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Welcome to U.S. history!
Theodore Roosevelt's Inaugural Address:
| 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 of 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 which 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 regards the things of the body and the things of the
soul. |
| Much has been given 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 relations
with 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. But justice and generosity in a nation,
as in an individual, count most when shown not by the weak but by the strong. While ever
careful to refrain from wrongdoing others, we must be no less insistent that we are not
wronged ourselves. We wish peace, but we wish the peace of justice, the peace of
righteousness. We wish it because we think it is right and not because we are afraid. No
weak nation that acts manfully and justly should ever have cause to fear us, and no strong
power should ever be able to single us out as a subject for insolent aggression. |
| Our relations with the other powers of the world are
important; but still more important are our relations among ourselves. Such growth in
wealth, in population, and in power as this nation has seen during the century and a
quarter of its national life is inevitably accompanied by a like growth in the problems
which are ever before every nation that rises to greatness. Power invariably means both
responsibility and danger. Our forefathers faced certain perils which we have outgrown. We
now face other perils, the very existence of which it was impossible that they should
foresee. Modern life is both complex and intense, and the tremendous changes wrought by
the extraordinary industrial development of the last half century are felt in every fiber
of our social and political being. Never before have men tried so vast and formidable an
experiment as that of administering the affairs of a continent under the forms of a
Democratic republic. The conditions which have told for our marvelous material well-being,
which have developed to a very high degree our energy, self-reliance, and individual
initiative, have also brought the care and anxiety inseparable from the accumulation of
great wealth in industrial centers. Upon the success of our experiment much depends, not
only as regards our own welfare, but as regards the welfare of mankind. If we fail, the
cause of free self-government throughout the world will rock to its foundations, and
therefore our responsibility is heavy, to ourselves, to the world as it is to-day, and to
the generations yet unborn. There is no good reason why we should fear the future, but
there is every reason why we should face it seriously, neither hiding from ourselves the
gravity of the problems before us nor fearing to approach these problems with the
unbending, unflinching purpose to solve them aright. |
| Yet, after all, though the problems are new, though
the tasks set before us differ from the tasks set before our fathers who founded and
preserved this Republic, the spirit in which these tasks must be undertaken and these
problems faced, if our duty is to be well done, remains essentially unchanged. We know
that self-government is difficult. We know that no people needs such high traits of
character as that people which seeks to govern its affairs aright through the freely
expressed will of the freemen who compose it. But we have faith that we shall not prove
false to the memories of the men of the mighty past. They did their work, they left us the
splendid heritage we now enjoy. We in our turn have an assured confidence that we shall be
able to leave this heritage unwasted and enlarged to our children and our children's
children. To do so we must show, not merely in great crises, but in the everyday affairs
of life, the qualities of practical intelligence, of courage, of hardihood, and endurance,
and above all the power of devotion to a lofty ideal, which made great the men who founded
this Republic in the days of Washington, which made great the men who preserved this
Republic in the days of Abraham Lincoln. |
Back
to Theodore Roosevelt
Executive Oath of Office
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of
President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and
defend the Constitution of the United States."
United States Constitution, Article II,
Section 1, Clause 8
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back in Time
1George Washington, 2John
Adamsl, 3Thomas Jefferson, 4James Madison, 5James
Monroe, 6John Quincy Adams, 7Andrew Jackson, 8Martin
Van Buren,9William H Harrison,10John Tyler,11James K
Polk, 12Zachary Taylor, 13Millard Fillmore,14Franklin
Pierce,15James Buchanan,16Abraham Lincoln, 17Andrew
Johnson, 18Ulysses S Grant,19Rutherford B Hayes, 20James A Garfield, 21Chester
A. Arthur, 22Grover
Cleveland,23Benjamin Harrison, 24Grover Cleveland, 25William
McKinley,26Theodore Roosevelt, 27William H. Taft,28Woodrow Wilson, 29Warren
G. Harding,30Calvin Coolidge,31Herbert Hoover,32Franklin
D Roosevelt,33Harry S.
Truman, 34Dwight D Eisenhower,35John F Kennedy, 36Lyndon
B Johnson, 37RichardN. Nixon, 38Gerald R Ford, 39James E
Carter,40Ronald
W. Reagan, 41George
HerbertW. Bush, 42Bill Clinton,
43George Walker Bush 44
Barack H. Obama
last updated
07/14/09
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