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Contents
Overview
Born: October 27, 1858 in New York City... Youngest person ever to serve as president... Champion of the strenuous life, TR embodied the notion of an expanded presidency. Stamped the presidency with his own colorful personality. His enormous popularity gave him political clout that matched his celebrity status. "Get action, do things," sums up his attitude toward all endeavors, political and otherwise... Died: January 6, 1919.
Did you know? - Read some fun facts about Theodore Roosevelt
The Era
- The Wright brothers make the first plane flight (1903)
- The Great Train Robbery plays to packed movie houses (1903)
- Japan defeats Russia in the Russo-Japanese War (1905)
- Upton Sinclair publishes The Jungle, a muckraking exposé (1906)
- Ford introduces the Model T automobile (1908)
World Timeline - See a timeline of world events during Theodore Roosevelt's administration.
Early Career
Newly-minted
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New York State Assemblyman Theodore Roosevelt convened the Cities Committee at Albany one day in 1882, armed with his Harvard education, his moral indignation, his physical prowess, and a scavenged chair leg to defend against assault, should debate take a physical turn. Dogged, audacious, bombastic, and naive, he had begun his journey to American legend. Yet he was not the same Theodore Roosevelt who had been born to a comfortable Dutch American family in New York on October 27, 1858. In the years since, he had repeatedly reinvented himself.
Frail, nearsighted, and tormented by near-fatal asthma attacks, young Theodore, or Teedie, as he was known, devoted his early life to learning. He read voraciously, from children's magazines like Our Young Folks to the poetry of Longfellow and Western adventure books by the writer Mayne Reid. At age 8, Teedie founded the Roosevelt Museum of Natural History in the family home and stocked it with specimens he collected or begged -- the skins of mice, birds, and snakes, the skull of a seal, each carefully tagged and catalogued.
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in his mind he modeled himself on the rugged heroes of the West, the wispy Teedie scarcely seemed headed for a heroic life. But as a teenager, he overcame his frailty through exercise, spending hour after hour lifting weights, doing calisthenics, and boxing.
Roosevelt's burgeoning physical strength would not be enough to gain his admission to Harvard, a goal which caused him to rebuild himself once again. He commanded an impressive store of knowledge, but Harvard's entrance examination emphasized mathematics, Latin, and Greek -- areas in which he was weak. He worked assiduously under a tutor named Arthur Cutler, and after two years' study, passed the exam.
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Roosevelt had made himself into a model man, he would learn at Harvard that all men did not aspire to the same models. His boisterous, nature, his distaste for debauchery, his New York pedigree, and his intellect set him at odds with the other Harvard men, many of whom were wayward sons of New England's elite. Once more, Roosevelt transformed himself -- this time from an outsider to an insider. Rather than adapt his nature to Harvard, he adapted Harvard to his nature, challenging his teachers in the classroom, challenging his classmates with the idea that fun was not burlesque-hall grogfests but tramps in the idyllic Adirondacks, and challenging Harvard's elite clubs to deny membership to such an obviously remarkable young man. Accepted grudgingly, Roosevelt gained admission to a number of important Harvard clubs, including the vaunted Porcellians. He performed above average academically and earned a Phi Beta Kappa key. Yet in his Autobiography, he wrote: "...I am sure [Harvard] did me good, but only in the general effect, for there was very little in my actual studies which helped me in after-life."
It was at Harvard, however, that Roosevelt's life was remade by love, as personified by Alice Hathaway Lee, the sister of a Harvard friend. Spurned repeatedly, Roosevelt eventually won Lee's hand. The couple married and moved to New York, where Theodore briefly studied law. But he quickly remade himself again, this time entering one of the most disreputable fields imaginable: politics.
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the time, men of TR's ilk eschewed politics, a grubby profession peopled by "saloonkeepers, horse-car conductors, and the like." Roosevelt quickly proved he could thrive in this rough-and-tumble fellowship. He barged into New York City's Republican party in 1880; the following year, he won a seat in the New York Assembly. When TR arrived at Albany, his dandyish appearance and his penchant for moralistic diatribes quickly made him a political pariah -- and a media sensation. The press loved Roosevelt and provided an outlet for his attacks on the political machines, which served the wealthy few at the expense of the majority.
By his third one-year term in the legislature, the pedantic greenhorn had become a skilled diplomat capable of wielding political and moral force with equanimity. The rising star of Albany, Roosevelt seemed destined for greatness. Then tragedy struck. On February 14, 1884, Roosevelt's mother, Mittie, died of typhoid. The same day, his beloved wife, Alice, died of Bright's disease. Completely shattered, the man who had transformed himself from a weak, asthmatic boy into a powerful, talented politician finished his assembly term and retreated to the Badlands of North Dakota. There he would rebuild himself once again.
