Who Said This?

[AussieMick]

Nope, not Charlie.
6 months after the words were spoken there was a vicious civil war in the relevant country. Get the country/nation and you are doing well to get the names of ' our President ' and speaker ..... in the civil war they were enemies.

[AussieMick]

When he was in the USA seeking funds "our President " gave speeches to huge crowds.

[Rogerm]

Was it Garibaldi of Italy?

[AussieMick]

No, sorry. Not Garibaldi.
His presence in the US was kept secret for the first 10 days during which he visited his mother in Rochester and his half-brother, a priest in Boston.

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He spoke to huge audiences and acquired large amounts in donations for his cause in the 'home' country.
He had a thirty-minute standing ovation in Chicago. But some places he met unfriendly crowds and there some who were critical of his perceived pro-German stance during the WW1.

[Gene C]

James Connolly ?

[Steve]

Michael Collins?

[AussieMick]

(Sorry for delay). Steve, Gene... you've got the country but not the Speaker or the 'President ' who spent about 18 months travelling across the US. That man did become the official President of the country a few years after the civil war.

[AussieMick]

Michael Collins was present when the words were spoken.

[Anita]

Éamon de Valera?

[AussieMick]

You got it, Anita. The speaker was Arthur Griffith, founder of Sinn Fein. De Valera went to the US in 1919 . He was born there. He was fund raising for the fight against England. Griffith and Michael Collins negotiated a Treaty with England but De Valera and others didn't. like the terms .... (James Connolly, executed 1916, worked in the US for a while.)
Well done Anita. You win a complimentary something.

[Anita]

Thanks Michael! Great question. I learned a lot working through the clues. This site has maps with a history of all the US tours. https://www.ucc.ie/en/theirishrevolution...r-1919-20/

[Gene C]

You will need to put on your thinking cap for this one as I haven't come up with any clues yet for the answer.

Who said this in their book about Abraham Lincoln -
"One cannot do much historical and biographical work without learning that the memory of man, when it comes to exact details, is painfully unreliable. A conversation is rarely repeated twice alike. With no malice, with no intent to deceive, men distort the thing which has been told them twenty-four hours before, and with every day and month that passes, if they repeat the tale, this distortion grows and changes"

[RJNorton]

Could it be Merrill Peterson?

[Gene C]

Good guess Roger.

Our quote was written before Peterson published his book in 1994 about Lincoln in American Memory
Which is an excellent segue to our first clue.

Our quote comes from a book written before 1994.

[RJNorton]

Benjamin Thomas?