as fast as they were ready for it will be pursued with earnestness and fidelity.  Already something has been accomplished in this direction.  The Government’s representatives, civil and military, are doing faithful and noble work in their mission of emancipation and merit the approval and support of their countrymen.  The most liberal terms of amnesty have already been communicated to the insurgents, and the way is still open for those who have raised their arms against the Government for honorable submission to its authority.  Our countrymen should not be deceived.  We are not waging war against the inhabitants of the Philippine Islands.  A portion of them are making war against the United States.  By far the greater part of the inhabitants recognize American sovereignty and welcome it as a guaranty of order and of security for life, property, liberty, freedom of conscience, and the pursuit of happiness.  To them full protection will be given.  They shall not be abandoned.  We will not leave the destiny of the loyal millions the islands to the disloyal thousands who are in rebellion against the United States.  Order under civil institutions will come as soon as those who now break the peace shall keep it.  Force will not be needed or used when those who make war against us shall make it no more.  May it end without further bloodshed, and there be ushered in the reign of peace to be made permanent by a government of liberty under law!

***

Theodore Roosevelt
Inaugural Address
Saturday, March 4, 1905

My fellow-citizens, no people on earth have more cause to be thankful than ours, and this is said reverently, in no spirit of boastfulness in our own strength, but with gratitude to the Giver of Good who has blessed us with the conditions which have enabled us to achieve so large a measure of well-being and of happiness.  To us as a people it has been granted to lay the foundations of our national life in a new continent.  We are the heirs of the ages, and yet we have had to pay few of the penalties which in old countries are exacted by the dead hand of a bygone civilization.  We have not been obliged to fight for our existence against any alien race; and yet our life has called for the vigor and effort without which the manlier and hardier virtues wither away.  Under such conditions it would be our own fault if we failed; and the success which we have had in the past, the success which we confidently believe the future will bring, should cause in us no feeling of vainglory, but rather a deep and abiding realization of all which life has offered us; a full acknowledgment of the responsibility which is ours; and a fixed determination to show that under a free government a mighty people can thrive best, alike as regards the things of the body and the things of the soul.