Domestic Policy
Theodore
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Roosevelt appeared an unlikely candidate for a reform president. Born into a wealthy family, he enjoyed a youth beyond the reach of most Americans, touring Europe and the Middle East, studying with private tutors, and coming of age in a New York mansion. A Harvard man, he socialized with America's upper crust. In practice, however, TR looked after the interests of working class Americans against rapacious corporate trusts, defying -- and some would say betraying -- the very society from which he had sprung.
When TR entered the White House in 1901, he took control of a federal government that often aligned itself with big business. Roosevelt restrained his progressive leanings for a short time, wisely avoiding a shakeup on Wall Street, where jittery investors saw him at best as a loose cannon and at worst as a dangerous demagogue.
In early 1902, however, TR took the offensive against powerful corporate trusts. He convinced Congress to create a Bureau of Corporations to regulate big business, then shocked the nation by bringing an anti-trust suit against J. P. Morgan's Northern Securities Corporation. Morgan condemned the president, not just for what he had done, but for the ungentlemanly way in which he had done it -- publicly and without warning. A new paradigm had been established in Washington, and Roosevelt would go on to file suit against more than 40 major corporations during his presidency.
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Roosevelt's trust-busting surprised big business, it was certainly consistent with the major influences on his life. Theodore Roosevelt grew up worshipping a father who preached the moral duty of helping the poor, and he worked to be like his father in every way he could. As a young man, TR experienced life as a rancher in North Dakota's Badlands, where all the money in the world could not make a cow easier to rope or the summer sun less blazing, and years of honest work from sunup to sundown might still leave a person poor.
He learned to value working class people, and he never forgot them. From the time he took office in 1901 to the time he left it in 1909, the cowboy president did much to help working Americans. He passed laws to ensure the safety of food and drugs sold in the American marketplace. He placed millions of acres of land under federal protection, preserving America's natural resources. He regulated interstate commerce and helped laborers to get a fair shake at the negotiating table.
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deplored Roosevelt. Yet TR adamantly defended the right of big business to exist. Trying to destroy the trusts, Roosevelt wrote in his Autobiography, "was a hopeless effort... those who went into it, although they regarded themselves as radical progressives, really represented a sincere form of rural Toryism." To TR, Progressivism meant a square deal for the American people and American business, a society where businesses profited by fair competition -- but not at the expense of the average American.
In fact, Roosevelt's relationship with labor was a tenuous one; he probably feared nothing more than he feared labor's potential for violence. "We can no more and no less afford to condone evil in the man of capital than evil in the man of no capital," Roosevelt wrote. One of his greatest frustrations was the inability of capitalists to see that their greed might well foment a bloody American revolution. Labor regularly condemned him, insisting that his brand of reform did not go far enough.
After leaving the presidency, Roosevelt continued to push for domestic reform, most notably during his Progressive party campaign for the presidency in 1912. He ran on a "New Nationalism" platform, calling for women's suffrage, an end to child labor, pensions for the elderly, unemployment insurance, and increased regulation of the trusts. While Theodore Roosevelt failed in this final presidential bid, others picked up his torch, and many of the ideas he championed would later come to fruition.
Foreign Affairs
Theodore
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Roosevelt came to the presidency intent on expanding U.S. power abroad and with a belief that America should be strong and ready to defend its interests around the world. The former Rough Rider entertained boyishly romantic notions of glory on the battlefield. And it was only near the end of his life, when he experienced great personal tragedy during World War I, that Roosevelt truly realized the brutal nature of war.
Roosevelt influenced U.S. foreign policy even before he became president. As Assistant Secretary of the Navy under President William McKinley, he lobbied for a stronger Navy. Fearing the danger of Spanish control of Cuba, TR advocated war against Spain; he even presented a written war plan to McKinley, which McKinley promptly ignored. When the U.S. battleship Maine exploded in Havana Harbor, Roosevelt was eager to place the blame on Spain.
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in charge of the Navy for a day while his boss was away, the hawkish Assistant Secretary telegrammed squadron commanders in the Pacific and put them on high alert against Spain's Pacific fleet -- a brazen usurpation of power. Two months later, the U.S. declared war on Spain, and Roosevelt resigned his Navy position to organize the First Volunteer Cavalry, known popularly as the Rough Riders, a motley mix of men from all walks of life. The gentleman soldier led his troops to a bloody victory on Cuba's San Juan Hill and returned home a bonafide hero, brimming with imperialistic fervor. He forever remembered his "crowded hour" in battle as the defining episode of his life and one that helped launch his national political career.
