ELIZABETH CADY STANTON
In the summer of 1848 five ardent Quaker reformers met at the obscure village of Seneca Falls, New York, to discuss the social, civil, and religious rights of women. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Martha Wright, Jane Hunt, and Mary Ann McClintock were all veterans of the abolitionist and temperance movements. Influenced by the clarity of the Declaration of Independence, together they helped Stanton draft a manifesto that initiated a groundswell of support for women’s rights. Later that summer, they held a convention where the draft resolution was resoundingly affirmed. Though written and adopted prior to the War Between the States, it was one of the first great political documents of the new postbellum age of modernity.
Whereas, the great precept of nature is conceded to be that “man shall pursue his own true and substantial happiness,” Blackstone in his Commentaries remarks that this law of nature being coeval with mankind, and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries and at all times; no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this, and such of them as are valid, derive all their force, and all their validity, and all their authority, immediately and immediately, from this original; therefore,
Resolved, that all laws which prevent woman from occupying such a station in society as her conscience shall dictate, or which place her in a position inferior to that of man, are contrary to the great precept of nature, and therefore of no force or authority.
Resolved, that woman is man’s equal—was intended to be so by the Creator, and the highest good of the race demands that she should be recognized as such.
Resolved, that the women of this country ought to be enlightened in regard to the laws under which they live, that they may no longer publish their degradation by declaring themselves satisfied with their present position, nor their ignorance by asserting that they have all the rights they want.
Resolved, that inasmuch as man, while claiming for himself intellectual superiority, does accord to woman moral superiority, it is preeminently his duty to encourage her to speak and teach, as she has an opportunity, in all religious assemblies.
Resolved, that the same amount of virtue, delicacy, and refinement of behavior that is required of woman in the social state, should also be required of man, and the same transgressions should be visited with equal severity on both man and woman.
Resolved, that the objection of indelicacy and impropriety, which is so often brought against woman when she addresses a public audience, comes with a very ill-grace from those who encourage, by their attendance, her appearance on the stage, in the concert, or in feats of the circus.
Resolved, that woman has too long rested satisfied in the circumscribed limits which corrupt customs and a perverted application of the Scriptures have marked out for her, and that it is time she should move in the enlarged sphere which her great Creator has assigned her.
Resolved, that it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise.
Resolved, that the equality of human rights results necessarily from the fact of the identity of the race in capabilities and responsibilities.
Resolved, that the speedy success of our cause depends upon the zealous and untiring efforts of both men and women, for the overthrow of the monopoly of the pulpit, and for the securing to women an equal participation with men in the various trades, professions, and commerce.
Resolved, therefore, that, being invested by the Creator with the same capabilities, and the same consciousness of responsibility for their exercise, it is demonstrably the right and duty of woman, equally with man, to promote every righteous cause by every righteous means; and especially in regard to the great subjects of morals and religion, it is self-evidently her right to participate with her brother in teaching them, both in private and in public, by writing and by speaking, by any instrumentalities proper to be used, and in any assemblies proper to be held; and this being a self-evident truth growing out of the divinely implanted principles of human nature, any custom or authority adverse to it, whether modern or wearing the hoary sanction of antiquity, is to be regarded as a self-evident falsehood, and at war with mankind.
* * *
FRANCIS BELLAMY
This patriotic vow was written by a journalist to commemorate the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1892. Though it was first publicly recited at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago that year, it was not officially recognized until 1954. At that time the original was revised to include the words “under God.” Usually recited at the opening of public ceremonies or events, it is a kind of national covenantal commitment.
I pledge allegiance
To the flag of the United States of America
And to the republic for which it stands,
One nation under God,
Indivisible, with liberty, and justice for all.
* * *
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
Born into slavery, Booker T. Washington literally pulled himself up by his own bootstraps to become one of the most articulate and influential educators in the nation. Founder of the Tuskegee Institute, author of a number of books, and a popular speaker, he always emphasized the importance of education, hard work, and self-discipline for the advancement of African Americans. Washington’s audience at the Cotton States’ Exposition on September 18, 1895, included both white and black southerners, and his speech received enormous attention throughout the country—it helped galvanize public opinion in favor of black self-improvement.
Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Board of Directors and Citizens: One-third of the population of the South is of the Negro race. No enterprise seeking the material, civil, or moral welfare of this section can disregard this element of our population and reach the highest success. I but convey to you, Mr. President and directors, the sentiment of the masses of my race when I say that in no way have the value and manhood of the American Negro been more fittingly and generously recognized than by the managers of this magnificent exposition at every stage of its progress. It is a recognition that will do more to cement the friendship of the two races than any occurrence since the dawn of our freedom.
Not only this, but the opportunity here afforded will awaken among us a new era of industrial progress. Ignorant and inexperienced, it is not strange that in the first years of our new life we began at the top instead of at the bottom; that a seat in Congress or the state legislature was more sought than real estate or industrial skill; that the political convention or stump speaking had more attractions than starting a dairy farm or truck garden.
A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel. From the mast of the unfortunate vessel was seen a signal, “Water, water; we die of thirst!” The answer from the friendly vessel at once came back, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” And a third and fourth signal for water was answered, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” The captain of the distressed vessel, at last heeding the injunction, cast down his bucket, and it came up full of fresh, sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River. To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign land or who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the Southern white man, who is their next-door neighbor, I would say: “Cast down your bucket where you are”—cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded.
Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions. And in this connection it is well to bear in mind that whatever other sins the South may be called to bear, when it comes to business, pure and simple, it is in the South that the Negro is given a man’s chance in the commercial world, and in nothing is this exposition more eloquent than in emphasizing this chance. Our greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labor and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life; shall prosper in proportion as we learn to draw the line between the superficial and the substantial, the ornamental gew-gaws of life and the useful. No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities.
To those of the white race who look to the incoming of those of foreign birth and strange tongue and habits for the prosperity of the South, were I permitted I would repeat what I say to my own race, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” Cast it down among the eight millions of Negroes whose habits you know, whose fidelity and love you have tested in days when to have proved treacherous meant the ruin of your firesides. Cast down your bucket among these people who have, without strikes and labor wars, tilled your fields, cleared your forests, built your railroads and cities, and brought forth treasures from the bowels of the earth, and helped make possible this magnificent representation of the progress of the South. Casting down your bucket among my people, helping and encouraging them as you are doing on these grounds, and to education of head, hand, and heart, you will find that they will buy your surplus land, make blossom the waste places in your fields, and run your factories. While doing this, you can be sure in the future, as in the past, that you and your families will be surrounded by the most patient, faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful people that the world has seen. As we have proved our loyalty to you in the past, in nursing your children, watching by the sick-bed of your mothers and fathers, and often following them with tear-dimmed eyes to their graves, so in the future, in our humble way, we shall stand by you with a devotion that no foreigner can approach, ready to lay down our lives, if need be, in defense of yours, interlacing our industrial, commercial, civil, and religious life with yours in a way that shall make the interests of both races one. In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.
There is no defense or security for any of us except in the highest intelligence and development of all. If anywhere there are efforts tending to curtail the fullest growth of the Negro, let these efforts be turned into stimulating, encouraging, and making him the most useful and intelligent citizen. Effort or means so invested will pay a thousand percent interest. These efforts will be twice blessed—“blessing him that gives and him that takes.”
There is no escape through law of man or God from the inevitable:
The laws of changeless justice bind
Oppressor with oppressed;
And close as sin and suffering joined
We march to fate abreast.
Nearly sixteen millions of hands will aid you in pulling the load upward; or they will pull against you the load downward. We shall constitute one-third and more of the ignorance and crime of the South, or one-third its intelligence and progress; we shall contribute one-third to the business and industrial prosperity of the South, or we shall prove a veritable body of death, stagnating, depressing, retarding every effort to advance the body politic. Gentlemen of the exposition, as we present to you our humble effort at an exhibition of our progress, you must not expect overmuch. Starting thirty years ago with ownership here and there in a few quilts and pumpkins and chickens (gathered from miscellaneous sources), remember the path that has led from these to the inventions and production of agricultural implements, buggies, steam engines, newspapers, books, statuary, carving, paintings, the management of drugstores and banks, has not been trodden without contact with thorns and thistles. While we take pride in what we exhibit as a result of our independent efforts, we do not for a moment forget that our part in this exhibition would fall far short of your expectations but for the constant help that has come to our educational life, not only from the Southern states, but especially from Northern philanthropists, who have made their gifts a constant stream of blessing and encouragement.
The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing. No race that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long in any degree ostracized. It is important and right that all privileges of the law be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercises of these privileges. The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera house.
In conclusion, may I repeat that nothing in thirty years has given us more hope and encouragement, and drawn us so near to you of the white race, as this opportunity offered by the exposition; and here bending, as it were, over the altar that represents the results of the struggles of your race and mine, both starting practically empty-handed three decades ago, I pledge that in your effort to work out the great and intricate problem which God has laid at the doors of the South, you shall have at all times the patient, sympathetic help of my race; only let this be constantly in mind, that, while from representations in these buildings of the product of field, of forest, of mine, of factory, letters, and art, much good will come, yet far above and beyond material benefits will be that higher good, that, let us pray God, will come, in a blotting out of sectional differences and racial animosities and suspicions, in a determination to administer absolute justice, in a willing obedience among all classes to the mandates of law. This, this, coupled with our material prosperity, will brine into our beloved South a new heaven and a new earth.
* * *
WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN
This speech delivered at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on July 9, 1896, was quite probably the most effective oration in the history of American party politics. Bryan, then only thirty-six, had come to Chicago as a leader of the Nebraska delegation, but with the avowed intention of vaulting from this relatively obscure role into the presidential nomination. And that he did. The great issue before the convention was whether the party should take its place behind President Cleveland and the conservative Democrats in a continued defense of the gold standard or yield to the fervent demand of populists in the West for free coinage of silver as the remedy for depressed prices, unemployment, and the blight of depression. Bryan was perhaps the most articulate advocate of the silver strategy—essentially calling for government to inflate the money supply. Though he was ultimately defeated by William McKinley in the general election, he had established himself as a political force to be contended with.
I would be presumptuous, indeed, to present myself against the distinguished gentlemen to whom you have listened if this were a mere measuring of abilities; but this is not a contest between persons. The humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error. I come to speak to you in defense of a cause as holy as the cause of liberty—the cause of humanity.
When this debate is concluded, a motion will be made to lay upon the table the resolution offered in commendation of the administration, and also the resolution offered in condemnation of the administration. We object to bringing this question down to the level of persons. The individual is but an atom; he is born, he acts, he dies; but principles are eternal; and this has been a contest over a principle.
Never before in the history of this country has there been witnessed such a contest as that through which we have just passed. Never before in the history of American politics has a great issue been fought out as this issue has been, by the voters of a great party. On the fourth of March, 1895, a few Democrats, most of them members of Congress, issued an address to the Democrats of the nation, asserting that the money question was the paramount issue of the hour; declaring that a majority of the Democratic party had the right to control the action of the party on this paramount issue; and concluding with the request that the believers in the free coinage of silver in the Democratic party should organize, take charge of, and control the policy of the Democratic party. Three months later, at Memphis, an organization was perfected, and the silver Democrats went forth openly and courageously proclaiming their belief, and declaring that, if successful, they would crystallize into a platform the declaration which they had made. They began the conflict. With a zeal approaching the zeal which inspired the crusaders who followed Peter the Hermit, our silver Democrats went forth from victory unto victory until they are now assembled, not to discuss, not to debate, but to enter up the judgment already rendered by the plain people of this country. In this contest brother has been arrayed against brother, father against son. The warmest ties of love, acquaintance and association have been disregarded; old leaders have been cast aside when they have refused to give expression to the sentiments of those whom they would lead, and new leaders have sprung up to give direction to this cause of truth. Thus has the contest been waged, and we have assembled here under as binding and solemn instructions as were ever imposed upon representatives of the people.
We do not come as individuals. As individuals we might have been glad to compliment the gentleman from New York but we know that the people for whom we speak would never be willing to put him in a position where he could thwart the will of the Democratic party. I say it was not a question of persons; it was a question of principle, and it is not with gladness, my friends, that we find ourselves brought into conflict with those who are now arrayed on the other side.
The gentleman who preceded me spoke of the State of Massachusetts; let me assure him that not one present in all this convention entertains the least hostility to the people of the State of Massachusetts, but we stand here representing people who are the equals, before the law, of the greatest citizens in the State of Massachusetts. When you turning to the gold delegates come before us and tell us that we are about to disturb your business interests, we reply that you have disturbed our business interests by your course.
We say to you that you have made the definition of a business man too limited in its application. The man who is employed for wages is as much a business man as his employer; the attorney in a country town is as much a business man as the corporation counsel in a great metropolis; the merchant at the cross-roads store is as much a business man as the merchant of New York; the farmer who goes forth in the morning and toils all day—who begins in the spring and toils all summer—and who by the application of brain and muscle to the natural resources of the country creates wealth, is as much a business man as the man who goes upon the board of trade and bets upon the price of grain; the miners who go down a thousand feet into the earth, or climb two thousand feet upon the cliffs, and bring forth from their hiding places the precious metals to be poured into the channels of trade are as much business men as the few financial magnates who, in a back room, corner the money of the world. We come to speak for this broader class of business men.
Ah, my friends, we say not one word against those who live upon the Atlantic coast, but the hardy pioneers who have braved all the dangers of the wilderness, who have made the desert to blossom as the rose—the pioneers away out there who rear their children near to Nature’s heart, where they can mingle their voices with the voices of the birds—out there where they have erected schoolhouses for the education of their young, churches where they praise their Creator, and cemeteries where rest the ashes of their dead—these people, we say, are as deserving of the consideration of our party as any people in this country. It is for these that we speak. We do not come as aggressors. Our war is not a war of conquest; we are fighting in the defense of our homes, our families, and posterity. We have petitioned, and our petitions have been scorned; we have entreated, and our entreaties have been disregarded; we have begged, and they have mocked when our calamity came. We beg no longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more. We defy them.
The gentleman from Wisconsin has said that he fears a Robespierre. My friends, in this land of the free you need not fear that a tyrant will spring up from among the people. What we need is an Andrew Jackson to stand, as Jackson stood, against the encroachments of organized wealth.
They tell us that this platform was made to catch votes. We reply to them that changing conditions make new issues; that the principles upon which Democracy rests are as everlasting as the hills, but that they must be applied to new conditions as they arise. Conditions have arisen, and we are here to meet those conditions. They tell us that the income tax ought not to be brought in here; that it is a new idea. They criticize us for our criticism of the Supreme Court of the United States. My friends, we have not criticized; we have simply called attention to what you already know. If you want criticisms, read the dissenting opinions of the court. There you will find criticisms. They say that we passed an unconstitutional law; we deny it. The income tax law was not unconstitutional when it was passed; it was not unconstitutional when it went before the Supreme Court for the first time; it did not become unconstitutional until one of the judges changed his mind, and we cannot be expected to know when a judge will change his mind. The income tax is just. It simply intends to put the burdens of government justly upon the backs of the people. I am in favor of an income tax. When I find a man who is not willing to bear his share of the burdens of the government which protects him, I find a man who is unworthy to enjoy the blessings of a government like ours.
They say that we are opposing national bank currency; that is true. If you will read what Thomas Benton said, you will find he said that, in searching history, he could find but one parallel to Andrew Jackson; that was Cicero, who destroyed the conspiracy of Cataline and saved Rome. Benton said that Cicero only did for Rome what Jackson did for us when he destroyed the bank conspiracy and saved America. We say in our platform that we believe that the right to coin and issue money is a function of government. We believe it. We believe that it is a part of sovereignty, and can no more with safety be delegated to private individuals than we could afford to delegate to private individuals the power to make penal statutes or levy taxes. Mr. Jefferson, who was once regarded as good Democratic authority, seems to have differed in opinion from the gentleman who has addressed us on the part of the minority. Those who are opposed to this proposition tell us that the issue of paper money is a function of the bank, and that the Government ought to go out of the banking business. I stand with Jefferson rather than with them, and tell them, as he did, that the issue of money is a function of government, and that the banks ought to go out of the governing business.
They complain about the plank which declares against life tenure in office. They have tried to strain it to mean that which it does not mean. What we oppose by that plank is the life tenure which is being built up in Washington, and which excludes from participation in official benefits the humbler members of society.
Let me call your attention to two or three important things. The gentleman from New York says that he will propose an amendment to the platform providing that the proposed change in our monetary system shall not affect contracts already made. Let me remind you that there is no intention of affecting those contracts which according to present laws are made payable in gold; but if he means to say that we cannot change our monetary system without protecting those who have loaned money before the change was made, I desire to ask him where, in law or in morals, he can find justification for not protecting the debtors when the act of 1873 was passed, if he now insists that we must protect the creditors.
He says he will also propose an amendment which will provide for the suspension of free coinage if we fail to maintain the party within a year. We reply that when we advocate a policy which we believe will be successful, we are not compelled to raise a doubt as to our own sincerity by suggesting what we shall do if we fail. I ask him, if he would apply his logic to us, why he does not apply it to himself. He says he wants this country to try to secure an international agreement. Why does he not tell us what he is going to do if he fails to secure an international agreement? There is more reason for him to do that than there is for us to provide against the failure to maintain the parity. Our opponents have tried for twenty years to secure an international agreement, and those are waiting for it most patiently who do not want it at all.
And now, my friends, let me come to the paramount issue. If they ask us why it is that we say more on the money question than we say upon the tariff question, I reply that, if protection has slain its thousands, the gold standard has slain its tens of thousands. If they ask us why we do not embody in our platform all the things that we believe in, we reply that when we have restored the money of the Constitution all other necessary reforms will be possible; but that until this is done there is no other reform that can be accomplished.
Why is it that within three months such a change has come over the country? Three months ago, when it was confidently asserted that those who believe in the gold standard would frame our platform and nominate our candidates, even the advocates of the gold standard did not think that we could elect a president. And they had good reason for their doubt, because there is scarcely a State here today asking for the gold standard which is not in the absolute control of the Republican party. But note the change. Mr. McKinley was nominated at St. Louis upon a platform which declared for the maintenance of the gold standard until it can be changed into bimetallism by international agreement. Mr. McKinley was the most popular man among the Republicans, and three months ago everybody in the Republican party prophesied his election. How is it today? Why, the man who was once pleased to think that he looked like Napoleon—that man shudders today when he remembers that he was nominated on the anniversary of the battle of Waterloo. Not only that, but as he listens he can hear with ever-increasing distinctness the sound of the waves as they beat upon the lonely shores of St. Helena.
Why this change? Ah, my friends, is not the reason for the change evident to any one who will look at the matter? No private character, however pure, no personal popularity, however great, can protect from the avenging wrath of an indignant people a man who will declare that he is in favor of fastening the gold standard upon this country, or who is willing to surrender the right of selfgovernment and place the legislative control of our affairs in the hands of foreign potentates and powers.
We go forth confident that we shall win. Why? Because upon the paramount issue of this campaign there is not a spot of ground upon which the enemy will dare to challenge battle. If they tell us that the gold standard is a good thing, we shall point to their platform and tell them that their platform pledges the party to get rid of the gold standard and substitute bimetallism. If the gold standard is a good thing, why try to get rid of it? I call your attention to the fact that some of the very people who are in this convention today and who tell us that we ought to declare in favor of international bimetallism—thereby declaring that the gold standard is wrong and that the principle of bimetallism is better—these very people four months ago were open and avowed advocates of the gold standard, and were then telling us that we could not legislate two metals together, even with the aid of all the world. If the gold standard is a good thing, we ought to declare in favor of its retention and not in favor of abandoning it; and if the gold standard is a bad thing why should we wait until other nations are willing to help us to let go? Here is the line of battle, and we care not upon which issue they force the fight; we are prepared to meet them on either issue or on both. If they tell us that the gold standard is the standard of civilization, we reply to them that this, the most enlightened of all the nations of the earth, has never declared for a gold standard and that both the great parties this year are declaring against it. If the gold standard is the standard of civilization, why, my friends, should we not have it? If they come to meet us on that issue we can present the history of our nation. More than that; we can tell them that they will search the pages of history in vain to find a single instance where the common people of any land have ever declared themselves in favor of the gold standard. They can find where the holders of the fixed investments have declared for a gold standard, but not where the masses have.
