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Home  »  Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen  »  Page 428

Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.

Page 428



for. What a wretched life is that of a man who seeks to shirk the burdens laid on us in the world. It is equally ignoble whether he be a man of wealth or one who earns his bread in the sweat of his brow.”
  ON LYNCHING: “The worst enemy of the colored race is the colored man who commits some hideous wrong, especially if that be the worst of all crimes: rape; and the worst enemy of the white race is the white man who avenges that crime by another crime, equally infamous.… Shameless deeds of infamous hideousness should be punished speedily, but by the law, not by another crime.”
  Two things which Mr. Roosevelt did when Governor of New York, among the countless minor details of his official life, always seemed to me so characteristic of him that I have kept the record of them.
  When Mrs. Place was to be executed for the murder of her step-daughter, after a period of great public excitement, he wrote to the warden of Sing Sing: “I particularly desire that this solemn and awful act of justice shall not