Proclamation 1506B

by Woodrow Wilson

By the President of the United States of America A PROCLAMATION. TO THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES: ⁠It becomes my sad duty to announce officially the death of Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States from September 14, 1901 to March 4, 1909, which occurred at his home at Sagamore Hill, Oyster Bay, New York, at 4:15 o'clock in the morning of January 6, 1919. In his death the United States has lost one of its most distinguished and patriotic citizens, who had endeared himself to the people by his strenuous devotion to their interests and to the public interests of his country. ⁠As president of the Police Board of his native city, as Member of the Legislature and Governor of his State, as Civil Service Commissioner, as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, as Vice-President and as President of the United States, he displayed administrative powers of a signal order and conducted the affairs of these various offices with a concentration of effort and a watchful care which permitted no divergence from the line of duty he had definitely set for himself. ⁠In the War with Spain, he displayed singular initiative and energy and distinguished himself among the commanders of the army in the field. As President he awoke the Nation to the dangers of private control which lurked in our financial and industrial systems. It was by thus arresting the attention and stimulating the purpose of the country that he opened the way for subsequent necessary and beneficent reforms. ⁠His private life was characterized by a simplicity, a virtue and an affection worthy of all admiration and emulation by the people of America. ⁠IN TESTIMONY of the respect in which his memory is held by the Government and people of the United States, I do hereby direct that the flags of the White House and the several Departmental Buildings be displayed at half staff for a period of thirty days, and that suitable military and naval honors under orders of the Secretaries of War and of the Navy may be rendered on the day of the funeral. ⁠Done this seventh day of January, in the year of Our Lord one thousand nine hundred and nineteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and forty-third. Woodrow Wilson⁠ By the President: Robert Lansing, Secretary of State.