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Theodore Roosevelt
26th President of the United States
In office September 14 1901 – March 3 1909
President	William McKinley
Vice President	None (1901-1905) Charles Warren Fairbanks (1905-1909)
Preceded by	William McKinley
Succeeded by	William Howard Taft
25th Vice President of the United States
In office March 4, 1901 – September 14, 1901
Preceded by	Garret Hobart
Succeeded by	Charles W. Fairbanks
Personal details
Born	October 27 1858 New York City, New York, in Gramercy, Manhattan
Died	January 6 1919 Oyster Bay, New York
Nationality	American
Political party	Republican Party
Spouse(s)	1st:Alice Hathaway Lee Roosevelt; 2nd:Edith Carow Roosevelt
Signature

Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. (October 27 1858 – January 6 1919), also known as T.R. and to the public as Teddy, was the 26th President of the United States (1901–1909). At age 42, he was the youngest President in American history, succeeding to the office upon the assassination of President William McKinley. Within the Republican Party he was a Progressive reformer who sought to bring his party's conservative mindset into the 20th century. He distrusted wealthy businessmen and as a "trust buster" broke up numerous large corporations. His "Square Deal" promised a fair shake for the average citizen, including regulation of railroad rates and pure foods and drugs. As an outdoorsman he promoted the conservation movement, emphasizing efficient use of natural resources. After he started attacking the courts as biased against labor unions, he broke with his friend and anointed successor William Howard Taft and ran as a third-party candidate in 1912 on the Progressive Party ticket.

As Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Navy he prepared for and advocated war with Spain in 1898. He organized and helped command the First 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 1898. He was a professional historian, naturalist and explorer of the Amazon Basin; his 35 books, listed online , include works on outdoor life, natural history, U.S. Western and political history, and his autobiography.

Roosevelt understood the strategic significance of the Panama Canal, and negotiated for the U.S. to take control of its construction in 1904. It was completed in 1914, after he left office. He felt that 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.

The dominant personality of the era, he helped redefine masculinity. He preached and lived the "strenuous life," ridiculing the sedentary life of luxury and attempting the most strenuous and dangerous feats--which finally cost his life. 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." His image stands alongside Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln on the Mount Rushmore monument. Surveys of scholars have consistently ranked him from #3 to #7 on the list of greatest American presidents. On June 26, 2006, Roosevelt, once again, made the cover of Time Magazine with the lead story, "The Making of Modern America - The 20th Century Express": "At home and abroad, Theodore Roosevelt was the locomotive President, the man who drew his flourishing nation into the future."

Childhood and education

Roosevelt was born at 28 East 20th Street in the modern-day Gramercy section of New York City on October 27 1858, the second of four children of Theodore Roosevelt, Sr. (1831–1878) and Martha 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. The Roosevelts had been in New York since the mid 17th century and had grown with the emerging New York commerce class after the American Revolution. Until the birth of the Republican Party, just before the Civil War, the family was strongly Democratic in its political outlook. By the 18th Century, the family had grown in wealth, power and influence from the profits of several businesses including hardware and plate-glass importing. 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. Martha Bulloch was a Southern belle from a slave-owning family in Georgia and had Confederate sympathies. On his mother's side, Theodore's uncle, James Dunwoody Bulloch, "Uncle Jimmy," was a 14 year U.S. Navy officer turned secret Confederate naval procurement agent in England. James' brother Irvine Bulloch was the youngest officer on the Confederate raider, CSS Alabama and both had been exiled to Liverpool, England after the war. During the Civil War, Martha supported her southern relatives' struggles and quietly mailed packages south.

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 caught, studied, and prepared for display. At age nine, he codified his observation of insects with a paper titled "The Natural History of Insects."

To combat his poor physical condition, his father compelled the young Roosevelt to take up exercise. To deal with bullies, Roosevelt started boxing lessons.

Two trips abroad had a permanent impact: family tours of Europe in 1869 and 1870, and of the Middle East 1872 to 1873.

The pater familias of the Roosevelts, Theodore Sr., who was also known to friends and family as "Great Heart," was more than an ordinary father to Roosevelt. He had a tremendous influence on young Theodore and was a life-long source of inspiration. 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." Some Roosevelt biographers have argued that the senior Roosevelt's influence served as a check on negative aspects of his son's adult personality. From childhood on, Roosevelt wanted to live up to the ideals instilled in him by his father. 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."

Young "Teedie," as he was nicknamed as a child , was mostly homeschooled by tutors and his parents. A leading biographer says: "The most obvious drawback to the home schooling Roosevelt 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. . He matriculated at Harvard College in 1876. 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. He was an unusually eloquent conversationalist who, throughout his life, sought out the company of the smartest men and women. He could multitask in extraordinary fashion, dictating letters to one secretary and memoranda to another, while browsing through a new book. As an adult, a visitor would get a not so subtle hint that Roosevelt was losing interest in the conversation when he would pick up a book and begin looking at it now and then as the conversation continued.

While at Harvard, Roosevelt was active in numerous clubs, including Delta Kappa Epsilon and Alpha Delta Phi fraternities. He also edited a student magazine. He was runner-up in the Harvard boxing championship, losing to C.S. Hanks. The sportsmanship Roosevelt showed in that fight was long remembered.

He graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude (22nd of 177) from Harvard in 1880 , and entered Columbia Law School. Finding law boring, however, he researched and wrote his first major book, "The Naval War of 1812", in 1882, which still is considered the only comprehensive history on the subject. Presented with an opportunity to run for New York Assemblyman in 1881, he dropped out of law school to pursue his new goal of entering public life.

Early life

Early public life

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 who opposed the Stalwarts; they lost to the conservative faction that nominated James G. Blaine. Refusing to join other Mugwumps in supporting Grover Cleveland, the Democratic nominee, he stayed loyal to the party and supported Blaine.

First marriage

At the age of 22, Roosevelt married his first wife, 19-year-old Alice Hathaway Lee, on October 27, 1880, at the Unitarian Church in Brookline, Massachusetts. Alice was the daughter of the prominent banker George Cabot Lee and Caroline Haskell Lee. The couple first met in 1878. He proposed in June 1879. However, Alice waited another six months before accepting the proposal. They announced their engagement on Valentine's Day 1880. Alice Roosevelt died exactly four years later, only two days after the birth of their first child, also named Alice. In a tragic coincidence, Roosevelt's mother died of typhoid fever on the same day at the Roosevelt family home in Manhattan.

