Theodore Roosevelt

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• Born: 27 October 1858
• Birthplace: New York, New York
• Died: 6 January 1919 (arterial blood clot)
• Best Known As: President of the United States, 1901-1909

Teddy Roosevelt was a weak and asthmatic child who grew up to be one of the most robust and ambitious U.S. presidents ever. A former New York City police commissioner (1895-97), author, and hero of the Spanish-American War (1898), he reluctantly accepted an offer to become William McKinley's vice president upon McKinley's re-election in 1900. When McKinley was assassinated in 1901, Roosevelt became the youngest man ever to become president. (He was 42.) He served two terms, built up the Navy, used "battleship diplopmacy" to create an independent Panama and then build the Panama Canal, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1905 for helping to end the Russo-Japanese War, designated dozens of national forests, parks, and monuments, and strengthened the executive branch through his progressive agenda and the sheer force of his personality. He is often remembered for his policy pronouncement, "Speak softly and carry a big stick." He was succeeded in 1909 by William Howard Taft. Roosevelt ran for president again in 1912, as a candidate of the National Progressive (or "Bull Moose") Party; he beat Taft but came in second to the next president, Democrat Woodrow Wilson. In the last years of his life he traveled widely, explored Brazil, supported America's entry into World War I, and published several books including Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography in 1913.

Teddy Roosevelt was fifth cousin to a later president, Franklin Roosevelt... Teddy was the first president to visit a foreign country, Panama, in 1906... He was also the first American to win a Nobel Prize... He was the 26th U.S. president... The Rough Riders were an all-volunteer cavalry regiment organized by Roosevelt and Leonard Wood in 1898; on July 1 of that year he led the Rough Riders on successful charges up Kettle Hill and San Juan Heights (better known as San Juan Hill) near Santiago, Cuba, thus cementing his fame in America... John F. Kennedy remains the youngest man ever elected president, at the age of 43... Roosevelt graduated from Harvard in 1880; he attended law school at Columbia but did not graduate... Roosevelt was married to the former Alice Hathaway Lee from 1880 until her death after giving birth to their daughter Alice in 1884. He married Edith Kermit Carow in 1886, and they had five children: Theodore, Jr. (b. 1887), Kermit (b. 1889), Ethel (b. 1891), Archibald (b. 1894) and Quentin (b. 1897). Quentin, a pilot, was killed in France in World War I... Teddy's mother died the same day as his first wife, 14 February 1886.

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Theodore Roosevelt. (credit: Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)

(born Oct. 27, 1858, New York, N.Y., U.S. — died Jan. 6, 1919, Oyster Bay, N.Y.) 26th president of the U.S. (1901 – 09). He was elected to the New York legislature (1882), where he became a Republican leader opposed to the Democratic political machine. After political defeats and the death of his wife, he went to the Dakota Territory to ranch. He returned to New York to serve on the U.S. Civil Service Commission (1889 – 95) and as head of the city's board of police commissioners (1895 – 97). A supporter of William McKinley, he served as assistant secretary of the navy (1897 – 98). When the Spanish-American War was declared, he resigned to organize a cavalry unit, the Rough Riders. He returned to New York a hero and was elected governor in 1899. As the Republican vice-presidential nominee, he took office when McKinley was reelected, and he became president on McKinley's assassination in 1901. One of his early initiatives was to urge enforcement of the Sherman Antitrust Act against business monopolies. He won election in his own right in 1904, defeating Alton Parker. At his urging, Congress regulated railroad rates and passed the Pure Food and Drug Act and Meat Inspection Act (1906) to protect public health. He created national forests and set aside mineral, oil, and coal deposits for conservation. He and secretary of state Elihu Root announced the Roosevelt corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which reasserted the U.S.'s position as protector of the Western Hemisphere. For mediating an end to the Russo-Japanese War, he received the 1906 Nobel Prize for Peace. He secured a treaty with Panama for construction of a trans-isthmus canal. Declining to seek reelection, he secured the nomination for William H. Taft. After traveling in Africa and Europe, he tried to win the Republican presidential nomination in 1912; when he was rejected, he organized the Bull Moose Party and ran on a policy of New Nationalism. Though he lost the election, he secured 88 electoral votes — the most successful third-party candidacy in the 20th century. Throughout his life he continued to write, publishing extensively on history, politics, travel, and nature. See also Big Stick policy; Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

For more information on Theodore Roosevelt, visit Britannica.com.

(b. New York City, 27 Oct. 1858; d. 6 Jan. 1919) US; Governor of New York State 1899 – 1900, Vice-President 1901, President 1901 – 9 Born into a wealthy American family of Dutch descent, Roosevelt was related to a former President (Martin Van Buren 1837 – 41) as well as to a future one (Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933 – 45). His father was a merchant and banker. His mother was a descendant of Robert III, King of the Scots. As a child he was sickly and asthmatic. His parents took him on trips to Europe while he was young, initially in order to improve his poor state of health. He fought to strengthen his physical state by working out in a gymnasium (built for him by his father) and later by boxing and working as a rancher. He developed a love of travel and adventure as well as an interest in politics and writing.

He went to Harvard before studying law at Columbia Law School. While at law school, he was elected a member of the New York State Assembly, serving from 1881 to 1885. After the death of his first wife, shortly after giving birth to a daughter, in 1884 he retreated to Dakota for two years, returning to New York City in 1886 to seek the Republican nomination for mayor. He failed in his bid, then sailed to London to marry Edith Carow. He served as US civil service commissioner from 1889 to 1894, then spent two years as president of the New York City Police Board before being appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy by President McKinley. His service as Assistant Secretary was short, lasting from 1897 until May of the following year, when he resigned in order to raise a cavalry regiment (the First United States Volunteer Cavalry) to fight in the Spanish-American War in Cuba. He led his men — an odd assortment of cowboys, college football players, and native Americans, dubbed Roosevelt's Rough Riders — in several sorties, most spectacularly in taking San Juan Hill, where Roosevelt led his men while under heavy fire. Returning to the USA later that year, he found himself a national hero.

His rise thereafter was rapid. He was elected Governor of New York State in the November of 1898, taking office the following January. The following year he was chosen as the vice-presidential candidate at the Republican convention in Philadelphia, a nomination he had been persuaded to accept to prevent it going to someone else. In November 1900, McKinley and Roosevelt swept to victory, McKinley for a second term, with the party also taking control of both Houses of Congress. On 4 March 1901, Roosevelt took the oath as Vice-President. The assassination of McKinley six months later catapulted him into the presidency at the age of 42, the youngest — and at the time richest — ever holder of the office.

Roosevelt was by instinct an activist and a reformer. He had battled against corruption in New York and once in the White House battled against the power of the big corporations. Under the banner of "A Square Deal", he enforced anti-trust legislation. He intervened in a coal strike in 1903. He was also responsible for the development of Forest Reserves throughout the country. He intervened in the Dominican Republic and began negotiations for the Panama Canal Zone. In 1904 he easily won election in his own right as President, gaining more than 7.6 million votes to just over 5 million for his Democratic opponent. The following year, he brought Russian and Japanese delegates together in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to produce a peace treaty ending the war between the two countries. He played a role in bringing Germany and France together to resolve the issue of Morocco. For his work, he later received the Nobel Peace Prize. His extrovert leadership and an increasingly liberal stance nonetheless made him unpopular with many traditionalists within the Republican Party.

Stepping down from office in March 1909, he engaged in extensive travel, including hunting in Africa. In 1912, dismayed by the performance of his successor as President, William Taft, he accepted nomination by dissident Republicans who had formed the Progressive Party. When he declared "I feel fit as a Bull Moose" the party was instantly dubbed the Bull Moose Party. While speaking in Milwaukee he was shot in the breast but carried on talking. He got 4 million votes in the election, in effect letting in the Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson. He then set off again on his travels, leading an expedition to Brazil. One of his sons died in Europe in 1918 — Roosevelt himself had sought permission to lead men at the front but had been refused — and he died the following year at the age of 60.

Roosevelt was a man of great paradox. A gifted scholar — he penned over thirty books — and scion of a wealthy family, he was also a cowboy and populist. He was a great activist and optimist but also suffered from bouts of self-doubt. He was tough but sensitive. Though sometimes withdrawn, he was also flamboyant. He liked attention. He put the presidency on a new plane. He was the first President to travel abroad and he raised the profile of the office. He also had one other enduring legacy: the teddy bear is named after him — the result of a refusal while hunting to shoot a bear cub.

Roosevelt, Theodore (1858-1919), soldier, explorer, prolific author, and USA president 1901-9. Known as ‘Teddy’, from whence, after an apocryphal incident in which he spared a cub, comes the term ‘teddy bear’. Despite asthma and extremely poor eyesight, he was a serious naturalist and outdoorsman who founded the National Parks system, and in general brought ‘vigah’ to bear on everything he did. Although a Republican with an aristocratic background, his presidency was populist and he used the office as a ‘bully pulpit’ to reach out to the people over the head of an outraged political and economic establishment.

He was also an egomaniac who split his own party and let in only the second Democrat president since the American civil war, and a flagrant racist who was forced to retract lies about the performance of African-American troops at the battle of San Juan Hill, who as president dealt viciously with them after a disturbance in Brownsville, Texas, and who preached the crudest social Darwinism from that bully pulpit. He was high-handed with ‘lesser breeds’ abroad as well, waging an atrocity-ridden campaign against the Philippines insurrection and instituting temporary colonial rule over the Dominican Republic in 1905 and Cuba in 1906, as well as organizing the 1903 secession of Panama from Colombia in order to obtain the Panama Canal Zone cheaply.

There was a ‘Boys' Own’ quality to his many adventures, in particular his participation in the Spanish-American war, for which he raised and led the ‘Rough Riders’ regiment of western irregulars. During the assault on Kettle Hill, he led from the front and on a horse until he encountered wire. In sum, he was a protean high Victorian figure with all the vices and virtues of the type, and does not fit into any of today's political or social pigeon-holes.

Because of his war hero status, the powerful New York Republican machine anointed him for the governorship of New York in 1899, with a private understanding that he would refrain from attacking corruption. Once elected, his personal popularity enabled him to renege on this agreement and to make a start on cleaning the Augean stables of New York politics. His choice as the vice-presidential candidate for the party in 1900 came about because by then the machine wanted him out of the governor's mansion at any price. It was not a good day for politics as usual when Pres McKinley fell to an assassin's bullet in September 1901 and Roosevelt became the youngest president. Of his successors, only John Kennedy in 1961 was younger.

For those who rate presidents according to the degree they have extended the power of the office, Theodore stands shoulder to shoulder with his distant cousin Franklin and with Lincoln, without their advantage of a tangible national crisis to strengthen his hand. He did this by auditing and breaking up large corporate combinations, exploiting the interstate commerce clause of the constitution, and using the powers granted to the federal government by the 1890 Sherman Anti-Trust Act, previously applied only to trade-union activity. What is so remarkable about his performance is that the Republicans were unequivocally the party of big business and his ‘trust-busting’ of 44 major corporations over the next seven years bypassed a conservative Republican congress disinclined to give him the inch it knew he would turn into a mile.

During Roosevelt's presidency the USA, already possessed of the most powerful economy, began to play a commensurate political role in world affairs, as symbolized by his own role in mediating the end of the 1904-5 Russo-Japanese war, for which he won the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize. The Japanese correctly perceived his prejudice against them, strengthened when he restricted ‘oriental’ immigration in 1907. The festering resentment caused by these, along with his acquisition of a hostage to fortune in the Philippines, can be seen to lead directly to the death struggle of 1941-5. That war was to be won by the mighty blue-water navy that Roosevelt was also instrumental in creating.

After leaving the White House in 1909, he toured Africa and Europe and returned to the USA over a year later to play a deeply divisive role in the politics of the Republican party, including the formation of a Progressive party as a vehicle for his own presidential aspirations, the final outcome of which was the election in 1912 of the sanctimonious Democrat Wilson, who was personally everything Roosevelt despised.

— Hugh Bicheno

Born to a wealthy New York family, a puny, asthmatic, and nearsighted child, Theodore Roosevelt seemed destined for a sheltered life. Instead, he developed his body and an appetite for public service in an obsessive quest to prove his masculinity and to assert his independence. He became a dynamic political leader.

Roosevelt embraced things military from an early age. Two years after graduating from Harvard in 1880, he published The Naval War of 1812, reflecting the navalist thinking later codified by Capt. Alfred T. Mahan. Roosevelt developed his political skills as a New York State legislator, U.S. Civil Service Commissioner, and New York police commissioner. In 1897, he became assistant secretary of the navy in the McKinley administration.

An ardent advocate of the Spanish‐American War, Roosevelt used his political connections to secure an appointment in 1898 as lieutenant colonel in the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry regiment, the “Rough Riders.” His friend Col. Leonard Wood commanded the unit initially, but he left for a higher command. Roosevelt's most famous military exploit came when he led a charge in the Battle of San Juan Hill (actually Kettle Hill) outside Santiago, Cuba. The well‐publicized exploit helped him win the New York governorship in 1898 and vice presidency in 1900.

Roosevelt became president in September 1901 after President McKinley's assassination. A moralist in tone but realist in practice, Roosevelt worried about competition with Germany in the Caribbean and, later, about tensions with Japan. Diplomatically, he acted as a mediator and won a Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating an end to the Russo‐Japanese War in 1905.

A fervent believer in the Mahanian doctrine of sea power, Roosevelt paid particular attention to the U.S. Navy as the first line of defense and a primary instrument of American foreign policy. He used the navy to signal American concern during the Venezuelan crisis of 1902–03 and deployed naval forces to block Colombian suppression of the Panamanian revolt in 1903, clearing the way for construction of the Panama Canal. Roosevelt operated in effect as his own secretary of the navy. A competitor in the international naval arms race of the day, he won congressional approval for sixteen battleships, including new, powerful dreadnoughts, and he increased the naval budget by 60 percent.

Roosevelt also pushed for more realistic and frequent training exercises. He united the navy's battleships in a true fleet formation and then sent the “great white fleet” on a world cruise from 1907 to 1909 to test its ability to operate coherently and to demonstrate U.S. naval power.

With Secretary of War (and later State) Elihu Root, Roosevelt also sought to enlarge and modernize the army. He supported the General Staff Act, endorsed larger unit training, elevated able officers, and approved reform legislation in 1903 and 1908 to make the National Guard a more reliable federal reserve. He also pushed for the development of aviation and the machine‐gun service.

Roosevelt left office in 1909 and lost a bid for the presidency in 1912 on the Progressive Party ticket. As a former president, he played a leading role in the military “Preparedness” movement in 1915–17 for universal military training and for a larger navy. He assailed Woodrow Wilson's foreign and military policies, urging the United States to enter the war after the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915. Upon American intervention in 1917, Roosevelt asked to lead a volunteer division, but President Wilson refused. During World War I, Roosevelt denounced dissenters and urged a postwar coalition with Britain. He died shortly after the end of the war.

[See also Caribbean and Latin America, U.S. Military Involvement in the; Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.]

