GOVERNOR, 1904
as the principles of the national government. The flame of strife but tested the virtue of the metal. The blows intended to dissever only welded the sovereignties together more firmly for future wider effort. The nation, as it exists today, arose when Pickett failed to drive the Philadelphia Brigade from the stone wall on Cemetery Hill. A seer, sitting on that dread day upon the crests of Big Round Top, could have figured, in the clouds of smoke rolling over the Devil's Den and the Bloody Angle, the scenes soon to occur in Manila Bay, at Santiago and San Juan Hill, the beaming of a new light at Hawaii and in the far Philippines, the junction of the two mighty oceans and the near disappearance of English control of the commerce of the world.
The presidential office is so great a station among men that those who fill it are not to be regarded as personalities. Their individuality is lost in its immensity. They become the manifestations of certain impulses and stages of development of the national life. Jackson represented its rough, uncouth and undisciplined strength. Lincoln looms up above all other Americans bearing the burden of woe and suffering which fate laid upon his broad shoulders in its time of stress and trial. Blessed be his memory forevermore! No people can look forward to the fulfilment of such a destiny as events seem to outline for us save one alert and eager with the enthusiasm and vigor of youth. No other President has so stood for that which, after all, typifies our life — the sweep of the winds over broad prairies, the snow-capped mountains and the rushing rivers, the Sequoia trees, the exuberance of youth conscious of red blood, energy and power, pointing our bow of promise, as does Theodore Roosevelt. He has hunted in our woods, he has enriched our literature, he has ridden in the face of the enemy, he has maintained our ideals. Upon this day, devoted to the memories of the heroic dead — in Pennsylvania a sad Decoration Day[1] — the achievements of the prolific past and the promise of the teeming future confront each other. Today for the first time Theodore Roosevelt treads the field made immortal by the sword of George Gordon Meade and hallowed by the prose dirge of Abraham Lincoln.
Philander C. Knox, then in the Cabinet, wrote: “I have heard the President and Mrs. Roosevelt both express their very high appreciation of the way in which you presented him at Gettysburg.”
- ↑ Quay lay dead.
