Fourth Inaugural Address

Summary

Franklin D. Roosevelt's fourth inaugural, on 20 January 1945, is among the shortest ever given, under six hundred words. Wartime austerity and the President's own failing health moved the ceremony from the Capitol to the South Portico of the White House, and Roosevelt opened by asking the small crowd to accept his wish "that the form of this inauguration be simple and its words brief." The argument fits in a handful of sentences. Americans and their allies are passing through "a period of supreme test" of courage, resolve, wisdom, and "our essential democracy." The nation that fights for total victory must also work for "a just and honorable peace, a durable peace." Mistakes will come, but they "must never be mistakes which result from faintness of heart or abandonment of moral principle." Roosevelt recalls his old schoolmaster, Dr. Endicott Peabody of Groton, on the peaks and valleys of history and the upward line drawn through them, and concedes that the Constitution of 1787 "was not a perfect instrument; it is not perfect yet." The middle of the speech lists lessons learned "at a fearful cost." Americans cannot live alone at peace; their own well-being depends on nations far away; they must live "as men, not as ostriches, nor as dogs in the manger." The isolationist debates of the 1930s stand behind every clause. Emerson supplies the moral: "The only way to have a friend is to be one." The address ends in prayer, thanking God for "stout hearts and strong arms" and asking for vision to see the way "to the achievement of His will to peace on earth." Within three weeks Roosevelt was at Yalta; within three months he was dead at Warm Springs, Georgia. The brief text has been read since as his last charge to the nation: finish the war, then build the peace without retreating into isolation.

Top Lessons

• Brevity as a wartime decision

  Roosevelt cut the ceremony to a few minutes on the White House portico, with no parade, while soldiers were still dying in Europe and the Pacific. The form itself argues that a nation at war should not celebrate its leaders lavishly.

• Imperfection without faintness of heart

  Roosevelt twice admits imperfection: Americans will make mistakes, and the Constitution "is not perfect yet." What he refuses to excuse is the error that comes from timidity or from abandoning moral principle. The lesson separates honest failure from cowardice.

• Ostriches and dogs in the manger

  Two animal images name two kinds of isolation: the ostrich hides its head from danger, and the dog in Aesop's fable guards hay it cannot eat so that the ox cannot either. Roosevelt uses both to reject the policy of standing apart from the world after the war.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Presidential inaugurals concern constitutional politics and national crisis; they have no medical content for this library's lens.