Bibliography

• Howard Beale, Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of America to World Power, 1956.
• William Henry Harbaugh, Power and Responsibility: The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt, 1961; rev. ed., 1975.
• Richard Collin, Theodore Roosevelt's Caribbean: The Panama Canal, the Monroe Doctrine, and the Latin American Context, 1990.
• Lewis L. Gould, The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 1991

Roosevelt, Theodore (1858-1919) 26th president of the United States. A frail, asthmatic youth, Roosevelt, born in New York City, fought against his infirmities and became an avid sportsman. He had an abiding interest in natural history and published a scholarly paper while still in college. By 1882, this prodigious polymath had also begun work on The Naval War of 1812, still recognized as a major work of scholarship. After college, he studied law but dropped out. He entered the New York State Assembly in 1882, where, although nominally a Republican, he quickly won a reputation for independence and supported a bundle of “good government” measures. After the death of his wife in 1884, he moved to his ranch in western Dakota and considered quitting politics and becoming a rancher. Nonetheless, in 1886 he ran for mayor of New York City, coming in third; he also remarried. In 1887 he became chairman of the U.S. Civil Service Commission, where he continued to emphasize merit as the basis for advancement. From 1895 to 1897, he served as New York City's police commissioner, tightening discipline and setting high standards for police officers. He was assistant secretary of the navy (1897-99) but resigned to organize a regiment of volunteer cavalry, called the “Rough Riders, ” whom he led in a famous assault on San Juan Heights, Cuba, during the Spanish-American War. In November 1898 he won election as governor of New York, on the strength of his war record and his ebullient personality. In that position he supported progressive measures such as limits on women and child labor, eliminated separate schools for white and black students, and made efforts to preserve the state's natural beauty. Roosevelt ran for vice president in the election of 1900 and became president in 1901 upon the assassination of President William McKinley. Believing that federal regulation was necessary to redress inequalities in the nation's social and economic spheres, he moved to break up the huge trusts that dominated the country's economy, beginning with the Northern Securities Company; he also used his influence, and threats of nationalization, to bring miners and owners back to the negotiating table during the 1902 coal strike and to win de facto recognition of the union. During his second term Roosevelt supported additional progressive legislation, including the Pure Food and Drug bill, the expansion of the civil service, and federal inspection of stockyards and slaughterhouses. He also continued to press for preservation of the nation's natural resources. In foreign policy, he supported a buildup of the navy, the open door policy in China, and U.S. hegemony in Latin America; he encouraged the revolution in Panama (1903) that allowed for the construction of the Panama Canal, and believed peace could best be maintained by a balance of power. His mediation of the Russo-Japanese War (1905) earned him the Nobel Peace Prize. Despite Roosevelt's energy, his charisma, and his sprawling intellect, he did not command the loyalties of his fellow Republicans, who resented his domination of the party's politics, and who did not share his views on the role of the federal government. Roosevelt responded by condemning them as lackeys of the wealthy and by claiming that corporations were purchasing favors from politicians. In 1912, having been denied renomination by the Republican party, Roosevelt ran on as a third-party candidate representing the Progressive, or Bull Moose, party but came in second to Woodrow Wilson. From 1912 on, he wrote voluminously, explored Brazil, and advocated military preparedness as World War I loomed, criticizing pacifists and advocating universal conscription. He supported Charles Evans Hughes for president in 1916 because he though Hughes would better prepare the nation for the inevitability of war. He eventually supported the League of Nations, although he continued to believe that U.S. military leadership was essential to world peace.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

The first modern American president, Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) was also one of the most popular, important, and controversial. During his years in office he greatly expanded the power of the presidency.

A strong nationalist and a resourceful leader, Theodore Roosevelt gloried in the opportunities and responsibilities of world power. He especially enlarged the United States role in the Far East and Latin America. At home he increased regulation of business, encouraged the labor movement, and waged a long, dramatic battle for conservation of national resources. He also organized the Progressive party (1912) and advanced the rise of the welfare state with a forceful campaign for social justice.

Roosevelt was born in New York City on Oct. 27, 1858. His father was of an old Dutch mercantile family long prominent in the city's affairs. His mother came from an established Georgia family of Scotch-Irish and Huguenot ancestry. A buoyant, dominant figure, his father was the only man, young Roosevelt once said, he "ever feared." He imbued his son with an acute sense of civic responsibility and an attitude of noblesse oblige.

Partly because of a severe asthmatic condition, Theodore was educated by private tutors until 1876, when he entered Harvard College. Abandoning plans to become a naturalist, he developed political and historical interests, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and finished twenty-first in a class of 158. He also began writing The Naval War of 1812 (1882), a work of limited range but high technical competence. Four months after his graduation in 1880, he married Alice Hathaway Lee, by whom he had a daughter.

Early Career

Bored by the study of law in the office of an uncle and at Columbia University, Roosevelt willingly gave it up in 1882 to serve the first of three terms in the New York State Assembly. He quickly distinguished himself for integrity, courage, and independence, and upon his retirement in 1884 he had become the leader of the Republican party's reform wing. Though his reputation was based on his attacks against corruption, he had shown some interest in social problems and had begun to break with laissez-faire economics. Among the many bills he drove through the Assembly was a measure, worked out with labor leader Samuel Gompers, to regulate tenement workshops.

Roosevelt's last term was marred by the sudden deaths of his mother and his wife within hours of each other in February 1884. After the legislative session ended, he established a ranch, Elkhorn, on the Little Missouri River in the Dakota Territory. Immersing himself in history, he completed Thomas Hart Benton (1886) and Gouverneur Morris (1887) and began to prepare his major work, the four-volume Winning of the West (1889-1896). A tour de force distinguished more for its narrative power and personality sketches than its social and economic analysis, it won the respect of the foremost academic historian of the West, Frederick Jackson Turner. It also gave Roosevelt considerable standing among professional historians and contributed to his election as president of the American Historical Association in 1912. Meanwhile, he published numerous hunting and nature books, some of high order.

Politics and a romantic interest in a childhood friend, Edith Carow, drew Roosevelt back east. Nominated for mayor of New York, he waged a characteristically vigorous campaign in 1886 but finished third. He then went to London to marry Carow, with whom he had four sons and a daughter.

In 1889 Roosevelt was rewarded for his earlier services to President Benjamin Harrison with appointment to the ineffectual Civil Service Commission. Plunging into his duties with extraordinary zeal, he soon became head of the Commission. He insisted that the laws be scrupulously enforced in order to open the government service to all who were qualified, and he alienated many politicians in his own party by refusing to submit to their demands. By the end of his six years in office Roosevelt had virtually institutionalized the civil service.

Roosevelt returned to New York City in 1895 to serve two tumultuous years as president of the police board. Enforcing the law with relentless efficiency and uncompromising honesty, he indulged once more in acrimonious controversy with the leaders of his party. He succeeded in modernizing the force, eliminating graft from the promotion system, and raising morale to unprecedented heights. "It's tough on the force, for he was dead square … and we needed him," said an unnamed policeman when Roosevelt resigned in the spring of 1897 to become President William McKinley's assistant secretary of the Navy.

As assistant secretary, Roosevelt instituted personnel reforms, arranged meaningful maneuvers for the fleet, and lobbied energetically for a two-ocean navy. He uncritically accepted imperialistic theories, and he worked closely with senators Henry Cabot Lodge and Alfred Beveridge for war against Spain in 1898. Although moved partly by humanitarian considerations, he was animated mainly by lust for empire and an exaggerated conception of the glories of war. "No qualities called out by a purely peaceful life," he wrote, "stand on a level with those stern and virile virtues which move the men of stout heart and strong hand who uphold the honor of their flag in battle."

Anxious to prove himself under fire, Roosevelt resigned as assistant secretary of the Navy in April to organize the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry Regiment (the "Rough Riders"). He took command of the unit in Cuba and distinguished himself and his regiment in a bold charge up the hill next to San Juan. In late summer 1898 he returned to New York a war hero.

New York's Governor

Nominated for governor, Roosevelt won election in the fall of 1898 by a narrow margin. His 2-year administration was the most enlightened to that time. By deferring to the Republican machine on minor matters, by mobilizing public opinion behind his program, and by otherwise invoking the arts of the master politician, Roosevelt forced an impressive body of legislation through a recalcitrant Assembly and Senate. Most significant, perhaps, was a franchise tax on corporations. As the Democratic New York World concluded when he left office, "the controlling purpose and general course of his administration have been high and good."

Roosevelt accepted the vice-presidential nomination in 1900. A landslide victory for McKinley and Roosevelt ensued. Then, on Sept. 14, 1901, following McKinley's death by an assassin's bullet, Roosevelt was sworn in. Not quite 43, he was the youngest president in history.

First Presidential Administration

Roosevelt's first three years in office were inhibited by the conservatism of Republican congressional leaders and the accidental nature of his coming to power. He was able to sign the Newlands Reclamation Bill into law (1902) and the Elkins Antirebate Bill (1903); he also persuaded Congress to create a toothless Bureau of Corporations. But it was his sensational use of the dormant powers of his office that lifted his first partial term above the ordinary.

On Feb. 18, 1902, Roosevelt shook the financial community and took a first step toward bringing big business under Federal control by ordering antitrust proceedings against the Northern Securities Company, a railroad combine formed by J. P. Morgan and other magnates. Suits against the meat-packers and other trusts followed, and by the time Roosevelt left office 43 actions had been instituted. Yet he never regarded antitrust suits as a full solution to the corporation problem. During his second administration he strove, with limited success, to provide for continuous regulation rather than the dissolution of big businesses.

Hardly less dramatic than his attack on the Northern Securities Company was Roosevelt's intervention in a five-month-long anthracite coal strike in 1902. By virtually forcing the operators to submit to arbitration, he won important gains for the striking miners. Never before had a president used his powers in a strike on labor's side.

Foreign Policy

Roosevelt's conduct of foreign policy was as dynamic and considerably more far-reaching in import. Believing that there could be no retreat from the power position which the Spanish-American War had dramatized but which the United States industrialism had forged, he stamped his imprint upon American policy with unusual force. He established a moderately enlightened government in the Philippines, while persuading Congress to grant tariff concessions to Cuba. He settled an old Alaskan boundary dispute with Canada on terms favorable to the United States. And he capitalized on an externally financed revolution in Panama to acquire the Canal Zone under conditions that created a heritage of ill will.

At the instance of the president of Santo Domingo, Roosevelt also arranged for the United States to assume control of the customs of that misgoverned nation in order to avert intervention by European powers. He had about the same desire to annex Santo Domingo, he said, "as a gorged boa constrictor might have to swallow a porcupine wrong-end-to." But he had already forestalled German intervention in Venezuela in 1902 and was anxious to establish a firm policy against it. So on May 20, 1904, and again in December he set forth what became known as the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. The United States, he declared, assumed the right to intervene in the internal affairs of the Latin American nations in the event of "chronic wrongdoing" or "impotence."

Roosevelt's first administration was also marked by a revitalization of the bureaucracy. The quality of appointees was raised, capable members of minority groups were given government posts (in 1906 Roosevelt named the first Jew, Oscar Straus, to a Cabinet position), and the civil service lists were expanded. At the same time, however, the President ruthlessly manipulated patronage so as to wrest control of Republican party machinery from Senator Mark Hanna and secure his nomination to a full term in 1904. "In politics," he disarmingly explained, "we have to do a great many things we ought not to do." Overwhelming his conservative Democratic opponent by the greatest popular majority to that time, Roosevelt won the election and carried in a great host of congressional candidates on his coattails.

Second Administration

Although the resentment of the Republican party's Old Guard increased rather than diminished as his tenure lengthened, Roosevelt pushed through a much more progressive program in this second term. His "Square Deal" reached its finest legislative flower in 1906 with passage of the Hepburn Railroad Bill, the Pure Food and Drug Bill, an amendment providing Federal regulation of stockyards and packing houses, and an employers' liability measure. Yet he probably did even more to forward progressivism by using his office as a pulpit and by appointing study commissions such as those on country life and inland waterways. Several of his messages to Congress in 1907 and 1908 were the most radical to that time. In the face of the Old Guard's open repudiation of him, moreover, he profoundly stimulated the burgeoning progressive movement on all levels of government.

Conservation Program

In conservation Roosevelt's drive to control exploitation and increase development of natural resources was remarkable for sustained intellectual and administrative force. In no other cause did he fuse science and morality so effectively. Based on the propositions that nature's heritage belonged to the people, that "the fundamental idea of forestry is the perpetuation of forests by use," and that "every stream is a unit from its source to its mouth, and all its uses are interdependent," his conservation program provoked bitter conflict with Western states'-rightists and their allies, the electric power companies and large ranchers. In the end Roosevelt failed to marshal even a modicum of support in Congress for multipurpose river valley developments. But he did save what later became the heart of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) by vetoing a bill that would have opened Muscle Shoals to haphazard private development.

By March 1909 Roosevelt's audacious use of executive power had resulted in the transfer of 125 million acres to the forest reserves. About half as many acres containing coal and mineral deposits had been subjected to public controls. Sixteen national monuments and 51 wildlife refuges had been established. And the number of national parks had been doubled. As Roosevelt's bitter enemy Senator Robert M. La Follette wrote, "his greatest work was inspiring and actually beginning a world movement for … saving for the human race the things on which alone a peaceful, progressive, and happy life can be founded."

Foreign Policy

Roosevelt's pronounced impact on the international scene continued during his second term. He intervened decisively for peace in the Algeciras crisis of 1905-1906, and he supported the call for the Second Hague Conference of 1907. But it was in the Far East, where he gradually abandoned the imperialistic aspirations of his pre-presidential years, that he played the most significant role. Perceiving that Japan was destined to become a major Far Eastern power, he encouraged that country to serve as a stabilizing force in the area. To this end he used his good offices to close the Russo-Japanese War through a conference at Portsmouth, N.H., in 1905; for this service he received the Nobel Peace Prize. He also acquiesced at this time in Japan's extension of suzerainty over Korea (Taft-Katsura Memorandum).

By 1907 Roosevelt realized that the Philippines were the United States' "heel of Achilles." He had also come to realize that the China trade which the open-door policy was designed to foster was largely illusory. He consequently labored to maintain Japan's friendship without compromising American interests. He fostered a "gentleman's agreement" on immigration of Japanese to the United States. He implicitly recognized Japan's economic ascendancy in Manchuria through the Root-Takahira agreement of 1908. (Later he urged his successor, President William H. Taft, to give up commercial aspirations and the open-door policy in North China, though he was unsuccessful in this.)

Progressive Movement

Rejecting suggestions that he run for reelection, Roosevelt selected Taft as his successor. He then led a scientific and hunting expedition to Africa (1909) and made a triumphal tour of Europe. He returned to a strife-ridden Republican party in June 1910. Caught between the conservative supporters of Taft and the advanced progressive followers of himself and La Follette, he gave hope to La Follette by setting forth a radical program - the "new nationalism" - of social and economic reforms that summer. Thereafter pressure to declare himself a candidate for the nomination in 1912 mounted until he reluctantly did so.

Although Roosevelt outpolled Taft by more than 2 to 1 in the Republican primaries, Taft's control of the party organization won him the nomination in convention. Roosevelt's supporters then stormed out of the party and organized the Progressive, or "Bull Moose," party. During the three-cornered campaign that fall, Roosevelt called forcefully for Federal regulation of corporations, steeply graduated income and inheritance taxes, multipurpose river valley developments, and social justice for labor and other underprivileged groups. But the Democratic nominee, Woodrow Wilson, running on a more traditional reform platform, won the election.

World War I

Within 3 months of the outbreak of war in Europe in 1914, Roosevelt began his last crusade: an impassioned campaign to persuade the American people to join the Allies and prosecute the war with vigor. He believed that a German victory would be inimical to American economic, political, and cultural interests. But he was also influenced, as in 1898, by his romantic conception of war and ultranationalism. As a result, he distorted the real nature of his thought by trumpeting for war on the submarine, or American-rights, issue alone. More regrettable still, he virtually called for war against Mexico in 1916.

Following America's declaration of war in April 1917, Roosevelt relentlessly attacked the administration for failing to mobilize fast enough. Embittered by Wilson's refusal to let him raise a division, he also attacked the President personally. He was unenthusiastic about the League of Nations, believing that a military alliance of France, Great Britain, and the United States could best preserve peace. He was prepared to support Senator Henry Cabot Lodge's nationalistic reservations to the League Covenant, but he died in his home at Oyster Bay, Long Island, on Jan. 6, 1919, before he could be effective.

Roosevelt's reputation as a domestic reformer remains high and secure. He was the first president to concern himself with the judiciary's massive bias toward property rights (as opposed to human rights), with the maldistribution of wealth, and with the subversion of the democratic process by spokesmen of economic interests in Congress, the pulpits, and the editorial offices. He was also the first to understand the conservation problem in its multiple facets, the first to evolve a regulatory program for capital, and the first to encourage the growth of labor unions. The best-liked man of his times, he has never been revered because his militarism and chauvinism affronted the human spirit.

Further Reading

Roosevelt can be studied through his own writings. Especially valuable are his Letters, edited by Elting E. Morison and John M. Blum (8 vols., 1951-1954), and a collection of his essays, books, and speeches, The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, edited by Hermann Hagedorn (24 vols., 1923-1925). A general collection, Writings, was edited by William H. Harbaugh (1967). Roosevelt's An Autobiography (1913) is revealing despite the usual deficiencies of such works.

William H. Harbaugh, Power and Responsibility: The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt (1961; rev. ed., entitled The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt, 1963), is a full-length biography. The best study of Roosevelt's early career is Carleton Putnam, Theodore Roosevelt, vol. 1: The Formative Years (1958); the best treatment of his governorship is G. Wallace Chessman, Governor Theodore Roosevelt (1965). John M. Blum, The Republican Roosevelt (1954; new ed. 1962), is a penetrating essay. The roots of Roosevelt's imperialism are examined in David H. Burton, Theodore Roosevelt: Confident Imperialist (1968).

Howard K. Beale, Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of America to World Power (1956), is a seminal study. Fine short accounts are George E. Mowry, The Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 1900-1912 (1958), and G. Wallace Chessman, Theodore Roosevelt and the Politics of Power, edited by Oscar Handlin (1969).