Mr. Carlisle said in 1878 that this was a struggle between “the idle holders of idle capital” and “the struggling masses, who produce the wealth and pay the taxes of the country;” and, my friends, the question we are to decide is: Upon which side will the Democratic party fight; upon the side of “the idle holders of idle capital” or upon the side of “the struggling masses?” That is the question which the party must answer first, and then it must be answered by each individual hereafter. The sympathies of the Democratic party, as shown by the platform, are on the side of the struggling masses who have ever been the foundation of the Democratic party. There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them.
You come to us and tell us that the great cities are in favor of the gold standard; we reply that the great cities rest upon our broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.
My friends, we declare that this nation is able to legislate for its own people on every question, without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation on earth; and upon that issue we expect to carry every State in the Union. I shall not slander the inhabitants of the fair State of Massachusetts nor the inhabitants of the State of New York by saying that, when they are confronted with the proposition, they will declare that this nation is not able to attend to its own business. It is the issue of 1776 over again. Our ancestors, when, but three million in number, had the courage to declare their political independence of every other nation; shall we, their descendants, when we have grown to seventy million, declare that we are less independent than our forefathers? No, my friends, that will never be the verdict of our people. Therefore, we care not upon what lines the battle is fought. If they say bimetallism is good, but that we cannot have it until other nations help us, we reply that, instead of having a gold standard because England has, we will restore bimetallism, and then let England have bimetallism because the United States has it. If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we will fight them to the uttermost. Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests, and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.
* * *
WILL CARLETON
Patriotic fervor ran high during the brief Spanish-American War. Uniting the nation for the first time since the calamity of the War Between the States and Reconstruction, the war was heralded in songs like this one as an emblem of America’s new vitality.
A voice went over the waters
A stormy edge of the sea;
Fairest of Freedom’s daughters,
Have you no help for me?
Do you not hear the rusty chain
Clanking about my feet?
Have you not seen my children slain,
Whether in cell or street?
Oh, if you were sad as I,
And I as you were strong,
You would not have to call or cry
You would not suffer long!
“Patience?” Have I not learned it,
Under the crushing years?
Freedom—have I not earned it,
Toiling with blood and tears?
“Not of you?” My banners wave
Not on Egyptian shore,
Or by Armenia’s mammoth grave,
But at your very door,
Oh, if you were needy as I,
And I as you were strong,
You should not suffer, bleed, and die,
Under the hoofs of wrong!
Is it that you have never
Felt the oppressor’s hand,
Fighting, with fond endeavor,
To cling to your own sweet land?
Were you not half dismayed,
There in the century’s night,
Till to your view a sister’s aid
Came, like a flash of light?
Oh, what gift could ever be grand
Enough to pay the debt,
If out of the starry Western land,
Should come my Lafayette!
* * *
CLINTON SCOLLARD
Spanish-American relations—already tense due to reports of brutal human rights abuses in the European power’s few remaining colonies—were transformed into open conflict when an American battle cruiser was mysteriously destroyed by a mine while peacefully anchored in Havana harbor. The men aboard who lost their lives became the martyrs in a national crusade for honor and vindication.
Not in the dire, ensanguined front of war,
Conquered or conqueror,
’Mid the dread battle-peal, did they go down
To the still under-seas, with fair Renown
To weave for them the hero-martyr’s crown.
They struck no blow
’Gainst an embattled foe;
With valiant-hearted Saxon hardihood
They stood not as the Essex sailors stood,
So sore bestead in that far Chilian bay;
Yet no less faithful they,
These men who, in a passing of the breath,
Were hurtled upon death.
No warning the salt-scented sea-wind bore,
No presage whispered from the Cuban shore
Of the appalling fate
That in the tropic night-time lay in wait
To bear them whence they shall return no more.
Some lapsed from dreams of home and love’s clear star
Into a realm where dreams eternal are;
And some into a world of wave and flame
Where-through they came
To living agony that no words can name.
Tears for them all,
And the low-tuned dirge funereal!
Their place is now
With those who wear, green-set about the brow,
The deathless immortelles,
The heroes torn and scarred
Whose blood made red the barren ocean dells,
Fighting with him the gallant Ranger bore,
Daring to do what none had dared before,
To wave the New World banner, freedom-starred,
At England’s very door!
Yea, with such noble ones their names shall stand
As those who heard the dying Lawrence speak
His burning words upon the Chesapeake,
And grappled in the hopeless hand-to-hand;
With those who fell on Erie and Champlain
Beneath the pouring, pitiless battle-rain:
With such as these, our lost men of the Maine!
What though they faced no storm of iron hail
That freedom and the right might still prevail?
The path of duty it was theirs to tread
To death’s dark vale through ways of travail led,
And they are ours—our dead!
If it be true that each loss holds a gain,
It must be ours through saddened eyes to see
From out this tragic holocaust of pain
The whole land bound in closer amity!
* * *
ROBERT BURNS WILSON
The Spanish military, once the greatest in the world, was no match for the vigorous American expeditionary force—especially since it was so distantly separated from its supply lines. Thus the battle songs of the Americans were invariably songs of invincibility and victory.
When the vengeance wakes, when the battle breaks,
And the ships sweep out to sea;
When the foe is neared, when the decks are cleared,
And the colors floating free;
When the squadrons meet, when it’s fleet to fleet
And front to front with Spain,
From ship to ship, from lip to lip,
Pass on the quick refrain,
“Remember, remember the Maine!”
When the flag shall sign, “Advance in line;
Train ships on an even keel;”
When the guns shall flash and the shot shall crash
And bound on the ringing steel;
When the rattling blasts from the armored masts
Are hurling their deadliest rain,
Let their voices loud, through the blinding cloud,
Cry ever the fierce refrain,
“Remember, remember the Maine!”
God’s sky and sea in that storm shall be
Fate’s chaos of smoke and flame,
But across that hell every shot shall tell
Not a gun can miss its aim;
Not a blow shall fail on the crumbling mail,
And the waves that engulf the slain
Shall sweep the decks of the blackened wrecks,
With the thundering, dread refrain,
“Remember, remember the Maine!”
* * *
R. V. RISLEY
Though the Rough Riders charging up San Juan Hill received the most publicity, the greatest military victory came at sea far from the Western theater, off the coast of the Philippines. This popular song celebrates the valor, ingenuity, and quick victory of Commodore Dewey at Manila Bay.
He took a thousand islands and he didn’t lose a man
(Raise your heads and cheer him as he goes!)
He licked the sneaky Spaniard till the fellow cut and ran,
For fighting’s part of what a Yankee knows.
He fought ’em and he licked ’em, without any fuss or flame
(It was only his profession for to win),
He sank their boats beneath ’em, and he spared ’em as they swam,
And then he sent his ambulances in.
He had no word to cheer him and had no bands to play,
He had no crowds to make his duty brave;
But he risked the deep torpedoes at the breaking of the day,
For he knew he had our self-respect to save.
He flew the angry signal crying justice for the Maine,
He flew it from his flagship as he fought.
He drove the tardy vengeance in the very teeth of Spain,
And he did it just because he thought he ought.
He busted up their batteries and sank eleven ships
(He knew what he was doing, every bit);
He set the Maxims going like a hundred cracking whips,
And every shot that crackled was a hit.
He broke ’em and he drove ’em, and he didn’t care at all,
He only liked to do as he was bid;
He crumpled up their squadron and their batteries and all—
He knew he had to lick ’em and he did.
And when the thing was finished and they flew the frightened flag,
He slung his guns and sent his foot ashore,
And he gathered in their wounded, and he quite forgot to brag,
For he thought he did his duty, nothing more.
Oh, he took a thousand islands and he didn’t lose a man
(Raise your heads and cheer him as he goes!)
He licked the sneaky Spaniard till the fellow cut and ran,
For fighting’s part of what a Yankee knows!
* * *
EMMA LAZARUS
Written in 1883, this poem gained fame after it was inscribed on the Statue of Liberty in 1903. Thereafter it became a kind of beacon light of hope to the oppressed peoples of the world. To this day it conveys the exceptionalism of the American experiment in national life—one that is rooted first and foremost in a set of ideas about freedom.
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows worldwide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
* * *
JAMES ROCHE
The construction of the Panama Canal was not only a remarkable feat of engineering prowess—thrusting the American republic at the forefront of the world stage—but it was a great economic, diplomatic, and administrative achievement as well. As this popular poem illustrates, the dynamic leadership of Theodore Roosevelt had already made an impress upon the energetic nation—and this singular accomplishment of his only added to the luster of America’s new sterling reputation.
Here the oceans twain have waited
All the ages to be mated
Waited long and waited vainly,
Though the script was written plainly:
“This, the portal of the sea,
Open for him who holds the key;
Here the empire of the earth
Waits in patience for its birth.”
But the Spanish monarch, dimly
Seeing little, answered grimly:
“North and South the land is Spain’s,
As God gave it, it remains.
He who seeks to break the tie,
By mine honor, he shall die!”
So the centuries rolled on,
And the gift of great Colon,
Like a spendthrift’s heritage,
Dwindled slowly, age by age,
Till the flag of red and gold
Fell from hands unnerved and old.
And the granite-pillared gate
Waited still the key of fate.
Who shall hold that magic key
But the child of destiny,
In whose veins has mingled long
All the best blood of the strong?
He who takes his place by grace
Of no single tribe or race,
But by many a rich bequest
From the bravest and the best.
Sentinel of duty, here
Must he guard a hemisphere.
Let the old world keep its ways;
Naught to him its blame or praise;
Naught its greed, or hate, or fear;
For all swords be sheathed here.
Yea, the gateway shall be free
Unto all, from sea to sea;
And no fratricidal slaughter
Shall defile its sacred water;
But—the hand that opened the gate
Shall forever hold the key!
* * *
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
One of the most popular men who has ever held the highest political office in the land, Theodore Roosevelt made his reputation as a reformer. His entire career was a kind of crusade against systemic corruption and injustice. Unlike most reformers, however, he was profoundly committed to conservative principles—his reforms were designed to preserve the heritage of Christendom rather than to merely innovate. That unique combination of progressivism and conservatism is especially evident in this speech, which he delivered to the House of Representatives on April 14, 1906.
Over a century ago Washington laid the cornerstone of the Capitol in what was then little more than a tract of wooded wilderness here beside the Potomac. We now find it necessary to provide by great additional buildings for the business of the government. This growth in the need for the housing of the government is but a proof and example of the way in which the nation has grown and the sphere of action of the national government has grown. We now administer the affairs of a nation in which the extraordinary growth of population has been outstripped by the growth of wealth and the growth in complex interests. The material problems that face us today are not such as they were in Washington’s time, but the underlying facts of human nature are the same now as they were then. Under altered external form we war with the same tendencies toward evil that were evident in Washington’s time, and are helped by the same tendencies for good. It is about some of these that I wish to say a word today.
In Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress you may recall the description of the Man with the Muck-rake, the man who could look no way but downward, with the muck-rake in his hand; who was offered a celestial crown for his muck-rake, but who would neither look up nor regard the crown he was offered, but continued to rake to himself the filth of the floor.
In Pilgrim’s Progress the Man with the Muck-rake is set forth as the example of him whose vision is fixed on carnal instead of on spiritual things. Yet he also typifies the man who in this life consistently refuses to see aught that is lofty and fixes his eyes with solemn intentness only on that which is vile and debasing. Now, it is very necessary that we should not flinch from seeing what is vile and debasing. There is filth on the floor, and it must be scraped up with the muck-rake: and there are times and places where this service is the most needed of all the services that can be performed. But the man who never does anything else, who never thinks or speaks or writes save of his feats with the muck-rake, speedily becomes, not a help to society, not an incitement to good, but one of the most potent forces for evil.
There are, in the body politic, economic, and social, many and grave evils, and there is urgent necessity for the sternest war upon them. There should be relentless exposure of and attack upon every evil man, whether politician or business man, every evil practice, whether in politics, in business, or in social life. I hail as a benefactor every writer or speaker, every man who, on the platform, or in book, magazine, or newspaper, with merciless severity makes such attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of use only if it is absolutely truthful. The liar is no whit better than the thief, and if his mendacity takes the form of slander, he may be worse than most thieves. It puts a premium upon knavery untruthfully to attack an honest man, or even with hysterical exaggeration to assail a bad man with untruth. An epidemic of indiscriminate assault upon character does no good but very great harm.
My plea is not for immunity to but for the most unsparing exposure of the politician who betrays his trust, of the big-business man who makes or spends his fortune in illegitimate or corrupt ways. There should be a resolute effort to hunt every such man out of the position he has disgraced. Expose the crime, and hunt down the criminal; but remember that even in the case of crime, if it is attacked in sensational, lurid, and untruthful fashion, the attack may do more damage to the public mind than the crime itself. It is because I feel that there should be no rest in the endless war against the forces of evil that I ask that the war be conducted with sanity as well as with resolution. The men with the muck-rakes are often indispensable to the well-being of society; but only if they know when to stop raking the muck, and to look upward to the celestial crown above them, to the crown of worthy endeavor. There are beautiful things above and round about them; and if they gradually grow to feel that the whole world is nothing but muck, their power of usefulness is gone. If the whole picture is painted black, there remains no hue whereby to single out the rascals for distinction from their fellows. Such painting finally induces a kind of moral colorblindness; and people affected by it come to the conclusion that no man is really black, and no man really white, but that all are gray.
To assail the great and admitted evils of our political and industrial life with such crude and sweeping generalizations as to include decent men in the general condemnation means the searing of the public conscience. There results a general attitude either of cynical belief in and indifference to public corruption or else of a distrustful inability to discriminate between the good and the bad. Either attitude is fraught with untold damage to the country as a whole. The fool who has not sense to discriminate between what is good and what is bad is well-nigh as dangerous as the man who does discriminate and yet chooses the bad. There is nothing more distressing to every good patriot, to every good American, than the hard, scoffing spirit which treats the allegation of dishonesty in a public man as a cause for laughter.
There is any amount of good in the world, and there never was a time when loftier and more disinterested work for the betterment of mankind was being done than now. The forces that tend for evil are great and terrible but the forces of truth and love and courage and honesty and generosity and sympathy are also stronger than ever before. It is a foolish and timid, no less than a wicked, thing to blink the fact that the forces of evil are strong, but it is even worse to fail to take into account the strength of the forces that tell for good. Hysterical sensationalism is the very poorest weapon wherewith to fight for lasting righteousness. The men who, with stern sobriety and truth, assail the many evils of our time, whether in the public press, or in magazines, or in books, are the leaders and allies of all engaged in the work for social and political betterment. But if they give good reason for distrust of what they say, if they chill the ardor of those who demand truth as a primary virtue, they thereby betray the good cause, and play into the hands of the very men against whom they are nominally at war.
We can no more and no less afford to condone evil in the man of capital than evil in the man of no capital. The wealthy man who exults because there is a failure of justice in the effort to bring some trust magnate to an account for his misdeeds is as bad as, and no worse than, the so-called labor leader who clamorously strives to excite a foul class feeling on behalf of some other labor leader who is implicated in murder. One attitude is as bad as the other and no worse; in each case the accused is entitled to exact justice; and in neither case is there need of action by others which can be construed into an expression of sympathy for crime. There is nothing more antisocial in a democratic republic like ours than such vicious class-consciousness.
It is important to this people to grapple with the problems connected with the amassing of enormous fortunes, and the use of those fortunes, both corporate and individual, in business. We should discriminate in the sharpest way between fortunes well won and fortunes ill won; between those gained as an incident to performing great services to the community as a whole, and those gained in evil fashion by keeping just within the limits of mere lawhonesty. Of course no amount of charity in spending such fortunes in any way compensates for misconduct in making them. As a matter of personal conviction, and without pretending to discuss the details or formulate the system, I feel that we shall ultimately have to consider the adoption of some such scheme as that of a progressive tax on all fortunes, beyond a certain amount, either given in life or devised or bequeathed upon death to any individual—a tax so framed as to put it out of the power of the owner of one of these enormous fortunes to hand on more than a certain amount to any one individual.
The eighth commandment reads “Thou shalt not steal.” It does not read “Thou shalt not steal from the rich man.” It does not read “Thou shalt not steal from the poor man.” It reads, simply and plainly, “Thou shalt not steal.” No good whatever will come from that warped and mock morality which denounces the misdeeds of men of wealth and forgets the misdeeds practiced at their expense; which denounces bribery, but blinds itself to blackmail; which foams with rage if a corporation secures favors by improper methods, and merely leers with hideous mirth if the corporation is itself wronged. The only public servant who can be trusted honestly to protect the rights of the public against the misdeeds of a corporation is that public man who will just as surely protect the corporation itself from wrongful aggression. If a public man is willing to yield to popular clamor and do wrong to the men of wealth or to rich corporations, it may be set down as certain that if the opportunity comes he will secretly and furtively do wrong to the public in the interest of a corporation.
More important than aught else is the development of the broadest sympathy of man for man. The welfare of the wage-worker, the welfare of the tiller of the soil—upon this depends the welfare of the entire country; their good is not to be sought in pulling down others; but their good must be the prime object of all our statesmanship.
Materially we must strive to secure a broader economic opportunity for all men, so that each shall have a better chance to show the stuff of which he is made. Spiritually and ethically we must strive to bring about clean living and right thinking. We appreciate that the things of the body are important; but we appreciate also that the things of the soul are immeasurably more important. The foundation stone of national life is, and ever must be, the high individual character of the average citizen.
* * *
H. L. MENCKEN
In the course of his remarkable career in journalism, criticism, and punditry, H. L. Mencken poleaxed many a cultural sacred cow and deftly needled many a political windbag, but this essay—which prefaced his 1919 magnum opus, The American Language—reflects primarily his concern with the speech of what he liked to refer to as this “Great Republic.” It highlights the “salient differences between the English of England and the English of America.” His opinions on language, like those he expressed on other subjects, have given rise to much comment and controversy, but their influence has been greater than perhaps any other American writer’s excepting perhaps Noah Webster.
The aim of this book is best exhibited by describing its origin. I am, and have been since early manhood, an editor of newspapers, magazines and books, and a critic of the last named. These occupations have forced me into a pretty wide familiarity with current literature, both periodical and within covers, and in particular into a familiarity with the current literature of England and America. It was part of my daily work, for a good many years, to read the principal English newspapers and reviews; it has been part of my work, all the time, to read the more important English novels, essays, poetry and criticism. An American born and bred, I early noted, as everyone else in like case must note, certain salient differences between the English of England and the English of America as practically spoken and written—differences in vocabulary, in syntax, in the shades and habits of idiom, and even, coming to the common speech, in grammar. And I noted too, of course, partly during visits to England but more largely by a somewhat wide and intimate intercourse with English people in the United States, the obvious differences between English and American pronunciation and intonation.
Greatly interested in these differences—some of them so great that they led me to seek exchanges of light with Englishmen—I looked for some work that would describe and account for them with a show of completeness, and perhaps depict the process of their origin. I soon found that no such work existed, either in England or in America—that the whole literature of the subject was astonishingly meagre and unsatisfactory. There were several dictionaries of Americanisms, true enough, but only one of them made any pretension to scientific method, and even that one was woefully narrow and incomplete. The one more general treatise, the work of a man foreign to both England and America in race and education, was more than 40 years old, and full of palpable errors. For the rest, there was only a fugitive and inconsequential literature—an almost useless mass of notes and essays, chiefly by the minor sort of pedagogues, seldom illuminating, save in small details, and often incredibly ignorant and inaccurate. On the large and important subject of American pronunciation, for example, I could find nothing save a few casual essays. On American spelling, with its wide and constantly visible divergencies from English usages, there was little more. On American grammar there was nothing whatever. Worse, an important part of the poor literature that I unearthed was devoted to absurd efforts to prove that no such thing as an American variety of English existed—that the differences I constantly encountered in English and that my English friends encountered in American were chiefly imaginary, and to be explained away by denying them.
