In 1886, Theodore Roosevelt was living in North Dakota. He had headed west to deal with the trauma and psychological beating of losing both his wife and mother on the same day, February 14, 1884. While there, he became a solid citizen that many believed had a future in government. Before the deaths, TR would have agreed, but for now he was content to master his sorrow on the back of a horse. For July 4th, he was asked to give a speech for the 4th of July celebration held on the frontier (before ND was a state).
I urge you to read it deeply. I have highlighted some parts that are particularly apt for our own times.
“I am particularly glad to have an opportunity of addressing you, my fellow citizens of Dakota, on the Fourth of July, because it always seems to me that those who dwell in a new territory, and whose actions therefore are peculiarly fruitful, for good and bad alike, in shaping the future, have in consequence peculiar responsibilities. But as you already know your rights and privileges so well, I am going to ask you to excuse me if I say a few words to you about your duties. Much has been given to us, and so, much will be expected of us; and we must take heed to use aright the gifts entrusted to our care.
The Declaration of independences derived its peculiar importance, not on accounts of what America was, but because of what she was to become; she shared with other nations the present, and she yielded to them the past, but it was felt in return that to her, and to her especially, belonged the future. It is the same with us here. We, grangers and cowboys alike, have opened a new land; and we are the pioneers, and as we shape the course of the stream near its head, our efforts have infinitely more effect, in bending it in any given direction. . . In other words, the first comers in a land can, by their individual efforts, do far more to channel our the course in which its history is to run than can those who come after them; and their labors, whether exercised on the side of evil or on the side of good, are far more effective than if they had remained in old settled communities.
So it is peculiarly incumbent on us here today so to act throughout our lives as to leave our children a heritage, for which we will received their blessing and not their curse. . . . If you fail to work in public life, as well as in private, for honesty and uprightness and virtue, if you condone vice because the vicious man is smart, or if you in any other way cast your weight on the scales in favor of evil, you are just so far corrupting and making less valuable the birthright of your children.. . . .
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 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, steamboats, and everything else. But we must keep steadily in mind that no people were ever yet benefited by riches if their prosperity corrupted their virtue. It is of more importance that we should show our selves honest, brave, truthful, and intelligent, than that we should own all the railways and grain elevators in the world.
We have fallen heirs to the most glorious heritage a people ever received, and each one must do his part if we wish to show that the nations is worthy of its good fortune. Here we are not ruled over by others, as in the case of Europe; we rule ourselves. All American citizens, whether born here or elsewhere, whether of one creed or another, stand on the same footing; we welcome every honest immigrant no matter from what country he comes, provided only that he leaves off his former nationality, and remains neither Celt nor Saxon, neither Frenchman nor German, but becomes an American, desirous of fulfilling in good faith the duties of American citizenship.
When we this rule ourselves, we have the responsibilities of sovereigns, not of subjects. We must never exercise our rights either wickedly or thoughtlessly; we can continue to preserve them in but one possible way, by making the proper use of them. In a new portion of the country, especially here in the Far West, it is peculiarly important to do so; and on this day of all others, we ought soberly realize the weight of the responsibility that rests upon us. I am, myself, at heart as much a Westerner as an Easterner; I am proud, indeed, to be considered one of yourselves, and I address you in this rather solemn strain today, only because of my pride in you, and because your welfare, moral as well as material, so near my heart.
–Teddy Roosevelt, speech on July 4, 1886; from Hermann Hagedorn, Roosevelt in the Bad Lands. 1921 Referenced in David McCullough. Mornings on Horseback. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2001.