• Born: Oct. 27, 1858, New York, N.Y.
• Political party: Republican
• Education: Harvard College, A.B., 1880; Columbia University School of Law, 1881
• Military service: 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, 1898
• Previous government service: New York State Assembly, 1881–84; U.S. Civil Service commissioner, 1889–95; president, New York City Board of Police Commissioners, 1895–96; assistant secretary of the navy, 1897–98; governor of New York, 1899–1901; Vice President, 1901
• Succeeded to Presidency, 1901; served, 1901–9
• Died: Jan. 6, 1919, Oyster Bay, N.Y.

Theodore (“Teddy”) Roosevelt was the youngest person ever to serve as President of the United States and the first Vice President who succeeded to the Presidency to win election in his own right. He used the powers of the Presidency to the hilt, especially in foreign affairs, and he was the first President to act as the leader of a world power. His motto was “Speak softly and carry a big stick,” yet in spite of his militaristic attitudes, the nation remained at peace. Not a single member of the armed forces died in combat during his term—almost a unique accomplishment among U.S. Presidents.

Roosevelt was afflicted with asthma as a boy but built himself up with exercise. He graduated from Harvard and attended law school briefly. In the New York Assembly he strayed frequently from the Republican party to take an independent position. He wrote several popular histories, beginning with The Naval War of 1812. When his wife Alice Lee died in childbirth in 1884 (on the same day he learned of the death of his mother), he went out West to a ranch in the Dakota Territory to recover from his grief.

Roosevelt returned to the East to run for mayor of New York City in 1886, but he finished third and went back to the ranch with his new wife, his childhood friend Edith Carow. There he wrote biographies of Senator Thomas Hart Benton and Gouverneur Morris (an influential delegate to the federal Constitutional Convention), and the two volumes of The Winning of the West. In 1889 he returned East again and was named to the U.S. Civil Service Commission by President Benjamin Harrison. He transferred thousands of patronage jobs to the merit system. In 1895 he became president of the New York City Board of Police Commissioners.

When President William McKinley took office in 1897, he named Roosevelt assistant secretary of the navy. Roosevelt promoted ship construction and deployed much of the fleet in the Far East, where Admiral George Dewey was able to secure Manila Bay and win control of the Philippines at the beginning of the Spanish-American War. Roosevelt himself organized the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, known as the Rough Riders. As their commander, he led them into battle at Kettle Hill near Santiago de Cuba, which newspaper accounts called the “charge up San Juan Hill.”

Roosevelt's battlefield exploits, recounted in his book The Rough Riders (1899), won him the governorship of New York. His reform program so upset party leaders that they arranged for him to receive the Vice Presidential nomination in 1900. Roosevelt was so bored with the inactivity of the Vice Presidency that he seriously considered finishing law school. But six months after his inauguration, on September 14, 1901, President William McKinley died of an assassin's bullet and Roosevelt took the Presidential oath.

At 42, Roosevelt was the youngest person ever to assume the office. He pledged to continue McKinley's policies but soon demonstrated his reformist and independent streak, much to the chagrin of the Republican leaders who had put him on the ticket. He developed the “stewardship” theory of the Presidency: the chief executive could and should take all measures necessary for the welfare of the American people, even if they were not specifically mentioned in the Constitution.

Roosevelt instituted more than 30 court cases against corporations, charging them with violations of antitrust laws—conspiring to control markets or fix prices. He insisted that coal mine owners negotiate with their miners. This was the first time that a President had acted as a neutral umpire in a dispute between management and labor. In 1902 he secured passage of the Newlands Reclamation Act, which funded irrigation projects in the West. He increased the acreage of national parks and forests fivefold, much of it by executive orders creating five national parks. He also established the first federal bird reservation and 50 bird sanctuaries to protect endangered species. For the first time, a President focused public attention on conservation and the environment, and he got Congress to establish the U.S. Forest Service. In 1903 Congress created the Department of Commerce and Labor, and to head it, Roosevelt nominated the first Jewish cabinet secretary, Oscar Straus.

In foreign affairs Roosevelt presided over the expansion of American naval power, sending the Great White Fleet on a tour around the world from 1907 to 1909 to demonstrate the power of the United States to other nations. He insisted that the United States be the dominant naval power in the Pacific. When the government of Colombia refused to ratify an agreement that would allow the United States to begin construction of a canal across the isthmus of Panama (then a Colombian province), Roosevelt encouraged revolutionists to declare Panama independent and used the navy to prevent Colombian warships from quelling the revolt. Soon, he concluded an agreement with the new nation, granting the United States a zone in which to construct a canal. In 1904 the President announced the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which, in effect, made the United States the “policeman” in the Western Hemisphere.

In 1904 Roosevelt was unanimously nominated for President by the Republican party, and he won election in his own right by defeating Democrat Alton B. Parker. He declared that he viewed his first three years in the White House as a full first term, and that, therefore, his second term would be his last.

Roosevelt continued his activist foreign policies. He took full control of the finances of the Dominican Republic in 1905 in order to pay its debts to U.S. and European creditors. When the Senate balked at consenting to a commercial treaty with the Dominican Republic because Southern senators considered it harmful to Southern sugar growers, Roosevelt implemented its terms by calling it an executive agreement, which did not require Senate consent. That same year Roosevelt mediated an end to the Russo-Japanese War at the Portsmouth Conference, receiving the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. He donated his $40,000 prize to a foundation for promoting better labor-management relations.

With solid Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress, in 1906 Roosevelt won passage of three important laws: the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act, which established new safety standards for consumers, and the Hepburn Railroad Act, which strengthened the enforcement power of the Interstate Commerce Commission over railroads.

In 1908 Roosevelt honored his two-term pledge and helped secure the Republican Presidential nomination for his protègé William Howard Taft. The two men eventually broke over Taft's conservative policies, and in 1910 Roosevelt went on a nationwide speaking tour, promoting a program of New Nationalism. To Roosevelt, the issue was simple: the Republican party should be the “party of the plain people,” not “the party of privilege and of special interests.” He called for government regulation of corporations and natural resources, a minimum wage, and limitations on the length of the workday.

In 1912 Taft defeated Roosevelt for the Republican nomination. Roosevelt's followers then organized a new party, the Progressive party, and nominated him. Roosevelt told them he felt “as strong as a bull moose,” and the press then dubbed it the Bull Moose party. His platform emphasized democratization of U.S. politics; its proposals included the reversal of judicial decisions by popular vote, direct election of U.S. senators, woman suffrage, and referenda (direct popular votes) on legislation.

With Republican voters split between the regular Taft and the insurgent Roosevelt, Democrat Woodrow Wilson won the White House. Toward the end of his life, Roosevelt attempted unsuccessfully to get Wilson to offer him a commission so he could lead a new group of volunteers to fight in World War I. He died in 1919, shortly after the war's end.

See also Executive agreements; McKinley, William; Monroe Doctrine; Taft, William Howard; Two-term tradition; Wilson, Woodrow

Sources

• John Milton Cooper, Jr., The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983).
• Lewis L. Gould, The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991).
• William H. Harbaugh, Power and Responsibility: The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975).
• David McCullough, Mornings on Horseback (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981).
• Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1979)

(1858-1919), twenty-sixth president of the United States. The most dynamic of American presidents, Roosevelt was at once a realist and a romanticist in foreign affairs and a progressive in domestic policy. He was also a fervent nationalist and a consummate moralist.

Born in New York City, Roosevelt graduated from Harvard in 1880. He emerged as the leader of reform Republicans in the New York State Assembly in the early 1880s. Thereafter, he pushed practical reforms as head of the U.S. Civil Service Commission (1889-1895), president of the New York City police commission (1895-1897), assistant secretary of the navy (1897-1898), and governor of New York (1899-1900). He vigorously advocated war against Spain in 1898 and then performed heroically in Cuba as colonel of a volunteer cavalry unit, the "Rough Riders."

Elected vice president of the United States in 1900, Roosevelt became president after the assassination of William McKinley in September 1901. For seven and a half years, Roosevelt strove to balance the interests of farmers, workers, and businesspeople. Despite his image as a trustbuster, he preferred continuous regulation of giant corporations to dissolution under the antitrust laws, and to that end he drove through Congress legislation creating the Bureau of Corporations and strengthening the regulation of railroads. He also supported regulation of the food and drug industries. But his most significant accomplishment was probably the transfer of 125 million acres of public land into the forest reserves, the doubling of national parks, the creation of sixteen national monuments such as California's Muir Woods, and the establishment of fifty-one wildlife refuges.

In 1904 Roosevelt won a full term by decisively defeating Democrat Alton B. Parker. He became increasingly progressive thereafter and by 1909 had endorsed proposals for graduated income and inheritance taxes and other concepts then deemed radical.

In foreign affairs, Roosevelt willingly shouldered the responsibilities of world power. He broke precedents, acted independently of Congress, and held himself ready to invoke force in defense of the national interest if necessary. He arranged to construct a canal through Panama. ("I took Panama," he boasted, with some cause.) He faced down the kaiser over German involvement in Venezuela. He assumed in the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine the right to intervene in the affairs of Latin American states. And he facilitated, and to some extent mediated, the end of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. That same year he secretly recognized Japanese suzerainty in Korea and, in 1908, implicitly accepted Japan's economic ascendancy in Manchuria.

Roosevelt's views continued to evolve in retirement, and in 1910 he urged President William Howard Taft to abandon commercial ambitions in North China. Roosevelt also moved beyond the advanced progressive themes of the last years of his presidency. His commitment to an expanded regulatory and welfare program (the "New Nationalism") made conflict between him and Taft virtually inevitable; in 1912, running as the candidate of the Progressive, or Bull Moose party, Roosevelt outpolled his successor in the presidential campaign, which, however, Woodrow Wilson won. An ardent proponent of military preparedness and American entry into World War I, Roosevelt returned to the Republican party in 1916. He strenuously supported the war effort but opposed the League of Nations as conceived by Wilson.

Theodore Roosevelt was the first president of the modern era to react broadly to the challenges raised by the industrial and technological revolutions. In so doing, he contributed substantially to the enlargement of federal power.

Bibliography:

Lewis L. Gould, The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt (1990); William H. Harbaugh, Power and Responsibility: The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt (1961).

Author:

William H. Harbaugh

See also Elections: 1900 , 1904 , 1912; New Nationalism; Progressive Parties: 1912, 1924, 1948; Progressivism; Spanish-American War. For events during Roosevelt's administration, see Antitrust Movement; Asia-U.S. Relations; Brownsville Affair; Caribbean-U.S. Relations; Conservation and Environmental Movements; Interstate Commerce Commission; Latin America-U.S. Relations; Lochner v. New York; Muckrakers; Muller v. Oregon ; Panama Canal; Pure Food and Drug Act; Roosevelt Corollary.

A political leader of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Roosevelt was president from 1901 to 1909. He became governor of New York in 1899, soon after leading a group of volunteer cavalrymen, the Rough Riders, in the Spanish-American War. A Republican, Roosevelt was elected vice president in 1900 under President William McKinley and became president when McKinley was assassinated; he was reelected on his own in 1904. As president, he upheld many of the interests of the Progressive movement. His accomplishments include the breaking up of large monopolies (see trust busting), better federal inspection of food, closer federal regulation of railroads, and more conservation of natural resources. Roosevelt summarized his foreign policy as “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” He received the Nobel Prize for peace in 1906, after he brought the opponents in the Russo-Japanese War to an agreement. Construction of the Panama Canal was begun during his presidency. He did not seek reelection in 1908, but ran unsuccessfully for the presidency in 1912 as the candidate of the Progressive party.

Theodore ("Teddy") Roosevelt served as the twenty-sixth president of the United States from 1901 to 1909. A writer, explorer, and soldier, as well as a politician, Roosevelt distinguished himself as president by advocating conservation of natural resources, waging legal battles against economic monopolies and trusts, and exercising leadership in foreign affairs. An energetic man with a colorful personality, Roosevelt later sought to reclaim the presidency in 1912 as the head of the Progressive party.

Roosevelt was born on October 27, 1858, in New York City, a descendant of a wealthy and aristocratic family that first settled in New York in the 1600s. A sickly boy, Roosevelt developed a regimen of diet and exercise that transformed him into a vigorous young man. He graduated from Harvard University in 1880 and was elected to the New York State Assembly in 1881.

Roosevelt resigned in 1884, following the death of his wife, and spent two years at his ranch in the Badlands of the Dakota Territory. During this period he developed both his association with the Wild West world of cowboys and his appreciation of the wilderness. He returned to New York City in 1886 and ran unsuccessfully for mayor. From 1889 to 1895, Roosevelt served as a civil service commissioner in Washington, D.C. In 1895 he was appointed as a reform-minded New York City police commissioner. His main occupation, however, was that of writer: he wrote many magazine articles and twelve books between 1880 and 1900.

Roosevelt's rise to national prominence came during the Spanish-American War of 1898. Anxious to be a part of the forces that would go to Cuba, he organized a group of cowboys and New York aristocrats into a cavalry regiment nicknamed the Rough Riders. As a lieutenant colonel, Roosevelt became a national hero and darling of the national news media when he led his Rough Riders to victory at the Battle of San Juan Hill in July 1898.

The New York Republican party, under the leadership of Senator Thomas C. Platt, nominated Roosevelt for governor in 1898, in the hope that his popularity could rescue a party plagued by scandal. Roosevelt was easily elected but soon offended party leaders by asserting his political independence. Platt became so frustrated with Roosevelt's reform agenda that he persuaded President William McKinley to make Roosevelt his vice presidential running mate in 1900. Reluctantly, Roosevelt accepted the nomination. His popularity helped McKinley win a second term. On September 6, 1901, an anarchist named Leon F. Czolgosz shot McKinley when he visited the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. Eight days later McKinley died and Roosevelt assumed the presidency.

As president, Roosevelt sought to attack corruption and to promote economic and political reform. He insisted that government should be the arbiter of economic conflicts between capital and labor. He demonstrated his convictions by negotiating a settlement of a strike between coal miners and mine operators in 1902, the first time a president had intervened in a labor dispute. Roosevelt referred to his platform for business and labor as the Square Deal.

Roosevelt won public acclaim for being a "trust buster." By the early twentieth century, a few large companies in key industries, including railroads, oil, and steel, had stifled competition and created monopolies. In one of his first major acts, Roosevelt filed suit to dissolve the Northern Securities Company, a trust controlled by the three major railroads in the Northwest. Using the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890 (15 U.S.C.A. §1 et seq.), the Roosevelt administration successfully broke up Northern Securities; antitrust lawsuits against forty-three other major corporations soon followed.

In 1904 the Republican party nominated Roosevelt for a second term. He easily defeated the Democratic candidate Alton B. Parker of New York. In his second term Roosevelt helped enact several groundbreaking pieces of federal legislation. Spurred in part by public concern over the unsanitary food packing methods revealed by Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel The Jungle, Roosevelt pressured Congress and the meat packing industry to support the Meat Inspection Act of 1906 (21 U.S.C.A. §601 et seq.). In 1906 Congress also passed the Pure Food and Drug Act (21 U.S.C.A. §301 et seq.), which criminalized the misleading and harmful sale of patent medicines that made false claims about their medicinal effects. The act also established the Food and Drug Administration, putting in place a federal agency dedicated to consumer protection. Roosevelt also was instrumental in the passage of the Hepburn Act of 1906 (34 Stat. 584), which increased the powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), allowing the ICC to inspect the business records of railroads.

Roosevelt became the first president to play a major international role in foreign policy. His favorite motto, based on an African proverb, was "speak softly and carry a big stick." The motto epitomized Roosevelt's foreign policy, as he increased the size of the U.S. Navy and sent the fleet around the world in 1908 to demonstrate both U.S. military strength and U.S. involvement in world affairs.

Roosevelt initiated the construction of the Panama Canal in 1902, reduced domestic discord by making an agreement with Japan on limiting the number of Japanese immigrants to the United States, and negotiated the end of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 at a peace conference held in Portsmouth, Maine. He earned the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 for mediating the peace agreement.

Perhaps the most innovative aspect of Roosevelt's presidency was his commitment to the conservation of natural resources. He lobbied successfully for funds to convert large portions of federal land into national forests. In seven years 194 million additional acres of federal land were closed to commercial development, five times more than his three predecessors had reserved for conservation purposes. Roosevelt also approved the Newlands Act of 1903 (32 Stat. 388), which called for part of the receipts from the sale of public lands in the western states and territories to be reserved for dams and reclamation projects. The legislation saved much western wildlife from extinction.

