James Madison, 4th President of the United States (1809-1817)

Inaugural Address, 4 March 1809

● Under the benign influence of our republican institutions, and the maintenance of peace with all
nations whilst so many of them were engaged in bloody and wasteful wars, the fruits of a just policy
were enjoyed in an unrivaled growth of our faculties and resources.

First Annual Address, 29 November 1809

● Whatever may be the course of your deliberations on the subject of our military establishments, I
should fail in my duty in not recommending to your serious attention the importance of giving to our
militia, the great bulwark of our security and resource of our power, an organization best adapted to
eventual situations for which the United States ought to be prepared.
● In the state which has been presented of our affairs with the great parties to a disastrous and
protracted war, carried on in a mode equally injurious and unjust to the United States as a neutral
nation, the wisdom of the National Legislature will be again summoned to the important decision on
the alternatives before them.

Third Annual Address, 5 November 1811

● No proof, however, is yet given of an intention to repair the other wrongs done to the United States,
and particularly to restore the great amount of American property seized and condemned under edicts
which, though not affecting our neutral relations, and therefore not entering into questions between
the United States and other belligerents, were nevertheless founded in such unjust principles that the
reparation ought to have been prompt and ample.

Special Message, 1 June 1812

● We behold, in fine, on the side of Great Britain a state of war against the United States, and on the
side of the United States a state of peace toward Great Britain.

Proclamation—Announcement of a State of War Between the United States and the United Kingdom, 19 June
1812
● ...I do moreover exhort all the good people of the United States, as they love their country, as they
value the precious heritage derived from the virtue and valor of their fathers, as they feel the wrongs
which have forced on them the last resort of injured nations, and as they consult the best means under
the blessing of Divine Providence of abridging its calamities, that they exert themselves in preserving
order, in promoting concord, in maintaining the authority and efficacy of the laws, and in supporting
and invigorating all the measures which may be adopted by the constituted authorities for obtaining a
speedy, a just, and an honorable peace.

Proclamation—Recommending a Day of Prayer, 9 July 1812

● ...Whereas such a recommendation will enable the several religious denominations and societies so
disposed to offer at one and the same time their common vows and adorations to Almighty God on
the solemn occasion produced by the war in which He has been pleased to permit the injustice of a
foreign power to involve these United States…
●
Fourth Annual Message, 4 November 1812
 ● With these blessings are necessarily mingled the pressures and vicissitudes incident to the state of
war into which the United States have been forced by the perseverance of a foreign power in its
system of injustice and aggression.
● Above all, we have the inestimable consolation of knowing that the war in which we are actually
engaged is a war neither of ambition nor of vain glory; that it is waged not in violation of the rights
of others, but in the maintenance of our own; that it was preceded by a patience without example
under wrongs accumulating without end, and that it was finally not declared until every hope of
averting it was extinguished by the transfer of the British scepter into new hands clinging to former
councils…

Inaugural Address, 4 March 1813

● May we not cherish this sentiment without presumption when we reflect on the characters by which
this war is distinguished? It was not declared on the part of the United States until it had been long
made on them…
● As the war was just in its origin and necessary and noble in its objects, we can reflect with a proud
satisfaction that in carrying it on no principle of justice or honor, no usage of civilized nations, no
precept of courtesy or humanity, have been infringed.
● To render the justice of the war on our part the more conspicuous, the reluctance to commence it was
followed by the earliest and strongest manifestations of a disposition to arrest its progress.
● These resources are amply sufficient to bring the war to an honorable issue.

Fifth Annual Message, 7 December 1813

● It is fortunate for the United States that they have it in their power to meet the enemy in this
deplorable contest as it is honorable to them that they do not join in it but under the most imperious
obligations, and with the humane purpose of effectuating a return to the established usages of war.

Sixth Annual Message, 20 September 1814

● In his other incursions on our Atlantic frontier his progress, often checked and chastised by the
martial spirit of the neighboring citizens, has had more effect in distressing individuals and in
dishonoring his arms than in promoting any object of legitimate warfare…
● Having forborne to declare war until to other aggressions had been added the capture of near 1000
American vessels and the impressment of thousands of American sea faring citizens...having
manifested on every occasion and in every proper mode a sincere desire to arrest the effusion of
blood and meet our enemy on the ground of justice and reconciliation, our beloved country…

Special Message, 18 February 1815

● The late war, although reluctantly declared by Congress, had become a necessary resort to assert the
rights and independence of the nation.’
● Experience has taught us that neither the pacific dispositions of the American people nor the pacific
character of their political institutions can altogether exempt them from that strife which appears
beyond the ordinary lot of nations to be incident to the actual period of the world, and the same
faithful monitor demonstrates that a certain degree of preparation for war is not only indispensable to
avert disasters in the onset, but affords also the best security for the continuance of peace.

