Theodore Roosevelt

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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. (190109). 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 (188995) and as head of the city's board of police commissioners (189597). A supporter of William McKinley, he served as assistant secretary of the navy (189798). 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 votesthe most successful third-party candidacy in the 20th century. Throughout his life he continued to write, publishing extensively on history, politics, travel, and nature. Big Stick policy; Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

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(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.

Early Life and Political Posts

Of a prosperous and distinguished family, Theodore Roosevelt was educated by private tutors and traveled widely. He was a delicate youth, and his determined efforts to overcome this had a marked effect on his character. After graduating (1880) from Harvard, he studied law at Columbia.

Roosevelt's interest was drawn to politics, and while serving (1882-84) in the New York state legislature as a Republican, he strongly opposed the nomination of James G. Blaine for the U.S. presidency. After Blaine's nomination, however, Roosevelt supported him, and that lost him much of his political backing. Discouraged by this turn of events, and bereaved by the deaths (1884) of his mother and his wife, Alice Hathaway Lee, Roosevelt retired to his ranch in the Dakota Territory.

He returned (1886) to New York City and ran as the Republican candidate for mayor against Henry George and Abram S. Hewitt; he came in third. He became increasingly important in Republican party politics. Appointed (1889) by President Benjamin Harrison as a member of the Civil Service Commission, he was noted for his vigor in the post until he resigned in 1895. As head (1895-97) of the New York City police board, Roosevelt accomplished little but nevertheless gained public notice by his advocacy of reform.

In 1897 he returned to federal office as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under President McKinley. An ardent supporter of U.S. expansion, he worked toward putting the U.S. navy on a war basis for the coming war with Spain. After the outbreak of the Spanish-American war, he resigned to organize, with Leonard Wood, the volunteer regiment that won fame as the Rough Riders. Returning from Cuba a popular hero, Roosevelt ran (1898) for the governorship of New York state, winning by a small margin. Republican "boss" Thomas C. Platt had supported him in his candidacy, but after Roosevelt's inauguration the two differed when Roosevelt imposed taxes on corporation franchises. It was at least partially to shelve Roosevelt that Platt backed his nomination as Vice President in 1900. The McKinley-Roosevelt slate was elected, but Roosevelt served as Vice President only a few months. McKinley was assassinated, and Roosevelt became (Sept. 14, 1901) President shortly before his 43d birthday, making him the youngest person to hold that office. (John F. Kennedy was the youngest person to be elected President.)

Presidency

Domestic Policy

Roosevelt's inexhaustible vitality and enthusiasm, aided by his ability to dramatize himself and to coin vivid phrases, made him a popular president. His intellectual interests did much to elevate the tone of American politics. On the other hand, he drew considerable criticism for his glorification of military strength and his patriotic fervor.

He recognized, from the outset of his first administration, the growing demand for reform that was expressed in the writings of the muckrakers. From 1902 he set about "trust busting" under terms of the moribund Sherman Antitrust Act, ordered the successful antitrust suit against the Northern Securities Company, and led the attack on a number of other large trusts. Altogether, his administration began some 40 suits against trusts. Roosevelt's threat to intervene in the anthracite coal strike of 1902 induced the operators to accept arbitration.

In his first term he also fathered important legislation, including the Reclamation Act of 1902 (the Newlands Act), which made possible federal irrigation projects; the bill (1903) establishing the U.S. Department of Commerce and Labor; and the Elkins Act of 1903, which put an end to freight rebates by railroads. Roosevelt's vigorous championship of the rights of the "little man" captured the American imagination, and when he ran for reelection in 1904 he defeated Alton B. Parker, the Democratic presidential candidate, by 196 electoral votes.

In his second administration Roosevelt directed the passage (1906) of the Hepburn Act, which revitalized the Interstate Commerce Commission and authorized greater governmental authority over railroads. In 1906 he backed the passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act. A firm believer in conservation of national resources, he sought to halt exhaustion of timber and mineral supplies by private interests and added many millions of acres of land to public ownership. His progressive reforms were directed not at the abolition of big business but at its regulation-an attitude shown by his tacit approval of the absorption of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company by United States Steel in the panic of 1907. By his aggressive domestic policy, Roosevelt decisively increased the power of the President.

Foreign Policy

Roosevelt's forcefulness was equally manifest in his foreign policy. Ably backed by John Hay and Elihu Root, he set out to solidify the world position won by the United States in the Spanish-American War. His efforts to enhance U.S. prestige and influence won him the hatred of anti-imperialist groups. Most notable, perhaps, was his Caribbean policy. In the Venezuela Claims dispute, Roosevelt, fearing German intervention in Venezuela, worked for a peaceful settlement that would maintain Venezuela's territorial integrity.