Despite his relative youth and energy, Roosevelt declined to run for another term. His progressive reforms had angered many conservative Republicans in Congress. In addition, his public comments on "race suicide," in which he lamented the declining birthrate of U.S. citizens of northern European ancestry and the accelerating birthrate of Russian and southern European immigrants, troubled many people. He approved the Republican presidential nomination of his secretary of war, William Howard Taft, in the belief that Taft was a progressive Republican. Taft won the presidency in November 1908.

After leaving office in March 1909, Roosevelt spent ten months in Africa on a hunting trip and then visited Europe. Upon his return to the United States in 1910, he was shocked at Taft's capitulation to the conservative Republicans in Congress. His animosity toward Taft grew, and in 1912 Roosevelt declared his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination. Although he won most of the primaries, the Republican party leaders controlled enough votes to give the nomination to Taft. Undaunted, Roosevelt formed a third party, called the Progressive party. Following a failed assassination attempt against him in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in October 1912, he said that it would take more than that to kill a bull moose. Thereafter, the Progressives were nicknamed the Bull Moose party.

Roosevelt won more votes than Taft, but the division of Republican strength allowed Democrat Woodrow Wilson to be elected president. Roosevelt grew to despise Wilson and his policies, leveling harsh criticism against Wilson's foreign policy. Incensed when Wilson denied him the opportunity to form a regiment and fight in World War I, Roosevelt denounced Wilson's proposal for the League of Nations, even though Roosevelt himself had once advocated such an organization.

Roosevelt's health deteriorated rapidly in his last years. He died on January 6, 1919, at his home in Oyster Bay, New York.

Quotes:

"In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing."

"At sometime in our lives a devil dwells within us, causes heartbreaks, confusion and troubles, then dies."

"I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life."

"The first requisite of a good citizen in this republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his weight."

"A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad."

"To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society."

See more famous quotes by Theodore Roosevelt

For other persons named Theodore Roosevelt, see Theodore Roosevelt (disambiguation).

Theodore Roosevelt
26th President of the United States
In office September 14, 1901 – March 4, 1909
Vice President	Charles W. Fairbanks (1905–1909)
Preceded by	William McKinley
Succeeded by	William Howard Taft
25th Vice President of the United States
In office March 4, 1901 – September 14, 1901
President	William McKinley
Preceded by	Garret Hobart
Succeeded by	Charles W. Fairbanks
33rd Governor of New York
In office January 1, 1899 – December 31, 1900
Lieutenant	Timothy L. Woodruff
Preceded by	Frank S. Black
Succeeded by	Benjamin B. Odell, Jr.
Assistant Secretary of the Navy
In office 1897 – 1898
President	William McKinley
President of the board of New York City Police Commissioners
In office 1895 – 1897
Born	October 27, 1858(1858-10-27) New York, New York
Died	January 6, 1919 (aged 60) Oyster Bay, New York
Political party	Republican (1897–1912) Progressive Party (1912–1916)
Spouse(s)	(1) Alice Hathaway Lee (married 1880, died 1884) (2) Edith Kermit Carow (married 1886)
Children	Alice, Ted, Kermit, Ethel, Archie, Quentin
Alma mater	Columbia Law School - dropped out; Harvard College
Occupation	Statesman, author, historian, explorer, conservationist, civil servant
Religion	Dutch Reformed
Signature
Military service
Service/branch	United States Army
Years of service	1898
Rank	Colonel
Commands	1st United States Volunteer Cavalry Regiment (Rough Riders)
Battles/wars	Spanish-American War *Battle of Las Guasimas *Battle of San Juan Hill
Awards	Nobel Peace Prize (1906), Medal of Honor

The coat of arms of Theodore Roosevelt
Details
Date of origin	17th century
Shield	Argent upon a grassy mound a rosebush bearing three roses gules barbed and seeded proper proper.
Crest and mantle	Upon a torse argent and gules, Three ostrich plumes each per pale gules and argent, the mantling gules doubled argent.

Theodore Roosevelt (October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919; pronounced /ˈroʊzəvɛlt/^[1])^[2] was the 26th President of the United States. He is well remembered for his energetic persona, his range of interests and achievements, his leadership of the Progressive Movement, his model of masculinity, and his "cowboy" image. He was a leader of the Republican Party and founder of the short-lived Progressive ("Bull Moose") Party of 1912. Before becoming the 26th President (1901–1909) he held offices at the municipal, state, and federal level of government. Roosevelt's achievements as a naturalist, explorer, hunter, author, and soldier are as much a part of his fame as any office he held as a politician.

Born to a wealthy family, Roosevelt was an unhealthy child suffering from asthma who stayed at home studying natural history. In response to his physical weakness, he embraced a strenuous life. He attended Harvard, where he boxed and developed an interest in naval affairs. A year out of Harvard, in 1881 he ran for a seat in the state legislature. His first historical book, The Naval War of 1812, published in 1882, established his reputation as a serious historian. After a few years of living in the Badlands, Roosevelt returned to New York City, where he gained fame for fighting police corruption. He was effectively running the US Department of the Navy when the Spanish American War broke out; he resigned and led a small regiment in Cuba known as the Rough Riders, earning himself a nomination for the Medal of Honor. After the war, he returned to New York and was elected Governor; two years later he was nominated for and elected Vice President of the United States.

In 1901, President William McKinley was assassinated, and Roosevelt became president at the age of 42, taking office at the youngest age of any U.S. President in history.^[3] Roosevelt attempted to move the Republican Party in the direction of Progressivism, including trust busting and increased regulation of businesses. Roosevelt coined the phrase "Square Deal" to describe his domestic agenda, emphasizing that the average citizen would get a fair shake under his policies. As an outdoorsman and naturalist, he promoted the conservation movement. On the world stage, Roosevelt's policies were characterized by his slogan, "Speak softly and carry a big stick". Roosevelt was the force behind the completion of the Panama Canal; he sent out the Great White Fleet to display American power, and he negotiated an end to the Russo-Japanese War, for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize.^[4]

Roosevelt declined to run for re-election in 1908. After leaving office, he embarked on a safari to Africa and a trip to Europe. On his return to the US, a rift developed between Roosevelt and his anointed^[5][6] successor as President, William Howard Taft. Roosevelt attempted in 1912 to wrest the Republican nomination from Taft, and when he failed, he launched the Bull Moose Party. In the election, Roosevelt became the only third party candidate to come in second place, beating Taft but losing to Woodrow Wilson. After the election, Roosevelt embarked on a major expedition to South America; the river on which he traveled now bears his name. He contracted malaria on the trip, which damaged his health, and he died a few years later, at the age of 60. Roosevelt has consistently been ranked by scholars as one of the greatest U.S. Presidents.

Contents 1 Family 1.1 Genealogy 1.2 Childhood 1.3 Paternal influence 1.4 First marriage and response to catastrophic loss 2 Education 3 Early political career 3.1 First book published - The Naval War of 1812 3.2 State Assemblyman 4 "Retirement" 5 Return to New York 5.1 Second marriage 5.2 Reentering public life 5.2.1 Civil Service Commission 5.2.2 New York City Police Commissioner 6 Becoming a national figure 6.1 Assistant Secretary of the Navy 6.2 War in Cuba 6.3 Governor and Vice-President 7 Presidency 1901-1909 7.1 Judicial appointments 7.1.1 Supreme Court appointments 7.1.2 Other judicial appointments 7.2 States admitted to the Union 8 Post-presidency 8.1 African safari 8.2 Republican Party rift 8.3 Election of 1912 8.3.1 Republican primaries 8.3.2 Formation of the Bull Moose Party 8.3.3 Assassination attempt 8.4 1913–1914 South American Expedition 9 Later years and death 10 Political positions 10.1 Immigration 10.2 Square Deal 10.3 Conservationist 10.4 Corporate regulations 11 Writer 11.1 Character and beliefs 12 Legacy 12.1 Popular culture 13 Media 14 Electoral history 15 See also 16 Notes and references 16.1 Notes 16.2 Primary sources 16.3 Secondary sources 16.4 Foreign policy 17 Further reading 18 External links

Family

Genealogy

The Roosevelts had been in New York since the mid-17th century. Roosevelt was born into a wealthy family of Dutch origin; by the 19th century, the family had grown in wealth, power and influence from the profits of several businesses including hardware and plate-glass importing. The family was strongly Democratic in its political affiliation until the mid-1850s, then joined the new Republican Party. Theodore's father, known in the family as "Thee", was a New York City philanthropist, merchant, and partner in the family glass-importing firm Roosevelt and Son. He was a prominent supporter of Abraham Lincoln and the Union effort during the American Civil War. His mother Mittie Bulloch was a Southern belle from a slave-owning family in Roswell, Georgia and had quiet Confederate sympathies. Mittie's brother, Theodore's uncle, James Dunwoody Bulloch, was a United States Navy officer who became a Confederate admiral and naval procurement agent in Britain. Another uncle, Irvine Bulloch, was a midshipman on the Confederate raider CSS Alabama; both remained in England after the war.^[7] From his grandparents' home, the young Roosevelt witnessed Abraham Lincoln's funeral procession when it came through New York.

Childhood

Theodore Roosevelt at age 11

Theodore Roosevelt was born on October 27, 1858, in a four-story brownstone at 28 East 20th Street,^[8] in the modern-day Gramercy section of New York City, the second of four children of Theodore Roosevelt, Sr. (1831–1878) and Mittie Bulloch (1835–1884). He had an elder sister Anna, nicknamed "Bamie" as a child and "Bye" as an adult for being always on the go, and two younger siblings—his brother Elliott (the father of future First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt), and his sister Corinne (grandmother of newspaper columnists Joseph and Stewart Alsop).

Sickly and asthmatic as a child, Roosevelt had to sleep propped up in bed or slouching in a chair during much of his early childhood, and had frequent ailments. Despite his illnesses, he was a hyperactive and often mischievous child, who suffered severely from tone deafness^[9]. His lifelong interest in zoology was formed at age seven upon seeing a dead seal at a local market. After obtaining the seal's head, the young Roosevelt and two of his cousins formed what they called the "Roosevelt Museum of Natural History". Learning the rudiments of taxidermy, he filled his makeshift museum with many animals that he killed or caught, studied, and prepared for display. At age nine, he codified his observation of insects with a paper titled "The Natural History of Insects".^[10]

To combat his poor physical condition, his father encouraged the young Roosevelt to take up exercise. Roosevelt started boxing lessons.^[11] Two trips abroad had a permanent impact: family tours of Europe in 1869 and 1870, and of the Middle East 1872 to 1873.

Paternal influence

Theodore, Sr. had a tremendous influence on his son. Of him Roosevelt wrote, "My father, Theodore Roosevelt, was the best man I ever knew. He combined strength and courage with gentleness, tenderness, and great unselfishness. He would not tolerate in us children selfishness or cruelty, idleness, cowardice, or untruthfulness."^[12]

Roosevelt's sister, Corinne, later wrote, "He told me frequently that he never took any serious step or made any vital decision for his country without thinking first what position his father would have taken."^[13]

First marriage and response to catastrophic loss

Diary entry on 14 Feb. 1884.

Alice Hathaway Lee (July 29, 1861 in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts – February 14, 1884 in Manhattan, New York) was the first wife of Theodore Roosevelt and mother of their child, Alice. Roosevelt's wife, Alice died of an undiagnosed (since it was camouflaged by her pregnancy) case of kidney failure (in those days called Bright's disease) two days after Alice Lee was born. Theodore Roosevelt's mother had died of typhoid fever in the same house, on the same day, at 3 am, some eleven hours earlier. After the near simultaneous deaths of his mother and wife, Roosevelt left his daughter in the care of his sister, Anna "Bamie/Bye" in New York City. In his diary he wrote a large X on the page and wrote "the light has gone out of my life." A short time later, Roosevelt wrote a tribute to his wife published privately indicating that:

She was beautiful in face and form, and lovelier still in spirit; As a flower she grew, and as a fair young flower she died. Her life had been always in the sunshine; there had never come to her a single sorrow; and none ever knew her who did not love and revere her for the bright, sunny temper and her saintly unselfishness. Fair, pure, and joyous as a maiden; loving , tender, and happy. As a young wife; when she had just become a mother, when her life seemed to be just begun, and when the years seemed so bright before her—then, by a strange and terrible fate, death came to her. And when my heart’s dearest died, the light went from my life forever.^[14]

To the immense disappointment of his wife's namesake and daughter, Alice, he would not speak of his wife publicly or privately for the rest of his life and did not mention her in his autobiography. As late as 1919, while working with Joseph Bucklin Bishop on a biography which included a collection of his letters, Roosevelt would mention neither his first marriage nor the circumstances of his second marriage, which took place in London.^[15]

A letter written then to a young female friend of Roosevelt's sister Corinne, who had lost a loved one, demonstrated Roosevelt's method of dealing with catastrophic loss. After his death, in her memoirs, his sister Corinne described this letter as "full of a certain quality — what perhaps I might call a righteous ruthlessness specially characteristic of Theodore Roosevelt," because he had written, "I hate to think of her suffering; but the only thing for her to do now is to treat it as past, the event as finished and out of her life; to dwell on it, and above all to keep talking of it with any one, would be both weak and morbid. She should try not to think of it; this she cannot wholly avoid, but she CAN avoid speaking of it. She should show a brave and cheerful front to the world, whatever she feels; and henceforth she should never speak one word of the matter to any one. In the long future, when the memory is too dead to throb, she may, if she wishes, speak of it once more, but if wise and brave, she will not speak of it now."^[16] Roosevelt would later indicate that this was his only method of dealing with a such a debilitating loss, indicating to a grieving friend, "There is nothing more foolish and cowardly than to be beaten down by a sorrow which nothing we can do will change."^[17] or, in the words of his biographer, Edmund Morris, "Like a lion obsessively trying to drag a spear from its flank, Roosevelt set about dislodging Alice Lee from his soul. Nostalgia, a weakness to which he was abnormally vulnerable, could be indulged if it was pleasant, but if painful it must be suppressed, 'until the memory is too dead to throb.'"^[18]

Education

Young "Teedie", as he was nicknamed as a child, (the nickname "Teddy" was from his first wife, Alice Hathaway Lee, and he later harbored an intense dislike for it due to her untimely death) was mostly home schooled by tutors and his parents. A leading biographer says: "The most obvious drawback to the home schooling Roosevelt received was uneven coverage of the various areas of human knowledge.".^[19] He was solid in geography (thanks to his careful observations on all his travels) and very well read in history, strong in biology, French and German, but deficient in mathematics, Latin and Greek He matriculated at Harvard College in 1876. His father's death in 1878 was a tremendous blow, but Roosevelt redoubled his activities. He did well in science, philosophy and rhetoric courses but fared poorly in Latin and Greek. He studied biology with great interest and indeed was already an accomplished naturalist and published ornithologist. He had a photographic memory and developed a life-long habit of devouring books, memorizing every detail.^[20] He was an eloquent conversationalist who, throughout his life, sought out the company of the smartest people. He could multitask in extraordinary fashion, dictating letters to one secretary and memoranda to another, while browsing through a new book.

As a young Sunday school teacher at Christ Church, Roosevelt was once reprimanded for rewarding a young man $1 who showed up to his class with a black eye for fighting a bully. The bully had supposedly pinched his sister and the young man was standing up for her. Roosevelt thought this to be honorable; however, the church deemed it too flagrant of support of fighting.^[21]

While at Harvard, Roosevelt was active in rowing, boxing, the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, and was a member of the Porcellian Club. He also edited a student magazine. He was runner-up in the Harvard boxing championship, losing to C.S. Hanks.