Still intrigued by the subject, and in despair of getting any illumination from such theoretical masters of it, I began a collection of materials for my own information, and gradually it took on a rather formidable bulk. My interest in it being made known by various articles in the newspapers and magazines, I began also to receive contributions from other persons of the same fancy, both English and American, and gradually my collection fell into a certain order, and I saw the workings of general laws in what, at first, had appeared to be mere chaos. The present book then began to take form—its preparation a sort of recreation from other and far different labor. It is anything but an exhaustive treatise upon the subject; it is not even an exhaustive examination of the materials. All it pretends to do is to articulate some of those materials—to get some approach to order and coherence into them, and so pave the way for a better work by some more competent man. That work calls for the equipment of a first rate philologist, which I am surely not. All I have done here is to stake out the field, sometimes borrowing suggestions from other inquirers and sometimes, as in the case of American grammar, attempting to run the lines myself.
That it should be regarded as an anti-social act to examine and exhibit the constantly growing differences between English and American, as certain American pedants argue sharply—this doctrine is quite beyond my understanding. All it indicates, stripped of sophistry, is a somewhat childish effort to gain the approval of Englishmen—a belated efflorescence of the colonial spirit, often commingled with fashionable aspiration. The plain fact is that the English themselves are not deceived, nor do they grant the approval so ardently sought for. On the contrary, they are keenly aware of the differences between the two dialects, and often discuss them, as the following pages show. Perhaps one dialect, in the long run, will defeat and absorb the other; if the two nations continue to be partners in great adventures it may very well happen. But even in that case, something may be accomplished by examining the differences which exist today. In some ways, as in intonation, English usage is plainly better than American. In others, as in spelling, American usage is plainly better than English. But in order to develop usages that the people of both nations will accept it is obviously necessary to study the differences now visible. This study thus shows a certain utility. But its chief excuse is its human interest, for it prods deeply into national idiosyncrasies and ways of mind, and that sort of prodding is always entertaining.
I am thus neither teacher, nor prophet, nor reformer, but merely inquirer. The exigencies of my vocation make me almost completely bilingual; I can write English, as in this clause, quite as readily as American, as in this here one. Moreover, I have a hand for a compromise dialect which embodies the common materials of both, and is thus free from offense on both sides of the water—as befits the editor of a magazine published in both countries. But that compromise dialect is the living speech of neither. What I have tried to do here is to make a first sketch of the living speech of These States. The work is confessedly incomplete, and in places very painfully so, but in such enterprises a man must put an arbitrary term to his labors, lest some mischance, after years of diligence, take him from them too suddenly for them to be closed, and his laborious accumulations, as Ernest Walker says in his book on English surnames, be “doomed to the waste-basket by harassed executors.”
If the opportunity offers in future I shall undoubtedly return to the subject. For one thing, I am eager to attempt a more scientific examination of the grammar of the American vulgar speech, here discussed briefly in Chapter VI. For another thing, I hope to make further inquiries into the subject of American surnames of non-English origin. Various other fields invite. No historical study of American pronunciation exists; the influence of German, Irish-English, Yiddish and other such immigrant dialects upon American has never been investigated; there is no adequate treatise on American geographical names. Contributions of materials and suggestions for a possible revised edition of the present book will reach me if addressed to me in care of the publisher at 220 West Forty-second Street, New York. I shall also be very grateful for the correction of errors, some perhaps typographical but others due to faulty information or mistaken judgment.
In conclusion I borrow a plea in confession and avoidance from Ben Jonson’s pioneer grammar of English, published in incomplete form after his death. “We have set down,” he said, “that that in our judgment agreeth best with reason and good order. Which notwithstanding, if it seem to any to be too rough hewed, let him plane it out more smoothly, and I shall not only not envy it, but in the behalf of my country most heartily thank him for so great a benefit; hoping that I shall be thought sufficiently to have done my part if in tolling this bell I may draw others to a deeper consideration of the matter; for, touching myself, I must needs confess that after much painful churning this only would come which here we have devised.”
* * *
CALVIN COOLIDGE
This speech, delivered on January 7, 1914, to the state senate of Massachusetts was the crowning plea of scholarly conservatism in a day of reaction and radicalism. Its laconic style and quiet confidence thrust the taciturn Calvin Coolidge upon the national stage and established a new platform for traditional civic restraint. In many ways it heralded the advent of a fresh new conservative movement. The speech was like the man—a simple Vermont performance: immovable but majestic granite.
This Commonwealth is one. We are all members of one body. The welfare of the weakest and the welfare of the most powerful are inseparably bound together. Industry cannot flourish if labor languish. Transportation cannot prosper if manufactures decline. The general welfare cannot be provided for in any one act, but it is well to remember that the benefit of one is the benefit of all, and the neglect of one is the neglect of all. The suspension of one man’s dividends is the suspension of another man’s pay envelope.
Men do not make laws. They do but discover them. Laws must be justified by something more than the will of the majority. They must rest on the eternal foundation of righteousness. That state is most fortunate in its form of government which has the aptest instruments for the discovery of laws. The latest, most modern, and nearest perfect system that statesmanship has devised is representative government. Its weakness is the weakness of us imperfect human beings who administer it. Its strength is that even such administration secures to the people more blessings than any other system ever produced. No nation has discarded it and retained liberty. Representative government must be preserved.
Courts are established, not to determine the popularity of a cause, but to adjudicate and enforce rights. No litigant should be required to submit his case to the hazard and expense of a political campaign. No judge should be required to seek or receive political rewards. The courts of Massachusetts are known and honored wherever men love justice. Let their glory suffer no diminution at our hands. The electorate and judiciary cannot combine. A hearing means a hearing. When the trial of causes goes outside the court-room, Anglo-Saxon constitutional government ends.
The people cannot look to legislation generally for success. Industry, thrift, character, are not conferred by act or resolve. Government cannot relieve from toil. It can provide no substitute for the rewards of service. It can, of course, care for the defective and recognize distinguished merit. The normal must care for themselves. Self-government means self-support.
Man is born into the universe with a personality that is his own. He has a right that is founded upon the constitution of the universe to have property that is his own. Ultimately, property rights and personal rights are the same thing. The one cannot be preserved if the other be violated. Each man is entitled to his rights and the rewards of his service be they ever so large or never so small.
History reveals no civilized people among whom there were not a highly educated class, and large aggregations of wealth, represented usually by the clergy and the nobility. Inspiration has always come from above. Diffusion of learning has come down from the university to the common school—the kindergarten is last. No one would now expect to aid the common school by abolishing higher education.
It may be that the diffusion of wealth works in an analogous way. As the little red schoolhouse is builded in the college, it may be that the fostering and protection of large aggregations of wealth are the only foundation on which to build the prosperity of the whole people. Large profits mean large pay rolls. But profits must be the result of service performed. In no land are there so many and such large aggregations of wealth as here; in no land do they perform larger service; in no land will the work of a day bring so large a reward in material and spiritual welfare.
Have faith in Massachusetts. In some unimportant detail some other States may surpass her, but in the general results, there is no place on earth where the people secure, in a larger measure, the blessings of organized government, and nowhere can those functions more properly be termed self-government.
Do the day’s work. If it be to protect the rights of the weak, whoever objects, do it. If it be to help a powerful corporation better to serve the people, whatever the opposition, do that. Expect to be called a stand-patter, but don’t be a stand-patter. Expect to be called a demagogue, but don’t be a demagogue. Don’t hesitate to be as revolutionary as science. Don’t hesitate to be as reactionary as the multiplication table. Don’t expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong. Don’t hurry to legislate. Give administration a chance to catch up with legislation.
We need a broader, firmer, deeper faith in the people—a faith that men desire to do right, that the Commonwealth is founded upon a righteousness which will endure, a reconstructed faith that the final approval of the people is given not to demagogues, slavishly pandering to their selfishness, merchandising with the clamor of the hour, but to statesmen, ministering to their welfare, representing their deep, silent abiding convictions.
Statutes must appeal to more than material welfare. Wages won’t satisfy, be they never so large. Nor houses; nor lands, nor coupons, though they fall thick as the leaves of autumn. Man has a spiritual nature. Touch it, and it must respond as the magnet responds to the pole. To that, not to selfishness, let the laws of the Commonwealth appeal. Recognize the immortal worth and dignity of man. Let the laws of Massachusetts proclaim to her humblest citizen, performing the most menial task, the recognition of his manhood, the recognition that all men are peers, the humblest with the most exalted, the recognition that all work is glorified. Such is the path to equality before the law. Such is the foundation of liberty under the law. Such is the sublime revelation of man’s relation to man—Democracy.
* * *
WOODROW WILSON
Despite having run on a platform of determined neutrality, President Woodrow Wilson found his administration being drawn inexorably toward war. On March 5, 1917, he delivered his second inaugural address as the nations of the world engaged in a great global war. “The tragical events of the thirty months of vital turmoil through which we have just passed have made us citizens of the world. There can be no turning back. All nations are equally interested in the peace of the world and in the political stability of free peoples, and equally responsible for their maintenance.” Less than a month later, the president, citing Germany’s policy of unlimited submarine warfare against its enemies as well as neutral countries, including the United States, asked Congress for a declaration of war against the Imperial German government. The United States entered the First World War on April 6, 1917.
I have called the Congress into extraordinary session because there are serious, very serious, choices of policy to be made, and made immediately, which it was neither right nor constitutionally permissible that I should assume the responsibility of making.
On the third of February last, I officially laid before you the extraordinary announcement of the Imperial German government that on and after the first day of February it was its purpose to put aside all restraints of law or of humanity and use its submarines to sink every vessel that sought to approach either the ports of Great Britain and Ireland, or the western coasts of Europe, or any of the ports controlled by the enemies of Germany within the Mediterranean.
That had seemed to be the object of the German submarine warfare earlier in the war; but since April of last year the Imperial government had somewhat restrained the commanders of its undersea craft in conformity with its promise then given to us that passenger boats should not be sunk and that due warning would be given to all other vessels which its submarines might seek to destroy, when no resistance was offered or escape attempted, and care taken that their crews were given at least a fair chance to save their lives in their open boats. The precautions taken were meager and haphazard enough, as was proved in distressing instance after instance in the progress of the cruel and unmanly business, but a certain degree of restraint was observed.
The new policy has swept every restriction aside. Vessels of every kind, whatever their flag, their character, their cargo, their destination, their errand, have been ruthlessly sent to the bottom without warning and without thought of help or mercy for those on board—the vessels of friendly neutrals along with those of belligerents. Even hospital ships and ships carrying relief to the sorely bereaved and stricken people of Belgium, though the latter were provided with safe conduct through the proscribed areas by the German government itself and were distinguished by unmistakable marks of identity, have been sunk with the same reckless lack of compassion or of principle.
I was for a little while unable to believe that such things would in fact be done by any government that had hitherto subscribed to the humane practices of civilized nations. International law had its origin in the attempt to set up some law which would be respected and observed upon the seas, where no nation had right of dominion and where lay the free highways of the world. By painful stage after stage has that law been built up, with meager enough results, indeed, after all was accomplished that could be accomplished, but always with a clear view, at least, of what the heart and conscience of mankind demanded.
This minimum of right the German government has swept aside under the plea of retaliation and necessity and because it had no weapons which it could use at sea except those which it is impossible to employ as it is employing them without throwing to the winds all scruples of humanity or of respect for the understandings that were supposed to underlie the intercourse of the world. I am not now thinking of the loss of property involved, immense and serious as that is, but only of the wanton and wholesale destruction of the lives of noncombatants, men, women, and children, engaged in pursuits which have always, even in the darkest periods of modern history, been deemed innocent and legitimate. Property can be paid for; the lives of peaceful and innocent people cannot be. The present German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind.
It is a war against all nations. American ships have been sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us very deeply to learn of, but the ships and people of other neutral and friendly nations have been sunk and overwhelmed in the waters in the same way. There has been no discrimination. The challenge is to all mankind. Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it. The choice we make for ourselves must be made with a moderation of counsel and a temperateness of judgment befitting our character and our motives as a nation. We must put excited feeling away. Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious assertion of the physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of right, of human right, of which we are only a single champion.
With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the step I am taking, and of the grave responsibilities which it involves, but in unhesitating obedience to what I deem my constitutional duty, I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German government to be in fact nothing less than war against the government and people of the United States; that it formally accept the status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it; and that it take immediate steps not only to put the country in a more thorough state of defense, but also to exert all its power and employ all its resources to bring the government of the German Empire to terms and end the war.
We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling toward them but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their impulse that their government acted in entering this war. It was not with their previous knowledge or approval. It was a war determined upon as wars used to be determined upon in the old, unhappy days when peoples were nowhere consulted by their rulers and wars were provoked and waged in the interest of dynasties or little groups of ambitious men who were accustomed to use their fellow men as pawns and tools.
A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic government could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants. It must be a league of honor, a partnership of opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals away; the plottings of inner circles who could plan what they would and render account to no one would be a corruption seated at its very heart. Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honor steady to a common end and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow interest of their own.
One of the things that has served to convince us that the Prussian autocracy was not and could never be our friend is that from the very outset of the present war it has filled our unsuspecting communities and even our offices of government with spies and set criminal intrigues everywhere afoot against our national unity of counsel, our peace within and without, our industries and our commerce.
We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretense about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included: for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith as the freedom of nations can make them.
It is a distressing and oppressive duty, gentlemen of the Congress, which I have performed in thus addressing you. There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts—for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free. To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other.
* * *
KATHERINE LEE BATES
The entry of America into the First World War was accompanied by an almost eschatological optimism. It was believed that this would indeed be the “war to end all wars.” It took on all the elements of a crusade. As a result, much of the popular lyricism of the day reflected a confident new idealistic nationalism—as this song so aptly illustrates.
Life is a trifle;
Honor is all;
Shoulder the rifle;
Answer the call.
A nation of traders
We’ll show what we are,
Freedom’s crusaders
Who war against war.
Battle is tragic;
Battle shall cease;
Ours is the magic
Mission of Peace.
Gladly we barter
Gold of our youth
For Liberty’s charter
Blood—sealed in truth.
Sons of the granite,
Strong be our stroke,
Making this planet
Safe for all folk.
Life is but passion,
Sunshine on dew.
Forward to fashion
The old world anew!
A nation of traders
We’ll show what we are,
Freedom’s crusaders
Who war against war.
* * *
DANA BURNET
Like all foreign wars, the First World War was attended by an atmosphere of romance and adventure. Many of the songs of the day reflected both the riotous optimism and the zealous valor of that peculiar perspective. This song, popular among the troops in France and Belgium, takes an ironic look at such military adventurism.
When Pershing’s men go marching into Picardy.
Marching, marching into Picardy
With their steel aslant in the sunlight and their great gray hawks a-wing
And their wagons rumbling after them like thunder in the Spring
Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp,
Till the earth is shaken
Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp,
Till the dead towns waken!
And flowers fall and shouts arise from Chaumont to the sea—
When Pershing’s men go marching, marching into Picardy.
Women of France, do you see them pass to the battle in the North?
And do you stand in the doorways now as when your own went forth?
Then smile to them and call to them, and mark how brave they fare
Upon the road to Picardy that only youth may dare!
Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp,
Till the earth is shaken
Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp,
Such is Freedom’s passion
And oh, take heart, ye weary souls that stand along the Lys,
For the New World is marching, marching into Picardy!
April’s sun is in the sky and April’s in the grass
And I doubt not that Pershing’s men are singing as they pass
For they are very young men, and brave men, and free,
And they know why they are marching, marching into Picardy.
Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp,
Till the earth is shaken
Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp,
Through the April weather.
And never Spring has thrust such blades against the light of dawn.
As yonder waving stalks of steel that move so shining on!
I have seen the wooden crosses at Ypres and Verdun,
I have marked the graves of such as lie where the Marne waters run,
And I know their dust is stirring by hill and vale and lea,
And their souls shall be our captains who march to Picardy.
Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp,
Till the earth is shaken
Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp,
Forward, and forever!
And God is in His judgment seat, and Christ is on His tree
And Pershing’s men are marching, marching into Picardy.
* * *
CLINTON SCOLLARD
All was not adventure and romance in the war, of course. Indeed, the brutality and widespread devastation of the First World War outstripped anything anyone had ever seen. In this lament, the tragedy of this brutal war is memorialized.
“Somewhere in France,” upon a brown hillside,
They lie, the first of our brave soldiers slain;
Above them flowers, now beaten by the rain,
Yet emblematic of the youths who died
In their fresh promise. They who, valiant-eyed,
Met death unfaltering have not fallen in vain;
Remembrance hallows those who thus attain
The final goal; their names are glorified.
Read then the roster!—Gresham! Enright! Hay!
No bugle call shall rouse them when the flower
Of morning breaks above the hills and dells,
For they have grown immortal in an hour,
And we who grieve and cherish them would lay
Upon their hillside graves our immortals!
* * *
GRACE CONKLING
The Great War was the most brutal and devastating the civilized world had ever witnessed. As a result, when peace finally came, there was much rejoicing on both sides of the battle lines. This poem, set to a popular jazz tune, highlighted the exultant relief of a world once again at peace.
I heard the bells across the trees,
I heard them ride the plunging breeze
Above the roofs from tower and spire,
And they were leaping like a fire,
And they were shining like a stream
With sun to make its music gleam.
Deep tones as though the thunder tolled,
Cool voices thin as tinkling gold,
They shook the spangled autumn down
From out the tree-tops of the town;
They left great furrows in the air
And made a clangor everywhere
As of metallic wings. They flew
Aloft in spirals to the blue
Tall tent of heaven and disappeared.
And others, swift as though they feared
The people might not heed their cry
Went shouting “victory up” the sky.
They did not say that war is done,
Only that glory has begun
Like sunrise, and the coming day
Will burn the clouds of war away.
There will be time for dreams again,
And home-coming for weary men.
* * *
WOODROW WILSON
The Great War—as the First World War was called by contemporaries—ended on November 11, 1918, and President Wilson brought to the Paris Peace Conference an outline for peace composed of fourteen points, which he had presented in an address to Congress eleven months earlier. The speech had met with great enthusiasm on both sides of the Atlantic, and when the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919, Wilson’s cornerstone proposal, the establishment of a League of Nations, was included. The president embarked on a cross-country speaking tour to take his case for Senate ratification of the League of Nations Covenant directly to the people. On September 26, in the midst of the tour, Wilson suffered a stroke from which he never recovered. The Senate rejected the covenant in March 1920, and the United States never joined the League of Nations.
We entered this war because violations of right had occurred which touched us to the quick and made the life of our own people impossible unless they were corrected and the world secured once for all against their recurrence. What we demand in this war, therefore, is nothing peculiar to ourselves. It is that the world be made fit and safe to live in—and particularly that it be made safe for every peace-loving nation which, like our own, wishes to live its own life, determine its own institutions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by the other peoples of the world as against force and selfish aggression. All the peoples of the world are in effect partners in this interest, and for our own part we see very clearly that unless justice be done to others it will not be done to us. The program of the world’s peace, therefore, is our program; and that program, the only possible program, as we see it, is this:
1.Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.
2.Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants.
3.The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance.
4.Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.
5.A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.
6.The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest cooperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing—and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire.
7.Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations.
8.All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all.
9.A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality.
10.The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity of autonomous development.
11.Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered into.
12.The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees.
13.An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant.
14.A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.
