One hundred years ago this year a great American was born. Today we commemorate his birth and his career of courage and statesmanship. But perhaps even more noteworthy is the fact that exactly seventy-two years ago this very weekend that man arrived in Dickinson for the first time. The Dickinson Press, on page 3 of the following Saturday's edition, referred to him as "Theodore Roosevelt, the New York political reformer and Dakota cowboy." It described how young Mr. Roosevelt had travelled more than two hundred miles to capture two horse thieves who had stolen his rowboat. Capturing them about sixty miles north of here, after a two-week trip down the little Missouri, he brought them in to Dickinson for trial. (While in Dickinson, incidentally, young Roosevelt was treated by Dr. Stickney, a pioneer physician after whom a dormitory on this campus is named.)
I think it is important that on this 72nd anniversary of that event we pause to pay tribute to the moral and physical courage of Theodore Roosevelt – then demonstrated at the age of 28. When his boat was stolen, Theodore Roosevelt was determined to go after the thieves. When he realized it would require another boat and none was available, he decided to build one. When it became apparent that a long hard journey of more than two weeks and 200 miles was involved, he did not turn back. And perhaps most significant of all, when he apprehended the thieves 60 miles away from the nearest jail and courthouse, he did not reclaim his boat and set them free – neither did he execute them on the spot.
This, it turns out, is what they had expected – this is what the circumstances would have permitted him to do without fear of punishment – and this is what the townspeople of Dickinson expressed astonishment that he had not done. "But I didn't come out here to kill anybody," Roosevelt had replied. "All I wanted to do was to defend myself and my property. There wasn't any one around to defend them for me, so I had to do it myself." And, in the words of Herman Hagedorn in his account of Roosevelt's experience, "there the matter rested. But the people (of Dakota) began to see a little more clearly than they had ever seen before the meaning of government by law."
The example of Theodore Roosevelt was an important lesson in the Badlands. For it was at that time that the area was passing out of a state of unorganized lawlessness into a condition resembling organized government. There was understandable reluctance in those days to embrace such a move. Government was looked upon by many citizens of the unbridled West as an evil – politicians were looked upon as worthless – and legislative bodies were looked upon with contempt.
But Theodore Roosevelt, the so-called New York reformer, was a different kind of politician who believed in a better kind of government – a government with moral and spiritual foundations. It was during this very year that he was working on his biography of Thomas Hart Benton, the bold and blustering frontier Senator from Missouri. He did not only admire Benton for his leadership in the development of the west – for his intimate association with cowboys, ranchers, Indian scouts, and prospectors. He admired Benton as a man of great political integrity – as one of the few Senators from a slave state who could successfully defy John C. Calhoun and his policies – as the man who told the Missouri Legislature that he would not carry out its pro-slavery instructions, even if it cost him his seat.
I have tried to write something of the courage of Thomas Hart Benton in my own book. He told a lobbyist seeking a ship subsidy that the only condition upon which he would lift a finger to help was "when the vessels are finished they will be used to take all such damned rascals as you, sir, out of the country." He told the 1844 Democratic National Convention, as it prepared to abandon Van Buren, that he would "see the Democratic party sink 50 fathoms deep into the middle of hell fire before I will give one inch with Mr. Van Buren". He told a Missouri campaign audience that three of his enemies, who had proposed the pro-slavery resolutions which he called "fungus cancers", were sitting quietly in their midst "as demure as three prostitutes at a christening." He told those who asked him to get together with his opponents that he would "sooner sit in council with the six thousand dead who had died of cholera in St. Louis than go into convention with such a gang of scamps".
This is the kind of dauntless, rugged, determined politician Theodore Roosevelt admired, as he rode and wrote in the Dakota territory. This was the kind of government in which he believed – a government with moral and spiritual foundations – a government with men dedicated to a better life and a better nation.
And thus it was not surprising that when Dickinson decided to hold its first celebration of Independence Day the following year, the honorable Theodore Roosevelt was invited to be the orator of the day. Looking very young and embarrassed, on a platform in the public square, Roosevelt talked simply, directly, earnestly, and emphatically. And he talked about the moral challenge of free government. "We have rights," he told the people of Dickinson and those who had gathered for miles around;
"but we (also) have correlative duties; none can escape them.