Roosevelt was beyond consolation. After drawing a large "X" in his diary, he wrote, "The light has gone out of my life."

Although he noted her loss in his diary and made several references to her in the subsequent months, from the next year on Roosevelt refused to speak his first wife's name again (even omitting her name from his autobiography) and did not allow others to speak of her in his presence. He came to despise his popular nickname "Teddy", both because he thought it undignified and because it was the lover's name used by his first wife.

Later that year, Roosevelt left the General Assembly and his infant daughter Alice, whom he had left in the long-term care of his older sister, Bamie. He moved to his ranch in the Badlands of the Dakota Territory to live a more simple life as a rancher and lawman.

This practice put an early strain on his relationship with his daughter who was given his late wife's name. However, as she grew into adulthood and better understood her father's deep moral convictions, the bond between them became strong. Alice continued to support her father's ideas after his death in 1919.

Life in Badlands and second marriage

Living near the boomtown of Medora, North Dakota, Roosevelt learned to ride and rope, occasionally getting involved in fistfights, and spent his time in the rough-and-tumble world of the final days of the American Old West. On one occasion, as a deputy sheriff, he hunted down three outlaws taking a stolen boat down the Little Missouri River, successfully taking them back overland for trial.

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

After the 1886-1887 winter 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 purchased 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, coming in a distant third.

Following the election, he went to London in 1886 and married his childhood sweetheart, Edith Kermit Carow. They honeymooned in Europe, and Roosevelt climbed Mont Blanc, leading only the third expedition of record to reach the summit. They had five children: Theodore Jr., Kermit, Ethel Carow, Archibald Bulloch "Archie", and Quentin. Although Roosevelt's father was also named Theodore Roosevelt, he died while the future president was still childless and unmarried, so the future President Roosevelt took the suffix of Sr. and subsequently named his son Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. Because Roosevelt was still alive when his grandson and namesake was born, his grandson was named Theodore Roosevelt III, and the president's son retained the Jr. after his father's death. "Uncle Ted" was the godfather and favorite uncle of Eleanor Roosevelt, whom he gave away in marriage to their cousin Franklin D. Roosevelt on St. Patrick's Day (March 17) 1905.

Roosevelt is the only President to have become a widower and remarry before becoming President.

In the 1880s, he gained recognition as a serious historian. His The Naval War of 1812 (1882) was the standard history for two generations, but his hasty biographies of Thomas Hart Benton (1887) and Gouverneur Morris (1888) were potboilers. 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. 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.

Return to public life

In the 1888 presidential election, Roosevelt campaigned for Benjamin Harrison in the Midwest. President Harrison appointed Roosevelt to the United States Civil Service Commission, where he served until 1895. In his term, he vigorously fought the spoilsmen and demanded the enforcement of civil service laws. In spite of Roosevelt's support for Harrison's reelection bid in the presidential election of 1892, the eventual winner, Grover Cleveland (a Bourbon Democrat), reappointed him to the same post.

In 1895, he became president of the New York City Board of Police Commissioners. During the two years that he held this post, Roosevelt radically changed the way a police department was run. He required his officers to be registered with the Board and to pass a physical fitness test. He also had telephones installed in station houses. Always an energetic man, he made a habit of walking officers' beats late at night and early in the morning to make sure that they were on duty. He also engaged a pistol expert to teach officers how to shoot their firearms. While serving on the Board, he opened job opportunities in the department to women and Jews for the first time.

Assistant Secretary of the Navy

Roosevelt had always been fascinated by navies and their history. Urged by Roosevelt's close friend, Congressman Henry Cabot Lodge, President William McKinley appointed a delighted Roosevelt to the post of Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1897. (Because of the poor health and inactivity of Secretary of the Navy John D. Long at the time, this basically gave Roosevelt reign over the department.)

Roosevelt had grown up fascinated with stories of naval battles by his mother and his uncles in Liverpool. Roosevelt had persistently encouraged his uncle James Dunwoody Bulloch to tell his unique story of Confederate operations in Britain during the Civil War and the secret fitting-out of such ships as the CSS Alabama on which Bulloch's brother Irvine had served as its youngest officer. His uncle in turn had helped him develop his ideas that led to his War of 1812 naval history. In that book, Roosevelt explained how near criminal neglect of Naval issues and apathy toward British seapower had almost led to the destruction of the new country. It was only the nautical skills of the commanders and the training and ship handling skills of the crews that had saved the Navy and the country. The overwhelming seapower of Britain had shaped every aspect of the war and made the events on land, to Roosevelt, seem almost secondary until the Battle of New Orleans. The book was but the first link in the chain of Roosevelt's developing views of the importance of a strong Navy to the security of the United States.

Concurrently with Roosevelt's arrival in Washington, D.C., a contemporary and friend, Alfred Thayer Mahan, who had met Roosevelt in 1887, had organized his earlier Naval War College lectures into his seminal book, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783. Roosevelt read it in a single weekend during the summer of 1890 and immediately appreciated its importance. But the book, while revolutionary to many Americans, simply reinforced Roosevelt's own understanding of the role that Navies would play on the world stage. His view was that only a dramatic expansion of the Navy into a service with a global reach would put the United States on par with the growing naval might of European nations and Japan. When asked to speak to the Naval War College, the scope and force of Roosevelt arguments stunned both the Secretary of the Navy as well as the President, as they had not been approved by either man. But so persuasive was Roosevelt's speech, that neither man publicly repudiated him. Within days of becoming assistant secretary, Roosevelt was pushing for the modernization of the Navy and the reorganization of both the Department and its officer corps. He also fought for an increase in ship-building capability, warning that building modern steel ships would take years instead of the mere weeks of construction in the age of sail.

Roosevelt was instrumental in consciously preparing the Navy for what he saw as an unavoidable conflict with Spain. Events would prove him right. During the Spanish-American War, the U.S. Navy searched the world for ships to support world-wide operations.

War in Cuba

Upon the declaration of war in 1898 that would be known as the Spanish-American War, Roosevelt resigned from the Navy Department and, with the aid of U.S. Army Colonel Leonard Wood, organized the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry Regiment out of a diverse crew that ranged from cowboys from the Western territories to Ivy League friends from New York. The newspapers called them the "Rough Riders." Originally Roosevelt held the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and served under Colonel Wood, but after Wood was promoted to Brigadier General of Volunteer Forces, Roosevelt was promoted to Colonel and given command of the Regiment. Under his leadership, the Rough Riders became famous for their dual charges up Kettle Hill and San Juan Hill in July 1898 (the battle was named after the latter hill). Roosevelt was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor in 2001 for his actions.