For such arrangements and covenants we are willing to fight and to continue to fight until they are achieved; but only because we wish the right to prevail and desire a just and stable peace such as can be secured only by removing the chief provocations to war, which this program does not remove. We have no jealousy of German greatness, and there is nothing in this program that impairs it.
We have spoken now, surely, in terms too concrete to admit of any further doubt or question. An evident principle runs through the whole program I have outlined. It is the principle of justice to all peoples and nationalities, and their right to live on equal terms of liberty and safety with one another, whether they be strong or weak. Unless this principle be made its foundation no part of the structure of international justice can stand. The people of the United States could act upon no other principle; and to the vindication of this principle they are ready to devote their lives, their honor, and everything that they possess. The moral climax of this the culminating and final war for human liberty has come, and they are ready to put their own strength, their own highest purpose, their own integrity and devotion to the test.
* * *
MARY SIEGRIST
The Great War was supposed to be the “war to end all wars.” Part of that idealistic hope of statesmen from around the world stemmed from optimism for a new council of nations where states would have the opportunity to work out their differences over an arbitrated negotiating table. Although the League of Nations failed, its aspiration and inspiration were preserved in hearts and minds and were given new life with the advent of the United Nations a quarter century later.
Lo, Joseph dreams his dream again,
And Joan leads her armies in the night,
And somewhere, the Master from His cross
Lifts his hurt hands and heals the world again!
For from the great red welter of the world,
Out from the tides of its red suffering
Comes the slow sunrise of the ancient dream
Is flung the glory of its bright imaging.
See how it breaks in beauty on the world,
Shivers and shudders on its trembling way
Shivers and waits and trembles to be born!
America, young daughter of the gods, swing out,
Strong in the beauty of virginity,
Fearless in thine unquestioned leadership,
And hold the taper to the nations’ torch,
And light the hearth fires of the halls of home.
Thine must it be to break an unpathed way,
To life the torch for world’s in-brothering
To bring to birth this child of all the earth,
Formed of the marriage of all nations;
Else shall we go, the head upon the breast,
A Cain without a country, a Judas at the board!
* * *
HENRY CABOT LODGE
When the esteemed Senate majority leader addressed the Senate on August 12, 1919, the nation was already in the midst of a “Great Debate” over its future foreign policy. The Great War had just ended. Should the country now join the new League of Nations that President Wilson had hammered into shape at the Versailles Peace Conference, or should the nation retain its traditional commitment to neutrality—as articulated in Washington’s hallowed Farewell Address? Utilizing carefully measured phrases and appealing to the mood of the audience, this speech somehow bridged the gap between the two positions and unleashed a storm of applause from the packed galleries. A group of marines, just returned from France, pounded their helmets enthusiastically against the gallery railing; men and women cheered, whistled, waved handkerchiefs and hats. It was minutes before order could be restored, and when a Democratic senator attempted to reply to Lodge’s arguments, his remarks were greeted with boos and hisses. In the end, the policy he elaborated became the foundation of all American foreign relations for the rest of the century.
I object in the strongest possible way to having the United States agree, directly or indirectly, to be controlled by a league which may at any time, and perfectly lawfully and in accordance with the terms of the covenant, be drawn in to deal with internal conflicts in other countries, no matter what those conflicts may be. We should never permit the United States to be involved in any internal conflict in another country, except by the will of her people expressed through the Congress which represents them.
With regard to wars of external aggression on a member of the league, the case is perfectly clear. There can be no genuine dispute whatever about the meaning of the first clause of article 10. In the first place, it differs from every other obligation in being individual and placed upon each nation without the intervention of the league. Each nation for itself promises to respect and preserve as against external aggression the boundaries and the political independence of every member of the league.
It is, I repeat, an individual obligation. It requires no action on the part of the league, except that in the second sentence the authorities of the league are to have the power to advise as to the means to be employed in order to fulfill the purpose of the first sentence. But that is a detail of execution, and I consider that we are morally and in honor bound to accept and act upon that advice. The broad fact remains that if any member of the league suffering from external aggression should appeal directly to the United States for support the United States would be bound to give that support in its own capacity and without reference to the action of other powers, because the United States itself is bound, and I hope the day will never come when the United States will not carry out its promises. If that day should come, and the United States or any other great country should refuse, no matter how specious the reason, to fulfill both in letter and spirit every obligation in this covenant, the United States would be dishonored and the league would crumble into dust, leaving behind it a legacy of wars. If China should rise up and attack Japan in an effort to undo the great wrong of the cession of the control of Shantung to that power, we should be bound under the terms of article 10 to sustain Japan against China, and a guaranty of that sort is never involved except when the question has passed beyond the stage of negotiation and has become a question for the application of force. I do not like the prospect. It shall not come into existence by any vote of mine.
Any analysis of the provisions of this league covenant, however brings out in startling relief one great fact. Whatever may be said, it is not a league of peace; it is an alliance, dominated at the present moment by five great powers, really by three, and it has all the marks of an alliance. The development of international law is neglected. The court which is to decide disputes brought before it fills but a small place. The conditions for which this league really provides with the utmost care are political conditions, not judicial questions, to reached by the executive council and the assembly, purely political bodies without any trace of a judicial character about them. Such being its machinery, the control being in the hands of political appointees whose votes will be controlled by interest and expedience, it exhibits that most marked characteristic of an alliance that its decisions are to be carried out by force. Those articles upon which the whole structure rests are articles which provide for the use of force; that is, for war. This league to enforce peace does a great deal for enforcement and very little for peace. It makes more essential provisions looking to war than to peace for the settlement of disputes.
Taken altogether, these provisions for war present what to my mind is the gravest objection to this league in its present form. We are told that of course nothing will be done in the way of warlike acts without the assent of Congress. If that is true let us say so in the covenant. But as it stands there is no doubt whatever in my mind that American troops and American ships may be ordered to any part of the world by nations other than the United States, and that is a proposition to which I for one can never assent. It must be made perfectly clear that no American soldiers, not even a corporal’s guard, that no American sailors, not even the crew of a submarine, can ever be engaged in war or ordered anywhere except by the constitutional authorities of the United States. To Congress is granted by the Constitution the right to declare war, and nothing that would take the troops out of the country at the bidding or demand of other nations should ever be permitted except through congressional action. The lives of Americans must never be sacrificed except by the will of the American people expressed through their chosen Representatives in Congress. This is a point upon which no doubt can be permitted. American soldiers and American sailors have never failed the country when the country called upon them. They went in their hundreds of thousands into the war just closed. They went to die for the great cause of freedom and of civilization. They went [at their country’s bidding and because their country summoned them] to service. We were late in entering the war. We made no preparation, as we ought to have done, for the ordeal which was clearly coming upon us; but we went and we turned the wavering scale. It was done by the American soldier, the American sailor, and the spirit and energy of the American people. They overrode all obstacles and all shortcomings on the part of the administration of Congress and gave to their country a great place in the great victory. It was the first time we had been called upon to rescue the civilized world. Did we fail? On the contrary, we succeeded, succeeded largely and nobly, and we did it without any command from any league of nations. When the emergency came, we met it and we were able to meet it because we had built up on this continent the greatest and most powerful Nation in the world, built it up under our own policies, in our own way, and one great element of our strength was the fact that we had held aloof and had not thrust ourselves into European quarrels; that we had no selfish interest to serve. We made great sacrifices. We have done splendid work. I believe that we do not require to be told by foreign nations when we shall do work which freedom and civilization require. I think we can move to victory much better under our own command than under the command of others. Let us unite with the world to promote the peaceable settlement of all international disputes. Let us try to develop international law. Let us associate ourselves with the other nations for these purposes. But let us retain in our own hands and in our own control the lives of the youth of the land. Let no American be sent into battle except by the constituted authorities of his own country and by the will of the people of the United States.
Those of us, Mr. President, who are either wholly opposed to the league, or who are trying to preserve the independence and the safety of the United States by changing the terms of the league, and who are endeavoring to make the league, if we are to be a member of it, less certain to promote war instead of peace have been reproached with selfishness in our outlook and with a desire to keep our country in a state of isolation. So far as the question of isolation goes, it is impossible to isolate the United States. I well remember the time 20 years ago, when eminent Senators and other distinguished gentlemen who were opposing the Philippines and shrieking about imperialism sneered at the statement made by some of us, that the United States had become a world power. I think no one now would question that the Spanish war marked the entrance of the United States into world affairs to a degree which had never obtained before. It was both an inevitable and an irrevocable step, and our entrance into the war with Germany certainly showed once and for all that the United States was not unmindful of its world responsibilities. We may set aside all this empty talk about isolation. Nobody expects to isolate the United States or to make it a hermit nation, which is a sheer absurdity. But there is a wide difference between taking a suitable part and bearing a due responsibility in world affairs and plunging the United States into every controversy and conflict on the face of the globe. By meddling in all the differences which may arise among any portion or fragment of humankind we simply fritter away our influence and injure ourselves to no good purpose. We shall be of far more value to the world and its peace by occupying, so far as possible, the situation which we have occupied for the last 20 years and by adhering to the policy of Washington and Hamilton, of Jefferson and Monroe, under which we have risen to our present greatness and prosperity. The fact that we have been separated by our geographical situation and by our consistent policy from the broils of Europe has made us more than any one thing capable of performing the great work which we performed in the war against Germany and our disinterestedness is of far more value to the world than our eternal meddling in every possible dispute could ever be.
Now, as to our selfishness, I have no desire to boast that we are better than our neighbors, but the fact remains that this Nation in making peace with Germany had not a single selfish or individual interest to serve. All we asked was that Germany should be rendered incapable of again breaking forth, with all the horrors, incident to German warfare, upon an unoffending world, and that demand was shared by every free nation and indeed by humanity itself. For ourselves we asked absolutely nothing. We have not asked any government or governments to guarantee our boundaries or our political independence. We have no fear in regard to either. We have sought no territory, no privileges, no advantages, for ourselves. That is the fact. It is apparent on the face of the treaty. I do not mean to reflect upon a single one of the powers with which we have been associated in the war against Germany, but there is not one of them which has not sought individual advantages for their own national benefit. I do not criticize their desires at all. The services and sacrifices of England and France and Belgium and Italy are beyond estimate and beyond praise. I am glad they should have what they desire for their own welfare and safety. But they all receive under the peace territorial and commercial benefits. We are asked to give, and we in no way seek to take. Surely it is not too much to insist that when we are offered nothing but the opportunity to give and to aid others we should have the right to say what sacrifices we shall make and what the magnitude of our gifts shall be. In the prosecution of the war we gave unstintedly American lives and American treasure. When the war closed we had 3,000,000 men under arms. We were turning the country into a vast workshop for war. We advanced ten billions to our allies. We refused no assistance that we could possibly render. All the great energy and power of the Republic were put at the service of the good cause. We have not been ungenerous. We have been devoted to the cause of freedom, humanity, and civilization everywhere. Now we are asked, in the making of peace, to sacrifice our sovereignty in important respects, to involve ourselves almost without limit in the affairs of other nations and to yield up policies and rights which we have maintained throughout our history. We are asked to incur liabilities to an unlimited extent and furnish assets at the same time which no man can measure. I think it is not only our right but our duty to determine how far we shall go. Not only must we look carefully to see where we are being led into endless disputes and entanglements, but we must not forget that we have in this country millions of people of foreign birth and parentage.
Our one great object is to make all these people Americans so that we may call on them to place America first and serve America as they have done in the war just closed. We cannot Americanize them if we are continually thrusting them back into the quarrels and difficulties of the countries from which they came to us. We shall fill this land with political disputes about the troubles and quarrels of other countries. We shall have a large portion of our people voting not on American questions and not on what concerns the United States but dividing on issues which concern foreign countries alone. That is an unwholesome and perilous condition to force upon this country. We must avoid it. We ought to reduce to the lowest possible point the foreign questions in which we involve ourselves. Never forget that this league is primarily—I might say overwhelmingly—a political organization, and I object strongly to having the politics of the United States turn upon disputes where deep feeling is aroused but in which we have no direct interest. It will all tend to delay the Americanization of our great population, and it is more important not only to the United States but to the peace of the world to make all these people good Americans than it is to determine that some piece of territory should belong to one European country rather than to another. For this reason I wish to limit strictly our interference in the affairs of Europe and of Africa. We have interests of our own in Asia and in the Pacific which we must guard upon our own account, but the less we undertake to play the part of umpire and thrust ourselves into European conflicts the better for the United States and for the world.
It has been reiterated here on this floor, and reiterated to the point of weariness, that in every treaty there is some sacrifice of sovereignty. That is not a universal truth by an means, but it is true of some treaties and it is a platitude which does not require reiteration. The question and the only question before us here is how much of our sovereignty we are justified in sacrificing. In what I have already said about other nations putting us into war I have covered one point of sovereignty which ought never to be yielded—the power to send American soldiers and sailors everywhere, which ought never to be taken from the American people or impaired in the slightest degree. Let us beware how we palter with our independence. We have not reached the great position from which we were able to come down into the field of battle and help to save the world from tyranny by being guided by others. Our vast power has all been built up and gathered together by ourselves alone. We forced our way upward from the days of the Revolution, through a world often hostile and always indifferent. We owe no debt to anyone except to France in that Revolution, and those policies and those rights on which our power has been founded should never be lessened or weakened. It will be no service to the world to do so and it will be of intolerable injury to the United States. We will do our share. We are ready and anxious to help in all ways to preserve the world’s peace. But we can do it best by not crippling ourselves.
I am as anxious as any human being can be to have the United States render every possible service to the civilization and the peace of mankind, but I am certain we can do it best by not putting ourselves in leading strings or subjecting our policies and our sovereignty to other nations. The independence of the United States is not only more precious to ourselves but to the world than any single possession. Look at the United States to-day. We have made mistakes in the past. We have had shortcomings. We shall make mistakes in the future and fall short of our own best hopes. But none-the-less is there any country to-day on the face of the earth which can compare with this in ordered liberty, in peace, and in the largest freedom? I feel that I can say this without being accused of undue boastfulness, for it is the simple fact, and in making this treaty and taking on these obligations all that we do is in a spirit of unselfishness and in a desire for the good of mankind. But it is well to remember that we are dealing with nations every one of which has a direct individual interest to serve, and there is grave danger in an unshared idealism. Contrast the United States with any country on the face of the earth to-day and ask yourself whether the situation of the United States is not the best to be found. I will go as far as anyone in world service, but the first step to world service is the maintenance of the United States. You may call me selfish if you will, conservative or reactionary, or use any other harsh adjective you see fit to apply, but an American I was born, an American I have remained all my life. I can never be anything else but an American, and I must think of the United States first, and when I think of the United States first in an arrangement like this I am thinking of what is best for the world, for if the United States fails the best hopes of mankind fail with it. I have never had but one allegiance—I cannot divide it now. I have loved but one flag and I cannot share that devotion and give affection to the mongrel banner invented for a league. Internationalism, illustrated by the Bolshevik and by the men to whom all countries are alike provided they can make money out of them, is to me repulsive. National I must remain, and in that way I like all other Americans can render the amplest service to the world. The United States is the world’s best hope, but if you fetter her in the interests and quarrels of other nations, if you tangle her in the intrigues of Europe, you will destroy her power for good and endanger her very existence. Leave her to march freely through the centuries to come as in the years that have gone. Strong, generous, and confident, she has nobly served mankind. Beware how you trifle with your marvelous inheritance, this great land of ordered liberty, for if we stumble and fall freedom and civilization everywhere will go down in ruin.
We are told that we shall “break the heart of the world” if we do not take this league just as it stands. I fear that the hearts of the vast majority of mankind would beat on strongly and steadily and without any quickening if the league were to perish altogether. If it should be effectively and beneficiently changed the people who would lie awake in sorrow for a single night could be easily gathered in one not very large room but those who would draw a long breath of relief would reach to millions.
We hear much of visions and I trust we shall continue to have visions and dream dreams of a fairer future for the race. But visions are one thing and visionaries are another, and the mechanical appliances of the rhetorician designed to give a picture of a present which does not exist and of a future which no man can predict are as unreal and shortlived as the steam or canvas clouds, the angels suspended on wires and the artificial lights of the stage. They pass with the monument of effect and are shabby and tawdry in the daylight. Let us at least be real. Washington’s entire honesty of mind and his fearless look into the face of all facts are qualities which can never go out of fashion and which we should all do well to imitate.
Ideals have been thrust upon us as an argument for the league until the healthy mind which rejects cant revolts from them. Are ideals confined to this deformed experiment upon a noble purpose, tainted, as it is, with bargains and tied to a peace treaty which might have been disposed of long ago to the great benefit of the world if it had not been compelled to carry this rider on its back? “Post equitem sedet atra cura,” Horace tells us, but no blacker care ever sat behind any rider than we shall find in this covenant of doubtful and disputed interpretation as it now perches upon the treaty of peace.
No doubt many excellent and patriotic people see a coming fulfillment of noble ideals in the words “league for peace.” We all respect and share these aspirations and desires, but some of us see no hope, but rather defeat, for them in this murky covenant. For we, too, have our ideals, even if we differ from those who have tried to establish a monopoly of idealism. Our first ideal is our country, and we see her in the future, as in the past, giving service to all her people and to the world. Our ideal of the future is that she should continue to render that service of her own free will. She has great problems of her own to solve, very grim and perilous problems, and a right solution, if we can attain to it, would largely benefit mankind. We would have our country strong to resist a peril from the West, as she has flung back the German menace from the East. We would not have our politics distracted and embittered by the dissensions of other lands. We would not have our country’s vigor exhausted or her moral force abated, by everlasting meddling and muddling in every quarrel, great and small, which afflicts the world. Our ideal is to make her ever stronger and better and finer, because in that way alone, as we believe, can she be of the greatest service to the world’s peace and to the welfare of mankind.
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FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT
On Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, the Japanese military conducted a surprise attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, resulting in the loss of more than two thousand American lives and the destruction of the bulk of the Pacific fleet. The next day, the president addressed Congress and the nation in a broadcast heard worldwide. He branded December 7 “a date which will live in infamy.” The speech was a call for a declaration of war against Japan—as well as its Axis allies in Europe. Later that afternoon, Congress passed the resolution.
Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
The United States was at peace with that nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its government and its emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific. Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in Oahu, the Japanese ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to the secretary of state a formal reply to a recent American message. While this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or armed attack.
It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time the Japanese government had deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.
The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. Very many American lives have been lost. In addition American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu.
Yesterday the Japanese government also launched an attack against Malaya.
Last night Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong.
Last night Japanese forces attacked Guam.
Last night Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands.
Last night the Japanese attacked Wake Island.
This morning the Japanese attacked Midway Island.
Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation.
As commander in chief of the army and navy I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense.
Always will we remember the character of the onslaught against us. No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.
I believe I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make very certain that this form of treachery shall never endanger us again.
Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger.
With confidence in our armed forces—with the unbounded determination of our people—we will gain the inevitable triumph—so help us God.
I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.
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EARL WARREN
“All men are created equal,” the framers of the Declaration had proclaimed as self-evident truth in 1776, and Lincoln at Gettysburg had reaffirmed this as the distinctive proposition of American national dedication. In 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment had written the proposition plainly into the Constitution of the United States: “nor shall any State deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Nevertheless, racial segregation and discrimination persisted throughout the nation until this Supreme Court decision in 1954. Thurgood Marshall, then chief counsel of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) argued before the court that the standard of “separate but equal” schools was little more than a cover for rank prejudice and injustice. Chief Justice Earl Warren’s opinion was upheld unanimously by the other justices. This landmark case paved the way for virtually all civil rights gains afterward.
These cases come to us from the States of Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware. They are premised on different facts and different local conditions, but a common legal question justifies their consideration together in this consolidated opinion.
