Theodore Roosevelt's Enduring Lesson: America Is No Accident

We … are America. Theodore Roosevelt, in August of 1901 – now 125 years ago –  gave a speech called “Manhood and Statehood,” noting America’s accomplishments are not an accident. America is the product of sacrifice, hard work, and individual Americans. How we act now still matters.

Expounding on America’s greatness, he noted history does not stop. As generations follow each other, the future depends on each.  “When we pay homage to the hardy, grim, resolute men who, with incredible toil and risk, laid deep the foundations of the civilization that we inherit, let us steadily remember … that the only homage that counts is homage of deeds – not merely words.”

He continued: “It is well to gather here to show that we remember what has been done in the past … and that we glory in the greatness for which they prepared the way. But lip-loyalty by itself avails very little… whether it is expressed concerning a nation or an ideal.”

He said our forefathers showed extraordinary courage, strength, and resilience, but the best way to remember them is to do the same. “They should be an inspiration … summoning us to show that we too have courage and strength; that we too are ready to dare greatly, if the need arises; and above all that we are firmly bent upon that steady performance of every day duty which, in the long run, is of such incredible worth … in the formation of our national character.”

Theodore Roosevelt was, even 125 years ago, aware of how republics evolve, some higher, some lower. He warned us to keep tight hold on what makes us who we are, as individuals and a nation. “Let us see to it that, while we take advantage of every gentler and more humanizing tendency of the age, we yet preserve the iron quality that made our forefathers and predecessors fit to do the deeds they did.”

He noted: “It will of necessity find a different expression now, but the quality itself remains just as necessary as ever… If either man or nation wishes to play a great part in the world, there must be no dallying with the life of lazy ease… We hold work not as a curse, but as a blessing.”

“Each man must choose so far as the conditions allow him the path to which he is bidden by his own peculiar powers and inclinations … But if he is a man, he must do a man’s work.” The point, which most know, is nothing comes of nothing, no free lunches, and that work and purpose are a blessing.

His pitch was that manhood, this president who strove to get women the right to vote, was based on immutable or unchanging qualities. He appealed to all humanity, or at least all Americans, to understand the linkage between values and work individually and the total culture of the nation.

“We need the positive virtues of resolution, of courage, of indomitable will, of power to do without shrinking the rough work that must always be done, and to persevere through the long days … the seeming failure that always comes before any final triumph…”

Perhaps his strongest pitch, however, was not for “iron qualities” but those that made individual and nation “good.” “If courage and strength and intellect are unaccompanied by the moral purpose, the moral sense, they become merely forms of expression for unscrupulous force …”

“If the strong man has not in him the lift toward lofty things, his strength makes him only a curse to himself and his neighbor.”  Theodore Roosevelt’s speech echoed the words of our Founders, from Washington, Adams and Jefferson to Lincoln several generations later. His words and their appeal remain real.

“Woe to all of us if ever as a people we grow to condone evil because it is successful … We can no more afford to lose social and civic decency and honesty than we can afford to lose the qualities of courage and strength.”

In closing, he said: “Each of us has not only his duty to himself, his family, and his neighbors, but his duty to the State and to the Nation. We are honor bound … to strive according to his or her strength … We cannot retain the full measure of our self-respect if we cannot retain pride in our citizenship.” We … are America.