Upon his return from Cuba, Roosevelt re-entered New York state politics and was elected governor of New York in 1898. He made such a concerted effort to root out corruption and "machine politics" that Republican boss Thomas Collier Platt forced him on McKinley as a running mate in the 1900 election to simplify their control of the state.

Vice presidency

McKinley and Roosevelt won the presidential election of 1900, defeating William Jennings Bryan and Adlai E. Stevenson I. Roosevelt found the vice-presidency unfulfilling. Thinking that he had little future in politics, he considered returning to law school after leaving office. On September 2, 1901, Roosevelt first uttered a sentence that would become strongly associated with his presidency, urging Americans to "speak softly and carry a big stick" during a speech at the Minnesota State Fair. It has been claimed that the famous phrase was actually inspired by a discussion Roosevelt had with French diplomat Comte Édouard Sébastien de Malo when the latter visited the US in 1900. As France was just coming out of the traumatic Dreyfus affair, Roosevelt asked Comte de Malo what lesson could be learned from the episode. De Malo replied: "France may have been humbled by this event, but we still stand strong and proud. Although we speak softly, we are still carrying a big stick."

Presidency 1901-1909

President McKinley was shot by an anarchist, Leon Czolgosz, on September 6, 1901. When it looked as if he would recover, Roosevelt decided to take a break and go hiking in the mountains. However, a messenger found him in the woods and told him that the President had taken a turn for the worse and that he should return immediately.

McKinley died on September 14, vaulting Roosevelt into the presidency. Roosevelt took the oath of office on September 14 in the Ansley Wilcox House at Buffalo, New York. He was the youngest person to assume the presidency, and he promised to continue McKinley's cabinet and his basic policies. Roosevelt did so, but after reelection in 1904, he moved to the political left, stretching his ties to the Republican Party's conservative leaders.

Anthracite coal strike of 1902

A national emergency was averted in 1902 when Roosevelt found a compromise to the anthracite coal strike by the United Mine Workers of America that threatened the heating supplies of most homes. Workers in eastern Pennsylvania were on strike for 163 days before it ended, and they were granted a 10% pay increase and a 9-hour day (from the previous 10 hours).

Square Deal

Roosevelt promised to continue McKinley's program, and at first he worked closely with McKinley's men, eventually winning them to his team or breaking with them. His 20,000-word address to the Congress in December 1901, asked Congress to curb the power of trusts "within reasonable limits." They did not act but Roosevelt did, issuing 44 lawsuits against major corporations; he was called the "trust-buster."

Mark Hanna was the rival power in the Republican party. Hanna died, and Roosevelt had an easy renomination and reelection in 1904. He won 336 of 476 electoral votes, and 56.4% of the total popular vote. He therefore became the first President who came into office due to the death of his predecessor to be elected in his own right.

Building on McKinley's effective use of the press, Roosevelt made the White House the center of news every day, providing interviews and photo opportunities. His children were almost as popular as he was, and their pranks in the White House made headlines. His daughter, Alice Lee Roosevelt, became quite popular in Washington.

Regulation of industry

Roosevelt firmly believed, "The Government must in increasing degree supervise and regulate the workings of the railways engaged in interstate commerce." Inaction was a danger, he argued, "Such increased supervision is the only alternative to an increase of the present evils on the one hand or a still more radical policy on the other." (Annual Message Dec 1904) His biggest success was passage of the Hepburn Act of 1906, giving the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) the power to set maximum railroad rates; it also stopped free passes given to friends of the railroad. Everyone at the time assumed railroads would always be a vast and powerful force; no one dreamed they would be challenged by trucks and automobiles and struggle to survive under the provisions of the Hepburn Act designed to help merchants and consumers.

In response to public clamor, Roosevelt pushed Congress to pass the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, as well as the Meat Inspection Act of 1906. These laws provided for labeling of foods and drugs, inspection of livestock and mandated sanitary conditions at meatpacking plants. Congress replaced Roosevelt's proposals with a version supported by the major meatpackers who worried about the overseas markets, and did not want small unsanitary plants undercutting their domestic market.

Conservationist

Roosevelt was the first American president to grasp the growing negative influence and long-term effects of human forces on the planet. This growing awareness was not accidental; Roosevelt had personally witnessed and commented on the extinction of the passenger pigeons that once blotted out the sun when migrating in flocks of tens of millions. He had once described his brother Elliott nearly being trampled by a mile-wide bison herd in Texas. Now the "lordly buffalo," as he called them had plummeted to near extinction in only 20 years - to no herd larger than 100 and a total U.S. count of less than a thousand. Roosevelt had also seen the effects of uncontrolled and unregulated industrial growth on the environment. Assuming the conservationist role was a natural step for him, and he decided that it was overdue to put the issue high on the national agenda. He worked with all the major figures of the movement, especially his chief advisor on the matter Gifford Pinchot. Roosevelt set aside more land for national parks and nature preserves than all of his predecessors combined. The Theodore Roosevelt National Park in the Badlands commemorates his conservationist philosophy. In 1907, when Congress attempted to stop the ability of the President to set aside lands for national forests in the Pacific Northwest, Roosevelt asked about remaining forest land, and designated 16 million acres (65,000 km²) of new national forests before signing the legislation, thereby defeating the main purpose of the bill. In May 1908, he sponsored the Conference of Governors held in the White House, with a focus on natural resources and their most efficient use. In an age when the natural resources of the United States seemed almost unlimited, Roosevelt took much different approach, writing to the governors of all the states and territories as well as the 500 most influential men in the country and telling them, "It seems time for the country to take account of its natural resources and to enquire how long they are likely to last." At the Governors Conference, Roosevelt delivered the opening address, "Conservation as a National Duty." On the subject of conservation, Roosevelt said, "There is an intimate relation between our streams and the development and conservation of all the other great permanent sources of wealth. In 1903, Roosevelt toured the Yosemite Valley with John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club. During his presidency, Roosevelt wrote several times about the growing conservation movement in essays for Outdoor Life magazine.

