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Theodore Roosevelt

The Roosevelt family, originally from Holland, had lived in New York City for many generations before Theodore Roosevelt was born there on October 27, 1858. Roosevelt was a frail boy, but by constant physical training he developed into a rugged man. He became interested in government and politics. His broad interests and forceful personality commanded the attention of Republican leaders in New York, and he was elected to the state legislature.

After Roosevelt lost both his mother and his young wife, he spent some time on a North Dakota ranch where he explored the country and wrote. Shortly after his return to the East, President Harrison appointed him to serve on the civil service commission from which he resigned to become police commissioner of New York City. Later he was appointed assistant secretary of the navy.

Theodore Roosevelt was a part of two important and diverse historical periods. These were the late 1800s and the early 1900s. Roosevelt lived through the Populist era and served as the United States president in the Progressive era. During these periods, traditional values were being eroded by saloons, brothels, and gambling. The ideology of both major political parties was changing. Factionalism increased as a consequence. Peoples’ whole way of life was changing rapidly. America went from an agricultural economy to an industrial economy and from a rural environment to an urban environment and from a producer’s culture to a consumer’s culture. Many of the differences between Americans became sectional. Manifest Destiny had been achieved, and America finally stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The “Great Indian Danger” had been quelled, but now Spain and the United States were fighting over colonial islands. During the Spanish American War he won distinction with his famous Rough Riders.

Jingoism! Defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as "extreme patriotism in the form of aggressive foreign policy". In practice, it refers to sections of the general public who advocate the use of threats of or actual force against other countries in order to safeguard what they perceive as their country's national interests, and colloquially to excessive bias in judging one's own country as superior to others. During the 19th century in the United States, journalists called this attitude "spread-eagleism". This patriotic belligerence was intensified by the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana harbor that led to the Spanish-American War. "Jingoism" did not enter the U.S. vernacular until near the turn of the 20th century. One of those frequently accused of Jingoism was Theodore Roosevelt, who answered in a October 8, 1895 interview in the New York Times, "There is much talk about 'jingoism'. If by 'jingoism' they mean a policy in pursuance of which Americans will with resolution and common sense insist upon our rights being respected by foreign powers, then we are 'jingoes'."

Among other things, this war may be taken as the end of the age of innocence. For the last time, America went to war on an amateur basis. The volunteer regiments still bore state names and numbers; officers of battleships in action went wandering about the deck snapping pictures of the fight; the assistant secretary of the Navy (Theodore Roosevelt) hastily resigned, wangled a commission as lieutenant colonel, and went blithely off to fight with a cavalry regiment; and a press correspondent could insult an Army commander and get away with it. All of this was changed later, and in 1917 (and, still farther on, in 1942) everything had become more or less professionalized. This was the last fling in the tradition of the land of amateurs; it worked; the war was won — and the world has been different ever since. They rang the curtain down, after the Spaniards quit in the summer of if worked; the war was won—and the world has been different ever since. They rang the curtain down, after the Spaniards quit in the summer of 1898.

Factories and small businesses escalated in number. Immigrants were coming to America so quickly that citizens thought America was becoming another Europe. Workers wanted more rights and organized to get them. Violent labor movements followed. Radical reforms in government and politics were taking place, but many reformers viewed them as making America more democratic. A stronger position was taken against corruption and vice in the government. People wanted businesses to be more responsible as well. As governor of New York he vigorously opposed unfair business practices. Millions of people were living in cities, which at first brought disease and water problems. City dwellers wanted living conditions improved, especially in the areas where poor immigrants were residing.

Theodore Roosevelt was a product of all these continuing circumstances. In the middle of it all, he became president at forty-two. Some historians have considered Theodore Roosevelt’s entry into the American presidency to be not only the close of the nineteenth century but also the beginning of the modern era. Roosevelt, it should be emphasized, did not himself provide the turning point; many forces of extraordinary complexity were at work, and it would be foolish to suppose that any one man brought America through this particular time of trial; but he was there when it happened, the period was indeed the “Roosevelt era,” and he himself made a substantial contribution.

Strength and energy Roosevelt had in abundance. A progressive friend once warned him that he must become either a great politician or a great moral teacher; he could not possibly be both. But Roosevelt insisted on being both, and the insistence occasionally led him into contradictions which baffled his admirers. A complete political realist — he could be bitterly critical of the “impractical reformers” who wanted him to attempt impossibilities — he must nevertheless justify the most realistic of his political actions on the highest ethical level, which now and then took a bit of doing. His deeds and his words often clashed, and he admitted frankly on one occasion that for a reformer in government, “political expediency draws the line.” And it was perhaps because of this inner conflict that he was so successful in his leadership of the progressive era.

Roosevelt — by any modern standard — was a true conservative. No “skillful broker of the possible” can ever be a real radical; and in the last analysis, it may be that it was precisely that sort of brokerage that was most deeply needed during the trying time when this democracy was trying to adjust itself to the twentieth century. Something essential was indeed conserved in those times. We grew through the transition period without a sharp break with the past or with our own tradition. The profound flexibility of American society was never better demonstrated, or more serviceable, than it was in that faraway era of the great progressives. Roosevelt did not create this flexibility, but he fully expressed it: a remarkable and a fascinating man, operating in a remarkable and fascinating time.

Elected to the office of vice president, McKinley's assassination made him President. As the 26th President from September 14, 1901-1909, Roosevelt successfully arbitrated such disputes as the Alaskan boundaries and the anthracite coal strike, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for his aid in the settlement of the war between Russia and Japan. He supported every measure for the conservation of natural resources and the building of the Panama Canal.

