Hey it’s Professor Dave, I wanna tell you about Teddy Roosevelt.
Theodore Roosevelt was one of the most remarkable personalities ever to inhabit the White House;
an irrepressible dynamo of a man.
He was a cowboy, historian, New York City Police Commissioner, Assistant Secretary of
the Navy, Spanish-American War hero, governor of New York, Vice President, Nobel Prize winner,
conservationist, explorer, and President of the United States.
And yet his greatest achievement was the creation of Theodore Roosevelt.
TR was truly a self-made man.
Born a sickly, asthmatic child he willed himself to be strong by embracing a strenuous lifestyle.
His debilitating asthma attacks had the effects of being smothered to death, terrifying Theodore
and his parents, but he was energetic and mischievously inquisitive.
His lifelong interest in zoology began at age seven when he saw a dead seal at a local
market; he obtained the seal’s head and formed the “Roosevelt Museum of Natural
History”.
He learned the rudiments of taxidermy, preparing various animals for display.
At age nine, he recorded his observation of insects in a paper entitled “The Natural
History of Insects”.
Hiking with his family in the Alps in 1869, Roosevelt was encouraged when he saw that
he could keep up with his father.
He discovered that physical exertion minimized his asthma and bolstered his spirits, so young
Teddy began a heavy regime of exercise.
After being manhandled by two older boys on a camping trip, he found a boxing coach to
teach him to fight, and in this way he strengthened his body.
He attended Harvard College, where he had a reputation for asking too many questions,
and graduated cum laude in 1880.
He then enrolled in law school at Columbia University, but dropped out after one semester
due to boredom.
Roosevelt was a lifelong bibliophile, and drew inspiration from reading about the heroes
of history.
He later articulated the abiding influence of the courageous men he read about, including
those in his family: “I was nervous and timid.
Yet from reading of the people I admired, I felt a great admiration for men who were
fearless and who could hold their own in the world, and I had a great desire to be like
them.”
He integrated his exuberant personality, vast range of interests, and world-famous achievements
into a “cowboy” persona defined by robust masculinity.
His first of many books, “The Naval War of 1812” was published in 1882 when he was
just 24, establishing his reputation as a learned historian, and it remains a standard
study of the war to this day.
After leaving law school, Roosevelt threw himself into the political arena, and he was
elected to the New York State Assembly, where he made a name for himself battling corruption.
He successfully nominated an African-American delegate, John R. Lynch, for the position
of Chairman of the 1884 GOP convention, but was disappointed when James G. Blaine was
nominated as the party’s candidate instead of a progressive.
However, he was devastated when his beloved wife, Alice, and his mother tragically died
on precisely the same day, February 14th, 1884.
In his diary, Roosevelt wrote a large X on the page and then simply, “The light has
gone out of my life.”
He retired to his ranch in the Dakota territories to become a cowboy, working for a brief time
as a rancher.
There he learned to ride western style, rope and hunt; earning the respect of the authentic
cowboys, men whom he said “possess, to a very high degree, the stern, manly qualities
that are invaluable to a nation.”
He reoriented, and began writing about frontier life for national magazines and published
three books – “Hunting Trips of a Ranchman,” “Ranch Life and the Hunting-Trail,” and
“The Wilderness Hunter.”
Volunteering as a deputy sheriff, Roosevelt captured three outlaws who had stolen his
boat, and he conveyed the thieves to Dickinson, North Dakota for trial.
He successfully led efforts to organize ranchers to address the problems of overgrazing and
other shared concerns, and coordinated efforts for the conservation of large game animals
and their habitats.
After a severe winter wiped out his herd of cattle and with it over half of his eighty
thousand dollar investment, Roosevelt returned to the East and ran unsuccessfully for Mayor
of New York City.
When the new mayor of New York offered Roosevelt a position on the board of the New York City
Police Commissioners, he accepted and quickly became president of the board.
He radically reformed the NYPD, reputedly one of the most corrupt police departments
in America.
The NYPD’s history division states that Roosevelt was “an iron-willed leader of
unimpeachable honesty, who brought a reforming zeal to the New York City Police Commission
in 1895.”
Roosevelt implemented regular inspections of firearms and annual physical exams; he
appointed sixteen hundred recruits based on their physical and mental qualifications,
regardless of political affiliation, established Meritorious Service Medals, and closed corrupt
police hostelries; he also had telephones installed in station houses.
In 1898, Roosevelt was made Assistant Secretary of the Navy under William McKinley, but resigned
after one year to fight in the Spanish-American war.