Foreign policy

Roosevelt's administration was marked by an active approach to foreign policy. Roosevelt saw it as the duty of more developed ("civilized") nations to help the underdeveloped ("uncivilized") world move forward. In Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and the Panama Canal Zone, he used the Army's medical service, under Walter Reed and William C. Gorgas, to eliminate the yellow fever menace and install a new regime of public health. He used the army to build up the infrastructure of the new possessions, building railways, telegraph and telephone lines, and upgrading roads and port facilities.

Roosevelt dramatically increased the size of the navy, forming the Great White Fleet, which toured the world in 1907. Roosevelt also added the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which stated that the United States could intervene in Caribbean affairs when corruption of governments made it necessary.

Roosevelt gained international praise for helping negotiate the end of the Russo-Japanese War, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Roosevelt later arbitrated a dispute between France and Germany over the division of Morocco. Some historians have argued these latter two actions helped in a small way to avert a world war.

Panama Canal

Roosevelt's most famous foreign policy initiative, following the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, was the construction of the Panama Canal, which upon its completion shortened the route of freighters between San Francisco, California and New York City by 8,000 miles (13,000 km).

Colombia first proposed the canal in their country as opposed to rival Nicaragua, and Colombia signed a treaty for an agreed-upon sum. At that time, Panama was a province of Colombia. According to the treaty, in 1902, the U.S. was to buy out the equipment and excavations from France, which had been attempting to build a canal since 1881. While the Colombian negotiating team had signed the treaty, ratification by the Colombian Senate became problematic.

The Colombian Senate balked at the price and asked for 10 million dollars over the original agreed upon price. When the U.S. refused to re-negotiate the price, the Colombian politicians proposed cutting the original French company that started the project out of the deal and giving that difference to Colombia. The original deal stipulated that the French company was to be reasonably compensated. Realizing that the Colombian Senate was no longer bargaining in good faith, Roosevelt tired of these last-minute attempts by the Colombians to cheat the French out of their entire investment.

Roosevelt ultimately decided, with the encouragement of Panamanian business interests, to help Panama declare independence from Colombia in 1903. A brief revolution, of only a few hours, followed the declaration, and Colombian soldiers were bribed $50 each to lay down their arms. On November 3, 1903, the nation of Panama was created, with its constitution written in advance by the United States. Shortly thereafter, a treaty was signed with Panama. The U.S. paid $10 million to secure rights to build on and control the Canal Zone. Construction began in 1904 and was completed in 1914.

The Great White Fleet

As Roosevelt's administration drew to a close, the president dispatched a fleet consisting of four US Navy battleship squadrons and their escorts, on a world-wide voyage of circumnavigation from December 16, 1907, to February 22, 1909. With their hulls painted white except for the beautiful gilded scrollwork with a red, white, and blue banner on their bows, these ships would come to be known as The Great White Fleet. Roosevelt wanted to demonstrate to his country and the world that the US Navy was capable of operating in a global theater, particularly in the Pacific. This was extraordinarily important at a time when tensions were slowly growing between the United States and Japan. The latter had recently shown its navy's competence in defeating the Russians in the Russo-Japanese War and the US Navy fleet to the west was relatively small. The Atlantic Fleet battleships only later came to be known as the "Great White Fleet." When the fleet sailed into Yokahama, Japan, the Japanese went to extraordinary lengths to show that their country desired peace with the US. Thousands of Japanese school children waving American flags greeted the Navy brass as they came ashore. In February 1909, Roosevelt was in Hampton Roads, Virginia to witness the triumphant return of the fleet and indicating that he saw the fleet's long voyage as a fitting finish for his administration. To the officers and men of the Fleet Roosevelt said, "Other nations may do what you have done, but they'll have to follow you." This parting act of Grand Strategy by Roosevelt greatly expanded the respect for as well as the role of the United States in the international arena.

Life in White House

Roosevelt relished the presidency and seemed to be everywhere at once. He took Cabinet members and friends on long, fast-paced hikes, boxed in the state rooms of the White House, romped with his children, and read voraciously. In 1908, he was permanently blinded in his left eye during one of his boxing bouts, but this injury was kept from the public at the time. His many enthusiastic interests and limitless energy led one ambassador to wryly explain, "You must always remember that the President is about six."

During his presidency, Roosevelt tried but failed to advance the cause of simplified spelling. He tried to force government to adopt the system, sending an order to the Public Printer to use the system in all public documents. The order was obeyed, and among the documents thus printed was the President's special message regarding the Panama Canal. The New York World translated the Thanksgiving Day proclamation:

When nerly three centuries ago, the first settlers kam to the kuntry which has bekom this great republik, tha confronted not only hardship and privashun, but terible risk of thar lives. . . . The kustum has now bekum nashnul and hallowed by immemorial usaj.

The reform annoyed the public, forcing him to rescind the order. Roosevelt's friend, literary critic Brander Matthews, one of the chief advocates of the reform, remonstrating with him for abandoning the effort. Roosevelt replied on December 16: "I could not by fighting have kept the new spelling in, and it was evidently worse than useless to go into an undignified contest when I was beaten. Do you know that the one word as to which I thought the new spelling was wrong — thru — was more responsible than anything else for our discomfiture?" Next summer Roosevelt was watching a naval review when a launch marked "Pres Bot" chugged ostentatiously by. The President waved and laughed with delight.

Roosevelt's daughter, Alice, was a controversial character during Roosevelt's stay in the White House. When friends asked if he could rein in his elder daughter, Roosevelt said, "I can be President of the United States, or I can control Alice. I cannot possibly do both." In turn, Alice said of him that he always wanted to be "the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral."

Roosevelt's contribution to the White House was the construction of the original West Wing, which he had built to free up the second floor rooms in the residence that formerly housed the president's staff. He and Edith also had the entire house renovated and restored to the federal style, tearing out the Victorian furnishings and details (including Tiffany windows) that had been installed over the previous three decades.

Presidential firsts

Roosevelt's presidency saw a number of firsts. In the sphere of race relations, Booker T. Washington became the first Black man to dine at the White House in 1901. Oscar S. Straus became the first Jew appointed as a Cabinet Secretary, under Roosevelt. Roosevelt was the first President to wear a necktie for his official portrait, a tradition which all of his successors followed. Although four Vice Presidents before Roosevelt had succeeded to the presidency upon the death of their predecessor, in 1904, Roosevelt became the first to be elected in his own right or even win his party’s nomination for reelection. After Roosevelt, three more Vice Presidents who succeeded to the Presidency would be elected to second terms (Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman, and Lyndon Johnson).

