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Theodore Roosevelt

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Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. Image:Cmoh army.jpgImage:Nobel Prize.png
Theodore Roosevelt

In office
September 14, 1901 – March 4, 1909
Vice President none (1901–1905),[1]
Charles W. Fairbanks (1905–1909)
Preceded by William McKinley
Succeeded by William Howard Taft

In office
March 4, 1901 – September 14, 1901
President William McKinley
Preceded by Garret Hobart (until 1899)
Succeeded by Charles W. Fairbanks (from 1905)

In office
January 1, 1899 – December 31, 1900
Lieutenant Timothy L. Woodruff
Preceded by Frank S. Black
Succeeded by Benjamin B. Odell, Jr.

Born October 27 1858(1858-10-27)
New York, New York
Died January 6 1919 (aged 60)
Oyster Bay, New York
Political party Republican
Spouse (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 Polymath, author, historian, conservationist, Civil servant
Religion Dutch Reformed
Signature Image:Theodore Roosevelt signature.gif
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 San Juan Hill)
Awards Medal of Honor

Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. (IPA: /ˈroʊzəvɛlt/[2]; October 27 1858January 6 1919), also known as T.R., and to the public (but never to friends and intimates) as Teddy, was the twenty-sixth President of the United States, and a leader of the Republican Party and of the Progressive Movement. He became President of the United States at the age of 42. He served in many roles including Governor of New York, historian, naturalist, explorer, author, and soldier. He is most famous for his personality: his energy, his vast range of interests and achievements, his model of masculinity, and his "cowboy" persona.

As Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Roosevelt prepared for and advocated war with Spain in 1898. He organized and helped command the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry Regiment, the Rough Riders, during the Spanish-American War. Returning to New York as a war hero, he was elected Republican governor in 1899. He was a professional historian, a lawyer, a naturalist and explorer of the Amazon Basin; his 35 books include works on outdoor life, natural history, the American frontier, political history, naval history, and his autobiography.[3]

In 1901, as Vice President, the 42 year-old Roosevelt succeeded President William McKinley after McKinley's assassination by anarchist Leon Czolgosz. He is the youngest person to become President.[4] He was a Progressive reformer who sought to move the dominant Republican Party into the Progressive camp. He distrusted wealthy businessmen and dissolved forty monopolistic corporations as a "trust buster". He was clear, however, to show he did not disagree with trusts and capitalism in principle but was only against corrupt, illegal practices. His "Square Deal" promised a fair shake for both the average citizen (through regulation of railroad rates and pure food and drugs) and the businessmen. He was the first U.S. president to call for universal health care and national health insurance.[5][6] As an outdoorsman, he promoted the conservation movement, emphasizing efficient use of natural resources. After 1906 he attacked big business and suggested the courts were biased against labor unions. In 1910, he broke with his friend and anointed successor William Howard Taft, but lost the Republican nomination to Taft and ran in the 1912 election on his own one-time Bull Moose ticket. He beat Taft in the popular vote and pulled so many Progressives out of the Republican Party that Democrat Woodrow Wilson won in 1912, and the conservative faction took control of the Republican Party for the next two decades.

Roosevelt negotiated for the U.S. to take control of the Panama Canal and its construction in 1904; he felt the Canal's completion was his most important and historically significant international achievement. He was the first American to be awarded the Nobel Prize, winning its Peace Prize in 1906, for negotiating the peace in the Russo-Japanese War.

Historian Thomas Bailey, who disagreed with Roosevelt's policies, nevertheless concluded, "Roosevelt was a great personality, a great activist, a great preacher of the moralities, a great controversialist, a great showman. He dominated his era as he dominated conversations....the masses loved him; he proved to be a great popular idol and a great vote getter."[7] His image stands alongside Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln on Mount Rushmore. Surveys of scholars have consistently ranked him from third to seventh on the list of greatest American presidents.

Contents

Biography

Childhood, education, and personal life

Image:TR Age 11 Paris.jpg
Theodore Roosevelt at age 11

Theodore Roosevelt was born in a four-story brownstone at 28 East 20th Street, in the modern-day Gramercy section of New York City, the second of four children of Theodore Roosevelt, Sr. (1831–1877) and Mittie Bulloch (1834–1884). 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 Eleanor Roosevelt) and his sister Corinne, (grandmother of newspaper columnists, Joseph and Stewart Alsop).

The Roosevelts had been in New York since the mid 18th century and had grown with the emerging New York commerce class after the American Revolution. Unlike many of the earlier "log cabin Presidents," Roosevelt was born into a wealthy family. 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 Savannah, 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.[8] From his grandparents' home, a young Roosevelt witnessed Abraham Lincoln's funeral procession in New York.

Sickly and asthmatic as a youngster, 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 young man. 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".[9]

To combat his poor physical condition, his father compelled the young Roosevelt to take up exercise. To deal with bullies, Roosevelt started boxing lessons.[10] Two trips abroad had a permanent impact: family tours of Europe in 1869 and 1870, and of the Middle East 1872 to 1873.

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."[11] Roosevelt's sister 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."[12]

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) was mostly home schooled by tutors and his parents. A leading biographer says: "The most obvious drawback to the home schooling Roosevelt keely received was uneven coverage of the various areas of human knowledge." 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.[13] He matriculated at Harvard College in 1876, graduating magna cum laude. 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.[14] 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.