Seventh Annual Address, 5 December 1815

● The Indian tribes within and bordering on the southern frontier, whom a cruel war on their part had
compelled us to chastise into peace, have latterly shown a restlessness which has called for
preparatory measures for repressing it, and for protecting the commissioners engaged in carrying the
terms of the peace into execution.
● Notwithstanding the security for future repose which the United States ought to find in their love of
peace and their constant respect for the rights of other nations, the character of the times particularly
inculcates the lesson that, whether to prevent or repel danger, we ought not to be unprepared for it.
Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States (1901-1909)

First Annual Address, 3 December 1901

● History may safely be challenged to show a single instance in which a masterful race such as ours,
having been forced by the exigencies of war to take possession of an alien land, has behaved to its
inhabitants with the disinterested zeal for their progress that our people have shown in the
Philippines.
● The connection between idleness and mischief is proverbial, and the opportunity to do remunerative
work is one of the surest preventatives of war.
● So far from being in any way a provocation to war, an adequate and highly trained navy is the best
guaranty against war, the cheapest and most effective peace insurance.

Remarks at the Reunion of the Department of the Potomac, Grand Army of the Republic at the New Willard
Hotel, 19 February 1902
● So now it behooves each of us so to conduct his civil life, so to do his duty as a citizen, that we shall
in the most effective way war against the spirit of anarchy in all its forms.

Commencement Address at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, 2 May 1902
● We all of us earnestly hope that the occasion for war may not arise, but if it has to come then this
nation must win
● It is what has been done before the outbreak of war that counts most.

Remarks at the Centennial Meeting of the Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church at Carnegie
Hall in New York City, 20 May 1902
● The criticism of those who live softly, remote from the strife, is of little value; but it would be
difficult to overestimate the value of the missionary work of those who go out to share the hardship,
and, while sharing it, not to talk, but to wage war against the myriad forms of brutality.
● Mere anarchy and ruin would have fallen upon the island if we had contented ourselves with simple
victory in the war and then had turned the island loose to shift for itself.

Remarks on Memorial Day in Arlington, Virginia, 30 May 1902

● These rules provide, of course, for the just severity necessary in war.
● They have been able to prolong the war at all only by recourse to acts each one of which put them
beyond the pale of civilized warfare.

Message to Congress, 13 June 1902

● On her behalf we waged a war of which the mainspring was generous indignation against oppression;
and we have kept faith absolutely.

Remarks to the Spanish War Veterans in Boston, Massachusetts, 25 June 1902

● It is unnecessary to say that no soldier can be worth his salt if he has not got the fighting desire.
● A good soldier must not only be willing to fight, but he must be anxious to fight.
● The soldier has got to have the fighting edge— the power and will that will make him bear himself
well on the battlefield.
Proclamation 483—Granting Pardon and Amnesty to Participants in Insurrection in the Philippines, 4 July
1902
● It has added honor to the flag, which it defended, and has justified increased confidence in the future
of the American people, whose soldiers do not shrink from labor or death, yet love liberty and peace.

Remarks at Symphony Hall in Boston, Massachusetts, 25 August 1902

● They had to be driven on by love for country that made them willing to spend the best years of their
youth and young manhood in the service of the nation to their own detriment—that made them
willing to sacrifice everything for the prize of death in battle for the honor of the flag.

Remarks in Portland, Maine, 26 August 1902

● I believe that this nation will rise level to any great emergency that may meet it, but it will only be
because now in our ordinary work-a-day life, the times of peace, in the times when no great crisis is
upon us, we school ourselves by constant practice in the commonplace, everyday, indispensable
duties, so that when the time arrives we shall show that we have learned aright the primary lessons of
good citizenship.

Remarks in Haverhill, Massachusetts, 26 August 1902

● A navy’s efficiency in a war depends mainly upon its preparedness at the outset of that war.

Remarks at The Weirs, New Hampshire, 28 August 1902

● Great were the deeds you did and vital the need of doing them, and many were the lessons taught the
rest of us; both by what you accomplished in the war and by the way in which when the war was over
you turned to the work of peace with the same spirit which had led you to triumph on the battlefields.
● You were willing to wager all for the prize of death in righteous war.

Remarks in Cornish, Vermont, 30 August 1902

● It is not enough, gentlemen, to mean well either in battle or in civil life; you not only had to mean
well, you had to do well, and it is the same thing in civil life.