In 1906, Roosevelt became the first American to be awarded a Nobel Prize, when he received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work towards ending the Russo-Japanese War. That same year, he made the first official trip by a President outside the United States, visiting Panama to inspect the construction progress of the Panama Canal on November 9.

Administration and Cabinet

Supreme Court appointments

Roosevelt appointed three Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States:

• Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. - 1902
• William Rufus Day - 1903
• William Henry Moody - 1906

Although Moody was a close associate of Roosevelt, Holmes, who would serve on the Supreme Court until 1932, gained his appointment by virtue of sharing a mutual acquaintance with Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge. Moody was forced to resign due to ill health four years after his appointment, and after retiring, Roosevelt would clash with both Holmes and Day for not supporting reforms he backed.

States admitted to the Union

During Roosevelt's Presidency, one state, Oklahoma, was admitted to the Union. This new state included the former Indian Territory, which had attempted to gain admission on its own into the Union as the State of Sequoyah. (Formerly, the state of Oklahoma had been divided into the Oklahoma Territory and Indian Territory.) In 1906, a bill was introduced in Congress providing for the admission of the Oklahoma and Indian Territories as one state, and Arizona and New Mexico as another state. Although the bill passed on June 14 and was signed into law by Roosevelt, the people of Arizona and New Mexico rejected the offer of statehood.

Post-presidency

African safari

In March 1910, shortly after the end of his second term, Roosevelt left New York for a safari in Africa. The trip was sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution and the National Geographic Society and received worldwide media attention. Despite his commitment to conservation, his party, which included scientists from the Smithsonian, killed or trapped over 11,397 animals, from insects and moles to hippopotamuses and elephants. 512 of the animals were big game animals, of which 262 were consumed by the expedition. This included six white rhinos. Tons of salted animals and their skins were shipped to Washington; the number of animals was so large, it took years to mount them. The Smithsonian was able to share many duplicate animals with other museums. Of the large number of animals taken, Roosevelt said, "I can be condemned only if the existence of the National Museum, the American Museum of Natural History, and all similar zoological institutions are to be condemned."

Republican Party rift

Roosevelt certified William Howard Taft to be a genuine "progressive" in 1908, when Roosevelt pushed through the nomination of his Secretary of War for the Presidency. Taft easily defeated three-time candidate William Jennings Bryan. Taft had a different progressivism, one that stressed the rule of law and preferred that judges rather than administrators or politicians make the basic decisions about fairness. Taft usually proved a less adroit politician than Roosevelt and lacked the energy and personal magnetism, not to mention the publicity devices, the dedicated supporters, and the broad base of public support that made Roosevelt so formidable. When Roosevelt realized that lowering the tariff would risk severe tensions inside the Republican Party—pitting producers (manufacturers and farmers) against merchants and consumers—he stopped talking about the issue. Taft ignored the risks and tackled the tariff boldly, on the one hand encouraging reformers to fight for lower rates, and then cutting deals with conservative leaders that kept overall rates high. The resulting Payne-Aldrich tariff of 1909 was too high for most reformers, but instead of blaming this on Senator Nelson Aldrich and big business, Taft took credit, calling it the best tariff ever. Again he had managed to alienate all sides. While the crisis was building inside the Party, Roosevelt was touring Africa and Europe, so as to allow Taft to be his own man.

Unlike Roosevelt, Taft never attacked business or businessmen in his rhetoric. However, he was attentive to the law, so he launched 90 antitrust suits, including one against the largest corporation, U.S. Steel, for an acquisition that Roosevelt had personally approved. The upshot was that Taft lost the support of antitrust reformers (who disliked his conservative rhetoric), of big business (which disliked his actions), and of Roosevelt, who felt humiliated by his protégé. The left wing of the Republican Party began agitating against Taft. Senator Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin created the National Progressive Republican League to defeat the power of political bossism at the state level and to replace Taft at the national level. More trouble came when Taft fired Gifford Pinchot, a leading conservationist and close ally of Roosevelt. Pinchot alleged that Taft's Secretary of Interior Richard Ballinger was in league with big timber interests. Conservationists sided with Pinchot, and Taft alienated yet another vocal constituency.

Roosevelt, back from Europe, unexpectedly launched an attack on the federal courts, which deeply upset Taft. Not only had Roosevelt alienated big business, he was also attacking both the judiciary and the deep faith Republicans had in their judges (most of whom had been appointed by McKinley, Roosevelt or Taft.) In the 1910 Congressional elections, Democrats swept to power, and Taft's reelection in 1912 was increasingly in doubt. In 1911, Taft responded with a vigorous stumping tour that allowed him to sign up most of the party leaders long before Roosevelt announced. Taft thereby demonstrated that he was a better political operator than Roosevelt.

Election of 1912

Late in 1911, Roosevelt finally broke with Taft and LaFollette and announced himself as a candidate for the Republican nomination. But Roosevelt had delayed too long, and Taft had already won the support of most party leaders in the country. Most of LaFollette's supporters went over to Roosevelt, leaving the Wisconsin Senator embittered.

Roosevelt, stepping up his attack on judges, carried 9 of the states with preferential primaries, LaFollette took two, and Taft only one. However, these primary elections, while demonstrating Roosevelt's popularity with the electorate, were in no ways as important as primaries are today. First of all, there were fewer states where the common voter was given a forum to express himself, such as a primary. Many more states selected convention delegates either at party conventions, or in caucuses, which were not as open as today's caucuses. So while the man in the street still adored Roosevelt, most professional Republican politicians were supporting Taft, and they proved difficult to upset in non-primary states.

At the Republican Convention in Chicago, despite the many advantages of incumbancy, Taft's victory was not immediately assured. But after two weeks, Roosevelt, realizing that he would not be able to win the nomination outright, asked his followers to leave the convention hall. They moved to the Auditorium Theatre, and then Roosevelt, along with key allies such as Pinchot and Albert Beveridge created the Progressive Party, structuring it as a permanent organization that would field complete tickets at the presidential and state level. It was popularly known as the "Bull Moose Party," which got its name after Roosevelt told reporters, "I'm as tough as a bull moose." At the convention Roosevelt cried out, "We stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord." The crusading rhetoric resonated well with the delegates, many of them long-time reformers, crusaders, activists and opponents of politics as usual. Included in the ranks were Jane Addams and many other feminists and peace activists. The platform echoed Roosevelt's 1907-08 proposals, calling for vigorous government intervention to protect the people from the selfish interests.

