ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT ONTHE OCCASION OF THE LAYING OF THECORNER STONE OF THE PILGRIM MEMORIALMONUMENT, PROVINCETOWN, MASSACHUSETTS,AUGUST 20, 1907
WASHINGTON
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
1907
It is not too much to say that the eventcommemorated by the monument whichwe have come here to dedicate was oneof those rare events which can in goodfaith be called of world importance. Thecoming hither of the Pilgrim three centuriesago, followed in far larger numbersby his sterner kinsmen, the Puritans,shaped the destinies of this continent,and therefore profoundly affected the[4]destiny of the whole world. Men ofother races, the Frenchman and theSpaniard, the Dutchman, the German, theScotchman, the Irishman, and the Swede,made settlements within what is now theUnited States, during the colonial periodof our history and before the Declarationof Independence; and since then therehas been an ever-swelling immigrationfrom Ireland and from the mainland ofEurope; but it was the Englishman whosettled in Virginia and the Englishman[5]who settled in Massachusetts who didmost in shaping the lines of our nationaldevelopment.
We can not as a nation be too profoundlygrateful for the fact that the Puritanhas stamped his influence so deeplyon our national life. We need have butscant patience with the men who now railat the Puritan’s faults. They were evident,of course, for it is a quality of strongnatures that their failings, like their virtues,should stand out in bold relief; but[6]there is nothing easier than to belittle thegreat men of the past by dwelling only onthe points where they come short of theuniversally recognized standards of thepresent. Men must be judged with referenceto the age in which they dwell,and the work they have to do. ThePuritan’s task was to conquer a continent;not merely to overrun it, butto settle it, to till it, to build upon ita high industrial and social life; and,while engaged in the rough work of[7]taming the shaggy wilderness, at that verytime also to lay deep the immovable foundationsof our whole American system ofcivil, political, and religious libertyachieved through the orderly process oflaw. This was the work allotted him todo; this is the work he did; and only amaster spirit among men could havedone it.
We have traveled far since his day.That liberty of conscience which he demandedfor himself, we now realize must[8]be as freely accorded to others as it isresolutely insisted upon for ourselves.The splendid qualities which he leftto his children, we other Americanswho are not of Puritan blood also claimas our heritage. You, sons of the Puritans,and we, who are descended fromraces whom the Puritans woul