In each of the cases, minors of the Negro race, through their legal representatives, seek the aid of the courts in obtaining admission to the public schools of their community on a nonsegregated basis. In each instance, they had been denied admission to schools attended by white children under laws requiring or permitting segregation according to race. This segregation was alleged to deprive the plaintiffs of the equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment. In each of the cases other than the Delaware case, a three judge federal district court denied relief to the plaintiffs on the so-called “separate but equal” doctrine announced by this Court in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537. Under that doctrine, equality of treatment is accorded when the races are provided substantially equal facilities, even though these facilities be separate. In the Delaware case, the Supreme Court of Delaware adhered to that doctrine, but ordered that the plaintiffs be admitted to the white schools because of their superiority to the Negro schools.
The plaintiffs contend that segregated public schools are not “equal” and cannot be made “equal,” and that hence they are deprived of the equal protection of the laws. Because of the obvious importance of the question presented, the Court took jurisdiction. Argument was heard in the 1952 Term, and reargument was heard this Term on certain questions propounded by the Court.
Reargument was largely devoted to the circumstances surrounding the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868. It covered exhaustively consideration of the Amendment in Congress, ratification by the states, then existing practices in racial segregation, and the views of proponents and opponents of the Amendment. This discussion and our own investigation convince us that, although these sources cast some light, it is not enough to resolve the problem with which we are faced. At best, they are inconclusive. The most avid proponents of the post-War Amendments undoubtedly intended them to remove all legal distinctions among “all persons born or naturalized in the United States.” Their opponents, just as certainly, were antagonistic to both the letter and the spirit of the Amendments and wished them to have the most limited effect. What others in Congress and the state legislatures had in mind cannot be determined with any degree of certainty.
An additional reason for the inconclusive nature of the Amendment’s history, with respect to segregated schools, is the status of public education at that time. In the South, the movement toward free common schools, supported by general taxation, had not yet taken hold. Education of white children was largely in the hands of private groups. Education of Negroes was almost non-existent, and practically all of the race were illiterate. In fact, any education of Negroes was forbidden by law in some states. Today, in contrast, many Negroes have achieved outstanding success in the arts and sciences as well as in the business and professional world. It is true that public school education at the time of the Amendment had advanced further in the North, but the effect of the Amendment on Northern States was generally ignored in the congressional debates. Even in the North, the conditions of public education did not approximate those existing today. The curriculum was usually rudimentary; ungraded schools were common in rural areas; the school term was but three months a year in many states; and compulsory school attendance was virtually unknown. As a consequence, it is not surprising that there should be so little in the history of the Fourteenth Amendment relating to its intended effect on public education.
In the first cases in this Court construing the Fourteenth Amendment, decided shortly after its adoption, the Court interpreted it as proscribing all state-imposed discriminations against the Negro race. The doctrine of “separate but equal” did not make its appearance in this Court until 1896 in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, supra, involving not education but transportation. American courts have since labored with the doctrine for over half a century. In this Court, there have been six cases involving the “separate but equal” doctrine in the field of public education. In Cumming v. Board of Education of Richmond County, 175 U.S. 528, and Gong Lum v. Rice, 275 U.S. 78, the validity of the doctrine itself was not challenged. In more recent cases, all on the graduate school level, inequality was found in that specific benefits enjoyed by white students were denied to Negro students of the same educational qualifications. Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, 305 U.S. 337; Sipuel v. Board of Regents of University of Oklahoma, 332 U.S. 631; Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629; McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, 339 U.S. 637. In none of these cases was it necessary to re-examine the doctrine to grant relief to the Negro plaintiff. And in Sweatt v. Painter, supra, the Court expressly reserved decision on the question whether Plessy v. Ferguson should be held inapplicable to public education.
In the instant cases, that question is directly presented. Here, unlike Sweatt v. Painter, there are findings below that the Negro and white schools involved have been equalized, or are being equalized, with respect to buildings, curricula, qualifications and salaries of teachers, and other “tangible” factors. Our decision, therefore, cannot turn on merely a comparison of these tangible factors in the Negro and white schools involved in each of the cases. We must look instead to the effect of segregation itself on public education.
In approaching this problem, we cannot turn the clock back to 1868 when the Amendment was adopted, or even to 1896 when Plessy v. Ferguson was written. We must consider public education in the light of its full development and its present place in American life throughout the Nation. Only in this way can it be determined if segregation in public schools deprives these plaintiffs of the equal protection of the laws.
Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the great expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition of the importance of education to our democratic society. It is required in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even service in the armed forces. It is the very foundation of good citizenship. Today it is a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment. In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.
We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other “tangible” factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does.
In Sweatt v. Painter, supra, in finding that a segregated law school for Negroes could not provide them equal educational opportunities, this Court relied in large part on “those qualities which are incapable of objective measurement but which make for greatness in a law school.” In McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, supra, the Court, in requiring that a Negro admitted to a white graduate school be treated like all other students again resorted to intangible considerations: “…his ability to study, to engage in discussions and exchange views with other students, and, in general, to learn his profession.” Such considerations apply with added force to children in grade and high schools. To separate them from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone. The effect of this separation on their educational opportunities was well stated by a finding in the Kansas case by a court which nevertheless felt compelled to rule against the Negro plaintiffs:
Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law; for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregation with the sanction of law, therefore, has a tendency to retard the educational and mental development of negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racially integrated school system.
Whatever may have been the extent of psychological knowledge at the time of Plessy v. Ferguson, this finding is amply supported by modern authority. Any language in Plessy v. Ferguson contrary to this finding is rejected.
We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of “separate but equal” has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. This disposition makes unnecessary any discussion whether such segregation also violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Because these are class actions, because of the wide applicability of this decision, and because of the great variety of local conditions, the formulation of decrees in these cases presents problems of considerable complexity. On reargument, the consideration of appropriate relief was necessarily subordinated to the primary question—the constitutionality of segregation in public education. We have now announced that such segregation is a denial of the equal protection of the laws. In order that we may have the full assistance of the parties in formulating decrees, the cases will be restored to the docket, and the parties are requested to present further argument on Questions 4 and 5 previously propounded by the Court for the reargument this Term. The Attorney General of the United States is again invited to participate. The Attorneys General of the states requiring or permitting segregation in public education will also be permitted to appear as amici curiae upon request to do so by September 5, 1954, and submission of briefs by October 1, 1954.
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JOHN F. KENNEDY
This inaugural address outlined the idealistic priorities of an energetic new administration that entered office in the midst of booming national prosperity and optimism: helping poorer citizens, an “alliance for progress” with the Latin American nations, and a new “quest for peace, before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction.” Though written by a crack team of ghostwriters, the closing words of the address—“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”—became synonymous with the memory of the martyred president.
We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom—symbolizing an end as well as a beginning, signifying renewal as well as change. For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forebears prescribed nearly a century and three-quarters ago.
The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe: the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.
We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans—born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage—and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
This much we pledge—and more.
To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share, we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends. United, there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures. Divided, there is little we can do—for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder.
To those new states whom we welcome to the ranks of the free, we pledge our word that one form of colonial control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron tyranny. We shall not always expect to find them supporting our view. But we shall always hope to find them strongly supporting their own freedom—and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.
To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required—not because the Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
To our sister republics south of the border, we offer a special pledge: to convert our good words into good deeds—in a new alliance for progress—to assist free men and free governments in casting off the chains of poverty. But this peaceful revolution of hope cannot become the prey of hostile powers. Let all our neighbors know that we shall join with them to oppose aggression or subversion anywhere in the Americas. And let every other power know that this hemisphere intends to remain the master of its own house.
To that world assembly of sovereign states, the United Nations, our last best hope in an age where the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace, we renew our pledge of support—to prevent it from becoming merely a forum for invective, to strengthen its shield of the new and the weak, and to enlarge the area in which its writ may run.
Finally, to those nations who would make themselves our adversary, we offer not a pledge but a request: that both sides begin anew the quest for peace, before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction.
We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed.
But neither can two great and powerful groups of nations take comfort from our present course—both sides overburdened by the cost of modern weapons, both rightly alarmed by the steady spread of the deadly atom, yet both racing to alter that uncertain balance of terror that stays the hand of mankind’s final war.
So let us begin anew, remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.
Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us.
Let both sides, for the first time, formulate serious and precise proposals for the inspection and control of arms—and bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute control of all nations.
Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce.
Let both sides unite to heed in all corners of the earth the command of Isaiah—to “undo the heavy burdens and let the oppressed go free.”
And if a beachhead of cooperation may push back the jungle of suspicion, let both sides join in creating a new endeavor, not a new balance of power, but a new world of law, where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved.
All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.
In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than mine, will rest the final success or failure of our course. Since this country was founded, each generation of Americans has been summoned to give testimony to its national loyalty. The graves of young Americans who answered the call to service surround the globe.
Now the trumpet summons us again—not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are—but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, “rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation,” a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.
Can we forge against these enemies a grand and global alliance, north and south, east and west, that can assure a more fruitful life for all mankind? Will you join in that historic effort?
In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility—I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it—and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.
And so, my fellow Americans: Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.
My fellow citizens of the world: Ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.
Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us here the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.
* * *
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
In 1963, during the most intense days of the struggle for civil rights, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote this remarkable open letter to his fellow clergymen around the nation who had criticized and condemned his relentless assault on prejudice, discrimination, segregation, and injustice as “unwise and untimely.” The effect was galvanizing. A tidal wave of support soon insured that civil rights would be legally extended to every citizen—rich or poor, black or white, hale or infirm, young or aged, man or woman.
My dear Fellow Clergymen: While confined here in the Birmingham City Jail, I came across your recent statement calling our present activities “unwise and untimely.” Since I feel that you are men of genuine goodwill and your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I would like to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.
I think I should give the reason for my being in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the argument of “outsiders coming in.” Several months ago our local affiliate here in Birmingham invited us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct action program if such were deemed necessary. So I am here, along with several members of my staff, because we were invited here. I am here because I have basic organizational ties here.
Beyond this, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the eighth-century prophets left their little villages and carried their “thus saith the Lord” far beyond the boundaries of their home towns; and just as the Apostle Paul left his little village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to practically every hamlet and city of the Graeco-Roman world, I too am compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my particular home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.
Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere in this country.
You deplore the demonstrations that are presently taking place in Birmingham. But I am sorry that your statement did not express a similar concern for the conditions that brought the demonstrations into being. I am sure that each of you would want to go beyond the superficial social analyst who looks merely at effects, and does not grapple with underlying causes. I would not hesitate to say that it is unfortunate that so called demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham at this time, but I would say in more emphatic terms that it is even more unfortunate that the white power structure of this city left the Negro community with no other alternative.
Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of police brutality is known in every section of this country. Its unjust treatment of Negroes in the courts is a notorious reality. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any city in this nation. These are the hard, brutal, and unbelievable facts. On the basis of these conditions Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the political leaders consistently refused to engage in good-faith negotiation….
You may well ask, “Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches, etceteras? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are exactly right in your call for negotiation. Indeed, this is the purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. I just referred to the creation of tension as a part of the work of the nonviolent resister. This may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word tension. I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, but there is a type of constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must see the need of having nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men to rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. So the purpose of the direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. We, therefore, concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in the tragic attempt to live in monologue rather than dialogue.
My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but as Reinhold Neibuhr has reminded us, groups are more immoral than individuals.
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have never yet engaged in a direct-action movement that was “well timed,” according to the timetable of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This “wait” has almost always meant “never.” It has been a tranquilizing thalidomide, relieving the emotional stress for a moment, only to give birth to an ill-formed infant of frustration. We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” We have waited for more than three hundred and forty years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jet-like speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim, when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos: “Daddy, who do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you, when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger” and your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted at night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tip-toe stance never quite knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”; then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the blackness of corroding despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.
You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, it is rather strange and paradoxical to find us consciously breaking laws. One may well ask, “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: There are just and there are unjust laws. I would agree with Saint Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”
Now what is the difference between the two? How does one determine when a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of Saint Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority, and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. To use the words of Martin Buber, the great Jewish philosopher, segregation substitutes an “I-it” relationship for the “I-thou” relationship, and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. So segregation is not only politically, economically, and sociologically unsound, but it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Isn’t segregation an existential expression of man’s tragic separation, an expression of his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? So I can urge men to disobey segregation ordinances because they are morally wrong.
There are some instances when a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I was arrested Friday on a charge of parading without a permit. Now there is nothing wrong with an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade, but when the ordinance is used to preserve segregation and to deny citizens the First Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and peaceful protest, then it becomes unjust.
I hope you can see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law as the rabid segregationist would do. This would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do it openly, lovingly (not hatefully as the white mothers did in New Orleans when they were seen on television screaming “nigger, nigger, nigger”), and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for law.
Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was seen sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar because a higher moral law was involved. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks, before submitting to certain unjust laws of the Roman empire. To a degree academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience.
We can never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. But I am sure that if I had lived in Germany during that time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers even though it was illegal. If I lived in a Communist country today, where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I believe I would openly advocate disobeying these anti-religious laws. I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice, and that when they fail to do this they become dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is merely a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, where the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substance-filled positive peace, where all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured as long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its pus-flowing ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must likewise be exposed, with all of the tension its exposing creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.
In your statement you asserted that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But can this assertion be logically made? Isn’t this like condemning the robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn’t this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical delvings precipitated the misguided popular mind to make him drink the hemlock? Isn’t this like condemning Jesus because His unique God-Consciousness and never-ceasing devotion to His will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see, as federal courts have consistently affirmed, that it is immoral to urge an individual to withdraw his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest precipitates violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber.
I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth of time. I received a letter this morning from a white brother in Texas which said: “All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great of a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth.” All that is said here grows out of a tragic misconception of time. It is the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually time is neutral. It can be used either destructively or constructively. I am coming to feel that the people of ill-will have used time much more effectively than the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of good people. We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men willing to be coworkers with God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy, and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.
I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency made up of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, have been so completely drained of self-respect and a sense of “somebodiness” that they have adjusted to segregation, and of a few Negroes in the middle class who, because of a degree of academic and economic security, and because at points they profit by segregation, have unconsciously become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black-nationalist groups that are springing up over the nation, the largest and best known being Elijah Muhammad’s Muslim movement. This movement is nourished by the contemporary frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination. It is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man is an incurable “devil.” I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need not follow the “do-nothingism” of the complacent or the hatred and despair of the black nationalists. There is the more excellent way of love and nonviolent protest. I’m grateful to God that, through the Negro church, the dimension of nonviolence entered our struggle. If this philosophy had not emerged, I am convinced that by now many streets of the South would be flowing with floods of blood. And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as “rabble-rousers” and “outside agitators” those of us who are working through the channels of nonviolent direct action and refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes, out of frustration and despair, will seek solace and security in black nationalist ideologies, a development that will lead inevitably to a frightening racial nightmare.
Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The urge for freedom will eventually come. This is what happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom; something without has reminded him that he can gain it. Consciously, and unconsciously, he has been swept in by what the Germans call the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa, and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America, and the Caribbean, he is moving with a sense of cosmic urgency toward the promised land of racial justice. Recognizing this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand public demonstrations. The Negro has many pent-up resentments and latent frustrations. He has to get them out. So let him march sometime; let him have his prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; understand why he must have sit-ins and freedom rides. If his repressed emotions do not come out in these nonviolent ways, they will come out in ominous expressions of violence. This is not a threat; it is a fact of history. So I have not said to my people “get rid of your discontent. But I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channelized through the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. Now this approach is being dismissed as extremist. I must admit that I was initially disappointed in being so categorized.
But as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a bit of satisfaction from being considered an extremist. Was not Jesus an extremist in love? “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you.” Was not Amos an extremist for justice? “Let justice roll down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.” Was not Paul an extremist for the gospel of Jesus Christ? “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” Was not Martin Luther an extremist? “Here I stand; I can do none other so help me God.” Was not John Bunyan an extremist? “I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.” Was not Abraham Lincoln an extremist? “This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.” Was not Thomas Jefferson an extremist? “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” So the question is not whether we will be extremist but what kind of extremist will we be. Will we be extremists for hate—or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice—or will we be extremists for the cause of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary’s hill, three men were crucified. We must not forget that all three were crucified for the same crime—the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thusly fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth, and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. So, after all, maybe the South, the nation, and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.
I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour. But even if the church does not come to the aid of justice, I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are frequently misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with the destiny of America. Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched across the pages of history the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence, we were here. For more than two centuries our fore-parents labored in this country without wages; they made cotton king, and they built the homes of their masters in the midst of brutal injustice and shameful humiliation—and yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.
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HARRY A. BLACKMUN
In perhaps its most divisive and controversial decision since Dred Scott, the Supreme Court overturned the homicide laws in abortion cases in all fifty states. Delivered on January 22, 1973, the decision sent shock waves throughout the nation—the effects of which are still felt. In a remarkably argued majority opinion, Associate Justice Blackmun introduced several creative constitutional innovations—including a heretofore unrecognized “right to privacy.” Like the Dred Scott decision before it, this case actually only exacerbated the debate the court set out to resolve.
We forthwith acknowledge our awareness of the sensitive and emotional nature of the abortion controversy, of the vigorous opposing views, even among physicians, and of the deep and seemingly absolute convictions that the subject inspires. One’s philosophy, one’s experiences, one’s exposure to the raw edges of human existence, one’s religious training, one’s attitudes toward life and family and their values, and the moral standards one establishes and seeks to observe, are all likely to influence and to color one’s thinking and conclusions about abortion.
In addition, population growth, pollution, poverty, and racial overtones tend to complicate and not to simplify the problem.
Our task, of course, is to resolve the issue by constitutional measurement, free of emotion and of predilection. We seek earnestly to do this, and, because we do, we have inquired into, and in this opinion place some emphasis upon, medical and medical-legal history and what that history reveals about man’s attitudes toward the abortion procedure over the centuries. We bear in mind, too, Mr. Justice Holmes’ admonition in his now-vindicated dissent in Lochner v. New York: “The Constitution is made for people of fundamentally differing views, and the accident of our finding certain opinions natural and familiar or novel and even shocking ought not to conclude our judgment upon the question whether statutes embodying them conflict with the Constitution of the United States.”
Jane Roe, a single woman who was residing in Dallas County, Texas, instituted this federal action in March 1970 against the District Attorney of the county. She sought a declaratory judgment that the Texas criminal abortion statutes were unconstitutional on their face, and an injunction restraining the defendant from enforcing the statutes.
Roe alleged that she was unmarried and pregnant; that she wished to terminate her pregnancy by an abortion “performed by a competent, licensed physician, under safe, clinical conditions”; that she was unable to get a “legal” abortion in Texas because her life did not appear to be threatened by the continuation of her pregnancy; and that she could not afford to travel to another jurisdiction in order to secure a legal abortion under safe conditions. She claimed that the Texas statutes were unconstitutionally vague and that they abridged her right of personal privacy, protected by the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments. By an amendment to her complaint Roe purported to sue “on behalf of herself and all other women” similarly situated.
The principal thrust of appellant’s attack on the Texas statutes is that they improperly invade a right, said to be possessed by the pregnant woman, to choose to terminate her pregnancy. Appellant would discover this right in the concept of personal “liberty” embodied in the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, or in personal, marital, familial, and sexual privacy said to be protected by the Bill of Rights or its penumbras.
It perhaps is not generally appreciated that the restrictive criminal abortion laws in effect in a majority of States today are of relatively recent vintage. Those laws, generally proscribing abortion or its attempt at any time during pregnancy except when necessary to preserve the pregnant woman’s life, are not of ancient or even of common-law origin. Instead, they derive from statutory changes effected, for the most part, in the latter half of the 19th century.
It is thus apparent that in common law, at the time of the adoption of our Constitution, and throughout the major portion of the 19th century, abortion was viewed with less disfavor than under most American statutes currently in effect. Phrasing it another way, a woman enjoyed a substantially broader right to terminate a pregnancy than she does in most States today. At least with respect to the early stage of pregnancy, and very possibly without such a limitation, the opportunity to make this choice was present in this country well into the 19th century. Even later, the law continued for some time to treat less punitively an abortion procured in early pregnancy….