Later (1904), when the Dominican Republic-which was deeply in debt to European bond holders-was threatened with intervention by European powers, the President enunciated a new U.S. policy that would forestall such action. In what came to be known as the Roosevelt corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, the President claimed that the United States had direct interest and the obligation to impose order in the affairs of Latin American countries. The Dominican Republic was forced to accept the appointment of a U.S. customs receiver. This policy aroused great indignation in Latin America.

Even more drastic was Roosevelt's action regarding the Panama Canal. After the Colombian senate refused to ratify the proposed Hay-Herrán Treaty, a U.S. navy warship, the Nashville, prevented the landing of additional Colombian troops in Panama, thus contributing to the success of the Panamanian revolution (1903). Roosevelt immediately recognized the new republic of Panama, and the Panama Canal was begun. Roosevelt's policy in Latin America prepared the way for "dollar diplomacy" in that area.

Roosevelt was also active generally in world affairs. With Hay, he endeavored to maintain the Open Door in China. In 1904, as mediator, he brought about the peace conference at Portsmouth, N.H., to end the Russo-Japanese War; and he was awarded the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize. He was an ardent advocate of the Hague Tribunal, and it was through his offices that the Algeciras Conference was called in 1906 to settle the Morocco question. In 1907 his gentleman's agreement with Japan to discourage emigration of Japanese laborers to the United States eased the tensions caused by California's anti-Japanese legislation.

The 1912 Election and After

Roosevelt virtually dictated the nomination of his presidential successor, William Howard Taft; after an African big-game expedition and a triumphal tour of European cities, Roosevelt returned (1910) to the United States and joined the campaign for the direct primary in New York. President Taft alienated the progressive Republicans headed by Robert M. La Follette, and the Republican party in 1912 was threatened with a split over the presidential nomination. The conservatives, however, controlled the Republican convention of 1912, and Taft was nominated for reelection.

Roosevelt led his followers out of the convention, organized the Progressive party-also called the Bull Moose party-and was nominated for President on this third-party slate. In the resulting three-cornered election he ran second to the Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson. Forced into retirement, Roosevelt denounced the policies of Wilson-whose attempt to secure a treaty awarding Colombia damages for the loss of Panama particularly enraged him. After the outbreak of World War I he attacked Wilson's neutrality policy; and when the United States entered the war he pleaded vainly to be allowed to raise and command a volunteer force. He died soon after the end of World War I.

Writings

During his busy career he had found time not only for hunting and exploring expeditions-including exploration (1913) of the River of Doubt (now called the Roosevelt River or Rio Teodoro) in the Amazon jungle-but also for writing a great number of books. They deal with history, hunting, wildlife, and politics. Among them are The Naval War of 1812 (1882), biographies of Thomas H. Benton (1887) and Gouverneur Morris (1888), The Winning of the West (4 vol., 1889-96), African Game Trails (1910), The New Nationalism (1910), Progressive Principles (1913), Through the Brazilian Wilderness (1914), and his important autobiography (1913).

Children

Alice, his daughter by his first wife, married Nicholas Longworth in the White House; "Princess Alice" attracted much notice by her forthright personality, unconventional ways, and able tongue (see Longworth, Alice Lee Roosevelt). There were five children of his second marriage (1886) to Edith Kermit Carow-Theodore, Jr., Kermit, Archibald Bullock, Ethel Carow (Mrs. Richard Derby), and Quentin. Quentin was killed in World War I; Theodore, Jr., and Kermit both died in active service in World War II.

Bibliography

See The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt (8 vol., 1951-54), ed. by J. M. Blum; The Selected Letters of Theodore Roosevelt (2006), ed. by H. W. Brands; biographies by H. F. Pringle (rev. ed. 1956, repr. several times), N. F. Busch (1963), D. W. Grantham, ed. (1971), H. W. Brands (1997), S. A. Cordery (2002), K. Dalton (2002), and E. Morris (The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 1979; Theodore Rex, 2001; and Colonel Roosevelt, 2010); G. E. Mowry, Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Movement (1946, repr. 1960); J. M. Blum, The Republican Roosevelt (1954, repr. 1962); H. K. Beale, Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of America to World Power (1956, repr. 1989); W. H. Harbaugh, The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt (1963); G. W. Chessman, Theodore Roosevelt and the Politics of Power (1969); D. McCullough, Mornings on Horseback (1980); M. L. Collins, That Damned Cowboy (1989); C. Millard, The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey (2005); P. O'Toole, When Trumpets Call: Theodore Roosevelt after the White House (2005); D. Brinkley, The Wilderness Warrior (2009); J. Bradley, The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War (2009); E. Thomas, The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898 (2010).

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