Theodore Roosevelt comments on his family life in exhibit at Niagara Falls, New York

In later years, pondering his largely home-based early education and his college experience in his autobiography, Roosevelt expressed mixed feelings about its value in preparing him for public service, writing:

All this individual morality I was taught by the books I read at home and the books I studied at Harvard. But there was almost no teaching of the need for collective action, and of the fact that in addition to, not as a substitute for, individual responsibility, there is a collective responsibility....The teaching which I received was genuinely democratic in one way. It was not so democratic in another. I grew into manhood thoroughly imbued with the feeling that a man must be respected for what he made of himself. But I had also, consciously or unconsciously, been taught that socially and industrially pretty much the whole duty of the man lay in thus making the best of himself; that he should be honest in his dealings with others and charitable in the old-fashioned way to the unfortunate; but that it was no part of his business to join with others in trying to make things better for the many by curbing the abnormal and excessive development of individualism in a few. Now I do not mean that this training was by any means all bad. On the contrary, the insistence upon individual responsibility was, and is, and always will be, a prime necessity.... But such teaching, if not corrected by other teaching, means acquiescence in a riot of lawless business individualism which would be quite as destructive to real civilization as the lawless military individualism of the Dark Ages. I left college and entered the big world owing more than I can express to the training I had received, especially in my own home; but with much else also to learn if I were to become really fitted to do my part in the work that lay ahead for the generation of Americans to which I belonged."^[22]

Upon graduating, Roosevelt underwent a physical examination and his doctor advised him that due to serious heart problems, he should find a desk job and avoid strenuous activity. He chose to embrace strenuous life instead.^[23] He graduated Phi Beta Kappa (22nd of 177) from Harvard in 1880, and entered Columbia Law School. When offered a chance to run for New York Assemblyman in 1881, he dropped out of law school to pursue his new goal of entering public life.^[24]

Early political career

First book published - The Naval War of 1812

While at Harvard, Roosevelt began a systematic study of the role played by the nascent US Navy in the War of 1812, largely completing two chapters of a book he would publish after graduation.^[25]

He would later recall that in the middle of Mathematics classes at Harvard, his mind would wander from his lessons to the accomplishments of the infant US Navy^[26]. Reading through literature on the subject, Roosevelt found both American and British accounts heavily biased and that there had been no systematic study of the tactics employed in the war. Although a challenge for a young man with no formal military or naval education, but helped in part by his two former Confederate naval officer Bulloch uncles, he did his own research using original source materials and official US Navy records. Unlike previous American and British books that ignored quantifiable facts to push a specific agenda, Roosevelt's carefully researched book was akin to today's modern doctoral dissertations, complete with carefully researched drawings depicting individual and combined ship maneuvers, charts depicting the differences in iron throw weights of cannon shot between American and British forces, and analyses of the differences between British and American leadership down to the ship-to-ship level. It is today considered one of the first modern American historical works. Published after Roosevelt's graduation from Harvard, The Naval War of 1812" was immediately accepted by reviewers who praised the book’s scholarship and style. The newly established Naval War College adopted it for study, and the Department of the Navy ordered a copy placed in the libraries of every capital ship in the Fleet. This book would help establish Roosevelt's reputation as a serious historian.^[27] Roosevelt brought out a subsequent edition including questions and answers from both scholars and critics. One modern naval historian wrote: "Roosevelt’s study of the War of 1812 influenced all subsequent scholarship on the naval aspects of the War of 1812 and continues to be reprinted. More than a classic, it remains, after 120 years, a standard study of the war."^[27]

Roosevelt as NY State Assemblyman, 1883 photo

State Assemblyman

Roosevelt was a Republican activist during his years in the Assembly, writing more bills than any other New York state legislator. Already a major player in state politics, he attended the Republican National Convention in 1884 and fought alongside the Mugwump reformers; they lost to the Stalwart faction that nominated James G. Blaine. Refusing to join other Mugwumps in supporting Democrat Grover Cleveland, the Democratic nominee, he debated with his friend Henry Cabot Lodge the pros and cons of staying loyal. When asked by a reporter whether he would support Blaine, he replied, "That question I decline to answer. It is a subject I do not care to talk about."^[28] Upon leaving the convention, he complained "off the record" to a reporter about Blaine's nomination. But, in probably the most crucial moment of his young political career, he resisted the very instinct to bolt from the Party that would overwhelm his political sense in 1912. In an account of the Convention, another reporter quoted him as saying that he would give "hearty support to any decent Democrat." He would later take great (and to some historical critics such as Henry Pringle, rather disingenuous) pains to distance himself from his own earlier comment, indicating that while he made it, it had not been made "for publication."^[29] Leaving the convention, his idealism quite disillusioned by party politics, Roosevelt indicated that he had no further aspiration but to retire to his ranch in the wild Badlands of the Dakota Territory that he had purchased the previous year while on a buffalo hunting expedition.

"Retirement"

Theodore Roosevelt as Badlands hunter in 1885. New York studio photo.

Roosevelt built a second ranch, which he named Elk Horn, thirty-five miles (56 km) north of the boomtown of Medora, North Dakota. On the banks of the Little Missouri, Roosevelt learned to ride western style, rope, and hunt. He rebuilt his life and began writing about frontier life for Eastern magazines. As a deputy sheriff, Roosevelt hunted down three outlaws who stole his river boat and were escaping north with it up the Little Missouri. Capturing them, he decided against hanging them (apparently yielding to established law procedures in place of vigilante justice), and sending his foreman back by boat, he took the thieves back overland for trial in Dickinson, guarding them forty hours without sleep and reading Tolstoy to keep himself awake. When he ran out of his own books, he read a dime store western that one of the thieves was carrying."^[30] While working on a tough project aimed at hunting down a group of relentless horse thieves, Roosevelt came across the famous Deadwood sheriff, Seth Bullock. The two would remain friends for life.^[31]

Return to New York

After the uniquely severe U.S. winter of 1886-1887 wiped out his herd of cattle (together with those of his competitors) and his $60,000 investment, he returned to the East, where in 1885 he had built Sagamore Hill in Oyster Bay, New York. It would be his home and estate until his death. Roosevelt ran as the Republican candidate for mayor of New York City in 1886 as "The Cowboy of the Dakotas"; he came in third.

Second marriage

Following the election, he went to London in 1886 and married his childhood sweetheart, Edith Kermit Carow.^[32] They honeymooned in Europe, and Roosevelt led a party to the summit of Mont Blanc, a feat which resulted in his induction into the British Royal Society.^[33] They had five children: Theodore Jr., Kermit, Ethel Carow, Archibald Bulloch "Archie", and Quentin.^[34]

Reentering public life

NYC Police Commissioner Roosevelt walks the beat with journalist Jacob Riis in 1894 - Illustration from Riis' autobiography

Civil Service Commission

In the 1888 presidential election, Roosevelt campaigned in the Midwest for Benjamin Harrison. President Harrison appointed Roosevelt to the United States Civil Service Commission, where he served until 1895.^[35] In his term, Roosevelt vigorously fought the spoilsmen and demanded enforcement of civil service laws. Close associate, friend and biographer, James Bucklin Bishop, described Roosevelt's assault on the spoils system indicating that,

The very citadel of spoils politics, the hitherto impregnable fortress that had existed unshaken since it was erected on the foundation laid by Andrew Jackson, was tottering to its fall under the assaults of this audacious and irrepressible young man.... Whatever may have been the feelings of the (fellow Republican party) President (Harrison) — and there is little doubt that he had no idea when he appointed Roosevelt that he would prove to be so veritable a bull in a china shop—he refused to remove him and stood by him firmly till the end of his term. ^[36]

During this time, the New York Sun described Roosevelt as "irrepressible, belligerent, and enthusiastic"^[36]

In spite of Roosevelt's support for Harrison's reelection bid in the presidential election of 1892, the eventual winner, Grover Cleveland (a Bourbon Democrat), reappointed him to the same post.^[37]

New York City Police Commissioner

Roosevelt as NYPD Commissioner 1895

Roosevelt became president of the board of New York City Police Commissioners in 1895. During his two years in this post, Roosevelt radically reformed the police department. The police force was reputed as one of the most corrupt in America. The NYPD's history division records that Roosevelt was "an iron-willed leader of unimpeachable honesty, (who) brought a reforming zeal to the New York City Police Commission in 1895."^[38] Roosevelt and his fellow commissioners established new disciplinary rules, created a bicycle squad to police New York's traffic problems, and standardized the use of pistols by officers.^[39] Roosevelt implemented regular inspections of firearms and annual physical exams, appointed 1,600 new recruits based on their physical and mental qualifications and not on political affiliation, established meritorious service medals, and closed corrupt police hostelries. During his tenure, a Municipal Lodging House was established by the Board of Charities, and Roosevelt required officers to register with the Board. He also had telephones installed in station houses.

In 1894, Roosevelt met Jacob Riis, the muckraking Evening Sun newspaper journalist who was opening the eyes of New York's rich to the terrible conditions of the city's millions of poor immigrants with such books as, How the Other Half Lives. In Riis' autobiography, he described the effect of his book on the new police commissioner, remembering that

When Roosevelt read (my) book, he came. We were not strangers. It could not have been long after I wrote “How the Other Half Lives” that he came to the Evening Sun office one day looking for me. I was out, and he left his card, merely writing on the back of it that he had read my book and had “come to help.” That was all and it tells the whole story of the man. I loved him from the day I first saw him; nor ever in all the years that have passed has he failed of the promise made then. No one ever helped as he did. For two years we were brothers in (New York City's crime-ridden) Mulberry Street. When he left I had seen its golden age. I knew too well the evil day that was coming back to have any heart in it after that. Not that we were carried heavenward “on flowery beds of ease” while it lasted. There is very little ease where Theodore Roosevelt leads, as we all of us found out. The lawbreaker found it out who predicted scornfully that he would “knuckle down to politics the way they all did,” and lived to respect him, though he swore at him, as the one of them all who was stronger than pull. The peaceloving citizen who hastened to Police Headquarters with anxious entreaties to “use discretion” in the enforcement of unpopular laws found it out and went away with a new and breathless notion welling up in him of an official’s sworn duty. That was it; that was what made the age golden, that for the first time a moral purpose came into the street. In the light of it everything was transformed.

^[40]

Always an energetic man, Roosevelt made a habit of walking officers' beats late at night and early in the morning to make sure they were on duty.^[41] As Governor of New York State before becoming Vice President in March 1901, Roosevelt signed an act replacing the Police Commissioners with a single Police Commissioner.^[42]

Becoming a national figure

Assistant Secretary of the Navy

Roosevelt had always been fascinated by naval history. Urged by Roosevelt's close friend, Congressman Henry Cabot Lodge, President William McKinley appointed a delighted Roosevelt to the post of Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1897. (Because of the inactivity of Secretary of the Navy John D. Long at the time, this gave Roosevelt control over the department.) Roosevelt was instrumental in preparing the Navy for the Spanish-American War^[43] and was an enthusiastic proponent of testing the U.S. military in battle, at one point stating "I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one".^[44][45]

War in Cuba

Col. Theodore Roosevelt

Upon the 1898 Declaration of War launching the Spanish-American War, Roosevelt resigned from the Navy Department. With the aid of U.S. Army Colonel Leonard Wood, Roosevelt found volunteers from cowboys from the Western territories to Ivy League friends from New York, forming the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry Regiment. The newspapers called them the "Rough Riders."

Originally Roosevelt held the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and served under Colonel Wood. In Roosevelt's own account, The Rough Riders, "after General Young was struck down with the fever, and Wood took charge of the brigade. This left me in command of the regiment, of which I was very glad, for such experience as we had had is a quick teacher."^[46] Accordingly, Wood was promoted to Brigadier General of Volunteer Forces, Roosevelt was promoted to Colonel and given command of the Regiment.^[46]

Under his leadership, the Rough Riders became famous for dual charges up Kettle Hill and San Juan Hill on July 1, 1898 (the battle was named after the latter "hill," which was the shoulder of a ridge known as San Juan Heights). Out of all the Rough Riders, Roosevelt was the only one with a horse – the troopers' horses had been left behind because transport ships were in short supply – and used it to ride back and forth between rifle pits at the forefront of the advance up Kettle Hill; an advance which he urged in absence of any orders from superiors. However, he was forced to walk up the last part of Kettle Hill on foot, due to barbed wire entanglement and after his horse, Little Texas, became tired.

Colonel Roosevelt and the Rough Riders after capturing San Juan Hill

For his actions, Roosevelt was nominated for the Medal of Honor which was subsequently disapproved. As historian John Gable wrote, "In later years Roosevelt would describe the Battle of San Juan Hill on July 1, 1898, as 'the great day of my life' and 'my crowded hour.'.... (but) Malaria and other diseases now killed more troops than had died in battle. Roosevelt and other officers demanded that the soldiers be returned home. The famous 'round robin letter', and a stronger letter by Roosevelt, were leaked to the press by the commanding general, enraging Secretary of War, Russell Alger and President McKinley. Roosevelt believed that it was this incident that cost him the Medal of Honor."^[47]

Medal of Honor

In September 1997, Congressman Rick Lazio, representing the 2nd District of New York, sent two award recommendations to the U.S. Army Military Awards Branch. These recommendations, addressed to Brigadier General Earl Simms, the Army's Adjutant General, and Master Sergeant Gary Soots, Chief of Authorizations, would prove successful in garnering the much sought after award.^[48] Roosevelt was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor in 2001 for his actions.^[49] The medal is currently on display in the Roosevelt Room of the White House.^[50] He was the first and, thus far, the only President of the United States to be awarded with America's highest military honor, and the only person in history to receive both his nation's highest honor for military valor and the world's foremost prize for peace.^[51] His oldest son, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., would also posthumously be awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions at Normandy on June 6, 1944.^[52]

After his return to civilian life, Roosevelt preferred to be known as "Colonel Roosevelt" or "The Colonel." As a moniker, "Teddy" remained much more popular with the general public; however, political friends and others working closely with Roosevelt customarily addressed him by his rank.

Governor and Vice-President

Chicago newspaper sees cowboy-TR campaigning for governor

On leaving the Army, Roosevelt was elected governor of New York in 1898 as a Republican. He made such an effort to root out corruption and "machine politics" that Republican boss Thomas Collier Platt forced him on McKinley as a running mate in the 1900 election, against the wishes of McKinley's manager, Senator Mark Hanna. Roosevelt was a powerful campaign asset for the Republican ticket, which defeated William Jennings Bryan in a landslide based on restoration of prosperity at home and a successful war and new prestige abroad. Bryan stumped for Free Silver again, but McKinley's promise of prosperity through the gold standard, high tariffs, and the restoration of business confidence enlarged his margin of victory. Bryan had strongly supported the war against Spain, but denounced the annexation of the Philippines as imperialism that would spoil America's innocence. Roosevelt countered with many speeches that argued it was best for the Filipinos to have stability, and the Americans to have a proud place in the world. Roosevelt's six months as Vice President (March to September 1901) were uneventful.^[53] On September 2, 1901, at the Minnesota State Fair, Roosevelt first used in a public speech a saying that would later be universally associated with him: "Speak softly and carry a big stick, and you will go far."

Presidency 1901-1909

Main article: Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt

On September 6, President McKinley was shot while at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. Initial reports in the succeeding days suggested his condition was improving, so Roosevelt embarked on a vacation at Mount Marcy in upstate New York, across the state from Buffalo. He was returning from a climb to the summit on September 13 when a park ranger brought him a telegram informing him that McKinley's condition had deteriorated, and he was near death.

Roosevelt and his family immediately departed to go to Buffalo. When they reached the nearest train station at North Creek, at 5:22am on September 14, he received another telegram that McKinley had died a few hours earlier. Roosevelt arrived in Buffalo that afternoon, and was sworn in there as President at 3:30pm.

Roosevelt continued McKinley's cabinet and promised to continue McKinley's policies. One of his first notable acts as president was to deliver a 20,000-word address to Congress^[54] asking it to curb the power of large corporations (called "trusts"). For his aggressive attacks on trusts over his two terms he has been called a "trust-buster."

In the 1904 presidential election, Roosevelt won the presidency in his own right in a landslide victory. His vice president was Charles Fairbanks.

Roosevelt dealt with union workers also. In May 1902, United Mine Workers went on strike to get higher pay wages and shorter work days. He set up a fact-finding commission which stopped the strike. It resulted in the workers getting more pay for less hours.

In 1905, he issued a corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which allows the United States to "exercise international policy power" so they can intervene and keep smaller countries on their feet.

Roosevelt helped the well-being of people by passing laws such as The Meat Inspection Act of 1906 and The Pure Food and Drug Act. The Meat Inspection Act of 1906 banned misleading labels and preservatives that contained harmful chemicals in them. The Pure Food and Drug Act banned food and drugs, that are impure or falsely label, from being made, sold, and shipped.

The Gentlemen's Agreement also came into play in 1907. This law banned all school segregation, yet controlled Japanese immigration in California.

Building on McKinley's effective use of the press, Roosevelt made the White House the center of news every day, providing interviews and photo opportunities. After noticing the White House reporters huddled outside in the rain one day, he gave them their own room inside, effectively inventing the presidential press briefing.^[55] The grateful press, with unprecedented access to the White House, rewarded Roosevelt with ample coverage.^[55]

He chose not to run for another term in 1908, and supported William Taft for the presidency, instead of Fairbanks. Fairbanks withdrew from the race (and in 1912 he supported Taft for re-election, against Roosevelt).