The Constitution does not explicitly mention any right of privacy. In a line of decisions, however, going back perhaps as far as Union Pacific v. Botsford (1891), the Court has recognized that a right of personal privacy, or a guarantee of certain areas or zones of privacy, does exist under the Constitution. In varying contexts, the Court or individual Justices have, indeed, found at least the roots of that right in the First Amendment; in the Fourth and Fifth Amendments; in the penumbras of the Bill of Rights, in the Ninth Amendment; or in the concept of liberty guaranteed by the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment. These decisions make it clear that only personal rights that can be deemed “fundamental” or “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty,” are included in this guarantee of personal privacy. They also make it clear that the right has some extension to activities relating to marriage; procreation; contraception; family relationships; and child rearing and education.
This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment’s reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. The detriment that the State would impose upon the pregnant woman by denying this choice altogether is apparent. Specific and direct harm medically diagnosable even in early pregnancy may be involved. Maternity, or additional offspring, may force upon the woman a distressful life and future. Psychological harm may be imminent. Mental and physical health may be taxed by child care. There is also the distress, for all concerned, associated with the unwanted child, and there is the problem of bringing a child into a family already unable, psychologically and otherwise, to care for it. In other cases, as in this one, the additional difficulties and continuing stigma of unwed motherhood may be involved. All these are factors the woman and her responsible physician necessarily will consider in consultation.
On the basis of elements such as these, appellant and some amici argue that the woman’s right is absolute and that she is entitled to terminate her pregnancy at whatever time, in whatever way, and for whatever reason she alone chooses. With this we do not agree. Appellant’s arguments that Texas either has no valid interest at all in regulating the abortion decision, or no interest strong enough to support any limitation upon the woman’s sole determination, is unpersuasive. The Court’s decisions recognizing a right of privacy also acknowledge that some state regulation in areas protected by that right is appropriate. As noted above, a State may properly assert important interests in safeguarding health, in maintaining medical standards, and in protecting potential life. At some point in pregnancy, these respective interests become sufficiently compelling to sustain regulation of the factors that govern the abortion decision. The privacy right involved, therefore, cannot be said to be absolute. In fact, it is not clear to us that the claim asserted by some amici that one has an unlimited right to do with one’s body as one pleases bears a close relationship to the right of privacy previously articulated in the Court’s decisions. The Court has refused to recognize an unlimited right of this kind in the past.
We, therefore, conclude that the right of personal privacy includes the abortion decision, but that this right is not unqualified and must be considered against important state interests in regulation.
We note that those federal and state courts that have recently considered abortion law challenges have reached the same conclusion.
Although the results are divided, most of these courts have agreed that the right of privacy, however based, is broad enough to cover the abortion decisions; that the right, nonetheless, is not absolute and is subject to some limitations; and that at some point the state interests as to protection of health, medical standards, and prenatal life, become dominant. We agree with this approach.
The appellee and certain amici argue that the fetus is a “person” within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. In support of this, they outline at length and in detail the well-known facts of fetal development. If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant’s case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life is then guaranteed specifically by the amendment. The appellant conceded as much on reargument. On the other hand, the appellee conceded on reargument that no case could be cited that holds that a fetus is a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Constitution does not define “person” in so many words. The use of the word is such that it has application only postnatally. None indicates, with any assurance, that it has any possible pre-natal application.
All this, together with our observation, supra, that throughout the major portion of the 19th century prevailing legal abortion practices were far freer than they are today, persuades us that the word “person,” as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn….
Texas urges that, apart from the Fourteenth Amendment, life begins at conception and is present throughout pregnancy and that therefore the State has a compelling interest in protecting that life from and after conception. We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man’s knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.
In areas other than criminal abortion, the law has been reluctant to endorse any theory that life, as we recognize it, begins before live birth or to accord legal rights to the unborn except in narrowly defined situations and except when the rights are continent upon live birth. In short, the unborn have never been recognized in the law as persons in the whole sense.
In view of all this, we do not agree that, by adopting one theory of life, Texas may override the rights of the pregnant woman that are at stake. We repeat, however, that the State does have an important and legitimate interest in preserving and protecting the health of the pregnant woman.
With respect to the State’s important and legitimate interest in the health of the mother, the “compelling” point, in the light of present medical knowledge, is at approximately the end of the first trimester. This is so because of the now-established medical fact, that until the end of the first trimester mortality in abortion may be less than mortality in normal childbirth. It follows that, from and after this point, a State may regulate the abortion procedure to the extent that the regulation reasonably relates to the preservation and protection of maternal health. Examples of permissible state regulation in this area are requirements as to the qualifications of the person who is to perform the abortion; as to the licensure of that person; as to the facility in which the procedure is to be performed, that is, whether it must be a hospital or may be a clinic or some other place of less-than-hospital status; as to the licensing of the facility; and the like.
With respect to the State’s important and legitimate interest in potential life, the “compelling” point is at viability. This is so because the fetus then presumably has the capability of meaningful life outside the mother’s womb. State regulation protective of fetal life after viability thus has both logical and biological justifications. If the State is interested in protecting fetal life after viability, it may go so far as to proscribe abortion during that period, except when it is necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother.
Measured against these standards, Article 1196 of the Texas Penal Code, in restricting legal abortions to those “procured or attempted by medical advice for the purpose of saving the life of the mother,” sweeps too broadly. The statute makes no distinction between abortions performed early in pregnancy and those performed later, and it limits to a single reason, “saving” the mother’s life, the legal justification for the procedure. The statute, therefore, cannot survive the constitutional attack made upon it here.
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RONALD REAGAN
Ushered into the presidency by a roiling discontent with the course of modern liberalism, Ronald Reagan initiated a remarkable new era of conservatism in American political life. His inauguration was a celebration of the original intentions of the Founders: small, limited, and accountable civil prerogatives. Although his administration’s domestic successes were actually rather limited—particularly in reigning in the size and cost of government—the moral resolve manifested here ultimately resulted in the greatest foreign policy victory in this century: the collapse of Communism’s “Evil Empire.” In all respects, there can be little doubt that this manifesto of optimism ultimately set the stage for the political debate through the end of the century.
These United States are confronted with an economic affliction of great proportions.
We suffer from the longest and one of the worst sustained inflations in our national history. It distorts our economic decisions, penalizes thrift and crushes the struggling young and the fixed-income elderly alike. It threatens to shatter the lives of millions of our people.
Idle industries have cast workers into unemployment, human misery and personal indignity. Those who do work are denied a fair return for their labor by a tax system which penalizes successful achievement and keeps us from maintaining full productivity.
But great as our tax burden is, it has not kept pace with public spending. For decades we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children’s future for the temporary convenience of the present.
To continue this long trend is to guarantee tremendous social, cultural, political and economic upheavals. You and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but for only a limited period of time. Why then should we think that collectively, as a nation, we are not bound by that same limitation? We must act today in order to preserve tomorrow. And let there be no misunderstanding—we’re going to begin to act beginning today.
The economic ills we suffer have come upon us over several decades. They will not go away in days, weeks or months, but they will go away. They will go away because we as Americans have the capacity now, as we have had in the past, to do whatever needs to be done to preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom.
In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.
From time to time we’ve been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by and of the people. But if no one among us is capable of government himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?
All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable with no one group singled out to pay a higher price. We hear much of special interest groups. Well our concern must be for a special interest group that has been too long neglected. It knows no sectional boundaries or ethnic and racial divisions, and it crosses political party lines. It is made up of men and women who raise our food, patrol our streets, man our mines and factories, teach our children, keep our homes and heal us when we’re sick.
Professionals, industrialists, shopkeepers, clerks, cabbies and truck drivers. They are, in short, “We the people.” This breed called Americans.
Well, this Administration’s objective will be a healthy, vigorous, growing economy that provides equal opportunities for all Americans with no barriers born of bigotry or discrimination. Putting America back to work means putting all Americans back to work. Ending inflation means freeing all Americans from the terror of runaway living costs. All must share in the productive work of this “new beginning” and all must share in the bounty of a revived economy.
With the idealism and fair play which are the core of our system and our strength, we can have a strong, prosperous America at peace with itself and the world.
So as we begin, let us take inventory.
We are a nation that has a government—not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the earth.
Our Government has no power except that granted it by the people. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed. It is my intention to curb the size and influence of the Federal establishment and to demand recognition of the distinction between the powers granted to the Federal Government and those reserved to the states or to the people.
All of us—all of us need to be reminded that the Federal Government did not create the states; the states created the Federal Government. Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it’s not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work—work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it.
If we look to the answer as to why for so many years we achieved so much, prospered as no other people on earth, it was because here in this land we unleashed the energy and individual genius of man to a greater extent than has ever been done before.
Freedom and the dignity of the individual have been more available and assured here than in any other place on earth. The price for this freedom at times has been high, but we have never been unwilling to pay that price.
It is no coincidence that our present troubles parallel and are proportionate to the intervention and intrusion in our lives that result from unnecessary and excessive growth of Government.
It is time for us to realize that we are too great a nation to limit ourselves to small dreams. We’re not, as some would have us believe, doomed to an inevitable decline; I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.
So, with all the creative energy at our command let us begin an era of national renewal. Let us renew our determination, our courage and our strength. And let us renew our faith and our hope. We have every right to dream heroic dreams.
Your dreams, your hopes, your goals are going to be the dreams, the hopes and the goals of this Administration, so help me God.
We shall reflect the compassion that is so much a part of your makeup. How can we love our country and not love our countrymen? And loving them reach out a hand when they fall, heal them when they’re sick and provide opportunity to make them self-sufficient so they will be equal in fact and not just in theory?
Can we solve the problems confronting us? Well the answer is an unequivocal and emphatic yes. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, I did not take the oath I’ve just taken with the intention of presiding over the dissolution of the world’s strongest economy.
In the days ahead I will propose removing the roadblocks that have slowed our economy and reduced productivity. Steps will be taken aimed at restoring the balance between the various levels of government. Progress may be slow—measured in inches and feet, not miles—but we will progress. It is time to reawaken this industrial giant, to get government back within its means and to lighten our punitive tax burden.
And these will be our first priorities, and on these principles there will be no compromise.
I believe we the Americans of today are ready to act worthy of ourselves, ready to do what must be done to insure happiness and liberty for ourselves, our children and our children’s children.
And as we renew ourselves here in our own land we will be seen as having greater strength throughout the world. We will again be the exemplar of freedom and a beacon of hope for those who do not now have freedom.
To those neighbors and allies who share our freedom, we will strengthen our historic ties and assure them of our support and firm commitment. We will match loyalty with loyalty. We will strive for mutually beneficial relations. We will not use our friendship to impose on their sovereignty, for our own sovereignty is not for sale.
As for the enemies of freedom, those who are potential adversaries, they will be reminded that peace is the highest aspiration of the American people. We will negotiate for it, sacrifice for it, we will not surrender for it—now or ever.
Our forbearance should never be misunderstood. Our reluctance for conflict should not be misjudged as a failure of will. When action is required to preserve our national security we will act. We will maintain sufficient strength to prevail if need be, knowing that if we do so we have the best chance of never having to use that strength.
Above all we must realize that no arsenal or no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.
It is a weapon our adversaries in today’s world do not have. It is a weapon that we as Americans do have. Let that be understood by those who practice terrorism and prey upon their neighbors.
God bless you all. And God bless the United States of America.
* * *
The twentieth century has seen more adjustment of the nation’s constitutional structure than any other time in our history. Several of the amendments have radically altered the nature and function of the government. Two of the farthest reaching amendments—Amendments XVI and XVII—were ratified in a single year: 1913. Another—Amendment XVIII—was ratified in 1919 only to be repealed by another—Amendment XXI—which was ratified in 1933. Amendment XIX, giving the franchise to women, was ratified in 1920, while Amendment XX, regulating the terms of federal officials, was ratified in 1933. Amendment XXII was ratified in 1951 and Amendment XXIII was ratified ten years later in 1961. Amendment XXIV, guaranteeing all citizens civil and voting rights, was ratified in 1964. Amendment XXV, providing for orderly succession in the White House, was ratified in 1967, and Amendment XXVI, lowering the legal voting age, was ratified in 1971. Amendment XXVII has had perhaps the most interesting route to ratification. It was first proposed in 1789. Nevertheless, it was not ratified until more than two hundred years later in 1992.
AMENDMENT XVI
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
AMENDMENT XVII
The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures.
When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of such State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided, That the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct.
This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution.
AMENDMENT XVIII
Section 1: After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.
Section 2: The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Section 3: This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.
AMENDMENT XIX
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
AMENDMENT XX
Section 1: The terms of the President and Vice-President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3rd day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin.
Section 2: The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such meeting shall begin at noon on the 3rd day of January, unless they shall by law appoint a different day.
Section 3: If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice-President elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice-President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice-President elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice-President shall have qualified.
Section 4: The Congress may by law provide for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the House of Representatives may choose a President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them, and for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the Senate may choose a Vice-President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them.
Section 5: Sections 1 and 2 shall take effect on the 15th day of October following the ratification of this article.
Section 6: This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission.
AMENDMENT XXI
Section 1: The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.
Section 2: The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.
Section 3: This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.
AMENDMENT XXII
No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.
But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.
AMENDMENT XXIII
Section 1: The District constituting the seat of Government of the United States shall appoint in such manner as the Congress may direct:
A number of electors of President and Vice-President equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives in Congress to which the District would be entitled if it were a State, but in no event more than the least populous State; they shall be in addition to those appointed by the States, but they shall be considered, for the purposes of the election of President and Vice President, to be electors appointed by a State; and they shall meet in the District and perform such duties as provided by the twelfth article of amendment.
Section 2: The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation
AMENDMENT XXIV
Section 1: The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice-President, for electors for President or Vice-President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.
Section 2: The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
AMENDMENT XXV
Section 1: In case of the removal of the President from office or his death or resignation, the Vice-President shall become President.
Section 2: Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice-President, the President shall nominate a Vice-President who shall take the office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both houses of Congress.
Section 3: Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice-President as Acting President.
Section 4: Whenever the Vice-President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments, or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice-President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.
Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice-President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments, or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within 48 hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within 21 days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within 21 days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice-President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.
AMENDMENT XXVI
Section 1: The right of citizens of the United States, who are 18 years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of age.
Section 2: The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
AMENDMENT XXVII
No law varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.
* * *
GEORGE W. BUSH
As tens of thousands of Americans watched on television with a sense of surreal horror, the two towers of the World Trade Center collapsed into flaming steel, rubble, and dust, and vanished from the skyline of lower Manhattan. Just hours earlier, the most brazen and horrific terrorist attack in human history was carried out when extreme Muslim jihadists crashed commercial airliners into both of the towers as well as the Pentagon in Washington, DC. A fourth hijacked plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania when the passengers realized what was transpiring and overwhelmed the terrorists. The death toll rose to nearly three thousand—including scores of police, fire, and rescue workers who ran into the buildings to save those trapped in the infernos that ensued. On that day President Bush seemed to be instantly transformed from a man who couldn’t read a teleprompter to a man who didn’t need to.
Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts. The victims were in airplanes or in their offices: secretaries, business men and women, military and federal workers, moms and dads, friends and neighbors. Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror. The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings, fires burning, huge structures collapsing have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness, and a quiet, unyielding anger. These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat. But they have failed. Our country is strong.
A great people has been moved to defend a great nation. Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve. America was targeted for attack because we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world. And no one will keep that light from shining. Today, our nation saw evil—the very worst of human nature—and we responded with the best of America. With the daring of our rescue workers, with the caring for strangers and neighbors who came to give blood and help in any way they could.
Immediately following the first attack, I implemented our government’s emergency response plans. Our military is powerful, and it’s prepared. Our emergency teams are working in New York City and Washington, DC, to help with local rescue efforts. Our first priority is to get help to those who have been injured, and to take every precaution to protect our citizens at home and around the world from further attacks. The functions of our government continue without interruption. Federal agencies in Washington which had to be evacuated today are reopening for essential personnel tonight and will be open for business tomorrow. Our financial institutions remain strong, and the American economy will be open for business as well.
The search is underway for those who were behind these evil acts. I have directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and to bring them to justice. We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.
I appreciate so very much the members of Congress who have joined me in strongly condemning these attacks. And on behalf of the American people, I thank the many world leaders who have called to offer their condolences and assistance. America and our friends and allies join with all those who want peace and security in the world, and we stand together to win the war against terrorism.
Tonight, I ask for your prayers for all those who grieve, for the children whose worlds have been shattered, for all whose sense of safety and security has been threatened. And I pray they will be comforted by a Power greater than any of us, spoken through the ages in Psalm 23, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil for you are with me.”
This is a day when all Americans from every walk of life unite in our resolve for justice and peace. America has stood down enemies before, and we will do so this time. None of us will ever forget this day, yet we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world.
Thank you. Good night. And God bless America.
* * *
From the end of Reconstruction to the present, the men who have held the highest civic office in the land have been a very eclectic group—some of them, like Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan, undoubtedly attained greatness while others, like Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, Herbert Hoover, and Richard Nixon, attained little more than ignominy. Nevertheless, their stories have become an integral part of our national heritage.
RUTHERFORD B. HAYES (1822–1893)
After the scandals of the Grant administration, the Republican Party was concerned to choose an especially upright candidate. They found him in Hayes, a devout, conscientious midwesterner whose Puritan ancestors had come from New England. In his third term as governor of Ohio in 1876, Hayes was known for an honest administration, constructive reforms, and a strong stand on sound money—one of the leading issues of the day. In addition, he had an outstanding military record, performing gallantly and emerging a major general. He was apparently above reproach. Yet it is one of the quirks of history that such a man should reach the White House through a very questionable settlement of a disputed election—although most historians believe that Hayes himself was not personally involved. The settlement was in the hands of a special electoral commission that happened to have a majority of Republicans. But the Republicans had chosen well—better than some of them knew. President Hayes proved to be too honest and forthright for many of them, who could hardly wait to get him out of office. Despite political undercurrents, Hayes made good use of his one term to stabilize the government on several fronts. He officially ended Reconstruction; he withdrew federal troops from the occupied Southern states; he established reforms in civil service; he took courageous steps to settle the railroad strike of 1877; and he stood firm in enforcing a sound money policy—all in the face of vigorous opposition. The man chosen to remove the taint of scandal from the government proved to be surprisingly resolute and effective; his dedication to principle and his courageous and forthright actions won him the kind of praise earned by very few one-term presidents.
JAMES A. GARFIELD (1831–1881)
He was the last of the presidents to go from a log cabin to the White House. Left fatherless when only an infant, Garfield was forced to work from his earliest years on the family farm in Ohio. Besides helping his widowed mother, he also succeeded in earning enough—as a canal boat driver, carpenter, and teacher—to put himself through college. His love of learning led him into a teaching career, serving as a professor of Latin and Greek and later a college president. The initiative that catapulted Garfield into the scholarly ranks ultimately carried him into public life as well. He became known as a powerful antislavery speaker and grew active in local politics. A brilliant career in the Union army—he was a brigadier general by the time he was thirty—was interrupted when he resigned after being elected to Congress. There he served for eighteen years, emerging in 1880 as the leader of his party. Nevertheless, when the Republicans met in Chicago in 1880, Garfield was not considered a presidential contender. The struggle was between Grant, who was willing to try a third term, and Senator James Blaine from Maine, but as happened before, the convention was so divided that neither could win. It was not until the thirty-sixth ballot that the dark-horse candidate Garfield was nominated. The surprise gift of the highest office in the land was not one that Garfield could enjoy for very long. In the White House he showed signs of being a strong executive, independent of party as was Hayes. But he was in office less than four months when he was fatally shot by an assassin as he was about to catch a train in the Washington depot on September 19, 1881. Like that earlier log-cabin president, Garfield left the White House a martyr, having spent less time in office than any president except Harrison.
