Remarks in Fredericksburg, Virginia

My friends and fellow citizens:

It is indeed a great pleasure to me to be once more within your mighty State, the mother of Presidents, the Old Dominion, with its soil hallowed by so many memories of the mighty men it has produced, of the mighty deeds it has seen enacted upon it. I know your people well already. I know your history, of course, or I would not be a good American. I wish to say to you with all my heart how glad I am to have the chance of starting through your State to visit the States of the South Atlantic and the Gulf. When I am through my present trip I will have been in and spoken in every State in the Union during my term as President.

There is one thing that has struck me more than anything else in my journeys from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Canada line to the Gulf, in meeting the different audiences, and that is that they are fundamentally alike; that wherever you go in this country the average American is a pretty decent fellow, and that all that is necessary in order to make him get on well with the other average American is that they should know one another.