Remarks in Windsor, Vermont, 30 August 1902

● They were years of heart-wearing work for a righteous end, and thrice fortunate the nation which has
citizens within its borders who in time of peace and in time of war alike, are willing and anxious to
spend the best there is in them to do all that their strength allows, to war for decency and
righteousness, to struggle with all their might for a worthy end.

Remarks in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, 2 September 1902

● Arms change, tactics change, but the spirit that makes the real soldier does not change.

Remarks in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 3 September 1902

● There are exceptions, of course, but as a rule the man who is a good soldier is a good citizen…

Remarks to the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen in Chattanooga, Tennessee, 8 September 1902

● The last time I ever saw General Sherman, I dined at his house, and we got to talking over the
capacity of different types of soldiers, and the General happened to say that if ever there were
 another war, and he were to have a command, he should endeavor to get as many railroad men as
possible under him. I asked him why, and he said, "Because on account of their profession they have
developed certain qualities which are essential in a soldier.”

Remarks at Tomlinson Hall in Indianapolis, Indiana, 23 September 1902

● The average American is, we believe, a man offering unusually good material out of which to make a
soldier…

Remarks at the Banquet of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York in New York City, 11
November 1902
● And remember, gentlemen, that we shall be a potent factor for peace largely in proportion to the way
in which we make it evident that our attitude is due, not to weakness, not to inability to defend
ourselves, but to a genuine repugnance to wrongdoing, a genuine desire for self-respecting friendship
with our neighbors.
● The voice of the weakling or the craven counts for nothing when he clamors for peace; but the voice
of the just man armed is potent.

Remarks at the Banquet of the Young Men’s Christian Association at the New Willard Hotel, 19 January
1903
● ...to strive to make the young man decent, God-fearing, law-abiding, honor-loving, justice-doing; and
also fearless and strong, able to hold their own in the hurly-burly of the world’s work, able to strive
mightily that the forces of right may be in the end triumphant.

Remarks at a Banquet in Honor of the Birthday of the Late President McKinley in Canton, Ohio, 27 January
1903
● He sought by every honorable means to preserve peace, to avert war.
● Then, when it became evident that these efforts were useless, that peace could not be honorably
entertained, he devoted his strength to making the war as short and as decisive as possible.

Remarks at the Milwaukee National Soldiers’ Home in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 3 April 1903
● The man who did all these things and then had the stuff in him to fight when the occasion came - that
is the man who will succeed in war as well as in civil life.

Remarks at the State House in Des Moines, Iowa, 28 April 1903

● We need to show in civic life the same spirit that you showed in the Civil War in battle; what you
cared to know about as to the man on your right or the one on the left, was not the way in which he
worshiped his Maker; not his social standing or wealth; you cared nothing whether he were a farmer
or mechanic, lawyer or business man, a bricklayer or banker; what you wanted to know was whether
he would do his duty like a man.

Remarks in Keokuk, Iowa, 29 April 1903

● You won because out of the grinding need of war was developed the capacity of each man on his
worth as a man; giving honor to whom honor is due; putting forward, not trying for motives of
jealousy to throw him down because he was big, not trying to put him up except because he could do
the job, treating him on his worth as a man.
Address at Pasadena, California, 8 May 1903
● You went to war for library, union, and the brotherhood of man, and now in peace it rests for us to
stand for the indivisible nation, for liberty under and through the law, and for brotherhood in its
widest, deepest and truest sense; the brotherhood which recognizes in each man a brother to be
helped, which will not suffer wrong and will not inflict it.

Address at the Ceremonies Incident to the Breaking of Sod for the Erection of a Monument in Memory of the
Late President McKinley in San Francisco, California, 13 May 1903
● It is a solemn thing to speak in memory of a man who, when young, went to war for the honor and
the life of the nation, who for four years did his part in the camp, on the march, in battle, rising
steadily upward from the ranks, and to whom it was given in after life to show himself exemplary in
public and in private conduct, to become the ideal of the nation in peace as he had been a typical
representative of the nation's young sons in war.

Remarks in Tacoma, Washington, 22 May 1903

● Of course, it is the merest truism to say that the best way to keep peace is to show that you are not
afraid of war, if unjustly treated or wronged.
● Peace came to us for all time because you dared to fight; and the people who in your day called for
peace at any price, if they had had their way, would have doomed us to generations of struggle—to
generations of war.

Remarks at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, 16 June 1903

● I hope and believe that we shall not as a nation in our time ever have to go to war, and the surest way
to invite war is to be opulent, aggressive and unarmed.

