatened by foes from without.

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.

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…

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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 accept it with pleasure.

In my judgment it should do not only more, but very much more.

Although some times we have difficulties in this country that we have to battle against, and sometimes things that we are not quite satisfied with, yet we are pretty good people.

I can not say how much it means to me to be greeted as I have been greeted by the men who wore the blue and the men who wore the gray in this trip through the Southland.

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 want, on behalf of this nation, the peace that comes not to the coward, who cringes for it, but the peace of the just man armed, who asks it as a right.

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

When a man is President, when he holds any public office, questions of merely partisan character sink into absolute insignificance compared with the mighty questions upon which all good Americans are united.