Judicial appointments

Main article: List of federal judges appointed by Theodore Roosevelt

Supreme Court appointments

Roosevelt appointed three Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States:

• Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. – 1902
• William Rufus Day – 1903
• William Henry Moody – 1906

Other judicial appointments

In total Roosevelt appointed 75 federal judges, a record for his day surpassing the 46 appointed by Ulysses S. Grant. In addition to his three Supreme Court appointments, Roosevelt appointed 19 judges to the United States Courts of Appeals, and 53 judges to the United States district courts.

Five of Roosevelt's appointees - George Bethune Adams, Thomas H. Anderson, Robert W. Archbald, Andrew McConnell January Cochran, and Benjamin Franklin Keller, were originally placed on their respective courts as recess appointments by President McKinley. Following the assassination which resulted in McKinley's death on September 14, 1901, Roosevelt chose to formally nominate those judges for confirmation by the United States Senate, and all were confirmed.

States admitted to the Union

• Oklahoma – 1907

Post-presidency

African safari

Roosevelt standing next to a dead elephant during a safari

In March 1909, shortly after the end of his presidency, Roosevelt left New York for a safari in east and central Africa. Roosevelt's party landed in Mombasa, British East Africa (now Kenya), traveled to the Belgian Congo (now Democratic Republic of the Congo) before following the Nile up to Khartoum in modern Sudan. Financed by Andrew Carnegie and by his own proposed writings, Roosevelt's party hunted for specimens for the Smithsonian Institution and for the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The group included scientists from the Smithsonian and was led by the legendary hunter-tracker R.J. Cunninghame and was joined from time to time by Frederick Selous, the famous big game hunter and explorer. Among other items, Roosevelt brought with him four tons of salt for preserving animal hides, a lucky rabbit's foot given to him by boxer John L. Sullivan, an elephant-rifle donated by a group of 56 admiring Britons, and the famous Pigskin Library, a collection of classics bound in pig leather and transported in a single reinforced trunk.

All told, Roosevelt and his companions killed or trapped over 11,397 animals, from insects and moles to hippopotamuses and elephants. These included 512 big game animals, including six rare white rhinos. The expedition consumed 262 of the animals. Tons of salted animals and their skins were shipped to Washington; the quantity was so large that it took years to mount them all, and the Smithsonian was able to share many duplicate animals with other museums.

Regarding the large number of animals taken, Roosevelt said, "I can be condemned only if the existence of the National Museum, the American Museum of Natural History, and all similar zoological institutions are to be condemned."^[56] However, although the safari was ostensibly conducted in the name of science, there was another, quite large element to it as well. Along with many native peoples and local leaders, interaction with renowned professional hunters and land owning families made the safari as much a political and social event, as it was a hunting excursion. Roosevelt wrote a detailed account of the adventure in the book African Game Trails, where he describes the excitement of the chase, the people he met, and the flora and fauna he collected in the name of science.

Republican Party rift

	"The right of the people to rule" Excerpts from a speech given by Theodore Roosevelt at Carnegie Hall, March 12, 1912. Recorded August 1912 by Thomas Edison. Duration 4:07.
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

Roosevelt certified William Howard Taft to be a genuine "progressive" in 1908, when Roosevelt pushed through the nomination of his Secretary of War for the Presidency. Taft easily defeated three-time candidate William Jennings Bryan. Taft had a different progressivism, one that stressed the rule of law and preferred that judges rather than administrators or politicians make the basic decisions about fairness. Taft usually proved a less adroit politician than Roosevelt and lacked the energy and personal magnetism, not to mention the publicity devices, the dedicated supporters, and the broad base of public support that made Roosevelt so formidable. When Roosevelt realized that lowering the tariff would risk severe tensions inside the Republican Party—pitting producers (manufacturers and farmers) against merchants and consumers—he stopped talking about the issue. Taft ignored the risks and tackled the tariff boldly, on the one hand encouraging reformers to fight for lower rates, and then cutting deals with conservative leaders that kept overall rates high. The resulting Payne-Aldrich tariff of 1909 was too high for most reformers, but instead of blaming this on Senator Nelson Aldrich and big business, Taft took credit, calling it the best tariff ever. Again he had managed to alienate all sides. While the crisis was building inside the Party, Roosevelt was touring Africa and Europe, to allow Taft to be his own man.^[57]

1909 cartoon: TR hands his policies to the care of Taft while William Loeb, Jr. carries the "Big Stick"

Unlike Roosevelt, Taft never attacked business or businessmen in his rhetoric. However, he was attentive to the law, so he launched 90 antitrust suits, including one against the largest corporation, U.S. Steel, for an acquisition that Roosevelt had personally approved. Consequently, Taft lost the support of antitrust reformers (who disliked his conservative rhetoric), of big business (which disliked his actions), and of Roosevelt, who felt humiliated by his protégé. The left wing of the Republican Party began agitating against Taft. Senator Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin created the National Progressive Republican League (precursor to the Progressive Party (United States, 1924)) to defeat the power of political bossism at the state level and to replace Taft at the national level. More trouble came when Taft fired Gifford Pinchot, a leading conservationist and close ally of Roosevelt. Pinchot alleged that Taft's Secretary of Interior Richard Ballinger was in league with big timber interests. Conservationists sided with Pinchot, and Taft alienated yet another vocal constituency.

Roosevelt, back from Europe, unexpectedly launched an attack on the federal courts, which deeply upset Taft. Roosevelt was attacking both the judiciary and the deep faith Republicans had in their judges (most of whom had been appointed by McKinley, Roosevelt or Taft.) In the 1910 Congressional elections, Democrats swept to power, and Taft's reelection in 1912 was increasingly in doubt. In 1911, Taft responded with a vigorous stumping tour that allowed him to sign up most of the party leaders long before Roosevelt announced.

Election of 1912

Main articles: U.S. presidential election, 1912 and Progressive Party 1912 (United States)

The battle between Taft and Roosevelt bitterly split the Republican Party; Taft's people dominated the party until 1936.

Republican primaries

Late in 1911, Roosevelt finally broke with Taft and LaFollette and announced himself as a candidate for the Republican nomination. Roosevelt, however, had delayed too long, and Taft had already won the support of most party leaders in the country. Because of LaFollette's nervous breakdown on the campaign trail before Roosevelt's entry, most of LaFollette's supporters went over to Roosevelt, the new progressive Republican candidate.

Roosevelt, stepping up his attack on judges, carried nine of the states that held preferential primaries, LaFollette took two, and Taft only one. The 1912 Primaries represented the first extensive use of the Presidential Primary, a reform achievement of the progressive movement. However, these primary elections, while demonstrating Roosevelt's continuing popularity with the electorate, were not nearly as pivotal as primaries became later in the century. There were fewer states where a common voter had an opportunity to express a recorded preference. Many more states selected convention delegates at state party conventions, or in caucuses, which were not as open as they later became. While Roosevelt was popular with the public, most Republican politicians and party leaders supported Taft, and their support proved difficult to counter in states without primaries.

Formation of the Bull Moose Party

At the Republican Convention in Chicago, despite being the incumbent, Taft's victory was not immediately assured. After two weeks, Roosevelt, realizing he would not be able to win the nomination outright, asked his followers to leave the convention hall. They moved to the Auditorium Theatre, and then Roosevelt, along with key allies such as Pinchot and Albert Beveridge created the Progressive Party, structuring it as a permanent organization that would field complete tickets at the presidential and state level. It was popularly known as the "Bull Moose Party," which got its name after Roosevelt told reporters, "I'm as fit as a bull moose."^[58] At the convention Roosevelt cried out, "We stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord." Roosevelt's platform echoed his 1907–08 proposals, calling for vigorous government intervention to protect the people from the selfish interests.^[59]

“

To destroy this invisible Government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day." - 1912 Progressive Party Platform, attributed to him[60] and quoted again in his autobiography[61] where he continues "'This country belongs to the people. Its resources, its business, its laws, its institutions, should be utilized, maintained, or altered in whatever manner will best promote the general interest.' This assertion is explicit. ... Mr. Wilson must know that every monopoly in the United States opposes the Progressive party. ... I challenge him ... to name the monopoly that did support the Progressive party, whether ... the Sugar Trust, the Steel Trust, the Harvester Trust, the Standard Oil Trust, the Tobacco Trust, or any other. ... Ours was the only programme to which they objected, and they supported either Mr. Wilson or Mr. Taft...

”

Assassination attempt

The bullet-damaged speech and eyeglass case on display at the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace

X-Ray of Roosevelt's ribcage showing the bullet at lower left

While Roosevelt was campaigning in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on October 14, 1912, a saloonkeeper named John Schrank shot him, but the bullet lodged in his chest only after penetrating both his steel eyeglass case and passing through a thick (50 pages) single-folded copy of the speech he was carrying in his jacket.^[62] Roosevelt, as an experienced hunter and anatomist, correctly concluded that since he wasn't coughing blood, the bullet had not completely penetrated the chest wall to his lung, and so declined suggestions he go to the hospital immediately. Instead, he delivered his scheduled speech with blood seeping into his shirt.^[63] He spoke for ninety minutes. His opening comments to the gathered crowd were, "Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose."^[64] Afterwards, probes and X-ray showed that the bullet had traversed three inches (76 mm) of tissue and lodged in Roosevelt's chest muscle but did not penetrate the pleura, and it would be more dangerous to attempt to remove the bullet than to leave it in place. Roosevelt carried it with him for the rest of his life.^[65]

Due to the bullet wound, Roosevelt was taken off the campaign trail in the final weeks of the race (which ended election day, November 5). Though the other two campaigners stopped their own campaigns in the week Roosevelt was in the hospital, they resumed it once he was released. The overall effect of the shooting was uncertain. Roosevelt for many reasons failed to move enough Republicans in his direction. He did win 4.1 million votes (27%), compared to Taft's 3.5 million (23%). However, Wilson's 6.3 million votes (42%) were enough to garner 435 electoral votes. Roosevelt had 88 electoral votes to Taft's 8 electoral votes. (This meant that Taft became the only incumbent President in history to come in third place in an attempt to be re-elected.) But Pennsylvania was Roosevelt's only Eastern state; in the Midwest he carried Michigan, Minnesota and South Dakota; in the West, California and Washington; he did not win any Southern states. Although he lost, he won more votes than former presidents Martin Van Buren and Millard Fillmore who also ran again and also lost.

1913–1914 South American Expedition

The initial party. From left to right (seated): Father Zahm, Rondon, Kermit, Cherrie, Miller, four Brazilians, Roosevelt, Fiala. Only Roosevelt, Kermit, Cherrie, Rondon and the Brazilians traveled down the River of Doubt.

Roosevelt's popular book Through the Brazilian Wilderness describes his expedition into the Brazilian jungle in 1913 as a member of the Roosevelt-Rondon Scientific Expedition co-named after its leader, Brazilian explorer Cândido Rondon. The book describes all the scientific discovery, scenic tropical vistas and exotic flora, fauna and wild life experienced on the expedition. A friend, Father John Augustine Zahm, had searched for new adventures and found them in the forests of South America. After a briefing of several of his own expeditions, he persuaded Roosevelt to commit to such an expedition in 1912. To finance the expedition, Roosevelt received support from the American Museum of Natural History, promising to bring back many new animal specimens. Once in South America, a new far more ambitious goal was added: to find the headwaters of the Rio da Duvida, the River of Doubt, and trace it north to the Madeira and thence to the Amazon River. It was later renamed Rio Roosevelt (Rio Teodoro today, 640 km long) in honor of the former President. Roosevelt's crew consisted of his 24-year-old son Kermit, Colonel Cândido Rondon, a naturalist sent by the American Museum of Natural History named George K. Cherrie, Brazilian Lieutenant Joao Lyra, team physician Dr. José Antonio Cajazeira, and sixteen highly skilled paddlers (called camaradas in Portuguese). The initial expedition started, probably unwisely, on December 9, 1913, at the height of the rainy season. The trip down the River of Doubt started on February 27, 1914.

Roosevelt, wearing sun helmet, barely survived an expedition in 1913 into the Amazonian rain forest to trace the River of Doubt later named the Rio Roosevelt.

During the trip down the river, Roosevelt contracted malaria and a serious infection resulting from a minor leg wound. These illnesses so weakened Roosevelt that, by six weeks into the expedition, he had to be attended day and night by the expedition's physician, Dr. Cajazeira, and his son, Kermit. By this time, Roosevelt considered his own condition a threat to the survival of the others. At one point, Kermit had to talk him out of his wish to be left behind so as not to slow down the expedition, now with only a few weeks rations left. Roosevelt was having chest pains when he tried to walk, his temperature soared to 103 °F (39 °C), and at times he was delirious. He had lost over fifty pounds (20 kg). Without the constant support of his son, Kermit, Dr. Cajazeira, and the continued leadership of Colonel Rondon, Roosevelt would likely have perished. Despite his concern for Roosevelt, Rondon had been slowing down the pace of the expedition by his dedication to his own mapmaking and other geographical goals that demanded regular stops to fix the expedition's position by sun-based survey.

Upon his return to New York, friends and family were startled by Roosevelt's physical appearance and fatigue. Roosevelt wrote to a friend that the trip had cut his life short by ten years. He might not have really known just how accurate that analysis would prove to be, because the effects of the South America expedition had so greatly weakened him that they significantly contributed to his declining health. For the rest of his life, he would be plagued by flareups of malaria and leg inflammations so severe that they would require hospitalization.^[66][67]

When Roosevelt had recovered enough of his strength, he found that he had a new battle on his hands. In professional circles, there was doubt about his claims of having discovered and navigated a completely uncharted river over 625 miles (1,000 km) long. Roosevelt would have to defend himself and win international recognition of the expedition's newly named Rio Roosevelt. Toward this end, Roosevelt went to Washington, D.C., and spoke at a standing-room-only convention to defend his claims. His official report and its defense silenced the critics, and he was able to triumphantly return to his home in Oyster Bay.

Later years and death

See also: Roosevelt's World War I volunteers

Roosevelt angrily complained about the foreign policy of President Wilson, calling it "weak." This caused him to develop an intense dislike for Woodrow Wilson. When World War I began in 1914, Roosevelt strongly supported the Allies of World War I and demanded a harsher policy against Germany, especially regarding submarine warfare. In 1916, he campaigned energetically for Charles Evans Hughes and repeatedly denounced Irish-Americans and German-Americans who Roosevelt said were unpatriotic because they put the interest of Ireland and Germany ahead of America's by supporting neutrality. He insisted one had to be 100% American, not a "hyphenated American" who juggled multiple loyalties. When the U.S. entered the war in 1917, Roosevelt sought to raise a volunteer infantry division, but Wilson refused.^[68]

Roosevelt's attacks on Wilson helped the Republicans win control of Congress in the off-year elections of 1918. Roosevelt was popular enough to seriously contest the 1920 Republican nomination, but his health was broken by 1918, because of the lingering malaria. His son Quentin, a daring pilot with the American forces in France, was shot down behind German lines in 1918. Quentin was his youngest son and probably his favorite. It is said the death of his son distressed him so much that Roosevelt never recovered from his loss.^[69]

Roosevelt's Grave in Youngs Memorial Cemetery Oyster Bay, New York

Twenty-six steps leading to Roosevelt's grave, commemorating his service as 26th President

Despite his faltering health, Roosevelt remained active to the end of his life. He was an enthusiastic proponent of the Scouting movement. The Boy Scouts of America gave him the title of Chief Scout Citizen, the only person to hold such title. One early Scout leader said, "The two things that gave Scouting great impetus and made it very popular were the uniform and Teddy Roosevelt's jingoism."^[70]

Roosevelt was considering a third Presidential campaign in 1920, and was believed to have been the front-runner for the Republican nomination until he was laid low by illness. His family and supporters threw their support to Roosevelt's old military companion, General Leonard Wood, who was ultimately defeated by Warren G. Harding.^[71]

On January 6, 1919, Roosevelt died in his sleep at Oyster Bay of a coronary thrombosis (heart attack), preceded by a 2 1/2-month illness described as inflammatory rheumatism,^[72] and was buried in nearby Youngs Memorial Cemetery.^[73][74] Upon receiving word of his death, his son Archie telegraphed his siblings simply, "The old lion is dead."^[69] The U.S. Vice-President at that time, Thomas R. Marshall, said that "Death had to take Roosevelt sleeping, for if he had been awake, there would have been a fight."^[75]

Political positions

Main article: Political positions of Theodore Roosevelt

Immigration

In an 1894 article on immigration, Roosevelt said, "We must Americanize in every way, in speech, in political ideas and principles, and in their way of looking at relations between church and state. We welcome the German and the Irishman who becomes an American. We have no use for the German or Irishman who remains such... He must revere only our flag, not only must it come first, but no other flag should even come second."^[76]

Square Deal

Theodore Roosevelt introduced the phrase "Square Deal" to describe his progressive views in a speech delivered after leaving the office of the Presidency in August 1910. In this speech, he stressed equality of opportunity for all citizens, and government regulations to encourage such. Many of the specifics outlined in the address anticipate Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. See 'Square Deal'

Conservationist

Roosevelt was one of the first Presidents to make conservation a national issue. In a speech that TR gave at Osawatomie, Kansas, on August 31, 1910, he outlined his views on conservation of the lands of the United States. He favored the use of America's natural resources, but not the misuse of them through wasteful consumption ^[77]. See 'Conservationist'.

