 | Addresses and presidential messages of Theodore Roosevelt, 1902-1904 |  |
XXXVIII
AT THE UNVEILING OF THE SHERMAN STATUE,
WASHINGTON, OCTOBER 15, 1903
General Dodge, Veterans of the Four Great Armies, and
you, my fellow-citizens:
To-day we meet together to do honor to the memory
of one of the great men whom, in the hour of her agony,
our nation brought forth for her preservation. The Civil
War was, not only in the importance of the issues at stake
and of the outcome the greatest of modern times, but it
was also, taking into account its duration, the severity
of the fighting, and the size of the armies engaged, the
greatest since the close of the Napoleonic struggles.
Among the generals who rose to high position as leaders
of the various armies in the field are many who will be
remembered in our history as long as this history itself is
remembered. Sheridan, the incarnation of fiery energy
and prowess; Thomas, far-sighted, cool-headed, whose
steadfast courage burned ever highest in the supreme
moment of the crisis; McClellan, with his extraordinary
gift for organization; Meade, victor in one of the decisive
battles of all time; Hancock, type of the true fighting
man among the regulars; Logan, type of the true fighting
man among the volunteers—the names of these and
of many others will endure so long as our people hold
sacred the memory of the fight for union and for liberty.
High among these chiefs rise the figures of Grant and of
the national capital is to-day to be unveiled. It is not
necessary here to go over the long roll of Sherman's
mighty feats. They are written large throughout the history
of the Civil War. Our memories would be poor
indeed if we did not recall them now, as we look along
Pennsylvania Avenue and think of the great triumphal
march which surged down its length when at the close
of the war the victorious armies of the East and of the
West met here in the capital of the nation they had
saved.
There is a peculiar fitness in commemorating the great
deeds of the soldiers who preserved this nation, by suitable
monuments at the national capital. I trust we shall
soon have a proper statue of Abraham Lincoln, to whom
more than to any other one man this nation owes its salvation.
Meanwhile, on behalf of the people of the nation,
I wish to congratulate all of you who have been instrumental
in securing the erection of this statue to General
Sherman.
The living can best show their respect for the memory
of the great dead by the way in which they take to heart
and act upon the lessons taught by the lives which made
these dead men great. Our homage to-day to the memory
of Sherman comes from the depths of our being.
We would be unworthy citizens did we not feel profound
gratitude toward him, and those like him and under him,
who, when the country called in her dire need, sprang
forward with such gallant eagerness to answer that call.
Their blood and their toil, their endurance and patriotism,
have made us and all who come after us forever their
debtors. They left us not merely a reunited country,
but a country incalculably greater because of its rich heritage
in the deeds which thus left it reunited. As a nation
we are the greater, not only for the valor and devotion
to duty displayed by the men in blue, who won in the
the loyalty toward what they regarded as right of the
men in gray; for this war, thrice fortunate above all
other recent wars in its outcome, left to all of us the
right of brotherhood alike with valiant victor and valiant
vanquished.
Moreover, our homage must not only find expression
on our lips; it must also show itself forth in our deeds.
It is a great and glorious thing for a nation to be stirred
to present triumph by the splendid memories of triumphs
in the past. But it is a shameful thing for a nation, if
these memories stir it only to empty boastings, to a pride
that does not shrink from present abasement, to that self-satisfaction
which accepts the high resolve and unbending
effort of the father as an excuse for effortless ease or
wrongly directed effort in the son. We of the present,
if we are true to the past, must show by our lives that we
have learned aright the lessons taught by the men who
did the mighty deeds of the past. We must have in us
the spirit which made the men of the Civil War what they
were; the spirit which produced leaders such as Sherman;
the spirit which gave to the average soldier the grim tenacity
and resourcefulness that made the armies of Grant
and Sherman as formidable fighting machines as this
world has ever seen. We need their ruggedness of body,
their keen and vigorous minds, and, above all, their dominant
quality of forceful character. Their lives teach us
in our own lives to strive after, not the thing which is
merely pleasant, but the thing which it is our duty to do.
The life of duty, not the life of mere ease or mere pleasure—that
is the kind of life which makes the great man,
as it makes the great nation.
We cannot afford to lose the virtues which made the
men of '61 to '65 great in war. No man is warranted in
feeling pride in the deeds of the army and the navy of the
past if he does not back up the army and the navy of
will be no let-up in the work of building, and of keeping
at the highest point of efficiency, a navy suited to the
part the United States must hereafter play in the world,
and of making and keeping our small regular army,
which in the event of a great war can never be anything
but the nucleus around which our volunteer armies must
form themselves, the best army of its size to be found
among the nations.
So much for our duties in keeping unstained the honor
roll our fathers made in war. It is of even more instant
need that we should show their spirit of patriotism in
the affairs of peace. The duties of peace are with us always;
those of war are but occasional; and with a nation
as with a man, the worthiness of life depends upon the
way in which the everyday duties are done. The home
duties are the vital duties. The nation is nothing but the
aggregate of the families within its border; and if the
average man is not hard-working, just, and fearless in his
dealings with those about him, then our average of public
life will in the end be low; for the stream can rise no
higher than its source. But in addition we need to remember
that a peculiar responsibility rests upon the man
in public life. We mean in the capital of the nation, in
the city which owes its existence to the fact that it is the
seat of the National Government. It is well for us in
this place, and at this time, to remember that exactly as
there are certain homely qualities the lack of which will
prevent the most brilliant man alive from being a useful
soldier to his country, so there are certain homely qualities
for the lack of which in the public servant no shrewdness
or ability can atone. The greatest leaders, whether
in war or in peace, must of course show a peculiar quality
of genius; but the most redoubtable armies that have
ever existed have been redoubtable because the average
soldier, the average officer, possessed to a high degree
and hardihood. And so the most successful governments
are those in which the average public servant possesses
that variant of loyalty which we call patriotism, together
with common sense and honesty. We can as little afford
to tolerate a dishonest man in the public service as a
coward in the army. The murderer takes a single life;
the corruptionist in public life, whether he be bribe-giver
or bribe-taker, strikes at the heart of the commonwealth.
In every public service, as in every army, there will be
wrongdoers, there will occur misdeeds. This cannot be
avoided; but vigilant watch must be kept, and as soon as
discovered the wrongdoing must be stopped and the
wrongdoers punished. Remember that in popular government
we must rely on the people themselves alike for
the punishment and the reformation. Those upon whom
our institutions cast the initial duty of bringing malefactors
to the bar of justice must be diligent in its discharge;
yet in the last resort the success of their efforts to purge
the public service of corruption must depend upon the
attitude of the courts and of the juries drawn from the
people. Leadership is of avail only so far as there is wise
and resolute public sentiment behind it.
In the long run, then, it depends upon us ourselves,
upon us, the people as a whole, whether this Government
is or is not to stand in the future as it has stood in the
past; and my faith that it will show no falling off is based
upon my faith in the character of our average citizenship.
The one supreme duty is to try to keep this average high.
To this end it is well to keep alive the memory of those
men who are fit to serve as examples of what is loftiest
and best in American citizenship. Such a man was General
Sherman. To very few in any generation is it given
to render such services as he rendered; but each of us in
his degree can try to show something of those qualities of
character upon which, in their sum, the high worth of
and simple living, his sturdy good sense, his manliness
and tenderness in the intimate relations of life, and
finally, his inflexible rectitude of soul, and his loyalty
to all that in this free republic is hallowed and symbolized
by the national flag.
| Addresses and presidential messages of Theodore Roosevelt, 1902-1904 | |