Teddy
Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States and the youngest to ever occupy
the Oval Office. He was Vice President to President William McKinley when
in 1901 McKinley was assassinated and Roosevelt took over at age 42. (At
age 43 President John F. Kennedy was the youngest to ever be elected President.)
Then
former president, Theodore Roosevelt wrote the letter below on January 3, 1919 to the president of the American Defense
Society. It was read publicly at a meeting on
January 5, 1919. Roosevelt
died the next day, on January 6, 1919.
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“We should
insist that if the immigrant who comes here does in good faith become an American and assimilates himself to us he shall be treated on an exact equality
with every one else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man
because of creed or birth-place or origin.
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But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American and nothing but an American. If he tries to keep segregated with men of his own origin and separated from the rest of America, then he isn't doing his part as an American. There can be no divided allegiance here. . . We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding-house; and we have room for but one soul loyalty, and that is loyalty to the American people.”
But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American and nothing but an American. If he tries to keep segregated with men of his own origin and separated from the rest of America, then he isn't doing his part as an American. There can be no divided allegiance here. . . We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding-house; and we have room for but one soul loyalty, and that is loyalty to the American people.”
