_Mr. Mayor; and you, My Fellow-Americans_:
It has been indeed a pleasure for me to come to-day within the limits
of your mighty and beautiful State. This afternoon I have been
traveling through a veritable garden of the Lord. It is only a few
weeks ago that I did my part in helping on the growth here when I
signed the bill under which the Trinity River will be improved, which
I was mighty glad to do. For I think that we Americans have learned
the lesson that whatever is good for some of us is good for all of
us. We are all going to go up, and not down, because we are going to
go together. I have been impressed even more than by the beauty and
fertility of your State by the character of its people. Surely no
President could be more touched by any greeting than by a greeting
such as this; and above all (I know the others of you will not mind my
saying) to be greeted by the men who, when the hour of trial came in
1861, sprang to arms, and whether they wore the blue, or whether they
wore the gray, proved the sincerity of their devotion by the valor
with which they risked their lives. Oh, my fellow-countrymen, think
what a blessed thing it is that now every man in this land can feel the
same pride in the valor and devotion of those who fought for one side
and of those who fought for the other! I can, in a sense, claim to be,
by blood at least, a typical President, for I am half Southern and half
Northern; I was born in the East and I have lived much in and learned
much from the West.
The Civil War has left us as a heritage of honor not merely the memory
of the mighty deeds done in it alike by the men of the North and the
men of the South; it has left us also as an inspiration and a memory
the way in which when the war was over those men turned to the works of
peace, and wrought out in peace success exactly as they had wrought it
out in war.
I come to Texas not for the first time. Seven years ago, again there
was a call to arms, a call to arms against a foreign foe. It then
fell to my lot to come here to help in raising a regiment, a regiment
in which I think over half of the men had fathers who served in the
Confederate army, and about one-third, perhaps somewhat more, fathers
who served in the Union army. We were the sons of the men who wore the
blue, the sons of the men who wore the gray, and our only desire was to
show ourselves not wholly unworthy of the mighty men of the years that
are past.
You of this State of Texas have behind you a history containing the
deeds of which not only you but all of the country must be forever
proud. My regiment was raised under the walls of that historic building
of which it was said that “Thermopylæ had its messengers of death, but
the Alamo had none.” You, the men of Texas, like the men of Oregon
and California, like the men of Kentucky and Tennessee in a previous
generation, did your part in changing this Nation from a string of
Atlantic seaboard commonwealths into a people bounded only by a
continent. No people more than the Texans have rendered it impossible
for this country to be anything but great. It is not open to us to
choose whether we shall play a small part or a great part. Your fathers
helped to make that choice impossible. Play a great part we must. All
that we can decide is whether we shall play it well or ill; and I know
too well, oh, my fellow-countrymen, not to know what your decision will
be.
The problems change. One generation faces different difficulties from
the difficulties faced by its predecessors. But the spirit in which
those problems must be faced is forever the same. You, the men of the
Civil War, who wrought deeds of deathless fame, who left memories
of honor that will last as long as this Nation endures, fought with
muzzle-loading, percussion-cap muskets and rifles, with cannon that
you could afford to put out in the open when you wanted to shoot
at the foe. You fought still in the shoulder-to-shoulder tactics.
Nowadays men must fight with different weapons; men must fight with
different tactics; but the spirit in which they must fight if they
are to win must be the spirit that sustained you alike in triumph and
defeat. The outward problem changes, the outward means of solving that
problem changes, but the heart of the man who is to solve it can not
be changed. We must show as a Nation now the same spirit that has been
shown by the mighty men of times past under penalty of failure; show it
in war if the need arises; and we must also show it in peace; show it
in the days that are with us all the time instead of waiting for the
heroic days that may never come.
Just as in time of war the man who does his duty in camp, on the march,
who does not throw away his blanket at noon because it is heavy, and
then wishes that he had two at midnight, is the type of man who makes
the best soldier in the long run; so it is true that in civil life the
man who does his duty as a citizen in the long run is the man who does
his ordinary work day by day, doing each day’s duty, great or small,
behaving as he should toward his wife, toward his children, toward his
neighbor, in his business, in his home; and if he does those duties
well the sum of the duties performed means that he is a good citizen.
I want you men of Texas, you men of my age, to see to it that exactly
as you lift your heads higher because of what your fathers have done,
so your children have the right to hold their heads higher because
of the way in which you handle yourselves. A glorious memory is the
best of all things for a nation if it spurs that nation on to try to
rise level with that memory. It is a poor thing for a nation if it
uses the memory of the past to excuse it for inaction or failure in
the present. Keep it before yourselves ever that the very fact that
you are proud of those who have gone before makes it incumbent upon
you to leave a heritage of honor to those who are to come after you,
and to train up those who are to come after you so that they can do
their work in the world. One of the things that has pleased me most in
passing through the part of your State that I have passed through this
afternoon was to see the care that you are giving to the education of
the children, to see the public schools and the private schools that
you have built and in which your boys and girls are being trained.
Do not forget that besides the training of the school must come the
training in the family. Take care the next generation is able to rise
level to its duty. You can not make it rise level if you do not give
it the proper training. Remember always that this life is certain
to contain much that is hard, much that is unpleasant. It is not a
kindness to the children, it is a curse, if you train them so that
they can not meet any need that arises. I do not believe that we ought
ever to try to delude ourselves with the thought that we can make life
easy, effortless, and yet keep it worth having. For a nation as for an
individual the life is the life of effort. You have made this great
State of Texas what it is because your forefathers had in them the
spirit which recognized in a difficulty something not to be flinched
from, but to be overcome.
I can not sufficiently thank you for the way you have greeted me
to-day. I am more touched than I can express by it. I come to the soil
of this State, hallowed by the great deeds of great men, I come knowing
your people already and believing in them with my heart and soul. A
couple of years ago I went from the Atlantic to the Pacific. I have
now come down to this mighty State, this wonderful commonwealth, which
borders on the Gulf, and I shall go away with the feeling that after
all, while there are small differences among us, the fundamental fact
is that wherever you find the average American, the average American
is a pretty good man. It is our unity, not our divergency, that is the
great fundamental fact of our national life. I shall go away a stronger
and better American for having been in this State of strong and good
Americans, this mighty commonwealth of Texas.