Remarks in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 30 May 1904

● The Civil War was a great war for righteousness - a war waged for the noblest ideals, but waged also
in thoroughgoing, practical fashion.

Fourth Annual Message, 6 December 1904

● There are kinds of peace which are highly undesirable, which are in the long run as destructive as any
war.
● Tyrants and oppressors have many times made a wilderness and called it peace.
● The peace of tyrannous terror, the peace of craven weakness, the peace of injustice, all these should
be shunned as we shun unrighteous war.
● Unrighteous wars are common, and unrighteous peace is rare; but both should be shunned.

Commencement Address at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, 30 January 1905
● What we desire is to have it evident that this nation seeks peace, not because it is afraid, but because
it believes in the eternal and immutable laws of justice and of right living.

Remarks at the Commemoration of Washington’s Birthday by the University of Pennsylvania and on

Receiving the Degree of LL.D. from that Institution in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 22 February 1905
 ● Yet, on the other hand, a nation prepared for war is a menace to mankind unless the national purpose
is to treat other nations with good faith and justice.
● Never since the beginning of our country's history has the navy been used in an unjust war.

Remarks at the Unveiling of the Statue of General Henry W. Slocum in Brooklyn, New York City, 30 may
1905
● ...they raised it to the principle of righteousness, which alone can justify any war or any struggle…

Remarks on Receiving the Degree of LL.D. From Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, 21 June
1905
● I have no patience with the brawler, the quarreler, the swashbuckler, and I have a little less for the
academy person who believes that a nation any more than an individual can afford to put peace
before justice.

Remarks in Elmira, New York, 11 August 1905

● I earnestly hope it never will be called again, and I will make every effort to see that peace obtains,
but one first-class way to keep peace is to make it evident that you are not afraid to fight.

Remarks at Sea on Board the West Virginia en Route to Washington, DC, 29 October 1905
● Let each of you officers remember, in the event of war, that while a surrender may sometimes be
justifiable, yet that surrender must always be explained, while it is never necessary to explain the fact
that you don't surrender, no matter what the conditions may be.

Fifth Annual Message, 5 December 1905

● A wanton or useless war, or a war of mere aggression--in short, any war begun or carried on in a
conscienceless spirit, is to be condemned as a peculiarly atrocious crime against all humanity.
● Peace is normally the hand-maiden of righteousness; but when peace and righteousness conflict then
a great and upright people can never for a moment hesitate to follow the path which leads toward
righteousness, even though that path also leads to war.
● There can be no worse foe of mankind in general, and of his own country in particular, than the
demagogue of war, the man who in mere folly or to serve his own selfish ends continually rails at
and abuses other nations, who seeks to excite his countrymen against foreigners on insufficient
pretexts, who excites and inflames a perverse and aggressive national vanity, and who may on
occasions wantonly bring on conflict between his nation and some other nation.
● But there are demagogues of peace just as there are demagogues of war, and in any such movement
as this for The Hague conference it is essential not to be misled by one set of extremists any more
than by the other.
● Whenever it is possible for a nation or an individual to work for real peace, assuredly it is failure of
duty not so to strive, but if war is necessary and righteous then either the man or the nation shrinking
from it forfeits all title to self-respect.

Remarks at the Laying of the Cornerstone of the Office Building of the House of Representatives: “The Man
with the Muck-Rake”, 14 April 1906
● 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.
Sixth Annual Address, 3 December 1906
● A just war is in the long run far better for a nation's soul than the most prosperous peace obtained by
acquiescence in wrong or injustice.
● Nothing would more promote iniquity, nothing would further defer the reign upon earth of peace and
righteousness, than for the free and enlightened peoples which, tho with much stumbling and many
shortcomings, nevertheless strive toward justice, deliberately to render themselves powerless while
leaving every despotism and barbarism armed and able to work their wicked will.

Seventh Annual Message, 3 December 1907

● Industry is always necessary, just as war is sometimes necessary.

Special Message, 14 April 1908

● Events still fresh in the mind of every thinking man show that neither arbitration nor any other device
can as yet be invoked to prevent the gravest and most terrible wrongdoing to peoples who are either
few in numbers, or who, if numerous, have lost the first and most important of national virtues--the
capacity for self-defense.

Eighth Annual Message, 8 December 1908

● The war we wage must be waged against misconduct, against wrongdoing wherever it is found…
● Such military efficiency can only be guaranteed in time of war if there is the most thorough previous
preparation in time of peace--a preparation, I may add, which will in all probability prevent any need
of war.