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Theodore Roosevelt

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:NA Estimated At:30,000.00 - 40,000.00 USD
Theodore Roosevelt

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Auction Date:2018 Feb 07 @ 18:00 (UTC-05:00 : EST/CDT)
Location:236 Commercial St., Suite 100, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
Printed draft of a speech made by Theodore Roosevelt at an event held in his honor by the Illinois Bar Association (IBA) at Chicago’s Hotel La Salle on April 29, 1916, eight pages, 7 x 24 (final page is trimmed to 7 x 7.75), with the upper border of the first page bearing an ANS in pencil by Roosevelt, addressed to Nathan William MacChesney, the president of the IBA, in full: “Dear Mr. McCh’ny, Here is the speech, with a few merely verbal corrections, sincerely, Theodore Roosevelt.” In addition to this short note, Roosevelt has made 43 handwritten corrections in pencil throughout, which consist of minor grammatical corrections, strike-throughs, and punctuation marks. Most significant however is the presence of Roosevelt’s now iconic maxim in regard to foreign policy, which can be found within the last paragraph of page six: “I once used the phrase, to sum up our proper foreign policy:—'Speak softly and carry a big stick.' There was a good deal of laughter over that phrase. But it expresses a pretty sound policy all the same. Remember, that I was President seven years and a half and that I never spoke with wanton harshness of any nation. I always spoke softly, I was always just as nice and polite as any man could be. But I carried a big stick!"

Roosevelt’s speech, in part: "Mr. President, and my Hosts of the Illinois Bar Association: I felt it a particular privilege to accept your invitation because I was glad to have a chance, as our Methodist brethren say, to show why it is borne in on me to testify to precisely this type of audience in this part of our common country; to address an audience of men who by advantages, by training, by practice, must inevitably play a leading part in the community; and to address such an audience in Lincoln's state, in the heart of our great country. And, friends of the Bar Association, questions of elective and legislative machinery, even questions of internal reform, sink into insignificance when we are confronted by the great question as to whether we are to be a nation at all or a mere knot, a tangle, of squabbling nationalities. Lincoln once said, speaking in this State, that the country could not endure half slave and half free; and nowadays America can not endure half hyphenated and half not.

Again, such questions are necessarily of small account while in international matters all moral sanctions and standards of conduct have vanished into chaos, unless we prepare ourselves to defend the lives of our citizens and the honor and vital interests of the nation as a whole. There is no use of discussing what measures of internal reform we shall have if it is going to be an alien victor who settles the discussion.

A year and three quarters have passed since the opening of the Great War. At the outset our people were stunned by the vastness and terror of the crisis. We had been assured by many complacent persons that the day of great wars had ended, that the reign of violence was over, that the enlightened public opinion of the world would prevent the oppression of weak nations. To be sure there was ample proof that none of these assurances were true, and far-seeing men did not believe in them. But there was good excuse for the mass of the people being misled. Now, however, there is none. War has been waged on a more colossal scale than ever before in the world's history; and cynical indifference to international morality, and willingness to trample on inoffensive, peace loving peoples who are also helpless or timid, have been shown on a greater scale than since the close of the Napoleonic Wars of a century ago. Alone of the great powers we have not been drawn into this struggle.

A two-fold duty was imposed upon us by the fact of our prosperity and by the fact of our momentary immunity from danger. This two-fold duty was, first, to make our voice heard for the weak who were wronged by the strong, and for international humanity and honor, and for peace on terms, and only on terms, of justice to all concerned. And, second, immediately, and in thoroughgoing fashion, to prepare ourselves so that there might not befall us on an even greater scale, such a disaster as befell Belgium. Those were our two duties. We have signally failed in the performance of both. Incredible to relate, we are not in any substantial respect stronger at this moment in soldiers and rifles, in seamen or ships, because of any governmental action taken in consequence of this war. And, moreover, we have seen every device and every provision designed by humanitarians to protect international right against international wrongdoing torn into shreds and we have not ventured so much as to speak one word of effective protest.

I wish you to understand, friends, I am speaking of you and me. I am speaking of us, here, and of those like us who are collectively responsible for what the men in public life do. As for as I can help it, I do not intend to let the average American citizen shirk the responsibility or say, ‘Yes, how wicked some one else is because of what we have done.’ Or rather, because of what we have left undone. The result of our inaction, of our sloth and timidity, has been that every nation in the world now realizes our weakness and that no nation in the world really believes either in our disinterestedness or our manliness. The effort to placate outside nations by being neutral between right and wrong, the effort to gain good will along professional pacifist lines, by remaining helpless for self defense, has resulted, after two fatuous years, in so shaping affairs that the nations of the world either already feel or are rapidly growing to feel for us not only dislike but contempt.

This is not a pleasant truth, but it is the truth; and, as a people, we will do well to remember Emerson’s saying that in the long run the most unpleasant truth is a safer traveling companion than the pleasantest falsehood. Our duty is to face the facts and then to take the thoroughgoing action necessary to meet the situation those facts disclose. The most foolish thing we could do is to sit together, to come together in meetings and tell one another how great we are, and then wait till we go up against the rifles in order to find out that our words amount to nothing unless we are able to back them by deeds. Our prime duty, infinitely our most important duty, is the duty of preparedness. Unless we prepare in advance we can not, when the crisis comes, be true to ourselves.” In very good to fine condition, with rusty paperclip impressions to the first page, some splitting to folds, and some short edge tears.

Few presidential aphorisms have endured to the extent of Roosevelt’s famous ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick, and you will go far,’ a proverb he first publicly used during an address at the Minnesota State Fair on September 2, 1901 (four days later, President William McKinley was shot by an assassin, and eight days after that, the 42-year-old Roosevelt assumed the role as the nation’s chief executive). The motto, which suggests that civil diplomacy, if compromised, should have the ability to wield forceful action, was perhaps best exemplified by Roosevelt’s use of the Great White Fleet in 1907, when an armada of over a dozen steel battleships circumnavigated the globe in a demonstration of Washington’s naval dominance, all without firing a shot. At the time of this 1916 speech, Roosevelt was again considering another run for the presidency, and in June was nominated as the Progressive Party candidate; he later turned down the offer via telegraph, instead tending his support for Republican hopeful Charles E. Hughes. Derisive of President Wilson’s inaction yet staid in its patriotic fervor, this speech merges introspection with no-nonsense rhetoric in is a distinctly Rooseveltian manner, making plain America’s need for entrance into the ‘Great War.’