Following President McKinley's assassination in September, 1901, Roosevelt, then vice president, ascended to the presidency, bringing his imperialistic philosophy with him. Roosevelt had long advocated the building of a Central American canal, linking the Pacific to the Atlantic. In 1903, when negotiations with Colombia for a canal zone lease broke down, Roosevelt quietly supported a revolution in that country. Fighting began on November 3. Days later, with tacit support from TR, the independent country of Panama emerged from Colombian control, sporting an American-made declaration of independence, constitution, and flag. Panama rapidly agreed to American terms on a canal zone lease, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began digging the following year.
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1904, when the Dominican Republic defaulted on its European debt, Roosevelt drafted the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine: the U.S. would freely intervene in any nation in the Western Hemisphere guilty of "brutal wrongdoing." When the Italian Navy steamed into the Caribbean to collect its due, Roosevelt enforced the corollary. Under pressure from Roosevelt, the Dominicans requested U.S. assistance. The U.S. took over collection of Dominican customs revenue, and set up a debt repayment plan, forestalling European intervention.
Fond of quoting the African proverb "Speak softly and carry a big stick," the militaristic Roosevelt was also capable of shrewd diplomacy and peace making. When Japan went to war with Russia over control of Manchuria and Korea in 1905, Roosevelt arbitrated the dispute. TR secretly agreed to Japanese annexation of Korea; in return the Japanese promised to keep their hands off China, Hawaii, and the Philippines. The combatants laid down their arms, Roosevelt won the Nobel Peace Prize -- the first American to win the award -- and the U.S. strengthened its position in Asia and the Pacific.
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1906, Roosevelt again brokered peace, this time when France and Germany squabbled over control of Morocco. Many believe that a peaceful resolution to this conflict delayed the start of World War I by a decade. A proponent of U.S. intervention in World War I, Roosevelt sneered at President Woodrow Wilson's neutrality, and was overjoyed when the U.S. declared war. His joy was short lived. All five of Roosevelt's sons served the Allied cause, and all returned safely save one. Quentin Roosevelt, TR's youngest son, was shot down in a dogfight on July 14, 1918. Roosevelt publicly maintained that it was better for Quentin to have served and died than not to have served at all, but the boy's death had a profoundly diminishing effect on the old Rough Rider. He followed his son to the grave less than six months later, on January 6, 1919.
Presidential Politics
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October 14, 1912, Progressive party presidential candidate Theodore Roosevelt delivered one of the most remarkable campaign speeches in American history. Wounded in the chest by the bullet of a would-be assassin, Roosevelt spoke passionately and eloquently for ninety minutes, extolling the virtues of Progressivism to a crowd in Milwaukee. While Roosevelt's campaign would ultimately fail, this moment, brimming with blood and passion, represented one of the finest hours of a man who, from the moment he entered presidential politics, made his life a continuous campaign.
As a vice-presidential candidate in 1900, Roosevelt stumped tirelessly for his Republican running mate, William McKinley. TR traveled thousands of miles to speak out against Democrat William Jennings Bryan's international isolationism and to laud traditional Republican virtues such as personal responsibility.
Roosevelt loved being seen and loved being heard. He smiled and waved, ranted and raved, hammering a clenched fist on his palm for emphasis as crowds cheered him on. In the end, McKinley-Roosevelt won by a landslide. On September 14, 1901, when William McKinley died of bullet wounds inflicted by an assassin, Theodore Roosevelt became the nation's 26th president.
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the sake of national stability, Roosevelt continued McKinley's conservative policies until early 1902, when he began a campaign to regulate corporate interests and protect the interest of the average citizen. This was a bold move, Roosevelt believed that the votes of the common man represented more political power than the political machines, and that his progressive policies would pave his way to reelection.
A skillful manipulator of the media, Roosevelt transformed the presidency. He held daily press briefings, giving insider tips to those reporters who responded with favorable stories. The White House welcomed cowboys and sculptors, intellectuals and prizefighters, and the public grew fascinated with the presidency -- and with TR. He was the first President to be photographed in action. His name and image were everywhere.
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tradition proscribed campaigning by incumbent presidents, but in 1904, Roosevelt's years of campaign by legislation paid off. He won the largest popular and electoral majority of any incumbent president in American history, then promised never to run for the presidency again. It was a promise he did not keep.
William Howard Taft, Roosevelt's hand-picked successor to the White House, promised to carry out a progressive agenda, but as his administration wore on, he became more and more conservative. The rift between the conservative and progressive wings of the Republican party grew. In 1912, some progressives called for the formation of a third party with Roosevelt. At first, Roosevelt resisted, looking ahead to a possible 1916 campaign. But after a series of confrontations with the Taft administration, Roosevelt leapt into the ring to oppose the president of his own party.
