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Remarks of the President at the Naturalization Ceremony at Monticello [Ford Speech or Statement]
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7344845
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Remarks of the President at the Naturalization Ceremony at Monticello [Ford Speech or Statement]
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White House Press Releases (Ford Administration)
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1976-07-05
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1976
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Digitized from Box 28 of the White House Press Releases at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
JULY 5, 1976
OFFICE OF THE WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY
(Charlottesville, Virginia)
THE WHITE HOUSE
REMARKS OF THE PRESIDENT
AT THE
NATURALIZATION CEREMONY
AT MONTICELLO
11:25 A.M. EDT
Governor Godwin, Mr. Justice Powell, Senator Byrd,
Ambassador Nolting, Reverend Clergy, distinguished guests,
ladies and gentlemen:
It is a very great honor and a high privilege,
Governor Godwin, to come to the Commonwealth of Virginia
and to this beautiful and significant home and to participate
in this wonderful ceremony. It is a great honor and privilege
for me to be here today.
I am very proud to welcome all of you as fellow
citizens of the United States of America. I invite you
to join fully in the American adventure and to share our
common goal and our common glory.
Our common goal is freedom -- the liberty of each
individual to enjoy the equal rights and to pursue the happi-
ness which in this life God gives and self-government secures.
Our common glory is the great heritage from the
past which enriches the present and insures our future.
In 1884, France, as a birthday gift, presented
the United States with a statue -- the Statue of Liberty
in New York Harbor. This year scores of friendly nations
have sent us Bicentennial gifts which we deeply appreciate
and will long cherish.
But you have given us a birthday present beyond
price -- yourselves, your faith, your loyalty, and your
love. We thank you with full and friendly hearts.
After two centuries, there is still something
wonderful about being an American. If we cannot quite
express it, we know what it is. You know what it is or
you would not be here today. Why not just call it patriotism?
MORE
Page 2
Thomas Jefferson was a Virginia planter, a
politician, a philosopher, a practical problem-solver,
a Palladian architect, a poet in prose. With such
genius he became a Burgess, a delegate, a Governor, an
Ambassador, a Secretary of State, a Vice President, and
President of the United States. But, he was first a
patriot.
The American patriots of 1776 who pledged their
lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to declare
and defend our independence did more than dissolve their
ties with another country to protest against the abuses of
their liberties.
Jefferson and his colleagues very deliberately
and very daringly set out to construct a new kind of
nation. "Men may be trusted," he said, "to govern them-
selves without a master." This was the most revolutionary
idea in the world at that time. It remains the most
revolutionary idea in the world today.
Washington, Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton,
Madison, and all patriots who laid the foundation for
freedom in our Declaration and our Constitution carefully
studied both contemporary and classic models of Government
to adapt them to the American climate and our circum-
stances.
Just as Jefferson did in designing Monticello,
they wanted to build in this beautiful land a home for
equal freedom and opportunity, a haven of safety and happi-
ness, not for themselves alone, but for all who would come to
us through centuries.
How well they built is told by millions upon
millions who came and are still coming. Our first national
census in 1790 produced a recorded population just under
four million. Three-fourths of them traced their ancestry
to the British Isles, though most had considered them-
selves Americans for several generations.
There was already talk about further immigration,
proposing it should be selective and restrictive, but
this was swept aside by the greatest mass movement of
people in all human history.
Immigrants came from almost everywhere, singly
and in waves. Throughout our first century they brought
the restless drive for better lives and rugged strength
that cleared the wilderness, plowed the prairie, tamed the
western plains, pushing on into the Pacific and to Alaska.
MORE
Page 3
Like the Mayflower Pilgrims and the early
Spanish settlers, these new Americans brought with them
precious relics of the worlds they left behind -- a
song,a story, a dance, a tool, a seed, a recipe, the
name of a place, the rules of a game, a trick of the
trade.
Such transfusions of traditions and cultures, as
well as of blood, have made Americans unique among nations
and Americans a new kind of people. There is little
the world has that is not native to the United States
today. Unfettered by ancient hates, the people of the
young United States really believed that all men are
created equal.
We admit they had stubborn blind spots in their
lofty vision -- for blacks, whose forebearer had been
Americans almost as long as theirs -- and for women,
whose political rights we took even longer to
recognize.
This is not the day, however, to deplore our
shortcomings or to regret that not all new citizens have
been welcomed as you are here today. The essential fact
is that the United States -- as a national policy and
in the hearts of most Americans -- has been willing to
absorb anyone from anywhere.
We were confident that simply by sharing our
American adventure these newcomers would become loyal, law-
abiding, productive citizens, and they did. Older nations
in the 18th and 19th centuries granted their nationality
to foreign born only as a special privilege, if at all.
We offered citizenship to all, and we have been richly
rewarded.
The United States was able to do this because
we are uniquely a community of values as distinct from
a religious community, a racial community, a geographic
community or an ethnic community. This nation was founded
200 years ago, not on ancient legends or conquests or
physical likeness or language, but on a certain political
value which Jefferson's pen so eloquently expressed.
To be an American is to subscribe to those opinions
which the Declaration of Independence proclaims and the
Constitution protects: The political values of self-
government, liberty and justice, equal rights and equal
opportunity.
These beliefs are the secrets of America's
unity from diversity -- in my judgment the most magnificent
achievement of our 200 years as a nation. "Black is
beautiful" was a motto of genius which uplifted us far
above its intention. Once Americans had thought about it
and perceived its truth, we began to realize that so are
brown, white, red and yellowbeautiful. When I was young,
a Sunday school teacher told us that the beauty of Joseph's
coat was in its many colors. I believeAmericans are
beautiful -- individually, in communities, and freely joined
together, by dedication to the United States of America.
MORE
Page 4
I see a growing danger in this country to conformity
of thought and taste and behavior. We need more encouragement
and protection for individuality. The wealth we have of
culture, ethnic and religious and racial traditions, are
valuable counterbalances to the overpowering sameness and
subordination of totalitarian societies.
The sense of belonging to any group that stands
for something decent and noble so long as it does not confine
free spirits or cultivate hostility to others, is part
of the pride every American should have in the heritage of
the past.
That heritage is rooted now, not in England alone --
as indebted as we are for the Magna Carta and the Common Law --
not in Europe alone, or in Africa alone, or Asia or on
the islands of the sea. The American adventure draws from
the best of all of mankind's long sojourn here on Earth and
now reaches out into the solar system.
You came as strangers among us and you leave here
as citizens, equal in fundamental rights, equal before the law
with an equal share in the promise of the future.
Jefferson did not define what the pursuit of
happiness means for you or for me. Our Constitution does
not guarantee that any of us will find it. But we are free
to try.
Foreigners like Lafayette, Von Steuben and Pulaski
came to fight in our Revolution because they believed in its
principles that they felt were universal. Immigrants like
Andrew Carnegie came as a poor boy and created a great steel
industry, then gave his fortune back to America for libraries,
universities and museums. Maria Francesca Cabrini came as
a missionary Sister to serve the sick and the poor. Samuel
Gompers worked in a sweatshop, spent his lunchtime helping
other immigrant workers learn to read so they could become
citizens. We have gained far, far more than we have given
to the millions who made America their second homeland.
Remember that none of us are more than caretakers
of this great country. Remember that the more freedom you
give to others, the more you will have for yourself. Remember
that without law there can be no liberty.
And remember, as well, the rich treasures you
brought from whence you came, and let us share your pride
in them.
This is the way that we keep our independence as
exciting as the day it was declared and keep the United
States of America even more beautiful than Joseph's coat.
Thank you very much.
END (AT 11:37 A.M. EDT)