"In our body politic, each man is himself a constituent portion of the sovereign… If you fail to work in public life, as well as in private, for honesty and uprightness and virtue… you are making less valuable the birthright of your children. The duties of American citizenship are very solemn as well as very precious… (for) it is not what we have that will make us a great nation; it is the way in which we use it.
"I do not undervalue for a moment (Roosevelt went on), our material prosperity; like all Americans I like big things; big prairies, big forests and mountains, big wheat fields, railroads – and herds of cattle too – big factories, steam boats, and everything else. But we must keep steadily in mind that no people were ever yet benefitted by riches if their prosperity corrupted their virtue… Each one must do his part to show that the nation is worthy of its good fortune. Here we are not ruled over by others… we rule ourselves. We have the responsibilities of sovereigns, not of subjects… and on this day of all others we ought soberly to realize the weight of the responsibility that rests upon us."
These words of Theodore Roosevelt, spoken here in Dickinson on the fourth of July some three generations ago, are of value and importance to us today. For there is a growing attitude in this country which ignores the moral and spiritual foundations of democratic government – which shrugs off the responsibilities of participation in public affairs – which casts disdain upon our politicians and political processes. This attitude is not new – it has been with us since Teddy Roosevelt's time.
Indeed, Roosevelt himself was not always laudatory in his descriptions of other politicians – particularly the Congress with which he tangled on more than one occasion. At the close of one such battle, he declared: "I do not much admire the Senate, because it is such a helpless body when efficient work for good is to be done." On another occasion, when it blocked his Santo Domingo Treaty, he told the Senate that it was "wholly incompetent." He took special delight in his victories over what he called "the friends of the special interest in the Senate." He boasted proudly that he "took the canal zone, and let Congress debate – and while the debate goes on, the canal does also." And in his autobiography, he wrote that in his second term he "achieved results only by appealing over the heads of the Senate and House leaders to the people, who were the masters of us both."
Some of these may seem like harsh sentiments. But this was, after all, a time when it was considered a great joke when the humorist Artemus Ward declared: "I am not a politician, and my other habits are good also." This was the time when Finley Peter Dunne's Mr. Dooley described our political leaders as "fine, strong American citizens – with their hand on the pulse of the people and their free forearm against the windpipe."
This same disdain for the political profession is all too prevalent today. Mothers may still want their favorite sons to grow up to be President, but, according to a famous Gallup poll of some years ago, 73% do not want them to become politicians in the process. Successful politicians, according to Walter Lippman, are "insecure and intimidated men," who "advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle, or otherwise manage to manipulate" the views and votes of the people who elect them. And even the President of the United States, when asked at a news conference early in his first term how he liked "the game of politics," replied with a frown that his questioner was using a derogatory phrase. Being President, he said, is a "very fascinating experience… but the word 'politics'… I have no great liking for that."
Politics, in short, has become one of our most neglected, our most abused and our most ignored professions. It ranks low on the occupational list of a large share of the population; and its chief practitioners are rarely well or favorably known. No education is considered necessary for political success, except how to find your way around a smoke-filled room.
Too many of our talented young men and women have no interest in a political career. Too many of them are unwilling to accept the sovereign responsibilities emphasized by Theodore Roosevelt here in Dickinson. Yet such a state of affairs is not only injurious to the nation – it was wholly unforeseen by those who founded this country.
For I would ask those of you who look with disdain and disfavor upon the possibilities of a political career to remember that our nation's first great politicians were traditionally our ablest, most respected, most talented leaders, men who moved from one field to another with amazing versatility and vitality. A contemporary described Thomas Jefferson as "A gentleman of 32, who could calculate an eclipse, survey an estate, tie an artery, plan an edifice, try a cause, break a horse, dance a minuet, and play the violin".
John Quincy Adams, after being summarily dismissed from the Senate by the Massachusetts Legislature for a notable display of independence, could become Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard and then become a great Secretary of State. (Those were the happy days when Harvard professors had no difficulty getting Senate confirmation.)
Daniel Webster could throw thunderbolts at Senator Hayne on the Senate floor and then stroll a few steps down the corridor to dominate the Supreme Court as the foremost lawyer of his time.
A little more than one hundred years ago, in the Presidential campaign of 1856, the Republicans sent three brilliant orators around the campaign circuit: William Cullen Bryant, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Ralph Waldo Emerson. (In those carefree days, the "egg-heads" were all Republicans.)