Corporate regulations

In the Eighth Annual Message to Congress (1908), TR mentioned the need for federal government to regulate interstate corporations using the Interstate Commerce Clause, also mentioning how these corporations fought federal control by appealing to states' rights. See 'Corporate Regulations'.

Writer

	"Address to the Boys Progressive League" A speech by Roosevelt as a former President
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

Despite his weakened condition and slow recovery from his South America expedition, Roosevelt continued to write with passion on subjects ranging from foreign policy to the importance of the national park system. As an editor of Outlook magazine, he had weekly access to a large, educated national audience. In all, Roosevelt wrote about 18 books (each in several editions), including his Autobiography,^[78] The Rough Riders^[79], History of the Naval War of 1812,^[80] and others on subjects such as ranching, explorations, and wildlife. His most ambitious book was the 4 volume narrative The Winning of the West, which attempted to connect the origin of a new "race" of Americans (i.e. what he considered the present population of the United States to be) to the frontier conditions their ancestors endured throughout the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries.

Character and beliefs

Roosevelt Family in 1903 with Quentin on the left, TR, Ted, Jr., "Archie", Alice, Kermit, Edith, and Ethel

Roosevelt intensely disliked being called "Teddy," and was quick to point out this fact to those who used the nickname, though it would become widely used by newspapers during his political career. He attended church regularly. Of including the motto "In God We Trust" on money, in 1907 he wrote, "It seems to me eminently unwise to cheapen such a motto by use on coins, just as it would be to cheapen it by use on postage stamps, or in advertisements." He was also a member of the Freemasons and Sons of the American Revolution.^[81]

Roosevelt had a lifelong interest in pursuing what he called, in an 1899 speech, "the strenuous life." To this end, he exercised regularly and took up boxing, tennis, hiking, rowing, polo, and horseback riding. As governor of New York, he boxed with sparring partners several times a week, a practice he regularly continued as President until one blow detached his left retina, leaving him blind in that eye (a fact not made public until many years later). Thereafter, he practiced judo attaining a third degree brown belt and continued his habit of skinny-dipping in the Potomac River during winter.^[82][83]

Sagamore Hill, Roosevelt's estate

He was an enthusiastic singlestick player and, according to Harper's Weekly, in 1905 showed up at a White House reception with his arm bandaged after a bout with General Leonard Wood.^[84] Roosevelt was also an avid reader, reading tens of thousands of books, at a rate of several a day in multiple languages. Along with Thomas Jefferson, Roosevelt is often considered the most well read of any American politician.^[85]

Legacy

Roosevelt's face on Mount Rushmore

For his gallantry at San Juan Hill, Roosevelt's commanders recommended him for the Medal of Honor, but his subsequent telegrams to the War Department complaining about the delays in returning American troops from Cuba doomed his chances. In the late 1990s, Roosevelt's supporters again took up the flag for him and overcame opposition from elements within the U.S. Army and the National Archives. On January 16, 2001, President Bill Clinton awarded Theodore Roosevelt the Medal of Honor posthumously for his charge up San Juan Hill, Cuba, during the Spanish-American War. Roosevelt's eldest son, Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., received the Medal of Honor for heroism at the Battle of Normandy in 1944. The Roosevelts thus became one of only two father-son pairs to receive this honor.

1910 cartoon shows Roosevelt's multiple roles from 1899 to 1910

Roosevelt's legacy includes several other important commemorations. Roosevelt was included with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln at the Mount Rushmore Memorial, designed in 1927. The United States Navy named two ships for Roosevelt: the USS Theodore Roosevelt (SSBN-600), a submarine that was in commission from 1961 to 1982; and the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71), an aircraft carrier that has been on active duty in the Atlantic Fleet since 1986.

The Roosevelt Memorial Association (later the Theodore Roosevelt Association) or "TRA", was founded in 1920 to preserve Roosevelt's legacy. The Association preserved TR's birthplace, "Sagamore Hill" home, papers, and video film.

Among the schools, neighborhoods, and streets named in Roosevelt's honor are Roosevelt High School in Seattle, Washington, the surrounding Roosevelt neighborhood, the district's main arterial, Roosevelt Way N.E., and Roosevelt Middle School in Eugene, Oregon.

Overall, historians credit Roosevelt for changing the nation's political system by permanently placing the presidency at center stage and making character as important as the issues. His notable accomplishments include trust-busting and conservationism. However, he has been criticized for his interventionist and imperialist approach to nations he considered "uncivilized". Even so, history and legend have been kind to him. His friend, historian Henry Adams, proclaimed, "Roosevelt, more than any other living man ....showed the singular primitive quality that belongs to ultimate matter – the quality that mediaeval theology assigned to God – he was pure act." Historians typically rank Roosevelt among the top five presidents.^[86][87]

The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles is named after him as well as the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City.

Popular culture

Theodore Roosevelt impersonator Joe Wiegand performs October 27, 2008 in the East Room of the White House, during a celebration of Roosevelt's 150th birthday.

Roosevelt's 1901 saying "Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick" is still being occasionally quoted by politicians and columnists in different countries – not only in English but also in translation to various other languages.

Roosevelt's lasting popular legacy, however, is the stuffed toy bears—teddy bears—named after him following an incident on a hunting trip in Mississippi in 1902. Roosevelt famously ordered the mercy killing of a wounded black bear. After a national cartoonist illustrated the President with a bear, a toy maker heard the story and asked TR if he could use his name on a toy bear. Roosevelt approved and the teddy bear was born. Bears and later bear cubs became closely associated with Roosevelt in political cartoons thereafter.^[88]

On June 26, 2006, Roosevelt, again, made the cover of TIME magazine with the lead story, "The Making of America—Theodore Roosevelt—The 20th Century Express": "At home and abroad, Theodore Roosevelt was the locomotive President, the man who drew his flourishing nation into the future."^[89]

Media

Theodore Roosevelt was one of the first presidents whose voice was recorded for posterity. Several of his recorded speeches survive.^[90] A 4.6-minute voice recording,^[91] which preserves Roosevelt's lower timbre ranges particularly well for its time, is among those available from the Michigan State University libraries. (This is the 1912 recording of The Right of the People to Rule, recorded by Edison at Carnegie Hall). In what some consider the best example of Roosevelt's animated oratorical style, an audio clip^[92] sponsored by the Authentic History Center includes his defense^[93] of the Progressive Party in 1912 wherein he proclaims it the "party of the people" in contrast with the other major parties.

Parade for the school children of San Francisco, down Van Ness Avenue

Collection of video clips of Roosevelt

• Roosevelt goes for a ride in Arch Hoxsey's plane in October 1910 – the first flight by a (then-former) U.S. president

Electoral history

Main article: Electoral history of Theodore Roosevelt

See also

Military of the United States portal

United States Army portal

North America portal

• Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt
• First inauguration of Theodore Roosevelt
• Second inauguration of Theodore Roosevelt
• Roosevelt family
• Theodore Roosevelt Cyclopedia 1940 compendium of Roosevelt's key writings, sayings and conversations
• List of U.S. political appointments that crossed party lines
• List of Medal of Honor recipients for the Spanish-American War
• William Allen White

Notes and references

Notes

1. ^ His last name is, according to the man himself, "pronounced as if it was spelled 'Rosavelt.' That is in three syllables. The first syllable as if it was 'Rose.'" Hart, Albert B.; Herbert R. Ferleger (1989). "Theodore Roosevelt Cyclopedia" (CD-ROM). Theodore Roosevelt Association. pp. 534–535. http://www.theodoreroosevelt.org/TR%20Web%20Book/TR_CD_to_HTML571.html. Retrieved 2007-06-10. ;
   An audio recording in which Roosevelt pronounces his own last name distinctly. To listen at the correct speed, slow the recording down by 20%. Retrieved on July 12, 2007.
   "How to Pronounce Theodore Roosevelt". http://inogolo.com/pronunciation/d227/Theodore_Roosevelt. Retrieved 2007-06-10. 
2. ^ "T.R.: The Story of Theodore Roosevelt", 1996, 'The American Experience'
3. ^ John F. Kennedy is the youngest person to be elected President. Roosevelt was not elected into office as President until 1904, when he was 46.
4. ^ Frederick W. Marks III, Velvet on Iron: The Diplomacy of Theodore Roosevelt (1979); Greg Russell, "Theodore Roosevelt's Diplomacy and the Quest for Great Power Equilibrium in Asia," Presidential Studies Quarterly 2008 38(3): 433-455
5. ^ "On Safari With Theodore Roosevelt, 1909". www.eyewitnesstohistory.com. EyeWitness to History. 1997. http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/tr.htm. Retrieved 13 September 2009. 
6. ^ "James S. Sherman, 27th Vice President (1909-1912)". www.senate.gov. U.S. Senate. http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/VP_James_Sherman.htm. Retrieved 13 September 2009. 
7. ^ Pringle (1931) p. 11
8. ^ Roosevelt, Theodore An Autobiography, 1913, The MacMillan Company, "On October 27, 1858, I was born at No. 28 East Twentieth Street, New York City..."
9. ^ LOST IN TONE
10. ^ "TR's Legacy—The Environment". Retrieved March 6, 2006.
11. ^ Thayer, William Roscoe (1919). Theodore Roosevelt: An Intimate Biography, Chapter I, p. 20. Bartleby.com.
12. ^ Roosevelt, Theodore (1913). Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography, Chapter I, p. 13.
13. ^ "The Film & More: Program Transcript Part One". Retrieved March 9, 2006.
14. ^ Miller, Nathan, (1992) Theodore Roosevelt - A Life, pg 158, ISBN 9780688132200, ISBN 0688132200, New York, Quill/William Morrow
15. ^ Bishop, Joseph Bucklin,(1920)"Theodore Roosevelt and His Time Shown in His Own Letters - Book I,p. 33-35
16. ^ Robinson Roosevelt, Corinne, 1921, My Brother Theodore Roosevelt, Kessinger Publishing (March 2003), ISBN 0766143813, pg 240-241.
17. ^ http://goodgriefofkansas.org/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=17
18. ^ Morris, Rise of, pg 232.
19. ^ Brands T. R. p. 49–50
20. ^ Brands p. 62
21. ^ Thayer, William Roscoe (November 2000). "Origins and Youth". Theodore Roosevelt; an Intimate Biography. Nalanda Digital Library. http://www.nalanda.nitc.ac.in/resources/english/etext-project/Biography/roosevelt/index.htm. Retrieved 22 November 2008. 
22. ^ Autobiography, pg 40
23. ^ Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, pg 67
24. ^ Brands, pp 123–29
25. ^ Autobiography, pg 35
26. ^ Morris, Rise of, pg 565
27. ^ ^{a b} Crawford, Michael J.. "The Lasting Influence of Theodore Roosevelt’s 'Naval War of 1812'". ijnhonline.org. International Journal of Naval History. http://www.ijnhonline.org/volume1_number1_Apr02/article_crawford_roosevelt_1812.doc.htm. Retrieved 2009-08-11. 
28. ^ Morris, Rise of, pg 267.
29. ^ "Theodore Roosevelt, A Biography, by Henry Pringle", pg 61
30. ^ Hagedorn, Herman (1921). Roosevelt in the Bad Lands. New York: Houghton-Mifflin. pp. 379. 
31. ^ Morris, Rise of, 241–245, 247–250
32. ^ Thayer, Chapter V, pp. 4, 6.
33. ^ Encyclopedia Britannica, 1910 Edition, Topic: Theodore Roosevelt
34. ^ Although Roosevelt's father was also named Theodore Roosevelt, he died while the future president was still childless and unmarried, so the future President Roosevelt took the suffix of Sr. and subsequently named his son Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. Because Roosevelt was still alive when his grandson and namesake was born, his grandson was named Theodore Roosevelt III, and the president's son retained the Jr. after his father's death.
35. ^ Thayer, ch. VI, pp. 1–2.
36. ^ ^{a b} Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt and His Time Book I, pg 51
37. ^ Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt and His Time pg 53
38. ^ Andrews, William, "The Early Years: The Challenge of Public Order - 1845 to 1870", - New York City Police Department History Site. Retrieved August 28, 2006.
39. ^ Editors, "Leadership of the City of New York Police Department 1845–1901", - The New York City Police Department Museum. Retrieved August 28, 2006.
40. ^ Riis, Jacob, A, The Making of an American Chapter XIII, page 3.
41. ^ Brands ch 11
42. ^ Cartoon of the Day explanation, Robert C. Kennedy, Harper's Weekly, September 6, 1902
43. ^ Brands ch 12
44. ^ "April 16, 1897: T. Roosevelt Appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy". Crucible of Empire - Timeline. PBS Online. http://www.pbs.org/crucible/tl7.html. Retrieved 2007-07-26. 
45. ^ "Transcript For "Crucible Of Empire"". Crucible of Empire - Timeline. PBS Online. http://www.pbs.org/crucible/Transcript.txt. Retrieved 2007-07-26. 
46. ^ ^{a b} Roosevelt, Theodore (1898). The Rough Riders, Chapter III, p. 52. Bartleby.com.
47. ^ http://www.trthegreatnewyorker.com/writer/theodore_roosevelt.htm
48. ^ Soots Letter
49. ^ Brands ch 13
50. ^ Rucker, Philip (March 21, 2009). "Obama's Turnabout On Vets Highlights Budgeting Nuances". The Washington Post. p. A02. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/20/AR2009032003236.html?hpid=topnews. Retrieved 2009-03-23. 
51. ^ "Medal of Honor". Life of Theodore Roosevelt. Theodore Roosevelt Association. http://www.theodoreroosevelt.org/life/medalofhonor.htm. Retrieved 2007-10-25. 
52. ^ Center of Military History
53. ^ Brands ch 14–15
54. ^ Theodore Roosevelt website
55. ^ ^{a b} Rouse, Robert (March 15, 2006). "Happy Anniversary to the first scheduled presidential press conference - 93 years young!". American Chronicle. http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/6883. 
56. ^ O'Toole, Patricia (2005) When Trumpets Call, p. 67, Simon and Schuster, ISBN 0-684-86477-0
57. ^ Thayer, Chapter XXI, p. 10.
58. ^ Carl M. Cannon, The Pursuit of Happiness in Times of War, Rowman & Littlefield: 2003, p. 142. ISBN 0742525929.
59. ^ Thayer, Chapter XXII, pp. 25–31.
60. ^ Patricia OToole (2006-06-25). "The War of 1912". Time Magazine. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1207791-2,00.html. Retrieved 2008-08-08. 
61. ^ Roosevelt, Theodore. An Autobiography: XV. The Peace of Righteousness, Appendix B, NEW YORK: MACMILLAN, 1913.
62. ^ Wisconsin Historical Society
63. ^ Medical History of American Presidents
64. ^ Excerpt from the Detroit Free Press, at Historybuff.com
65. ^ Roosevelt Timeline
66. ^ Hanson, David C. (2005). "Theodore Roosevelt: Lion in the White House". Retrieved March 6, 2006.
67. ^ Thayer, Chapter XXIII, pp. 4–7.
68. ^ Brands 781–4; Cramer, C.H. Newton D. Baker (1961) 110–113
69. ^ ^{a b} Dalton, (2002) p. 507
70. ^ Larson, Keith (2006). "Theodore Roosevelt". Retrieved March 6, 2006.
71. ^ Pietrusza, David. 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents (2007). pp. 55-71 (on Roosevelt's propsective candidacy), 167-175 (on Wood and his support by TR's family)
72. ^ Pinals, Robert S (February 2008). "Theodore Roosevelt's inflammatory rheumatism". J Clin Rheumatol 14 (1): 41–4. doi:10.1097/RHU.0b013e3181639ad0. ISSN 1076-1608. PMID 18431099. 
73. ^ "Business to Stop in Silent Tribute; Stock Exchanges and Courts Will Suspend for Day at 1 o'clock This Afternoon; Church Bells will Toll," New York Times. January 8, 1919
74. ^ "Bury Roosevelt with Simple Rites as Nation Grieves; Government's Representatives and Old Friends Pay Last Tribute at His Bier," New York Times. January 9, 1919.
75. ^ Manners, William. TR and Will: A Friendship that Split the Republican Party. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1969.
76. ^ Frum, David (2000). How We Got Here: The '70s. New York, New York: Basic Books. p. 267. ISBN 0465041957. 
77. ^ DiNunzio, Mario (1994). Theodore Roosevelt: An American Mind. New York, New York: Penguin Books USA. p. 145. ISBN 0-14-02-4520-0. 
78. ^ Roosevelt, Theodore (2006). An Autobiography. Echo Library. http://books.google.com/books?id=VZi1sGSjFfEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Autobiography%2Broosevelt. 
79. ^ Roosevelt, Theodore (1904). The Rough Riders. New York: The Review of Reviews Company. http://books.google.com/books?id=jO4YAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Rough+Riders%2Broosevelt. 
80. ^ Roosevelt, Theodore (1900). The Naval War of 1812. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons. http://books.google.com/books?id=6xkbAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=History+of+the+Naval+War+of+1812%2Broosevelt. 
81. ^ The Origins of the SAR Accessed 26 December 2008
82. ^ Thayer, Chapter XVII, pp. 22–24.
83. ^ Shaw, K.B. & Maiden, David (2006). "Theodore Roosevelt". Retrieved March 7, 2006.
84. ^ Amberger, J Christoph, Secret History of the Sword Adventures in Ancient Martial Arts 1998, ISBN 1-892515-04-0.
85. ^ David H. Burton, The Learned Presidency 1988, p 12.
86. ^ The Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia (2005). "Biography: Impact and Legacy". Retrieved March 7, 2006.
87. ^ "Legacy". Retrieved March 7, 2006.
88. ^ "History of the Teddy Bear". Retrieved March 7, 2006.
89. ^ ""The Making of America—Theodore Roosevelt—The 20th Century Express"". Time. 2006. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1207820,00.html. Retrieved 2006-03-26. 
90. ^ Vincent Voice Library at Michigan State University. Retrieved September 23, 2007.
91. ^ [1]
92. ^ [2]
93. ^ Roosevelt, Theodore (1913). Youngman, Elmer H. ed. Progressive Principles. New York: Progressive National Service. p. 215. http://books.google.com/books?id=qLYJAAAAIAAJ&jtp=215. Retrieved April 14, 2009. 

