TR: A "BULLY" PORTRAIT TEXT
I. Prologue
On April 25, 1865, Abraham Lincoln's funeral
procession slowly wound its way through the streets of lower
Manhattan. Thousands of New Yorkers lined the streets, thousands more
gazed from building windows. From a 2nd story window not far from
Union Square, a six year old boy strained to view the horse-drawn
casket....That boy was Theodore Roosevelt.
Theodore Roosevelt...26th President of the United
States. Theodore Roosevelt, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, builder
of the Panama Canal; Police Commissioner of New York City, Governor
of New York State; Theodore Roosevelt; author, historian, adventurer,
explorer, protector, defender, provider for those less fortunate.
II. The "Strenuous Life"
Action, involvement. That's what Roosevelt demanded
of himself and expected of others. As Roosevelt said:
"It ought to be axiomatic in this country that
every man must devote a reasonable share of his time to doing his
duty in the political life of the community" ..."If freedom
is worth having, if the right of self-government is a valuable right,
then the one and the other must be retained exactly as our
forefathers acquired them, by labor...." "People who say
they have not time to attend to politics are simply saying that they
are unfit to live in a free community. Their place is under a
despotism..."
Action, involvement, the "strenuous life."
These things are what Roosevelt demanded of himself and expected of
others: "It is not the critic who counts," he said, "not
the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer
of deeds could have done better, The credit belongs to the man who is
actually in the arena, whose face is marred by sweat and blood, who
strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again,
because there is no great effort without error or shortcoming, but
who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends
himself for a worthy cause; who at best, knows in the end triumph of
high achievement, and who, at the worst if he fails, at least he
fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with
those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat."
III. Roosevelt the Conservationist
Born in New York City, Theodore Roosevelt's arena was
the nation's vast open spaces. From rambles in the Adirondack
Mountains to cattle ranching in the Dakota Badlands, Roosevelt lived
with nature, respected nature and fought for its preservation:
"I recognize the right and duty of this
generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land; but
I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful
use, the generations that come after us."... "Our duty
to the whole, including the unborn generations, bids us restrain an
unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage of these
unborn generations. The movement for the conservation of wild life
and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural
resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose, and method."
"There can be no greater issue than that of conservation in this
country."
Theodore Roosevelt was not born into poverty, like
Lincoln. But his concern was always for those less fortunate than
himself. "A Square deal," he called it, a square
deal. "The principles for which we stand are the
principles of fair play and a square deal for every man, and every
woman in the United States," he said. "We must
see that every man and every woman is given a square deal, because
each is entitled to no more and should receive no less." "A
square deal in manners social, a square deal in business... A square
deal politically!"
V. The Object of Government
"The object of government is the welfare of the
people," he said. "It is all-essential to the continuance
of our healthy national life that we should recognize this community
of interest among our people. The welfare of each of us is dependent
fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us, and therefore in public
life that man is the best representative of each of us who seeks to
do good to each by doing good to all..whose endeavor it is not to
represent any special class,...but to represent all true and honest
men of all sections and all classes and to work for their interests
by working for our common country."...
"The object of government is the welfare of the
people," he said. "Let the watchwords of all our people be
the old familiar watchwords of honesty, decency, fair-dealing, and
commonsense..." "Let us never forget our duty to help in
uplifting the lowly, to shield from wrong the humble; and let us
likewise act in a spirit of generosity toward all our fellow
countrymen, in a spirit proceeding not from weakness but from
strength, a spirit which takes no more account of locality than it
does of class or of creed; a spirit which is resolutely bent on
seeing that the Union which Washington founded and which Lincoln
saved from destruction shall grow nobler and greater through the
ages."