They must give him a free hand, a fair field, and a cordial Godspeed, the two races working together for their mutual benefit and for the development of our common country.

He must have liberty, equal opportunity to make his living, to earn his bread, to build his home.

He must have justice, equal rights, and protection before the law.

He must have the same political privileges; the suffrage should be based on character and intelligence for white and black alike.

He must have the same public advantages of education; the public schools are for all the people, whatever their color or condition.

The white men of the South should give hearty and respectful consideration to the exceptional men of the negro race, to those who have the character, the ability and the desire to be lawyers, physicians, teachers, preachers, leaders of…

We should give them cheer and opportunity to gratify every laudable ambition, and to seek every innocent satisfaction among their own people.

Finally, the best white men of the South should have frequent conferences with the best colored men, where, in frank, earnest, and sympathetic discussion they might understand each other better, smooth difficulties, and so guide and…

We can pay most fitting homage to his memory by doing the tasks allotted to us in the spirit in which he did infinitely greater and more terrible tasks allotted to him.

Let us be steadfast for the right; but let us err on the side of generosity rather than on the side of vindictiveness toward those who differ from us as to the method of attaining the right.

I believe that our people will in the end rise level to every need, will in the end triumph over every difficulty that rises before them.

I could not have such confident faith in the destiny of this mighty people if I had it merely as regards one portion of that people.

Throughout our land things on the whole have grown better and not worse, and this is as true of one part of the country as it is of another.

I believe in the Southerner as I believe in the Northerner.

I claim the right to feel pride in his great qualities and in his great deeds exactly as I feel pride in the great qualities and deeds of every other American.

For weal or for woe we are knit together, and we shall go up or go down together; and I believe that we shall go up and not down, that we shall go forward instead of halting and falling back, because I have an abiding faith in the…

But in the end they will all be solved; for fundamentally our people are the same throughout this land; the same in the qualities of heart and brain and hand which have made this Republic what it is in the great to-day; which will make it…

I admire and respect and believe in and have faith in the men and women of the South as I admire and respect and believe in and have faith in the men and women of the North.

To-night I wish to greet you most warmly and to say that I doubt if we could find a more typically American gathering than this, for Americanism is not a matter of birthplace, of ancestry, of creed, of occupation.

Americanism is a matter of the spirit that is within, of a man’s soul.

From the time when we first became an independent Nation to the present moment there has never been a generation in which some of our most distinguished and most useful men were not born on the other side of the Atlantic.

It is a great mistake, oh, such a great mistake, to measure success merely by that which glitters from without, or to speak of it in terms which will mislead those about us, and especially the younger people about us, as to what success…

It has for some time been obvious that those who profit by the Monroe Doctrine must accept certain responsibilities along with the rights which it confers; and that the same statement applies to those who uphold the doctrine.

It can not be too often and too emphatically asserted that the United States has not the slightest desire for territorial aggrandizement at the expense of any of its southern neighbors, and will not treat the Monroe Doctrine as an excuse…

Thus the attempted solution of the complex problem by the ordinary methods of diplomacy reacts injuriously upon the United States Government itself, and in a measure paralyzes the action of the Executive in the direction of a sound and…