![[ROOSEVELT, THEODORE] Banquet of the Hamilton Club of Chicago on the Thirty Fourth Anniversary of Appomattox Day "The First Day of Peace" Monday, April the tenth, eighteen hundred and ninety nine. The Auditorium.](/sites/default/files/styles/auction_slider/public/images/lots/247/1610247.jpg?itok=csTFOooR)
Lot Details
Lot 8
[ROOSEVELT, THEODORE] Banquet of the Hamilton Club of Chicago on the Thirty Fourth Anniversary of Appomattox Day "The First Day of Peace" Monday, April the tenth, eighteen hundred and ninety nine. The Auditorium.
[Chicago: Hamilton Club, 1899], signed in pencil on the front cover by Theodore Roosevelt, and a number of other attendees including Williard T. Block (most, seated together at the event, on the back cover). Mat staining from previous framing, traces of tape on rear cover from mounting, some wear and discoloration, but in all in rather good condition for such a fragile and ephemeral item.
This was a lavish event, to judge from the menu within, at which Roosevelt (pictured in the central spread along with three other speakers) gave the toast to "The Strenuous Life." That, and the extensive address that followed (not printed here, it runs to seven close-set pages of type) argued that the key to America's future was strenuous effort of the kind in which Roosevelt excelled. "Above all, let us shrink from no strife, moral or physical, within or without the nation, provided we are certain that the strife is justified, for it is only through strife, through hard and dangerous endeavor, that we shall ultimately win the goal of true national greatness." The speech (published in 1900 as part of a collection of Roosevelt's writings and addresses entitled The Strenuous Life) proved widely influential and was often cited. Scott Joplin even wrote The Strenuous Life (A Ragtime Two Step) reflecting the sentiments the speech expressed.
Provenance: Williard T. Block and descended through the Block family.
C
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