Presidents and Cowboys

President Eisenhower

Remarks Upon Receiving the America's Democratic Legacy Award at a B'nai B'rith Dinner in Honor of the 40th Anniversary of the Anti-Defamation League

November 23rd, 1953

I was raised in a little town of which most of you have never heard. But in the West it is a famous place. It is called Abilene, Kansas. We had as our marshal for a long time a man named Wild Bill Hickok. If you don't know anything about him, read your Westerns more. Now that town had a code, and I was raised as a boy to prize that code.

It was: meet anyone face to face with whom you disagree. You could not sneak up on him from behind, or do any damage to him, without suffering the penalty of an outraged citizenry. If you met him face to face and took the same risks he did, you could get away with almost anything, as long as the bullet was in the front.

And today, although none of you has the great fortune, I think, of being from Abilene,Kansas, you live after all by that same code in your ideals and in the respect you give to certain qualities. In this country, if someone dislikes you, or accuses you, he must come up in front. He cannot hide behind the shadow. He cannot assassinate you or your character from behind, without suffering the penalties an outraged citizenry will impose.

President Reagan

Remarks at the Opening of "The American Cowboy" Exhibit at the Library of Congress

March 24th, 1983

. . . Among the horsehair lassoes and Remington sculptures and Gene Autry songs is a part of our national identity. Tales of Wild West men and women from Kit Carson to Wild Bill Hickok to Calamity Jane to Annie Oakley are woven into the dreams of our youths and the standards we aim to live by in our adult lives. Ideals of courageous and self-reliant heroes, both men and women, are the stuff of Western lore.

It all comes back as you browse through this exhibit. The difference between right and wrong seems as clear as the white hats that the cowboys in Hollywood pictures always wore so you'd know right from the beginning who was the good guy. Integrity, morality, and democratic values are the resounding themes.

Life wasn't that simple then, and it certainly isn't today. But in the words of a noted historian, "Americans, in making their Western myths, were not put off by discrepancies with reality. Americans believed about the West not so much what was true, but what they thought ought to be true." He went on, "Lacking the common heritage that bound other nations together, they were forced to look elsewhere for the basis of their national existence. And they found it in the West."

While this exhibit is here, I hope all of Washington takes time to get to know the American cowboy again. And as the exhibit travels from city to modern city, I hope it reinforces the glue of a very good society, born and bred in the wide open spaces.

^{Source: John Woolley and Gerhard Peters, The American Presidency Project [online]. Santa Barbara, CA: University of California (hosted), Gerhard Peters (database). http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=41095.}