While campaigning in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he was shot by saloonkeeper John Schrank in a failed assassination attempt on October 14, 1912. With the bullet lodged in his chest, Roosevelt delivered his scheduled speech. He was not seriously wounded (the bullet's progress was slowed by hitting a copy of the speech he was carrying in his jacket), although his doctors thought it too dangerous to attempt to remove the bullet; Roosevelt carried it with him until he died.

Roosevelt failed to move the political system in his direction. He did win 4.1 million votes (27%), compared to Taft's 3.5 million (23%). However, Wilson's 6.3 million votes (42%) were enough to garner 435 electoral votes. Roosevelt had 88 electoral votes to Taft's 8 electoral votes. (This meant that Taft became the only incumbent President in history to actually come in third place in an attempt to be re-elected.) But Pennsylvania was Roosevelt's only Eastern state; in the Midwest he carried Michigan, Minnesota and South Dakota; in the West, California and Washington; in the South, he did not win any states. Although he lost, he won more votes than former presidents Martin Van Buren and Millard Fillmore who also ran again and also lost. More important, he pulled so many progressives out of the Republican party that it took on a much more conservative cast for the next generation.

South American expedition

Just as Roosevelt, after his first administration, had gone to Africa in search of adventure, so also, after his failed attempt at regaining the White House, he found himself on another adventure. On this trip, however, he would get far more drama than he had bargained for.

His popular book Through the Brazilian Wilderness describes his expedition into the Brazilian jungle in 1913 as a member of the Roosevelt-Rondon Scientific Expedition co-named after its leader, Brazilian explorer Cândido Rondon. Perhaps in the interest of the scientific aspects of the expedition, the book describes all of the scientific discovery, scenic tropical vistas and exotic flora, fauna and wild life experienced on the expedition. However, the book does not encapsulate the whole truth of an expedition that went awry and involved hardship, suffering, death and even murder.

A friend, Father John Augustine Zahm, had searched for new adventures and found them in the forests of South America. After a briefing of several of his own expeditions, he convinced Roosevelt to commit to such an expedition in 1912. To finance the expedition, Roosevelt received support from the American Museum of Natural History, promising to bring back many new animal specimens. Once in South America, a new far more ambitious goal was added: to find the headwaters of the Rio da Duvida, the River of Doubt, and trace it north to the Madiera and thence to the Amazon River. It was later renamed Rio Roosevelt in honor of the former President. Roosevelt's crew consisted of his 24-year-old son Kermit, Colonel Cândido Rondon, a naturalist sent by the American Museum of Natural History named George K. Cherrie, Brazilian Lieutenant Joao Lyra, team physician Dr. José Antonio Cajazeira, and sixteen highly skilled paddlers (called camaradas in Portuguese). The initial expedition started, probably unwisely, on December 9, 1913, at the height of the rainy season. The trip up the River of Doubt started on the February 27, 1914.

During the trip up the river, Roosevelt contracted malaria and a serious infection resulting from a minor leg wound. These illnesses so weakened Roosevelt that, by six weeks into the expedition, he had to be attended day and night by the expedition's physician, Dr. Cajazeira and his son, Kermit. By this time, Roosevelt considered his own condition a threat to the survival of the others. At one point, Kermit had to talk him out his wish to be left behind so as not to slow down the expedition, now with only a few weeks rations left. Roosevelt was having chest pains when he tried to walk, his temperature soared to 103 F (39 C), and at times he was delirious. By now he was so weakened that he could not even sit up in his dugout but had to lie almost on his back. When the expedition reached civilization, Roosevelt had to be carried off by stretcher. He had lost over fifty pounds (20 kg). Kermit and all the expedition's members' physical conditions had suffered as well. In the final analysis, without the constant support of Dr. Cajazeira, and Rondon's leadership, Roosevelt would have perished. Without Kermit's insistence on not abandoning the river for an overland trek that would have failed for lack of food if nothing else, without Kermit's rope and canoe-handling skills that preserved the dugouts from destruction, his unflinching courage, dogged determination—in short, the devotion and loving support of a dedicated son—it is unlikely that anyone would have survived the expedition.

Upon his return by ship to New York, friends and family were startled by Roosevelt's physical appearance, for he was no longer the vibrant man with a seemingly endless supply of energy that they had always known. Roosevelt wrote to a friend that the trip had cut his life short by ten years. He might not have really known just how accurate that analysis would prove to be, because the effects of the South America expedition had so greatly weakened him that they significantly contributed to his declining health. For the rest of his life, he would be plagued by flareups of malaria and leg inflammations so severe that they would require hospitalization.

When Roosevelt had recovered enough of his strength, he found that he had a new battle on his hands. In professional circles, there was doubt about his claims of having discovered and navigated a completely uncharted river over 625 miles (1,000 km) long. Roosevelt would have to defend himself and win international recognition of the expedition's newly-named Rio Roosevelt. Toward this end, Roosevelt went to Washington, D.C., and spoke at a standing-room-only convention to defend his claims. His official report and its defense silenced the critics, and he was able to triumphantly return to his home in Oyster Bay.

Writer

Despite his weakened condition and slow recovery from his South America expedition, Roosevelt continued to write with great passion on subjects ranging from foreign policy to the importance of the national park system. As an editor of Outlook magazine, he had weekly access to a large, educated national audience. In all, Roosevelt wrote about 18 books (each in several editions), including his Autobiography, Rough Riders and History of the Naval War of 1812, ranching, explorations, and wildlife. His most important book was the 4 volume narrative The Winning of the West, which traced the origin of a new "race" of Americans to frontier conditions in the 18th century.

