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

by Theodore Roosevelt

Mr. Governor; and you, My Fellow-Citizens:

I have been particularly pleased to be greeted wherever I have gone by the great masses of school children, the children from the public schools and the children from the higher institutions of learning, State and private. It is a mere truism to say that the prime work of any State should be to keep up and raise ever higher its standard of citizenship. Texas has a right to be proud of its industrial development and of its wonderful natural resources, but I tell you the best crop for any State to rear after all is the crop of men and women. I believe in the future of Texas so heartily because I believe that you are steadily taking measures for the uptraining of the children, for the uptraining of the generations that in a very few years will take our places and rule the destinies of the State.

No State can be great without paying the penalty of responsibility that comes with greatness. That is true of the Nation; it is true likewise of the States that go to make up the Nation. You have here in Texas a commonwealth which in area and diversification of resources already stands unequaled, which in population and wealth will soon be one of the three or four first in the entire land. That means that besides feeling exaltation about it you ought to have a very heavy sense of responsibility entailed upon you thereby. No man can do any work worth doing except at the cost of effort, of self-restraint, of forcing himself to achieve things. No State can do anything except by possessing just those qualities, because the State is of course simply the aggregate of the individuals within it. If Texas fails in any way the failure will be felt by the entire country, because its influence and its power are so great. There is no royal road to good government; and I think all those interested in managing your public affairs will agree with me that what we need in our public officials is not genius, not even brilliancy, so much as the exercise of the ordinary rather commonplace qualities of honesty, courage, and common-sense—the qualities that make a man a good husband, a good father, a good neighbor; that make it advantageous to have dealings with him in business, or make it worth while having him as a friend. These are the qualities which are fundamental, which should be shown by the man who has to do with public life; and do not forget that each one of you here has to do his share in governing this commonwealth. It is not a figure of speech, it is the literal fact that in the United States every man is a sovereign. Remember that the fate of the sovereign who does not do his duty is to get dethroned; and if the average man who is sovereign does not do his duty he will get ousted from his sovereignty. If a man can not govern himself he will find a boss or some one else who can govern him, and then do not blame the boss, blame yourself for not having the self-control, the resolution, the forethought, and the sense of civic duty which would make you do your full part in the work of governing this country. We will not lose our birthright of citizenship unless by our own fault. If the average man keeps his head and his wits, and if he takes a little pains, he will be governed just about the way he desires to be governed. If he is not governed that way do not let him sit down and blame the politicians, let him blame himself, for it is in his power to get any government that he seriously desires to have. My fellow-citizens, together with expressing the exultation that we have a right to express about our country, we need to have impressed upon us a sense of our own responsibility, and of the shortcomings of which we are guilty if we do not rise level to that responsibility. It is a very good thing that we should gather together on state occasions, on the 4th of July, and at public festivals, and hear speakers say how big a country we have. But it is a better thing if we will go home and think over certain of the shortcomings that all of us have and make up our minds to remedy them in the future. What I ask of you and what I most firmly believe you will give is a patriotic perseverance in doing each his average round of duties, in doing the duties both of private life and as a citizen in public affairs each day. Do not wait for some special time when heroism will be called for, but do unweariedly the humdrum work that comes to every man. If we will do that, we will find that the affairs of state will be settled as we desire to have them settled. There is no use sitting at home finding fault with the way in which public affairs are handled, and then every four years, in a burst of animosity against some person, voting to turn him out. What you need to do is, month in and month out, year in and year out, to do your ordinary political duties as those political duties come up, and only under such conditions can you get really good public servants.

Let me say one more word of warning. In public life you will sometimes encounter a man who will endeavor to lead you to do something which down at bottom you doubt being right, which he tells you will be to your advantage to do, usually something that looks like wronging some one else. But the man who will wrong some one else for your advantage will, when the chance comes, be sure to wrong you for his own advantage.

My fellow-citizens, my fellow-Americans, I address you here under the shadow of your beautiful capitol of this great and wonderful State, with its heroic memories of Austin, of Sam Houston, of Davy Crockett, of all the men who in picture or in statue are commemorated on these walls; and my strongest feeling is that, proud though you are of Texas, you can not be prouder of it than I am. One of the great and splendid features of our American life is that each American has a right to be proud of the deeds of every other American, no matter from what part of the country his fellow-American may come. Your honor, your glory, are the honor and the glory of every man of our great country. All that is necessary for our people is that they should get to know one another in order to appreciate how slight are the divergencies and how vital and fundamental is the union among them.

IN FRONT OF THE ALAMO, SAN ANTONIO, TEX., APRIL 7, 1905

Mr. Mayor; Mr. Kirkpatrick; and you, My Fellow-Americans of this mighty Commonwealth:

I thank you for the way in which I have been greeted to-day. You can hardly imagine how much it means to me to come back to San Antonio in this way, and to be received as you have received me. I know that the rest of you will not grudge my saying a special word of acknowledgment to two sets among your citizens; first to the men of the great war, to the men who wore the blue or wore the gray in the days that tried men’s souls. My fellow-citizens, infinitely more important than any President, infinitely more important even than the reception to any President, is what is symbolized by seeing the men who fought in the Union army and the men who fought in the Confederate army standing mingled together, fellow-Americans, one in devotion and honor and loyalty to the country, shoulder to shoulder as fellow-citizens of the mightiest republic upon which the sun has ever shone. Indeed the man would have a poor heart, a poor spirit, who would not be thrilled by such a meeting as this, by such a sight as you accord me to-day, you of the gray, you of the blue, all one under the flag of this reunited country.

I suppose you must know it, but I want to tell you that it was of course the memory of the valor, the self-sacrifice, the endurance you displayed in the great war, that made us of the younger generation feel that when the lesser war came we wished to emulate your course. The regiment which I had the honor to command, and which was raised and organized in this city, took part in what were only skirmishes compared with the campaigns in which you did your share; and all that we claim is that while it was not given to us to have the chance to do great deeds, yet we hope we made you feel that the old spirit was not altogether lost. This regiment served under men who had themselves fought in the Civil War, both under Grant and under Lee. The commander of the cavalry division was that gallant ex-Confederate soldier, Major-General Joseph Wheeler; and our immediate commander, our brigade commander, was an ex-Union soldier, who entered the Union army as a private, and to whom for my great good fortune it befell me to sign the commission as Lieutenant-General of the army of the United States—Lieutenant-General Young. Afterward at San Juan the cavalry served under General Sumner, from whom I took my orders.

I can not say how much it meant to me to be able to take part in raising that regiment under the shadow of the Alamo. My admiration for Texas and Texans is no new thing. Since I have been a boy and first studied the history of this country my veins have thrilled and tingled as I read of the mighty deeds of Houston, of Bowie, of Crockett, of Travis, of the men who were victorious at the fight at San Jacinto, of the even more glorious men who fell in the fight of the Alamo, of which it was said, “Thermopylæ had its messengers of death, but the Alamo had none.”