I would urge therefore that each of you – and particularly those students of Dickinson College who are here today – regardless of your chosen occupation, consider entering the field of politics at some stage in your career – that you offer to the political arena, and to the critical problems of our society which are decided therein, the benefit of the talents which society has helped to develop in you. I ask you to decide, as Roosevelt put it, whether you will become a sovereign or a subject – to decide, in the words of Goethe, whether you will be an anvil or a hammer. The formal phases of the "anvil" stage are now completed for many of you, though hopefully you will continue to absorb still more in the years ahead. The question now is whether you are to be a hammer – whether you are to give to the world in which you were reared and educated the broadest possible benefits of that education.
This is a valuable institution, Dickinson State Teachers College. Its establishment and continued functioning, like that of all institutions, has required considerable effort and expenditure. I cannot believe that all of this was undertaken merely to give the school's graduates an economic advantage in the life struggle. "A university," said Professor Woodrow Wilson, "should be an organ of memory for the state for transmission of its best traditions. Every man sent out from a university should be a man of his nation, as well as a man of his time." And Prince Bismarck was even more specific – one-third of the students of German universities, he once stated, broke down from overwork; another third broke down from dissipation; and the other third ruled Germany. (I leave it to each of you to decide in which category you fall.)
But if you are to be among the rulers of our land, from precinct captain to President, if you are willing to enter the abused and neglected profession of politics, then let me tell you – as one who is familiar with the political world – that we stand in serious need of the fruits of your education. We do not need political scholars whose education has been so specialized as to exclude them from participation in current events – men like Lord John Russell, of whom Queen Victoria once remarked that he would be a better man if he knew a third subject – but he was interested in nothing but the Constitution of 1688 and himself. No, what we need are men who can ride easily over broad fields of knowledge and recognize the mutual dependence of the political and academic worlds.
I do not say that our political and public life should be turned over to college-trained experts who ignore public opinion. Nor would I give Dickinson College a seat in the Congress as William and Mary was once represented in the Virginia House of Burgesses. Nor would I adopt from the Belgian Constitution of 1893 the provision giving three votes instead of one to college graduates (at least not until more Democrats go to college).
But I do urge the application of your talents to the public solution of the great problems of our time – the conversion of our agricultural surpluses into a blessing instead of a liability – the prevention of business cycles which regularly throw millions of wage earners out of work through no fault of their own – the trend toward bigger government, bigger business, bigger labor and a bigger squeeze on the small, independent individual – the conflicting problems of automation, of taxation, of international trade – the unsolved problems of mental illness – and, above all, the knotty complex problems of war and peace, of untangling the strife-ridden, hate-ridden Middle East, of preventing man's destruction of man by nuclear war or, even more awful to contemplate, by disabling through mutations generations yet unborn.
We want from you not the sneers of the cynics or the despair of the faint-hearted. Theodore Roosevelt would not listen to either one. We ask of you enlightenment, vision, illumination. We ask that you live up to your responsibilities as American sovereigns – to implement, not ignore, the moral and spiritual foundations of our government.
In his book, "One Man's America," Alistair Cooke tells the story which perhaps best illustrates my point. On the 19th of May, 1780, as he describes it, in Hartford, Connecticut – the skies at noon turned from blue to gray. By mid-afternoon they had blackened over so densely that – in that religious age – men fell on their knees, and begged a final blessing before the end came. The Connecticut House of Representatives was in session. And as some men fell down in the darkened chamber and others clamored for an immediate adjournment, the Speaker of the House, one Colonel Davenport, came to his feet. And he silenced the din with these words: "The Day of Judgment is either approaching – or it is not. If it is not, there is no cause for adjournment. If it is, I choose to be found doing my duty. I wish, therefore, that candles may be brought."
Citizens of North Dakota, heirs to what Theodore Roosevelt called "the most glorious heritage a people ever received," we who are here today concerned with the dark and difficult task ahead ask once again that you bring us candles to help illuminate our way.
Source: Papers of John F. Kennedy. Pre-Presidential Papers. Senate Files, Box 900, "Theodore Roosevelt Centennial Lecture, Dickinson, North Dakota, 12 April 1958." John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.