While at Harvard, Roosevelt was active in rowing, boxing and the Alpha Delta Phi and Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternities. He also edited a student magazine. He was runner-up in the Harvard boxing championship, losing to C.S. Hanks. The sportsmanship he showed in that fight was long remembered. Upon graduating from Harvard, he 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.[15]

He graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude (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.[16]

Image:TR NY State Assemblyman 1883.jpg
Roosevelt as NY State Assemblyman 1883, photo

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 plusses and minuses of staying loyal or straying. 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."[17] 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."[18].

First marriage

Alice Hathaway Lee (July 29, 1861 in Chestnut Hill, MassachusettsFebruary 14 1884 in Manhattan, New York) was the first wife of Theodore Roosevelt and mother of their only child together, Alice Lee Roosevelt. Alice Roosevelt died of an undiagnosed case of Bright's Disease two days after Alice Lee was born. Theodore Roosevelt's mother Mittie died of Typhoid fever in the same house on the same day, Feb. 14, 1884. After the simultaneous deaths of his mother and wife, Roosevelt left his daughter in the care of his sister in New York and moved out to Dakota Territory.

Life in Badlands

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

Roosevelt built a second ranch he named Elk Horn thirty five miles (56 km) north of the boomtown, Medora, North Dakota. On the banks of the "Little Missouri," Roosevelt learned to ride, rope, and hunt. Roosevelt 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 River. Capturing them, he decided against hanging them 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 one of the thieves was carrying.[citation needed]

While working on a tough project aimed at hunting down a group of relentless horse thieves, Roosevelt came across the famous Deadwood, South Dakota Sheriff Seth Bullock. The two would remain friends for life. (Morris, Rise of, 241–245, 247–250)

After the uniquely severe U.S. winter of 1886-1887 wiped out his herd of cattle and his $60,000 investment (together with those of his competitors), 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.[19] 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.[20] They had five children: Theodore Jr., Kermit, Ethel Carow, Archibald Bulloch "Archie", and Quentin.[21]

Historian

Roosevelt's book The Naval War of 1812 (1882) was standard history for two generations. Roosevelt undertook extensive and original research even computing British and American man-of-war broadside throw weights.[22] By comparison, however, his hastily-written biographies of Thomas Hart Benton (1887) and Gouverneur Morris (1888) are considered superficial.[23] His major achievement was a four-volume history of the frontier, The Winning of the West (1889–1896), which had a notable impact on historiography as it presented a highly original version of the frontier thesis elaborated upon in 1893 by his friend Frederick Jackson Turner. Roosevelt argued that the harsh frontier conditions had created a new "race": the American people that replaced the "scattered savage tribes, whose life was but a few degrees less meaningless, squalid, and ferocious than that of the wild beasts with whom they held joint ownership". He believed that "the conquest and settlement by the whites of the Indian lands was necessary to the greatness of the race and to the well-being of civilized mankind". He was using an evolutionary model in which new environmental conditions allow a new species to form. His many articles in upscale magazines provided a much-needed income, as well as cementing a reputation as a major national intellectual. He was later chosen president of the American Historical Association.

Views on race

In the The Winning of the West (1889–1896), Roosevelt's frontier thesis stressed the racial struggle between "civilization" and "savagery." He supported Nordicism, the belief in the superiority of the "Nordic" race, along with social Darwinism and racialism. Excerpts:

  1. "The settler and pioneer have at bottom had justice on their side; this great continent could not have been kept as nothing but a game preserve for squalid savages".
  2. "The most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages".
  3. "American and Indian, Boer and Zulu, Cossack and Tartar, New Zealander and Maori, — in each case the victor, horrible though many of his deeds are, has laid deep the foundations for the future greatness of a mighty people".
  4. "..it is of incalculable importance that America, Australia, and Siberia should pass out of the hands of their red, black, and yellow aboriginal owners, and become the heritage of the dominant world races".
  5. "The world would have halted had it not been for the Teutonic conquests in alien lands; but the victories of Moslem over Christian have always proved a curse in the end. Nothing but sheer evil has come from the victories of Turk and Tartar".

What did not, however, conform to the views of Roosevelt's day was that race should never be the primary factor in someone of ability performing any job. Some notable events in Theodore Roosevelt's life included:

  • Developing a close relationship with the Hidatsa Indians that is maintained today in the oral tradition of the tribe.
  • Inviting reformer Booker T. Washington to dinner at the White House, an action which caused outrage among many newspapers in the American South, which objected to "mixing of the races on social occasions."
  • Openly supporting a bill in the New York State Assembly which allowed desegregation of schools in the state, personally noting that his children had been educated with other races and there was nothing wrong with it.
  • Appointed the Collector of the Port of Charleston post to an African-American, Dr. William D. Crum, and when he was urged to withdraw the appointment, wrote the following:
I do not intend to appoint any unfit man to office. So far as I legitimately can, I shall always endeavor to pay regard to the wishes and feelings of the people of each locality; but I cannot consent to take the position that the doorway of hope - the door of opportunity - is to be shut upon any man, no matter how worthy, purely upon the grounds of race or color. Such an attitude would, according to my contentions, be fundamentally wrong.
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