The Bull Moose party Theodore Roosevelt stepped from his Milwaukee hotel that October 14 on his way to deliver a campaign speech. The former President was undoubtedly flashing his trademark horsey grin at the waiting crowd when a fanatic lunged forward, raised a gun, and shot him in the chest. Slowed by thicknesses of coat, a glasses case, and a folded manuscript, the bullet fractured a rib and finally lodged near Roosevelt’s right lung. The blow knocked him to the ground. He coughed, collected himself, and scrambled to his feet. Doctors were summoned, and they urged the colonel to get to a hospital, but he ignored their advice. “I will make this speech or die,” he said, not yet aware his wound wasn’t fatal. “It is one thing or the other.” Shortly after, Roosevelt stood before a stunned crowd at the Milwaukee Auditorium, holding a bloody handkerchief to his chest. “Friends,” he said, “I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.” Roosevelt was running for President a third time, but not as a Republican. Disappointed by the politics of his handpicked presidential successor, William Taft, and touched by a desire to be President once more, Roosevelt originally declared himself a Republican candidate. But when he sought nomination, the Republican machine rejected him. Angry and eager for revenge, Roosevelt formed the Progressive party, which was quickly dubbed the Bull Moose party in recognition of its leader, who liked to say he was “as strong as a bull moose.” The party was a failure politically, but during its brief existence it embodied the ideals of the era—reforms of every stripe and color. Even before the party’s convention, however, Roosevelt knew he would lose to his Democratic opponent, New Jersey’s governor, Woodrow Wilson. “I would have had a sporting chance if the Democrats had put up a reactionary candidate,” he complained. When he stood bleeding before his audience in Milwaukee, Roosevelt gave an electrifying performance. “I had my manuscript — and there is where a bullet went through,” he said, pointing out the spot. “It probably saved me from it going into my heart. The bullet is in me now. And now, friends, I want you to understand that I am ahead of the game, anyway. No man has had a happier life than I have led.” Roosevelt paused. “He shot to kill. Now, friends, I am not speaking for myself at all. I give you my word, I do not care a rap about being shot; not a rap.” Remembering his speech, he said: “Now friends, what we Progressives are trying to do is to enroll rich or poor to stand together for the most elementary rights of good citizenship.” For an hour Roosevelt kept his audience gaping and silent in their seats. After his speech was over, he submitted to the doctors, who soon agreed he would quickly regain his health. American politics has offered nothing remotely like that speech before or since.

After a second term Roosevelt went exploring in the jungles of Africa and South America. On his return he led the Progressive party in the campaign of 1912, but later actively supported the Republican party. Theodore Roosevelt exemplified a strenuous type of leadership and made valuable contributions in a variety of fields.

It is hard to come to grips with Theodore Roosevelt, just as it is with any boy of six. There are times when he has the look of a genuinely great man, and times when he has the look, as Mark Hanna said, of a “damned cowboy.” He was, beyond a doubt, a strong President, and no small part of his strength lay in the fact that he was a cowboy. For what Roosevelt gave the presidency was the breathless drama of a Western movie, and he never left the audience in doubt that he was the “good guy” and the other fellows — Democrats, Senators, monopolists, Socialists, diplomats, nature-fakers, muckrakers — the “bad guys.” With the help of an active and attractive family, he put the presidency on the front page of every newspaper in America, and there it has remained ever since with huge consequences for its status and authority. Teddy lived the dreams of every red-blooded American boy: he punched cattle, led a cavalry charge, became President, and, when it was all over, went off to shoot lions and elephants’in Africa.

Theodore Roosevelt was a brilliant molder and interpreter of public opinion who confessed happily that the White House was a “bully pulpit.” He scored several genuine triumphs as leader of Congress and thus gave substance to his theory that “a good executive under present conditions of American life must take a very active interest in getting the right kind of legislation.” He conducted our diplomacy with unusual vigor, although his stick was not so big nor his voice so soft as he liked to boast. Still, the Panama Canal and the Treaty of Portsmouth were rather substantial achievements for those days.

Unfortunately for Teddy, but probably fortunately for the country, there was no real crisis in all his seven years that would permit him to prove conclusively that he was, as he insisted, a “Jackson-Lincoln” as opposed to a “Buchanan” President. The nearest thing to such a crisis was the anthracite coal strike of 1902. This event, his land withdrawals, and several other minor exertions of authority led him to state the famed “Stewardship Theory” which is still the most adroit literary justification of the strenuous presidency.

At his death on January 6, 1919, Colonel Roosevelt carried in his body the bullet which was fired by Schrank, at Milwaukee during the Presidential campaign of 1912, which nearly resulted in Colonel Roosevelt's death. This and other shocks to his constitution, it was said, might have contributed to the condition which finally brought about his end. Colonel Roosevelt survived innumerable accidents and dangers to his life, which might have left some mark on his constitution. When he first entered the White House, his Secretary of State, John Hay, concluded a letter of praise for Colonel Roosevelt by saying: "He will not live long."

Besides carrying a bullet in his body, Colonel Roosevelt was partially blind and partially deaf. The sight of his left eye was destroyed while he was in the White House in a boxing match. The hearing of one ear was destroyed by the abscess in his ear. He had suffered from broken ribs on numerous occasions, mostly in falls from horses, and a strained ligament on a rib caused him a severe attach of pleurisy in 1916. After that attack he was ordered by his physicians to give up violent exercise, but this advice he would not follow.

Towards the end of his life, he was a major force for military preparedness particularly as World War I loomed. Much of what he achieved affects each and every American today and his name and personality have become part of the collective icon for what America stands for at its best.

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