There never has been another man whose life has been vital to the Republic save Washington and Lincoln.
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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There would have been no point in commemorating what was done at Valley Forge if Gettysburg had not given us the national right to commemorate it.
If the men of ’61 had failed in the great struggle for national unity it would have meant that the work done by Washington and his associates might almost or quite as well have been left undone.
If the men who took to arms in ’76 for national independence had failed, then not merely would there never have been a national growth on this Continent, but the whole spirit of nationality for the younger lands of the world would have…
There have been two great crises in our national history—two crises where failure meant the absolute breaking asunder of the Nation—one the Revolutionary War, one the Civil War.
It was because you men of the Civil War both knew how to use liberty temperately and how to defend it at need that we and our children and our children’s children shall hold you in honor forever.
In all the ages of the past men have seen countries lose their liberty, because their people could not restrain and order themselves, and therefore forfeited the right to what they were unable to use with wisdom.
So we, the people, can preserve our liberty and our greatness in time of peace only by ourselves exercising the virtues of honesty, of self-restraint, and of fair dealing between man and man.
It can not be forced and yet be stable and enduring; for it is based fundamentally upon national character, and national character is stamped deep in a people by the lives of many generations.
We can make and keep this country worthy of the men who gave their lives to save it, only on condition that the average man among us on the whole does his duty bravely, loyally, and with common-sense, in whatever position life allots to…
That is why the title that most appeals to you now is the title of comrade, by which the private in the ranks and the lieutenant-general address one another, because each did his duty and asks no more than recognition of that fact.
They learned, as all the generation of the Civil War learned, that rare indeed is the chance to do anything worth doing by one sudden and violent effort.
They knew each how to act for himself, and yet each how to act with his fellows.
Yet, in addition thereto, they likewise possessed the power and the efficiency; for otherwise their high purpose would have been barren of result.
They had that love of country, that love of justice, that love of their fellow-men, without which power and resourceful efficiency but make a man a danger to his fellows.
They stood for the life of effort, not the life of ease.
The men who made this field forever memorable did so because they combined the power of fealty to a lofty ideal with the power of showing that fealty in hard, practical, common-sense fashion.
This is the right view to take of freedom; but it can only be taken if there is a full recognition of the close connection between liberty and responsibility in every domain of human thought and action.
Freedom thus conceived is a constructive force, which enables an intelligent and good man to do better things than he could do without it; which is in its essence the substitution of self-restraint for external restraint—the substitution…
In this world no privilege can be permanently appropriated by men who have not the power and the will successfully to assume the responsibility of using it aright.
The crisis which they faced was to determine whether or not this people was fit for self-government and, therefore, fit for liberty.
They took arms not to destroy, but to save liberty; not to overthrow, but to establish the supremacy of the law.
They fought for four years in order that on this Continent those who came after them, their children and their children’s children, might enjoy a lasting peace.
But the soldiers who won at Gettysburg, the soldiers who fought to a finish the Civil War and thereby made their countrymen forever their debtors, have left us far more even than the memories of the war itself.
Every spot on this field has its own associations of soldierly duty nobly done, of supreme self-sacrifice freely rendered.
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