CHESTER A. ARTHUR (1829–1886)
Although the nomination and election of the dark-horse Garfield surprised many Americans, the nomination of Chester Arthur as vice president was even more of a shock. Many a citizen feared the worst when Garfield died with three and a half years of his term remaining. And for good reason. Arthur, who loved fine clothes and elegant living, had been associated with the corrupt New York political machine for almost twenty years. In 1878 he had even been removed from his post as collector of the port of New York by President Hayes, who had become alarmed at his misuse of patronage. But in spite of his questionable record, Arthur was nominated vice president—largely to appease the powerful party establishment. Thus when Arthur became president, there was every expectation that the freewheeling spoils system that had reigned in New York would be firmly established in Washington. But Chester Arthur fooled everyone—friends and enemies alike. Somehow the responsibilities of that high office seemed to transform this corrupt petty politician into a man sincerely dedicated to the good of the country. Courageously, he established his independence by vetoing a graft-laden rivers-and-harbors bill, by breaking with his former machine cronies, and by vigorously prosecuting members of his own party accused of defrauding the government. And, most important, instead of a spoils system, he supported a federal civil service based on competitive examinations and a nonpolitical merit system. By his courageous acts Arthur won over many who had first feared his coming to power, but he lost the support of the political bosses. Although he was not an inspiring leader of men, he earned the nation’s gratitude as the champion of the civil service system.
GROVER CLEVELAND (1837–1908)
The only man to ever serve two nonconsecutive terms as president, Cleveland performed the greatest comeback in American politics: he succeeded his successor. With a limited formal education, Cleveland managed to study law and establish himself as a scrupulously honest officeholder in Buffalo and western New York State. By 1882 his reputation as a dedicated and effective administrator won him the governorship of New York, a post in which he gained further renown by fighting the New York City Democratic machine in cooperation with a young assemblyman, Theodore Roosevelt. “We love him for the enemies he has made,” said the delegate nominating Cleveland for the presidency at the 1884 Democratic convention, for Grover the Crusader had not hesitated to stamp out corruption in his own party. To many of both parties he was the incarnation of clean, honest government. After the corruption, oppression, injustice, and outright tyranny of the Reconstruction era, it was time for a change: “Grover the Good” was elected in 1884, the first Democratic president in twenty-four years. In office Cleveland was a doer—and he continued to make enemies: he made civil service reform a reality by courageously placing a number of political jobs under the protection of civil service, and he stood firmly against a high protective tariff, moves that contributed to his defeat in 1888. While out of office Cleveland assumed the role of party spokesman and became an active critic of the Harrison administration. In 1892 he soundly defeated the man who had replaced him in the White House. But he returned to power in grim times with a depression cutting deep into the nation’s economy; strong measures were called for, and in forcing repeal of silver legislation and halting the Pullman labor strike, Cleveland demonstrated a firm hand. Throughout a difficult term he remained an honest, independent leader, a man who left office with the hard-won respect of members of both parties.
BENJAMIN HARRISON (1833–1901)
Grandson of a president and great-grandson of a signer of the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Harrison carried a distinguished American name into the White House, but most historians generally agree that he added very little distinction to it during his stay there. Harrison’s early years were filled with promise and success—admitted to the Indiana bar at the age of twenty, he became one of the state’s ablest lawyers, and he interrupted his law career only to become a brigadier general for the Union army in the War Between the States at the age of thirty-two. But the success that marked his early years was rather spotty when he entered politics after the war. Shortly after returning to Indiana he was defeated running for governor. After one term in the U.S. Senate he failed to be reelected in 1887. And his victory over Cleveland in the presidential election of 1888 was matched by a defeat at his hands when the two ran against each other in 1892. Although he performed bravely on the battlefield, Harrison was not a bold president. Strongly supported and influenced by the mammoth trusts and other business interests, he signed into law one of the highest protective tariffs the country has ever known; and even when a bill to curb the trusts—the Sherman Anti-Trust Act—managed to be passed, his administration did virtually nothing to enforce it. In spite of such concessions to big business, the economy grew worse. Harrison permitted the country’s gold reserves to be severely depleted by a questionable pension plan for war veterans. By the close of his administration the signs of depression had multiplied. As is almost always the case, what was good for the huge corporate trusts had not proved to be good for the nation. The cautious man who was afraid of the new electric lights in the White House had failed to convince the country that he could lead on to better times: once again the country turned to Cleveland.
WILLIAM MCKINLEY (1843–1901)
Although a kind, gentle man beloved by the American people, McKinley did not earn a place in history as a champion of the people. Instead, his administration was closely identified with monopolies, trusts, corporations, and special interests. At a time when the expanding West and the agrarian South were developing populist movements of growing political significance, the dignified Midwestern lawyer represented the bankers, mercantilists, and industrialists who formed the most powerful bloc in the Republican Party establishment. Both economically and politically, McKinley was a conservative; on the three burning issues of the day—the tariff, currency, and Cuba—he took a conservative position. The McKinley Tariff Bill, passed in 1890, was one of the highest protective tariffs in U.S. history. As president, McKinley supported the gold standard and for a time resisted those who wanted to stampede the United States into war with Spain to rescue an oppressed Cuba. McKinley had been elected on a platform supporting Cuban independence. American investments in sugar plantations and trade with Cuba were at stake, and the newspapers kept stories of Spanish atrocities in Cuba before the eyes of the public. The pressure for American intervention—after the sinking of the battle cruiser Maine in Havana harbor—finally moved McKinley to go to war. The remarkable victories of servicemen like Teddy Roosevelt on the field and Dewey on the seas brought Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines into American hands. Ironically, the conservative McKinley launched the nation as a global power. With McKinley’s reelection in 1900, big business seemed secure for four more years. But a series of accidents dramatically altered this serene picture. In the 1900 campaign the progressive governor of New York, Theodore Roosevelt, was put on the ticket as vice president by rival New York Republican leaders who hoped that post would be his political graveyard. But only six months after the inauguration McKinley was fatally shot by an anarchist at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo on September 14, 1901. The era of freewheeling big business died with McKinley, the third martyred president.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT (1858–1919)
Before his fiftieth birthday he had served as a New York state legislator, the undersecretary of the navy, police commissioner for the city of New York, U.S. civil service commissioner, the governor of the state of New York, the vice president under William McKinley, a colonel in the U.S. Army, and two terms as the president of the United States. In addition, he had run a cattle ranch in the Dakota Territories; served as a reporter and editor for several journals, newspapers, and magazines; and conducted scientific expeditions on four continents. He read at least five books every week of his life and wrote nearly fifty on an astonishing array of subjects—from history and biography to natural science and social criticism. He enjoyed hunting, boxing, and wrestling. He was an amateur taxidermist, botanist, ornithologist, and astronomer. He was a devoted family man who lovingly raised six children. And he enjoyed a life-long romance with his wife. During his long and varied career he was hailed by supporters and rivals alike as the greatest man of the age—perhaps one of the greatest of all ages. A reformer and fighter, he was the most colorful and the most controversial president since Lincoln, the most versatile since Jefferson. Born to wealth, Roosevelt was imbued with a strong sense of public service; in every position he held, he fought for improvement and reform. His was largely a moral crusade: he saw his chief enemy as non-Christian corruption and weakness, and he vigorously fought it wherever he found it—in business or in government. In the White House the many-sided personality of Roosevelt captured the American imagination. The youngest man to become president, this dynamic reformer who combined a Harvard accent with the toughness of a Dakota cowboy was a totally new kind of president. Fighting the “malefactors of great wealth,” Roosevelt struck out against the mammoth trusts that appeared to be outside of government regulation. The railroads, the food and drug industries, and enterprises using the natural wealth of the public lands all were subjected to some form of regulation, for the protection of the public interest. Many conservation practices began with Roosevelt. A reformer at home, he was an avowed expansionist abroad. He supported the Spanish War and led his “Rough Riders” to fame; when president, he acquired the Canal Zone from Panama and sent U.S. battleships on a world cruise—to show off America’s growing strength. Perhaps most notable were Roosevelt’s efforts to end the Russo-Japanese War, an achievement that won him the Nobel Peace Prize. But this peacemaker, soldier, explorer, hunter, scientist, writer, and progressive statesman left many a mark upon history: to government he brought the fresh winds of reform, and the courage, vigor, and tenacity to make his reforms an enduring part of the American scene.
WILLIAM H. TAFT (1857–1930)
Most Americans were saddened—though the Republican establishment was relieved—when Roosevelt announced he would not seek a third term. His successor was the country’s largest president, a jovial, warmhearted mountain of a man with a brilliant legal mind—an excellent administrator but a poor politician. He served with distinction as the first governor of the Philippines and as Roosevelt’s secretary of war, positions in which his amiable nature served to advantage. But it was Taft’s great misfortune to succeed such a dazzling political figure as Roosevelt in the presidency and attempt to carry out his many new policies. Probably no successor could have pleased Roosevelt, but the fall from grace of the devoted friend Roosevelt had practically placed in the White House is one of the most tragic affairs in the history of the presidency. Near the end of Taft’s administration, when it was clear that he had not completely supported Roosevelt’s Square Deal and had made concessions to the conservatives, Roosevelt fiercely attacked him in speeches and articles. In the 1912 election Roosevelt won every primary and was poised to sweep back into office when the Republican establishment stripped the credentials of hundreds of delegates and denied the great man the opportunity. They renominated the compliant Taft instead. Roosevelt helped to organize the Progressive Party and nearly won the day anyway. With less than a month to go in the campaign, however, a nearly successful assassination took Roosevelt out of the race and the Democratic opponent, Woodrow Wilson, was able to barely eke out a win. Taft and the bosses of the Republican Party establishment were humiliated. In spite of that, Taft continued to serve his country. After teaching law at Yale he was appointed by President Harding to the post that he had long sought, one that probably meant more to him than the presidency: in 1921 he became chief justice of the Supreme Court, the only man ever to hold both offices.
WOODROW WILSON (1856–1924)
Although Wilson held only one political office before he became president, his years as a professor of history provided him with a detailed knowledge of political processes; as president of Princeton University and governor of New Jersey he proved himself an able, dedicated administrator, unafraid to institute reforms. Thus Wilson’s philosophy, knowledge, and ability uniquely equipped him for the nation’s highest office. It was ironic then that his policies were, for the most part, dictated by a secretive band of political cronies led by a man named Colonel House.
The administration’s misguided conspiratorial energies were first directed toward domestic issues: a lower tariff, stronger antitrust measures, a child-labor law, the first income-tax law, and the Federal Reserve Act—the last greatly centralizing the economy and the control of money through the establishment of a semiprivate national bank. But the country that had emerged as a world power under McKinley and Roosevelt could not long ignore the conflict in Europe. Wilson kept the country out of war during his first term, but America’s sympathy with the Allies made his ostensible neutrality difficult to maintain. “To make the world safe for democracy,” Wilson finally led the nation into war in 1917. In directing the war effort Wilson cooperated with a Congress that gave him vast emergency powers. While mobilizing the industrial as well as the military forces of the nation, he labored over plans for peace—his great hope was for a kind of multinational government called the League of Nations. But his dedication to the noble ideal of the League’s Covenant led to a bitter conflict with Congress when the Covenant, already signed by the European powers, was before them for approval. When Congress rejected it, he suffered his greatest defeat. During the last several months of his administration, he was deathly ill and his cronies practically ran what they could of the government as their personal fiefdom.
WARREN G. HARDING (1865–1923)
Promising a nation weary of war and weary of big-government social experiments “a return to normalcy,” the good-natured, undistinguished senator from Ohio was swept into office in 1920. Harding, the dark-horse Republican candidate, received over seven million votes more than the Democrat James Cox, who ran on Wilson’s dismal record. The genial Harding had run on Theodore Roosevelt’s platform pledging “not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy.” The editor of a small-town newspaper, Harding was an easygoing politician who seemed to be everybody’s friend. In the eyes of his clever manager Harry Daugherty, Harding had one great asset: he looked like a president. Handsome, with dignified bearing and easy charm, Harding was an impressive figure, and it was as a figurehead, as ceremonial chief of state, that he best filled the office of president. He was the first “packaged” president—though certainly not the last. Neither a leader nor a man of ideas, he seemed to represent the mood and temper of the McKinley administration rather than the two decades of progressive government that had followed; high protective tariffs were established, and both the regulation and taxation of business were reduced. Once again the government seemed to be at the service of the privileged few. Ironically, with the return to “normalcy” came rumors of corruption in high places—at the cabinet level. Daugherty, who had become attorney general, was later discovered to have freely sold his influence, and Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall was eventually convicted for accepting $100,000 from private oil interests. But the public—as well as the president himself—knew nothing of these scandals in the summer of 1923 when Harding took a trip to Alaska. Harding learned the details on his return trip. He died under very suspicious conditions in San Francisco only a few days later. The country mourned the passing of the warmhearted man who had symbolized the tranquil, prewar America, perhaps sensing that such “normalcy” was as irrevocably lost as was their president.
CALVIN COOLIDGE (1872–1933)
The sixth vice president to reach the White House through the death of a president, Coolidge differed markedly from the man he succeeded. Harding was easygoing and chatty, Coolidge shy and reserved. Harding was an inexperienced executive, Coolidge was a proven administrator. Harding was a man ruled by few defined principles, Coolidge was a taciturn Yankee with a passion for economy and efficiency. But both believed in less rather than more government; both favored business. “The business of America is business,” said Coolidge, in a statement as long as almost any he made. Somehow the pious, businesslike Coolidge was never associated with the scandals of Harding’s administration, and he managed to establish his own tenure as thoroughly honest and efficient. In every position he held—from mayor of Northampton, Massachusetts, to vice president—he demonstrated what he meant by efficient government by working long hours himself. “We need more of the office desk and less of the show window in politics.” The times were good, business prospered, the size and cost of government was cut drastically, and the industrious New Englander in the White House gained public favor. In 1924 the country showed its approval by electing him for another term. In the years that followed he continued to effect economies in government. In August 1927, with characteristic brevity, he announced, “I do not choose to run for President in 1928.” Though by now enormously popular, no one could change his mind. The man who had worked to maintain stability was determined to leave the White House while the country was enjoying stable and prosperous times.
HERBERT HOOVER (1874–1964)
He was one of those men—like both of the Adamses, Jefferson, and Madison—whose greatest contribution to the nation was not made in the White House. For Hoover, an extraordinarily successful mining engineer and administrator, the presidency was a time of trial—he was elected on a prosperity platform during the 1928 boom, but the stock market crash and the grinding depression that followed proved to be harsh contradictions to his innate optimism. Orphaned at nine, Hoover learned the Quaker virtues and rewards of hard work at an early age. He put himself through the first class at Stanford and became a phenomenal success as a mining engineer before he was thirty. Known and respected in international mining circles, he gained worldwide fame when he directed emergency relief activities in Europe during the First World War. By the end of that terrible conflict he held a unique place in the eyes of the world as a dedicated administrator in the service of the cause of humanity. Success continued to be Hoover’s lot when he served as secretary of commerce in the Harding and Coolidge cabinets, where he reorganized and expanded the Commerce Department. Running against the popular governor of New York, Alfred E. Smith, in 1928, Hoover was again successful, gaining more popular votes than any previous candidate. But when Hoover took office, vast forces were at work: the stock market collapsed, the booming industrial complex of the United States broke down, and no individual—not even Hoover with all the powers of the presidency—could cope with the disaster. He instituted measures to stimulate business with government aid, but the depression continued throughout his years in office. He was overwhelmingly defeated running for reelection in 1932.
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT (1882–1945)
Two figures dominated the American political scene in the twentieth century. The first was Theodore Roosevelt. The second, remarkably, was his young cousin, Franklin. Both men possessed great personal charisma, keen political instincts, penetrating social consciences, seemingly boundless energy, and brilliantly diverse intellects. Both of them left a lasting impress upon the world in which we live. But that is where the similarity between the two ends. In every other way, they could not have been more different. Franklin was the patriarch of the Hyde Park side of the family. A Harvard-educated lawyer, he began his political career as a Democratic party reformer in the New York State Senate. His vigorous campaign on behalf of Wilson—against his famous cousin—during the 1912 presidential election earned him an appointment as assistant secretary of the navy. In 1920 he was the vice presidential running mate on the losing Democratic ticket. Eight years later, after a crippling bout with polio, he was elected to the first of two terms as New York’s governor. Finally, in 1932 he ran for the presidency against the Depression-plagued Herbert Hoover and won overwhelmingly. During his record four terms he directed the ambitious transformation of American government, created the modern system of social welfare, guided the nation through World War II, and laid the foundations for the United Nations. Theodore Roosevelt was a conservative social reformer who wanted to firmly and faithfully reestablish the “Old World Order.” Franklin, on the other hand, was a liberal social revolutionary who wanted to boldly and unashamedly usher in the “New World Order.” Theodore’s motto was “speak softly and carry a big stick.” Franklin’s motto was “Good neighbors live in solidarity.” Both men understood the very critical notion that ideas have consequences. As a result, the twentieth century in America has largely been the tale of two households—of the Roosevelts of Sagamore Hill and of the Roosevelts of Hyde Park. In his tenure in office, Franklin introduced far-reaching social and economic changes in the form and function of government to stimulate the economy and relieve the distress of millions of unemployed. In thus extending the influence of the federal government farther than ever before into the social and economic life of the country, he transformed the republic from limited representationalism to bureaucratic interventionism. The only president to serve more than two terms, Roosevelt was reelected in 1936, 1940, and 1944. Domestic problems dominated his first term, but by the middle of the second, he began to recognize the aggressiveness of the Axis powers as a serious threat to world peace. Roosevelt offered American aid to the Allied Powers and, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, he directed the greatest total war effort—military and civilian—in all history. Supposedly to make America “the arsenal of democracy” the government took on war powers to regulate every aspect of industrial production and civilian consumption—thus, America was ruled with much of the same centralized control as the rest of the nations of the earth during the difficult days of Second World War. Though already ailing, Roosevelt met with Churchill and Stalin at Teheran in 1943 to plan strategy, and in 1945 at Yalta to plan for peace. Roosevelt was in Warm Springs, Georgia, preparing a speech for the San Francisco United Nations Conference when he died suddenly.
