What, then, will you take?  You will take nothing but your own judgment; that is, you will not only judge for yourselves, not only discard the court, discard our construction, discard the practise of the government, but you will drive us out, simply because you will it.  Come and do it!  You have sapped the foundations of society; you have destroyed almost all hope of peace.  In a compact where there is no common arbiter, where the parties finally decide for themselves, the sword alone at last becomes the real, if not the constitutional, arbiter.  Your party says that you will not take the decision of the Supreme Court.  You said so at Chicago; you said so in committee; every man of you in both Houses says so.  What are you going to do?  You say we shall submit to your construction.  We shall do it, if you can make us; but not otherwise, or in any other manner.  That is settled.  You may call it secession, or you may call it revolution; but there is a big fact standing before you, ready to oppose you—­that fact is, freemen with arms in their hands.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

INAUGURAL ADDRESS

(1905)

MY FELLOW CITIZENS:—­No people on earth have more cause to be thankful than ours, and this is said reverently, in no spirit of boastfulness in our own strength, but with gratitude to the Giver of Good, Who has blessed us with the conditions which have enabled us to achieve so large a measure of well-being and happiness.

To us as a people it has been granted to lay the foundations of our national life in a new continent.  We are the heirs of the ages, and yet we have had to pay few of the penalties which in old countries are exacted by the dead hand of a bygone civilization.  We have not been obliged to fight for our existence against any alien race; and yet our life has called for the vigor and effort without which the manlier and hardier virtues wither away.

Under such conditions it would be our own fault if we failed, and the success which we have had in the past, the success which we confidently believe the future will bring, should cause in us no feeling of vainglory, but rather a deep and abiding realization of all that life has offered us; a full acknowledgment of the responsibility which is ours; and a fixed determination to show that under a free government a mighty people can thrive best, alike as regard the things of the body and the things of the soul.

Much has been given to us, and much will rightfully be expected from us.  We have duties to others and duties to ourselves—­and we can shirk neither.  We have become a great nation, forced by the fact of its greatness into relation to the other nations of the earth, and we must behave as beseems a people with such responsibilities.

Toward all other nations, large and small, our attitude must be one of cordial and sincere friendship.  We must show not only in our words but in our deeds that we are earnestly desirous of securing their good will by acting toward them in a spirit of just and generous recognition of all their rights.