Primary sources

• Auchincloss, Louis, ed. Theodore Roosevelt, The Rough Riders and an Autobiography (Library of America, 2004) ISBN 978-1-93108265-5
• Auchincloss, Louis, ed. Theodore Roosevelt, Letters and Speeches (Library of America, 2004) ISBN 978-1-93108266-2
• Brands, H.W. ed. The Selected Letters of Theodore Roosevelt. (2001)
• Edwards, Adolph (1907) (^{[dead link]} – ^{Scholar search}). The Roosevelt Panic of 1907. Anitrock Pub. Co. http://books.google.com/books/pdf/The_Roosevelt_Panic_of_1907.pdf?id=R3koAAAAYAAJ&output=pdf&sig=ACfU3U3H9jU4cm6V4UIBtmkHPUMsxaVsPw&source=gbs_summary_r&cad=0. 
• Harbaugh, William ed. The Writings Of Theodore Roosevelt (1967). A one-volume selection of Roosevelt's speeches and essays.
• Hart, Albert Bushnell and Herbert Ronald Ferleger, eds. Theodore Roosevelt Cyclopedia (1941), Roosevelt's opinions on many issues; online version at [3]
• Morison, Elting E., John Morton Blum, and Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., eds., The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, 8 vols. (1951–1954). Very large, annotated edition of letters from TR.
• Roosevelt, Theodore (1999). Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography. online at Bartleby.com.
• Roosevelt, Theodore. The Works of Theodore Roosevelt (National edition, 20 vol. 1926); 18,000 pages containing most of TR's speeches, books and essays, but not his letters; a CD-ROM edition is available; some of TR's books are available online through Project Bartleby
• Theodore Roosevelt books and speeches on Project Gutenberg
• Roosevelt, Theodore, The Naval War of 1812 Or the History of the United States Navy during the Last War with Great Britain to Which Is Appended an Account of the Battle of New Orleans (1882) (New York: The Modern Library, 1999). ISBN 0-375-75419-9.

Secondary sources

• Blum, John Morton. (1954). The Republican Roosevelt. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Series of essays that examine how TR did politics OCLC 310975
• Brands, Henry William. (1997). T.R.: The Last Romantic. New York: Basic Books. Reprinted 2001, full biography OCLC 36954615
• Brinkley, Douglas. (2009). The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America. New York: HarperCollins. 10-ISBN 0-060-56528-4; 13-ISBN 978-0-060-56528-2;
• Chace, James. 1912: Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft, and Debs - The Election That Changed the Country. (2004). 323 pp.
• Cooper, John Milton The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt. (1983) a dual scholarly biography
• Dalton, Kathleen. Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life. (2002), full scholarly biography
• Fehn, Bruce. "Theodore Roosevelt and American Masculinity." Magazine of History (2005) 19(2): 52–59. Issn: 0882-228x Fulltext online at Ebsco. Provides a lesson plan on TR as the historical figure who most exemplifies the quality of masculinity.
• Gluck, Sherwin. "T.R.'s Summer White House, Oyster Bay." (1999) Chronicles the events of TR's presidency during the summers of his two terms.
• Goldman, Eric F. Rendezvous with Destiny: A History of Modern American Reform. (1952) Bancroft Prize, 1953, ISBN 1566633699
• Gould, Lewis L. The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt. (1991), standard history of his domestic and foreign policy as president
• Harbaugh, William Henry. The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt. (1963), full scholarly biography
• Keller, Morton, ed., Theodore Roosevelt: A Profile (1967) excerpts from TR and from historians.
• Kohn, Edward. "Crossing the Rubicon: Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, and the 1884 Republican National Convention." Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2006 5(1): 18–45. Issn: 1537-7814 Fulltext: in History Cooperative
• Millard, Candice. River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey. (2005)
• McCullough, David. Mornings on Horseback, The Story of an Extraordinary Family. a Vanished Way of Life, and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt. (2001) popular biography to 1884
• Mellander, Gustavo A. (1971). The United States in Panamanian Politics: The Intriguing Formative Years. Daville,Ill.:Interstate Publishers. OCLC 138568.
• Mellander, Gustavo A.; Nelly Maldonado Mellander (1999). Charles Edward Magoon: The Panama Years. Río Piedras, Puerto Rico: Editorial Plaza Mayor. ISBN 1563281554. OCLC 42970390.
• Morris, Edmund The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, to 1901 (1979); vol 2: Theodore Rex 1901–1909. (2001); Pulitzer prize for Volume 1. Biography.
• Mowry, George. The Era of Theodore Roosevelt and the Birth of Modern America, 1900–1912. (1954) general survey of era; online
• Mowry, George E. Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Movement. (2001) focus on 1912
• O'Toole, Patricia. When Trumpets Call: Theodore Roosevelt after the White House. (2005). 494 pp.
• Pearson, Edmund. Theodore Roosevelt. 1920.
• Powell, Jim. Bully Boy: The Truth About Theodore Roosevelt's Legacy (Crown Forum, 2006). Examines TR policies from conservative/libertarian perspective. ISBN 0307237222
• Pringle, Henry F. Theodore Roosevelt (1932; 2nd ed. 1956), full scholarly biography
• Putnam, Carleton Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography, Volume I: The Formative Years (1958), only volume published, to age 28.
• Renehan, Edward J. The Lion's Pride: Theodore Roosevelt and His Family in Peace and War. (Oxford University Press, 1998), examines TR and his family during the World War I period
• Strock, James M. Theodore Roosevelt on Leadership. Random House, 2003.
• Watts, Sarah. Rough Rider in the White House: Theodore Roosevelt and the Politics of Desire. 2003. 289 pp.

Foreign policy

• Beale Howard K. Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of America to World Power. (1956). standard history of his foreign policy
• Holmes, James R. Theodore Roosevelt and World Order: Police Power in International Relations. 2006. 328 pp.
• Marks III, Frederick W. Velvet on Iron: The Diplomacy of Theodore Roosevelt (1979)
• David McCullough. The Path between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870–1914 (1977).
• Ricard, Serge. "The Roosevelt Corollary." Presidential Studies Quarterly 2006 36(1): 17–26. Issn: 0360-4918 Fulltext: in Swetswise and Ingenta
• Tilchin, William N. and Neu, Charles E., ed. Artists of Power: Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Their Enduring Impact on U.S. Foreign Policy. Praeger, 2006. 196 pp.
• Tilchin, William N. Theodore Roosevelt and the British Empire: A Study in Presidential Statecraft (1997)

Further reading

• Testi, Arnaldo (1995). "The Gender of Reform Politics: Theodore Roosevelt and the Culture of Masculinity," Journal of American History, Vol. 81, No. 4, pp. 1509–1533.
• THE WILDERNESS WARRIOR; Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America, By Douglas Brinkley, 2009

External links

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• Theodore Roosevelt Association - Founded in 1920 by Roosevelt's friends and admirers to preserve his legacy. Extensive online resources and bibliography
• Extensive essay on Theodore Roosevelt and shorter essays on each member of his cabinet and First Lady from the Miller Center of Public Affairs
• Theodore Roosevelt: A Resource Guide from the Library of Congress
• NY Times Headline, January 6, 1919, Theodore Roosevelt Dies Suddenly at Oyster Bay Home; Nation Shocked, Pays Tribute to Former President; Our Flag on All Seas and in All Lands at Half Mast
• "The Early Years: The Challenge of Public Order - 1845 to 1870", by William Andrews, New York City Police Department History Site
• "Leadership of the City of New York Police Department 1845–1901", - The New York City Police Department Museum
• PBS "American Experience" Theodore Roosevelt
• My Brother Theodore Roosevelt, 1921 By Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, a bestseller with a woman's and sister's point of view on TR. Full text and Full text Search, Free to Read and Search.
• Almanac of Theodore Roosevelt
• Downloadable audio recordings of Roosevelt in MP3 format
• Audio clips of Roosevelt's speeches
• Roosevelt podcasts Audio Recording of Roosevelt's Progressive Party Acceptance Speech, "Progressive Covenant with the People" with text included.
• Quotes
• Theodore Roosevelt Works - Bartleby's Online Books
• Presidential Biography by Stanley L. Klos
• Works by Theodore Roosevelt at Project Gutenberg
• Works by/about Theodore Roosevelt at Internet Archive
• Index of T. Roosevelt Etexts
• Detailed biography of Theodore Roosevelt from the 1911 version of Encyclopedia Britannica
• Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Address
• State of the Union addresses for 1901, 1902, 1903, 1904, 1905, 1906, 1907, and 1908
• Nobel Peace Prize 1906: Theodore Roosevelt
• Theodore Roosevelt Papers at the Library of Congress
• Theodore Roosevelt: His Life & Times on Film (LOC)
• Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site
• Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site
• Sagamore Hill National Historic Site
• Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Site: Birthplace of the Modern Presidency, a National Park Service Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) lesson plan
• NobelPrize.org's entry on Theodore Roosevelt
• Congressional Medal of Honor's entry on Theodore Roosevelt; including citation and pictures
• Medal of Honor Recipients on Film
• White House biography
• Family and Descendants of Theodore Roosevelt
• Ron Schuler's Parlour Tricks: Teddy
• Theodore Roosevelt Links
• Theodore Roosevelt Quotes, Pictures and Biography at TeddyRoosevelt.com
• Theodore Roosevelt cylinder recordings, from the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara Library.
• On Theodore Roosevelt's progressive vision from the Roosevelt Institution, a student think tank inspired in part by Theodore Roosevelt.
• Boone and Crockett Club, founded by Theodore Roosevelt
• How to pronounce Theodore Roosevelt
• Yesterday's News blog 1901 newspaper account of Roosevelt's "Big Stick" speech at the Minnesota State Fair
• Archive of Theodore Roosevelt Pictures
• still of Theodore Roosevelt going on first aeroplane flight
• different view of Theodore Roosevelt & Arch Hoxsey in Wright aeroplane St Louis October 1910
• Works by or about Theodore Roosevelt in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Theodore Roosevelt at Find a Grave Retrieved on 2008-07-03
•  "Roosevelt, Theodore". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911. 
• Theodore Roosevelt with video, audio, pictures and other sources from Library of Congress and National Archives

Political offices
Preceded by William McKinley	President of the United States September 14, 1901-March 4, 1909	Succeeded by William Howard Taft
Vacant Title last held by Garret Augustus Hobart	Vice President of the United States March 4, 1901-September 14, 1901	Vacant Title next held by Charles W. Fairbanks
Preceded by Frank S. Black	Governor of New York 1899-1900	Succeeded by Benjamin B. Odell, Jr.
Party political offices
New political party	Progressive Party presidential candidate 1912	Party disbanded
Preceded by William McKinley	Republican Party presidential candidate 1904	Succeeded by William Howard Taft
Preceded by Garret Hobart	Republican Party vice presidential candidate 1900	Succeeded by Charles W. Fairbanks

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v • d • e Cabinet of President Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909) Vice President None (1901-1905) • Charles W. Fairbanks (1905-1909) Secretary of State John M. Hay (1901-1905) • Elihu Root (1905-1909) • Robert Bacon (1909) Secretary of the Treasury Lyman J. Gage (1901-1902) • Leslie M. Shaw (1902-1907) • George B. Cortelyou (1907-1909) Secretary of War Elihu Root (1901-1904) • William H. Taft (1904-1908) • Luke E. Wright (1908-1909) Attorney General Philander C. Knox (1901-1904) • William H. Moody (1904-1906) • Charles J. Bonaparte (1906-1909) Postmaster General Charles E. Smith (1901-1902) • Henry C. Payne (1902-1904) • Robert J. Wynne (1904-1905) • George B. Cortelyou (1905-1907) • George von L. Meyer (1907-1909) Secretary of the Navy John D. Long (1901-1902) • William H. Moody (1902-1904) • Paul Morton (1904-1905) • Charles J. Bonaparte (1905-1906) • Victor H. Metcalf (1906-1908) • Truman H. Newberry (1908-1909) Secretary of the Interior Ethan A. Hitchcock (1901-1907) • James R. Garfield (1907-1909) Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson (1901-1909) Secretary of Commerce and Labor George B. Cortelyou (1903-1904) • Victor H. Metcalf (1904-1906) • Oscar S. Straus (1906-1909)

v • d • e Cabinet of President William McKinley (1897-1901) Vice President Garret A. Hobart (1897-1899) • None (1899-1901) • Theodore Roosevelt (1901) Secretary of State John Sherman (1897-1898) • William R. Day (1898) • John Hay (1898-1901) Secretary of the Treasury Lyman J. Gage (1897-1901) Secretary of War Russell A. Alger (1897-1899) • Elihu Root (1899-1901) Attorney General Joseph McKenna (1897-1898) • John W. Griggs (1898-1901) • Philander C. Knox (1901) Postmaster General James A. Gary (1897-1898) • Charles E. Smith (1898-1901) Secretary of the Navy John D. Long (1897-1901) Secretary of the Interior Cornelius N. Bliss (1897-1899) • Ethan A. Hitchcock (1899-1901) Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson (1897-1901)

v • d • e Laureates of the Nobel Peace Prize Henry Dunant/Frédéric Passy (1901) · Élie Ducommun/Charles Gobat (1902) · William Cremer (1903) · Institut de Droit International (1904) · Bertha von Suttner (1905) · Theodore Roosevelt (1906) · Ernesto Moneta/Louis Renault (1907) · Klas Arnoldson/Fredrik Bajer (1908) · A.M.F. Beernaert/Paul Estournelles de Constant (1909) · International Peace Bureau (1910) · Tobias Asser/Alfred Fried (1911) · Elihu Root (1912) · Henri La Fontaine (1913) · International Committee of the Red Cross (1917) · Woodrow Wilson (1919) · Léon Bourgeois (1920) · Hjalmar Branting/Christian Lange (1921) · Fridtjof Nansen (1922) · Austen Chamberlain/Charles Dawes (1925) Complete roster · 1901–1925 · 1926–1950 · 1951–1975 · 1976–2000 · 2001–present

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Persondata
NAME	Roosevelt, Theodore, Jr.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	26th President of the United States
DATE OF BIRTH	October 27, 1858
PLACE OF BIRTH	New York City
DATE OF DEATH	January 6, 1919
PLACE OF DEATH	Oyster Bay, New York

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