HARRY S. TRUMAN (1884–1972)
In succeeding to the office that Roosevelt held through twelve years of depression, world tension, and war, Truman faced the greatest challenge ever to confront an American vice president. Thrust without warning into the role of world leader, he was immediately burdened with two almost overwhelming tasks—leading the nation to final victory in the war and planning a sound world peace. Truman emerged from the shadow of his predecessor, dealt courageously with these problems, and in 1948 established himself as president in his own right when he upset all predictions by defeating Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York. As a young man Truman had done farming, served in World War I as an artillery captain, and been partner in a haberdashery; in 1929 he entered politics. After studying law and serving as county judge, he was elected to the Senate in 1934. During the Second World War the Truman Committee became known for its careful investigation of defense spending; Harry Truman won national prominence and, in 1944, the vice presidential nomination. Truman’s administration was filled with momentous events: in the first year he met with Churchill and Stalin at Potsdam, he made the historic decision to use the atomic bomb, Germany and Japan surrendered, and America accepted the United Nations’ Charter. In the following years came the Marshall Plan—with aid for Europe, aid and technical assistance for underdeveloped countries, the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and in 1950 the Korean War—the most dramatic step the nation had taken to try to contain Communism. Sending troops to Korea to fight a “limited” war and deciding to use the atomic bomb represented totally new kinds of decisions for a president; in making them, the man who said “The buck stops here” forced the country to face with the two greatest problems of the day—nuclear power and the threat of Communism.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER (1890–1969)
He was the popular hero of the Second World War and thus was drafted by the Republican Party to run for president in 1952. In that year the genial “Ike,” whose apparent sincerity and good will captured the country, took his place with other American military heroes who have been elevated to the presidency. Like Zachary Taylor and Ulysses Grant, Eisenhower was a professional soldier who had never held a political office. In the army Eisenhower distinguished himself in planning and staff work; during the 1930s he served as special assistant to General Douglas MacArthur, and assisted him when he became military adviser to the Philippines. During the Second World War, Eisenhower commanded the North African invasion and later became famous as the man who devised the D-day invasion and then welded the armies of the allied nations into a mighty force that eventually won the war against the Nazis. Elected on a platform of peace, Eisenhower used the powers of the presidency to reduce world tension: in his first year in office he brought the Korean War to an end, and after both American and Russian scientists developed H-bombs, he proposed an “open-skies” plan for disarmament, as well as plans for an international atom pool for peaceful use. Despite such efforts, the problem of containing Communism continued to be a major concern throughout his administration: the Communists took North Vietnam in 1954, and in 1956 Russian troops reconquered a fighting Hungary that had struggled heroically to win its brief moment of freedom. The enormous popularity that carried Eisenhower into the White House remained undiminished in 1956, when he again defeated Adlai Stevenson of Illinois. During his second term, racial segregation became a consuming domestic issue, one that reached a climax in September 1957, when he sent troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, to ensure safety to black school children. With the Communist threat continuing to dominate the world scene, Eisenhower made a dramatic world tour for peace. In 1961, when he retired to his Gettysburg farm, the nation had reached a state of unparalleled prosperity.
JOHN F. KENNEDY (1917–1963)
The youngest man ever elected president—and the youngest to die in office—Kennedy defeated Vice President Richard Nixon in the first presidential election that featured candidates in formal television debates before millions of voters across the nation. A naval hero during the Second World War, he was the first Catholic to be elected president. Kennedy was born into a family with a political history—both his grandfathers were active in politics, and his father served as the nation’s ambassador to Great Britain. But Kennedy first won acclaim as an author when his Harvard honors thesis, published as Why England Slept, became a bestseller. In the war he was decorated for saving his PT-boat crew when a Japanese destroyer cut his boat in two. In 1946 he entered politics and was elected to Congress from Massachusetts. Six years later he became a senator. Publication of Kennedy’s book Profiles in Courage—which won the Pulitzer Prize despite the fact that it was actually ghostwritten—coincided with his emergence on the national political scene. In 1956 he narrowly missed the Democratic nomination for vice president; by 1960 he was a leading contender for the presidency. He defeated Nixon in one of the closest elections in the nation’s history—lleader during Presidentess than one vote per precinct separated them. On taking office, Kennedy delivered a stirring inaugural address. Written by the same ghosts who had garnered his literary fame, the address appealed to all peoples for restraint and cooperation in building a safe and free world in the age of nuclear weapons. In his first year he introduced a number of new social welfare programs, weathered the Bay of Pigs disaster, and met Communist challenges throughout the world. His space program bore fruit in 1962 when astronaut John Glenn orbited the earth. By challenging the Communist buildup in Cuba, Kennedy effected the first significant Russian retreat of the Cold War. In 1963 he reached an agreement with Russia to limit nuclear tests and offered controversial civil rights and tax bills to Congress. Before Congress acted, on November 22, while President Kennedy was in Dallas, Texas, on a speaking tour with his wife, he was assassinated by a sniper—a tragedy that shocked the world.
LYNDON B. JOHNSON (1908–1973)
He was the eighth vice president to take the place of a president who died in office, and the fourth to be elected to a new term. One of the most experienced national political figures ever elected vice president, he was sworn into office in Dallas, shortly after President Kennedy was assassinated. Like his predecessor, Johnson was born into a family with a political heritage—his father and grandfather were both in politics. Indeed, when he was born, his grandfather predicted he would be a U.S. senator. By the time he was forty, Johnson had achieved what his grandfather had predicted—although the manipulative means by which he did remained a scandal throughout his career. In the Senate his abilities to lead and persuade made themselves felt; as Senate majority leader during President Eisenhower’s administrations, Johnson established himself as a skillful and commanding political leader. He provided the Republican president bipartisan support for such critical legislation as the civil rights bill that was passed in 1957, the first civil rights legislation in over eighty years. In 1960 Johnson surprised many political friends when he ran as vice president on the Kennedy ticket. After becoming president, he moved firmly to stabilize the government and to support Kennedy programs at home and abroad. In November 1964, Johnson won a landslide election that pitted his own New Deal liberalism against Senator Barry Goldwater’s conservatism. In 1965 he sent Congress his programs to build “The Great Society.” One of the most productive in congressional history, that session turned into law bills on Medicare, school and college aid, voting rights, and antipoverty measures. During 1965 Johnson also increased the nation’s commitment in Vietnam and, in December, directed the first air raid against North Vietnam. The bombing and the continued increases of troops in Vietnam led to large, occasionally violent demonstrations. The country was also torn by riots in predominantly African American sections of major cities. On March 31, 1968, President Johnson stunned the nation by announcing he would not run for reelection. In October he announced a bombing halt that led to more serious peace talks in Paris. The closing days of his administration saw a flawless Apollo flight to the moon and indications from the Paris talks of improved prospects for peace in Vietnam.
RICHARD M. NIXON (1913–1994)
The first president to resign from office, Nixon removed himself from the presidency on August 9, 1974, after it became clear that he could not survive the impeachment proceedings then in progress. One month later he was granted an unqualified pardon by his successor. It was an ignominious end to a rather spectacular political career. He first won national attention in 1948 when, as a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee, he forced the confrontation that led to the perjury conviction of Alger Hiss. As vice president in 1959, he conducted the famous “kitchen debate” with the Russian dictator Khrushchev in Moscow. He was defeated for the presidency by Kennedy in 1960 but after a seven-year absence, he returned to national office in 1968 when he defeated Vice President Hubert Humphrey to finally attain that office. During his first term, an American became the first man to walk on the moon, opposition to U.S. participation in Vietnam took the form of mass demonstrations across the nation, and the Soviet Union entered into strategic arms limitations talks. Most significant were Nixon’s efforts to resolve international problems and promote world peace—he was a brilliant foreign policy expert. In February 1972 he became the first president ever to visit Communist China. His talks with Premier Chou En-lai and Chairman Mao Tse-tung led to a historic agreement pledging peaceful coexistence. In May 1972 Nixon and Chairman Brezhnev of the Soviet Union signed a treaty that reduced anti-ballistic missile deployment and limited the number of offensive strategic weapons—the first significant action to limit the nuclear arms race. But, on June 17, 1972, four men were arrested for breaking into the Democratic National Headquarters in the Watergate. Nixon and his aides denied involvement, and they succeeded in convincing the nation, so that the incident was not a significant issue in the 1972 election, which Nixon easily won. In 1973 he began withdrawing all troops from Vietnam. During the next eighteen months, the Senate Watergate hearings, the revelation of the White House tapes, the trials of over twenty Nixon aides, and, finally, the Supreme Court’s 8–0 decision forcing Nixon to surrender crucial tapes to the special prosecutor, convinced him that he faced impeachment if he did not resign.
GERALD R. FORD (1913–2006)
America’s first unelected president, Ford assumed the office of president August 9, 1974, when President Nixon resigned. Eight months before, Ford had become the first appointed vice president. He was the first to assume both positions under the provisions of the Constitution’s Amendment XXV. An exceptional football player at the University of Michigan, Ford coached football at Yale while studying law there. In the Second World War he served as a naval officer in the Pacific. In 1948 he won a seat in Congress and soon gained a reputation for his ability to deal with the complexities of defense budgets. Over the next two decades he built a record that was moderate to conservative. During those years he declined to run for both the governorship and the Senate, preferring to remain in the House. In 1960 he won the position of GOP conference chairman. Two years later he was elected minority leader. Ford began his presidency with immense popular support. His sudden pardon of Nixon, though, brought sharp criticism. On taking office, he stated he would not be a candidate in 1976, but in July 1975 he reversed himself and announced he would run. That year he signed the Helsinki accords with the Soviets and thirty other nations and met with Chinese leaders in Peking, seeking to maintain stable, if limited, relations. By early 1976 it was clear that Ford had succeeded in bringing the country out of the recession, and his “peace and prosperity” campaign brought him early primary victories. But although he presided over a glorious Bicentennial Fourth of July and the economic recovery continued, he narrowly defeated Reagan for the party’s nomination. Despite the fact that the nation’s economic recovery slowed during the campaign and Democratic candidate Carter dominated the first presidential television debates since 1960, Ford came from behind to make a very close race of the election. Ford was the first incumbent since Herbert Hoover to lose a presidential election.
JAMES E. CARTER (1924–)
In only the second presidential election involving nationally televised debates, Carter came from comparative obscurity to capture the Democratic nomination and the presidency, the first man from the Deep South elected president since before the War Between the States. As a young naval officer, he served in the nuclear submarine program under Admiral Hyman Rickover. After his father died, Carter resigned from the navy and returned to Georgia to operate the family farm. His father had served in the Georgia senate, and Carter’s first public service was on the local school board. In 1967, as a little-known candidate, he defeated an experienced state senator, winning a disputed election in which his opponent used illegal tactics. In 1966 Carter ran for the Democratic nomination for governor, but lost to Lester Maddox; in 1970 he was elected. Carter’s presidency was marked by a continuing commitment to human rights, a quest for Arab-Israeli peace, and at the end, an interminable hostage crisis. In 1977 Carter proposed a comprehensive energy program—calling the problem “the moral equivalent of war,” created a new Energy Department, and signed the controversial treaties which relinquished control of the Panama Canal. In 1978 Carter helped bring Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Menachen Begin to agree on the historic Camp David Accords, establishing a “framework for peace” in the Middle East. In 1979 he established diplomatic relations with Communist China and ended relations with Taiwan. That year world oil prices more than doubled and inflation soared to double digits. The Iranian seizure of Americans at the embassy in Tehran in November 1979 created a crisis that dominated the nation’s concerns until they were released almost a year and a half later. To protest the Soviets’ invasion of Afghanistan, Carter instituted a grain and trade embargo and enforced a boycott of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. Though he proclaimed himself a “born again” Christian, he was a committed supporter of abortion on demand, radical feminism, and homosexual advocacy. Carter barely survived the challenge of Senator Edward Kennedy for his party’s nomination, but in the election he was roundly defeated by Republican Ronald Reagan.
RONALD W. REAGAN (1911–2004)
Twice winning landslide elections—by the greatest electoral margin since Franklin Roosevelt defeated Alfred Landon in 1936—Reagan ushered in a new era of conservatism and traditionalism after the long tenure of liberals in the highest office in the land. A comparative latecomer to politics, Reagan achieved national recognition as a leading man in more than four dozen Hollywood movies and as a network television host. He served six terms as president of the Screen Actors Guild and two terms as president of the Motion Picture Industry Council. He emerged suddenly on the national political scene in 1964 when he delivered a rousing speech on television supporting presidential candidate Barry Goldwater. Two years later he was elected governor of California. Reagan’s victory over incumbent Jimmy Carter in 1980 represented a profound political shift toward conservatism across the country. In Washington, on March 30, 1981, President Reagan was shot and wounded in an assassination attempt. After successful surgery he was able to continue to function as president. That year he won congressional approval of a tax cut and appointed the first woman—Sandra O’Connor—to the Supreme Court. After a recession in 1982, the U.S. economy began a remarkably strong recovery that endured to the end of his second term. After his landslide victory in 1984—won in large part because he had mobilized the emerging Religious Right—he continued to set a conservative pace, including a tax-reform bill and a strong defense system. His strong opposition to terrorism and Communism—including the bombing of Libya, the liberation of Grenada, and tough economic pressures on the Soviet bloc—won general approval at home and criticism abroad. His meetings with the new leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, in 1985 and 1988 led to historic agreements on the banning of intermediate range nuclear missiles. The American economy continued to expand—but the federal government’s budget deficit soared to unprecedented heights. Reagan left office the most popular president since Theodore Roosevelt.
GEORGE H. W. BUSH (1924–)
The first incumbent vice president since Martin Van Buren to be elected president, Bush defeated Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis, governor of Massachusetts, by a landslide—by essentially riding on President Reagan’s coattails and by reinforcing his party’s ties to the Religious Right. Though his election provided continuity to the conservative “Reagan Revolution,” the Democratic Party remained securely in control of Congress. Bush came to the presidency with extensive experience in government and politics, having served in Congress; in the military, diplomatic, and intelligence arms of the executive branch; and as chairman of the Republican National Committee, before becoming vice president. His father, Prescott Bush, was U.S. senator from Connecticut from 1952 to 1962. In 1942, at age eighteen, Bush volunteered for service as a naval pilot, becoming the youngest in the navy. He flew fifty-eight combat missions in the Pacific during the Second World War. He was shot down but was later rescued by an American submarine. After the war he took his degree at Yale in three years—and captained the baseball team. He first entered politics in 1962. Working in Houston in the oil business, he was elected chairman of the Harris County Republican Party. Two years later he ran an unsuccessful campaign for the Senate. In 1968, while serving his first term in Congress, he faced a crisis when he voted for an open-housing bill which many of his white constituents opposed. His speech in Houston defending his vote won him support, and he was reelected. However, in running for the Senate in 1970, he lost to Democrat Lloyd Bentsen. Over the next decade Bush represented the United States at the United Nations and in China, and served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He campaigned for the presidency in 1980 but settled for vice president under Ronald Reagan. Though he had won office as the heir to the Reagan revolution, he quietly betrayed the basic principles of that grassroots conservative groundswell. He reluctantly supported major tax increases, did little to effectively deal with core moral issues, and allowed the budget deficit to continue to soar. He gained immense popularity between 1989 and 1991 when the old Soviet bloc began to fall apart and Communism lost power. That popularity was enhanced even more when the Gulf War against Iraq’s incursions in Kuwait proved overwhelmingly successful. But his weak domestic policy and his unwillingness to maintain the core support of conservatives and the religious right, cost him the 1992 election.
WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON (1946–)
Attaining the highest office in the land despite losing more than 57 percent of the electoral vote, Clinton’s tenure in the White House got off to a rockier start than any other president’s since the time of the War Between the States. Taking a proactive liberal stance despite his campaign image as a moderate—on his first day in office he institutionalized an unpopular pro-abortion policy and a still more unpopular policy regarding homosexual practice—he quickly plunged into the heated “culture war” debates that were already raging throughout the nation. Nevertheless, he was able to overcome the difficulties that attended these and numerous other minor scandals and political blunders to his mark as a thoroughly modern telegenic president. His rise to power was meteoric—evidence of his extraordinary political instincts. Rising from poverty and a broken home, he became an excellent student and a Rhodes scholar. In 1977, just five years out of school, he was elected attorney general of Arkansas. Two years later he was elected governor of the state. His aggressive idealistic style proved to be a bit much for the conservative state, and he was defeated in 1981 during his reelection bid. During the next two years he reinvented himself and with his new image was able to convince the electorate that he had changed. He won back the governorship—and held it for four more terms. Then, overcoming another spate of lurid rumors and minor scandal, he won the Democratic nomination in 1992. The general election later that year was marked by a good deal of apathy, malaise, and a massive defection from the two major parties—more than twenty-one million votes went to third-party candidates. Clinton’s lack of an electoral mandate was highlighted by the defeat of his health care reform plan and his setback in the 1994 elections when his party lost its majority tenure in both the House and the Senate for the first time in a half century. Nevertheless, exploiting the Republicans’ lack of decisive leadership, his extraordinary political gifts were enough to enable him to win reelection in 1996 and maintain a measure of popular admiration amidst widespread economic prosperity. But then scandal struck again. Caught in a sexual affair with a young White House intern, Clinton lied to the American people, to Congress, and even to a grand jury. The House of Representatives subsequently impeached him, and though the Senate failed to win a conviction on the charges, the matter forever tainted his presidency. The election that followed hinged largely on the realization among voters that character does indeed matter—perhaps more than almost anything else.
GEORGE W. BUSH (1946–)
There have been a number of hotly contested elections throughout the history of the American republic when the balloting of the Electoral College and the popular voting seemed to be at variance—the elections of 1800, 1824, 1876, and 1888. But the election of 2000 was among the most divisive and decisive. Despite the fact that George W. Bush, the former Republican governor of Texas, claimed victory in more than three-fourths of the nation, his opponent, Democratic Vice President Al Gore, won a slight plurality of the popular vote. The decision was left to the Electoral College—but even that was contested by a vote-counting controversy in the state of Florida. Gore refused to concede and the courts eventually settled the election. Born on July 6, 1946, in New Haven, Connecticut, Bush grew up in Midland and Houston, Texas, the scion of a prominent political family. His grandfather, Prescott Bush, was a senator from Connecticut, and his father was a congressman, diplomat, vice president, and later president. The younger Bush received a bachelor’s degree from Yale University in 1968 and then served as an F–102 fighter pilot in the Texas Air National Guard. He received a master of business administration from Harvard Business School in 1975. After graduating, he moved back to Midland and began a career in the oil business. After working on his father’s campaigns, he and a group of partners purchased the Texas Rangers baseball franchise where he oversaw team operations until he was elected governor in 1994. Though not known as a particularly articulate speaker, his management skills, team-building prowess, and political instincts quickly thrust him into the national limelight. After his election as president, he was generally expected to serve under the cloud of the contested victory. But the terrorist attacks on New York, Washington, and over the skies of Pennsylvania seemed to suddenly change both Bush and the nation. He went from being a man who could not read a teleprompter to one who did not need to while the nation rallied behind him and his quest to “rid the world of terrorism.” He asserted, “in our grief and anger we have found our mission and our moment.” Though the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were militarily successful, maintaining the peace in those strife-ridden lands proved to be a much more difficult matter. Bush found his run for reelection mired in questions regarding the legitimacy of the wars and the purposes for America’s dominating presence on the world stage. Though he won reelection in 2004, his second term was marked by toxic partisanship and fierce polarization. A collapse of the mortgage industry led to a catastrophic downturn in the economy—only exasperating a bitter national divide. His hallmark remained his call upon all Americans to be “citizens, not spectators; citizens, not subjects; responsible citizens building communities of service and a Nation of character.”
BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA II (1961–)
Riding a wave of euphoric hope, Obama won the 2008 election to become the first African American president. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, his parents separated at about the time of his birth and his father eventually returned to his home country, Kenya. From the ages of three to ten, Obama lived in Indonesia with his mother and her second husband. In 1971 he returned to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents. He attended a private college preparatory school. After graduating from Columbia University and Harvard Law School, he worked as a community organizer and a civil rights attorney in Chicago. He taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. His ideological mentors, men like Saul Alinski and Jeremiah Wright, inspired him to work to recover the legacy of ideological liberalism, the likes of which had not seen political success since the days of the New Deal. He served three terms representing the 13th District in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004, and ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000. In 2004 Obama received widespread media attention during his campaign for the U.S. Senate against the fiery, conservative Republican Alan Keyes, but it was his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July of that year that catapulted him onto the national stage. He won the Democratic nomination in 2008, besting Hillary Clinton, and then defeated Republican nominee John McCain in a bitterly divided race. Just weeks after his inauguration, before he had the chance to enact any of his policies or programs, he was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. The hope that the new administration would lead the nation away from the divisiveness that had so marred the previous few years was only too quickly disappointed. His domestic policies, including immigration reform, health-care reform, and educational reform, were all eventually overshadowed by foreign policy crises. Though he won reelection in 2012, he was hampered throughout his second term by a Republican opposition maintaining majorities in both the House and the Senate. Nevertheless, his presidency became a great symbol for so many Americans, long disenfranchised, that the nation’s great experiment in liberty still affords extraordinary opportunity to nearly anyone and everyone.