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political brawl of the lowest order ensued. TR announced Taft had "brains less than a guinea pig," while Taft called TR a "demagogue," and questioned his veracity. In a typically fiery nationwide tour, TR hammered Taft and the Conservatives mercilessly, winning the support of the common folk and delegates from those states that held primary conventions. But at the Republicans' national convention, the tide turned. The Republican machine supported Taft. TR's delegates refused to vote, then walked out. During the following two months, they formed the Progressive, or Bull Moose, party and chose TR as their presidential candidate.
The 1912 presidential race became a two-man show starring TR and the Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson, also a progressive politician. Americans would have to decide what kind of progressivism they wanted. Wilson called for a complete shutdown of the business trusts, but attempted to appease business people by asserting that other issues, such as women's suffrage, should be decided state by state. Roosevelt campaigned on a platform of "New Nationalism," which included such reforms as women's suffrage, old-age pensions, and child labor laws. He called for the continuation of trusts but under government supervision, and advised their continued existence under government regulation.
The Bull Moose candidate drew enthusiastic crowds wherever he went; the crowd in Milwaukee on October 14 was no exception. Wounded but still standing, Roosevelt implored Americans to vote for him, lest their country be divided into a nation of "haves" and "have nots." This was one of Roosevelt's finest hours, but drama could not outweigh the deadly split in the Republican party. On election day, Roosevelt bested Taft but lost to Wilson by more than two million votes. Theodore Roosevelt's last campaign was over, a decisive, if stirring, defeat.
Legacy
Theodore
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Roosevelt was above all a man of action. During the time he was president, from 1901 to 1909, he altered American foreign and domestic policy -- and even the presidency itself -- in ways that would influence the nation for decades to come.
When Roosevelt assumed the presidency, business and political machines dominated the landscape, carving up territory, buying candidates, and manipulating legislation. The courts usually defended moneyed interests, and had little care for the needs of the common folk. The president wielded as much power as the machines allowed. TR vowed to empower the presidency, and empower it he did. After a brief period of appeasing conservatives, Roosevelt launched the first salvo of his war against the machines, filing an anti-trust action against J. P. Morgan's Northern Securities Company.
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thereafter, the rambunctious Roosevelt intervened in a nationwide coal strike, threatening to use federal troops to operate the mines unless the strike was settled, and pushing the powers of the presidency to unprecedented -- and some said unconstitutional -- limits. TR made it clear that his interpretation of the Constitution allowed the president to wield broad powers in the face of national crises. "I am President of all the people of the United States," Roosevelt wrote, "without regard to creed, color, birthplace, occupation, or social condition. My aim is to do equal and exact justice among them all."
In seven years as president, he instituted numerous progressive reforms. The Hepburn Act gave the government power to set freight rates. The Bureau of Corporations took action against unscrupulous monopolies. The Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act ushered in a new era of consumer protections. As an ex-president and Progressive Party candidate, Roosevelt lobbied for policies that would form the core of the future federal government -- old-age pensions, unemployment insurance, a graduated income tax, child labor laws, and women's suffrage.
With Roosevelt in the White House, the presidency became a position of popular celebrity. Battering aside years of colorless presidential politics, he blasted his way onto the national scene, an outspoken moral crusader who shot from the hip.
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man who believed in "the supreme triumph of war," Roosevelt advocated strength as the guarantor of peace. Under Roosevelt, the U.S. fused its economic might with military power and began its rise to international dominance. TR blocked European interference in the Western hemisphere and paternally subjugated Latin nations, citing America's duty to act against countries guilty of "wrongdoing." He supported the spurious revolution that gave the U.S. control of the Panama Canal Zone, and he built the Panama Canal, dramatically enhancing America's strategic position on the seas.
Roosevelt also understood the power of diplomacy. He brokered peace between Russia and Japan in 1906, stabilizing Asia, increasing America's international prestige, and winning the Nobel Prize. He arbitrated a Franco-German conflict over Morocco, possibly delaying the onset of World War I by a decade.
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Roosevelt's most enduring legacy is an expanded national conservation system. As business interests ravaged America's natural resources, Roosevelt moved to protect them with scientific management techniques. Using his executive powers, TR created scores of national monuments, refuges, and parks, including the Tongass forest reserve, Grand Canyon National Monument, and Muir Woods. All told, he placed over 230 million acres under federal protection.
During Theodore Roosevelt's political career, the United States evolved from a weak, domestically-oriented nation to a country with imperialistic aspirations, from a conservative nation to a more progressive one, from a nation bent on destroying its natural resources to one that had begun to preserve them. The office of the presidency changed as well, expanding its powers and becoming a popular obsession. The politics of Theodore Roosevelt shepherded America into the 20th century. Much of his legacy shepherded America out of that century as well.
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