The First World War

Roosevelt angrily complained about the foreign policy of President Wilson, calling it "weak". When World War I began in 1914, Roosevelt strongly supported Britain, France and the Allies of World War I because he admired their fight for civilization; he demanded a harsher policy against Germany, especially regarding submarine warfare. In 1916, he campaigned energetically for Hughes and repeatedly denounced those Irish-Americans and German-Americans whose pleas for neutrality Roosevelt said were unpatriotic because they put the interest of Ireland and Germany ahead of America's. He insisted that one had to be 100% American, not a "hyphenated-American" who juggled multiple loyalties. When the U.S. entered the war in 1917, Roosevelt sought to raise a volunteer division, but Wilson refused. Roosevelt's attacks on Wilson helped the Republicans win control of Congress in the elections of 1918. Had Roosevelt remained alive and healthy, he might have contested the 1920 Republican nomination, but his health was broken by 1918 because of the lingering malaria. His son Quentin, a daring pilot with the American forces in France, was shot down behind German lines in 1918. Quentin was his youngest son and probably the most like him. It is said that the death of his son distressed him so much that Roosevelt never recovered from his loss. In the late fall of 1918, Roosevelt was observed in the old barn at Sagamore Hill sobbing quietly with his arm draped around his horse's neck.

Last years

Despite the setbacks from South American diseases and the death of his son, Roosevelt remained popular and upbeat to the end of his life. He was an enthusiastic proponent of the Scouting movement. The Boy Scouts of America gave him the title of Chief Scout Citizen, the only person to hold such title. One early Scout leader said, "The two things that gave Scouting great impetus and made it very popular were the uniform and Teddy Roosevelt's jingoism." After his death from an extreme case of inflamed hemorrhoids, Boy Scout leaders led annual pilgrimages to his gravesite for several years.

On January 6, 1919, at the age of 60, Roosevelt died in his sleep of a coronary embolism at Oyster Bay, and was buried in nearby Young's Memorial Cemetery. Upon receiving word of his death, his son, Archie, telegraphed his siblings simply, "The old lion is dead."

Personal life

Roosevelt was baptized in the family's church, part of the Reformed Church in America; he attended the Madison Square Presbyterian Church until the age of 16. Later in life, when Roosevelt lived at Oyster Bay he attended an Episcopal church with his wife. While in Washington he attended services at Grace Reformed Church. As President he firmly believed in the separation of church and state and thought it unwise to have In God We Trust on currency, because he thought it sacrilegious to put the name of the Deity on something so common as money. He was also a Freemason, and regularly attended the Matinecock Lodge's meetings. He once said that "One of the things that so greatly attracted me to Masonry that I hailed the chance of becoming a Mason was that it really did act up to what we, as a government, are pledged to — namely to treat each man on his merit as a man."

Roosevelt had a lifelong interest in pursuing what he called "the strenuous life." To this end, he exercised regularly and took up boxing, tennis, hiking, rowing, polo, and horseback riding. As governor of New York, he boxed with sparring partners several times a week, a practice he regularly continued as President until one blow detached his left retina, leaving him blind in that eye. Thereafter, he practiced jujutsu and continued his habit of skinny-dipping in the Potomac River during winter.

He was an enthusiastic singlestick player and, according to Harper's Weekly, in 1905 showed up at a White House reception with his arm bandaged after a bout with General Leonard Wood. Roosevelt was also an avid reader, reading tens of thousands of books, at a rate of several a day in multiple languages. Along with Thomas Jefferson Roosevelt is often considered the most well read of any American politician.

Legacy

For his gallantry at San Juan Hill, Roosevelt's commanders recommended him for the Medal of Honor, but his subsequent telegrams to the War Department complaining about the delays in returning American troops from Cuba doomed his chances. In the late 1890s, Roosevelt's supporters again took up the flag on his behalf and overcame opposition from elements within the U.S. Army and the National Archives. On January 16, 2001, President Bill Clinton posthumously awarded Theodore Roosevelt the Medal of Honor for his charge up San Juan Hill, Cuba, during the Spanish-American War. Roosevelt's eldest son, Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., received the Medal of Honor for heroism at the Battle of Normandy in 1944. The Roosevelts thus became one of only two father-son pairs to receive this honor.

Roosevelt's legacy includes several other important commemorations. Roosevelt was included with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln at the Mount Rushmore Memorial. The United States Navy named two ships for Roosevelt: the first, a George Washington class submarine was in commission from 1961 to 1982; and the second, a Nimitz class aircraft carrier has been on active duty in the Atlantic Fleet since 1986.

The Roosevelt Memorial Association (later the Theodore Roosevelt Association) was founded in 1919 to preserve Roosevelt's legacy. The Association preserved TR's birthplace, "Sagamore Hill," home, papers, and video film. It later published the Roosevelt Cyclopedia, a topical collection of Roosevelt's key statements on many issues.

Overall, historians credit Roosevelt for changing the nation's political system by permanently placing the presidency at center stage and making character as important as the issues. His notable accomplishments include trust-busting and conservationism. However, he has been criticized for his interventionist and imperialist approach to nations he considered "uncivilized". Even so, history and legend have been kind to him. His friend, historian Henry Adams, proclaimed, "Roosevelt, more than any other living man ....showed the singular primitive quality that belongs to ultimate matter — the quality that mediaeval theology assigned to God — he was pure act." Historians typically rank Roosevelt among the top five presidents.

Popular culture

As a charismatic President often considered larger than life, Roosevelt (or characters using his name loosely based on him) has appeared in numerous fiction books, television shows, films, and other media of popular culture.

In the Scrooge McDuck comics by Keno Don Rosa, Roosevelt appears several times, often as the mentor of an adolescent Scrooge, teaching him the values of self-confidence and self-reliance.

He is also a major character in Harry Turtledove's fictional Timeline-191 alternate history, along with Caleb Carr's novels The Alienist and The Angel of Darkness, and is the protagonist of Benito Cereno's Tales From the Bully Pulpit comic book. In the comic play and movie Arsenic and Old Lace part of the zany atmosphere is created by a character who holds the delusion that he is Theodore Roosevelt. The Sonic the Hedgehog villain Dr. Eggman was based on a design of Theodore Roosevelt wearing pajamas.

Filmmaker John Milius directed two films in which Roosevelt was a central character: The Wind and the Lion (1975) in which he was played by Brian Keith; and Rough Riders (1997) in which he was played by Tom Berenger.

Roosevelt's lasting popular legacy is the stuffed toy bears (teddy bears), named after him following an incident on a hunting trip in 1902. Roosevelt famously refused to kill a captured black bear cub simply for the sake of making a kill. Bears and later bear cubs became closely associated with Roosevelt in political cartoons thereafter.