He served with the Rough Riders, an army cavalry unit, where he gained national fame for his
courage and his victory at the Battle of San Juan Hill in Cuba.
Returning as a war hero, he was elected governor of New York in 1898.
The state party leadership distrusted him, so Senator Thomas Platt took the lead in moving
him to the prestigious but powerless role of vice president.
In the election of 1900, Roosevelt campaigned vigorously all across the country, helping
McKinley’s re-election to a landslide victory based on a platform of peace, prosperity,
and conservatism.
Following the assassination of President McKinley in September 1901, Roosevelt succeeded to
the office at age 42, becoming the youngest United States President in history.
Leading his party and country into the Progressive Era, he championed his “Square Deal” domestic
policies, promising the average citizen fairness, regulation of railroads, and pure food and
drugs.
He also promised to continue trust-busting, the practice of preventing monopolies and
limiting corporate power amassed through commerce-restriction agreements.
He also made conservation a top priority, establishing a multitude of new national parks,
forests, and monuments intended to preserve the nation’s natural resources.
Roosevelt was an ardent imperialist.
He vigorously defended the permanent acquisition of the Philippines in the 1900 election campaign,
but after the rebellion ended in 1901, he largely lost interest in the Philippines and
Asian expansion.
Instead, he turned his imperialist ambitions towards Latin America.
This included his pet project, the Panama Canal.
A canal traversing Central America was greatly desired for shipping, and there were two possible
routes proposed, one through Nicaragua and the other through Panama, which at the time
was still a rebellious district within Colombia.
Roosevelt convinced Congress to approve the Panamanian option, and a treaty was approved,
only to be rejected by the Colombian government.
When the Panamanians learned of this, a rebellion followed, supported by Roosevelt, and it succeeded.
A treaty with the new Panama government for construction of the canal was reached in 1903,
and the canal would be completed in 1913.
Following the U.S. victory in the Spanish-American War, Teddy viewed the nation as an emerging
world power.
He greatly expanded the United States Navy, and sent a portion of the navy dubbed the
Great White Fleet on a world tour to project US naval power around the globe.
Building on McKinley’s effective use of the press, Roosevelt turned the White House
into the center of news, providing ample interviews and photo opportunities.
After noticing the reporters huddled outside the White House in the rain one day, he gave
them their own room inside, effectively inventing the presidential press briefing.
The grateful press, with unprecedented access to the White House, rewarded Roosevelt with
substantial coverage.
Roosevelt was also the first President to issue over 1,000 Executive Orders.
The first 25 Presidents collectively issued a total of 1,262 executive orders.
Roosevelt alone issued 1,081, indicative of a trend toward greater reliance on executive
orders that lasted through the Carter administration.
Elected in 1904 to a full term, Roosevelt continued to promote progressive policies,
but much of his effort was blocked by Congress.
Roosevelt successfully groomed his close friend, William Howard Taft, to succeed him in the
presidency.
After leaving office, Roosevelt went on safari in Africa and toured around Europe.
Returning to the US, he became frustrated with Taft’s performance, and TR tried but
failed to win the presidential nomination in 1912.
Roosevelt founded his own party, the Progressive “Bull Moose” Party, and called for wide-ranging
progressive reforms.
The split among Republicans enabled the Democrats to win both the White House and a majority
in the Congress in 1912.
Republicans aligned with Taft would control the Republican Party for decades.
Frustrated at home, Roosevelt led a two-year expedition in the Amazon Basin, nearly dying
of tropical disease.
During World War I, he opposed President Woodrow Wilson for keeping the US out of the war against
Germany, and offered his military services, which were never summoned.
Although planning to run again for president in 1920, Roosevelt suffered deteriorating
health and died in early 1919.
Teddy Roosevelt’s remarkable energy, ambition, drive, and whirling dervish-like personality
made him a legend in his own time.
As Mark Twain, who was not an admirer, said of him: “Mr. Roosevelt is the Tom Sawyer
of the political world of the twentieth century; always showing off; always hunting for a chance
to show off.
In his frenzied imagination the Great Republic is a vast Barnum circus with him for a clown
and the whole world for audience; he would go to Halifax for half a chance to show off
and he would go to hell for a whole one.”
While campaigning in 1912, he was shot in an assassination attempt, but suffering only
a flesh wound, he pulled the bloodstained speech from his breast pocket and declared:
“You see, it takes more than one bullet to kill a Bull Moose”.
To uproarious applause, he continued delivering his speech for another 70 minutes.
Roosevelt is consistently ranked as one of the greatest US presidents, and his face adorns
Mount Rushmore alongside Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln.