Presidential addresses and state papers, Volume 3 (of 7)

by Theodore Roosevelt

I have spoken of the generals. Now for the rank and file. The Continental troops of the hardest fighter among Washington’s generals, Mad Anthony Wayne, were recruited so largely from this stock that Lighthorse Harry Lee of Virginia, the father of the great general, Robert Lee, always referred to them as “The Line of Ireland.” Nor must we forget that of this same stock there was a boy during the days of the Revolution who afterward became the chief American general of his time, and, as President, one of the public men who left his impress most deeply upon our Nation, Andrew Jackson, the victor of New Orleans.

The Revolution was the first great crisis of our history. The Civil War was the second. And in this second great crisis the part played by the men of Irish birth or parentage was no less striking than it had been in the Revolution. Among the three or four great generals who led the Northern Army in the war, stood Phil Sheridan. Some of those whom I am now addressing served in that immortal brigade which on the fatal day of Fredericksburg left its dead closest to the stonewall which marked the limit that could not be overpassed even by the highest valor.

And, gentlemen, it was my good fortune when it befell me to serve as a regimental commander in a very small war—but all the war there was—to have under me more than one of the sons of those who served in Meagher’s brigade. Among them was one of my two best captains, both of whom were killed, Allen Capron, and this man Bucky O’Neill. Bucky O’Neill was killed at Santiago, showing the same absolute indifference to life, the same courage, the same gallant readiness to sacrifice everything on the altar of an ideal, that his father had shown when he died in Meagher’s brigade in the Civil War.

The people who have come to this country from Ireland have contributed to the stock of our common citizenship qualities which are essential to the welfare of every great nation. They are a masterful race of rugged character, a race the qualities of whose womanhood have become proverbial, while its men have the elemental, the indispensable virtues of working hard in time of peace and fighting hard in time of war.

And I want to say here, as I have said and shall say again elsewhere, as I shall say again and again, that we must never forget that no amount of material wealth, no amount of intellect, no artistic or scientific growth can avail anything to the nation which loses the elemental virtues. If the average man can not work and fight, the race is in a poor way; and it will not have, because it will not deserve, the respect of any one.

Let us avoid always, either as individuals or as a Nation, brawling, speaking discourteously or acting offensively toward others, but let us make it evident that we wish peace, not because we are weak, but because we think it right; and that while we do not intend to wrong any one, we are perfectly competent to hold our own if any one wrongs us. There has never been a time in this country when it has not been true of the average American of Irish birth or parentage, that he came up to this standard, able to work and able to fight at need.

But the men of Irish birth or of Irish descent have been far more than soldiers—I will not say more than, but much in addition to, soldiers. In every walk in life in this country men of this blood have stood and now stand pre-eminent, not only as soldiers but as statesmen, on the bench, at the bar, and in business. They are doing their full share toward the artistic and literary development of the country.

And right here let me make a special plea to you, to this society and kindred societies: We Americans take a just pride in the development of our great universities, and more and more we are seeking to provide for creative and original work in these universities. I hope that an earnest effort will be made to endow chairs in American universities for the study of Celtic literature and for research in Celtic antiquities. It is only of recent years that the extraordinary wealth and beauty of the old Celtic Sagas have been fully appreciated, and we of America, who have so large a Celtic strain in our blood, can not afford to be behindhand in the work of adding to modern scholarship by bringing within its ken the great Celtic literature of the past.

My fellow-countrymen, I have spoken to-night especially of what has been done for this Nation of ours by men of Irish blood. But, after all, in speaking to you, or, to any other body of my fellow-citizens, no matter from what Old World country they themselves or their forefathers may have come, the great thing is to remember that we are all of us Americans. Let us keep our pride in the stocks from which we have sprung, but let us show that pride, not by holding aloof from one another, least of all by preserving the Old World jealousies and bitternesses, but by joining in a spirit of generous rivalry to see which can do most for our great common country.

Americanism is not a matter of creed or birthplace or descent. That man is the best American who has in him the American spirit, the American soul. Such a man fears not the strong and harms not the weak. He scorns what is base or cruel or dishonest. He looks beyond the accidents of occupation or social condition and hails each of his fellow-citizens as his brother, asking nothing save that each shall treat the other on his worth as a man, and that they shall all join together to do what in them lies for the uplifting of this mighty and vigorous people. In our veins runs the blood of many an Old World nation. We are kin to each of these nations and yet identical with none.