Theodore Roosevelt's Timeless Lesson on Courage in "Iron Times"

Theodore Roosevelt, on September 5, 1901, delivered a speech unlike any other. Nine days later, a terrible event shook the nation. It would call forth the kind of courage few generations need – the ability to dig deep, be resilient, and live through “iron days.”

On September 5, 1901, Theodore Roosevelt spoke to the last remaining Union soldiers of New England, those who had fought to keep the Union in one piece during the Civil War. He honored them for stepping up, for being noble in their time, but also noted that their war was different.

The Civil War, and their service, were of a kind seldom visited on any nation, a war that could shatter the Union, that is not just about winning on foreign soil, but about survival as a nation. He pointed out the many ways their lives changed the nation, and honored our Founders.

Finally, he delivered this testimony to what he called their “iron days,” which were defined by “iron men,” men who – when called to do the impossible – did not quake, shiver, hide or run, but stood and did what is required of them, who lived to be “equal to their time” and who did their duty.

He wrote – and spoke – these words: “Your history, rightly studied, will teach us the time-worn truth that in war, as in peace, we need chiefly the everyday, commonplace virtues, and above all an unflagging sense of duty.”

He continued: “Yet in dwelling upon the lessons for our ordinary conduct which we can learn from our experience, we just never forget that it also shows us what should be our model in times that are not ordinary, in the times that try men’s souls.” Here, he is quoting Thomas Paine.

“We need to have within us the splendid, heroic virtues which alone avail in the mighty crises, the terrible catastrophes whereby a nation is either purified as if by fire, or else consumed forever in the flames.” Without knowing it, he foreshadowed the imminent future with this biblical allusion.

“When you of the Civil War sprang forward at Abraham Lincoln’s call, to put all that life holds dear –and life itself – in the scale with the nation’s honor, you were able to do what you did because you had in you not only the qualities that make good citizens, but in addition the high and intense traits, the deep passion and enthusiasm, which go to make up heroes who are fit .. to deal with iron days.”

“We can never as a nation afford to forget that back of our reason, our understanding, and our common  sense, there must lie in full strength the tremendous fundamental passions which are not often needed, but which every truly great race must have as a wellspring of motive in time of need.”

Speaking of Americans as a race apart, a people who rise in the worst of times, who have a reserve for times suddenly and existentially unexpected, he honored those who were alive 40 years later.

Just nine days later, President McKinley – for whom Theodore Roosevelt was Vice-President – died at the hands of an assassin. Suddenly, Theodore Roosevelt himself was required to be one of those “iron men” in his own time, leading in new “iron times.” As history attests, true to his words to New England Civil War patriots, he did.