Media

Theodore Roosevelt's voice can be heard in several speeches from the Vincent Voice Library at Michigan State University: http://www.lib.msu.edu/vincent/presidents/index.htm

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See also

• Theodore Roosevelt, Sr. father
• Martha Bulloch mother
• Eleanor Roosevelt niece
• Alice Roosevelt first wife
• Edith Carow Roosevelt second wife
• Alice Roosevelt first daughter
• Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. first son
• Kermit Roosevelt second son
• Ethel Roosevelt second daughter
• Archibald Roosevelt third son
• Quentin Roosevelt fourth son
• Elliott Roosevelt brother
• Anna Cowles sister
• Corinne Robinson sister
• Theodore Roosevelt Association 1920 organization founded to preserve Roosevelt's historical legacy
• Theodore Roosevelt Cyclopedia 1940 compendium of Roosevelt's key writings, sayings and conversations
• Panama Canal
• Great White Fleet
• Russo-Japanese War

References

Primary sources

• Brands, H.W. ed. The Selected Letters of Theodore Roosevelt. (2001)
• Harbaugh, William ed. The Writings Of Theodore Roosevelt (1967). A one-volume selection of Roosevelt's speeches and essays.
• Hart, Albert Bushnell and Herbert Ronald Ferleger, eds. Theodore Roosevelt Cyclopedia (1941), Roosevelt's opinions on many issues; online version at
• Morison, Elting E., John Morton Blum, and Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., eds., The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, 8 vols. (1951-1954). Very large, annotated edition of letters from TR.
• Roosevelt, Theodore (1999). Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography. online at Bartleby.com.
• Roosevelt, Theodore. The Works of Theodore Roosevelt (National edition, 20 vol. 1926); 18,000 pages containing most of TR's speeches, books and essays, but not his letters; a CD-ROM edition is available; some of TR's books are available online through Project Bartleby
• Theodore Roosevelt books and speeches on Project Gutenberg

Secondary sources

• Beale Howard K. Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of America to World Power. (1956). standard history of his foreign policy
• Blum, John Morton The Republican Roosevelt. (1954). Series of essays that examine how TR did politics
• Blum, John Morton. The Progressive Presidents: Roosevelt, Wilson, Roosevelt, Johnson (1980)
• Brands, H.W. Theodore Roosevelt (2001), full biography
• Cooper, John Milton The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt. (1983) a dual biography
• Dalton, Kathleen. Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life. (2002), full biography
• Gould, Lewis L. The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt. (1991), standard history of his domestic and foreign policy as president
• Harbaugh, William Henry. The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt. (1963), full biography
• Keller, Morton, ed., Theodore Roosevelt: A Profile (1967) excerpts from TR and from historians.
• Millard, Candice. River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey. (2005)
• McCullough, David. Mornings on Horseback, The Story of an Extraordinary Family. a Vanished Way of Life, and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt. (2001) biography to 1884
• Morris, Edmund The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, to 1901 (1979); vol 2: Theodore Rex 1901-1909. (2001); Pulitzer prize for Volume 1
• Mowry, George. The Era of Theodore Roosevelt and the Birth of Modern America, 1900-1912. (1954) general survey of era
• Mowry, George E. Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Movement. (2001) focus on 1912
• Pringle, Henry F. Theodore Roosevelt (1932; 2nd ed. 1956), full biography
• Putnam, Carleton Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography, Volume I: The Formative Years (1958), only volume published, to age 28.
• Renehan, Edward J. The Lion's Pride: Theodore Roosevelt and His Family in Peace and War. (1992), examines TR and his family during the World War I period
• Rhodes, James Ford Rhodes. The McKinley and Roosevelt Administrations, 1897-1909 (1922)

External links

• Theodore Roosevelt Association
• PBS "American Experience" Theodore Roosevelt
• My Brother Theodore Roosevelt, 1921 By Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, a bestseller with a woman's and sister's point of view on TR. Full text and Full text Search, Free to Read and Search.
• Almanac of Theodore Roosevelt
• Downloadable audio recordings of Roosevelt in MP3 format
• Audio clips of Roosevelt's speeches
• Audio Recording of Roosevelt's Progressive Party Acceptance Speech, "Progressive Covenant with the People" with text included.
• Quotes
• Theodore Roosevelt Works - Bartleby's Online Books
• Works by Theodore Roosevelt at Project Gutenberg
• Index of T. Roosevelt Etexts
• Detailed biography of Theodore Roosevelt from the 1911 version of Encyclopedia Britannica
• Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Address
• State of the Union addresses for 1901, 1902, 1903, 1904, 1905, 1906, 1907, and 1908
• Nobel Peace Prize 1906: Theodore Roosevelt
• Theodore Roosevelt Papers at the Library of Congress
• Theodore Roosevelt: His Life & Times on Film (LOC)
• Sagamore Hill National Historic Site
• NobelPrize.org's entry on Theodore Roosevelt
• Congressional Medal of Honor's entry on Theodore Roosevelt; including citation and pictures
• White House biography
• Vice Presidents Dot Com
• Family and Descendants of Theodore Roosevelt
• Ron Schuler's Parlour Tricks: Teddy
• Theodore Roosevelt Links
• Theodore Roosevelt Quotes, Pictures and Biography at TeddyRoosevelt.com
• Theodore Roosevelt cylinder recordings, from the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara Library.
• On Theodore Roosevelt's progressive vision from the Roosevelt Institution, a student think tank inspired in part by Theodore Roosevelt.
• Boone and Crockett Club, founded by Theodore Roosevelt

v t e Governors and lieutenant governors of New York
Governors	G. Clinton Jay G. Clinton Lewis Tompkins Tayler D. Clinton Yates D. Clinton Pitcher Van Buren Throop Marcy Seward Bouck Wright Young Fish Hunt Seymour Clark King Morgan Seymour Fenton Hoffman J. Adams Dix Tilden Robinson Cornell Cleveland Hill Flower Morton Black T. Roosevelt Odell Higgins Hughes White J. Alden Dix Sulzer Glynn Whitman Smith Miller Smith F. Roosevelt Lehman Poletti Dewey Harriman Rockefeller Wilson Carey M. Cuomo Pataki Spitzer Paterson A. Cuomo Hochul
Lieutenant governors	Van Cortlandt S. Van Rensselaer J. Van Rensselaer Broome Tayler Clinton Tayler Swift Tayler Root Tallmadge Pitcher P. Livingston Dayan Throop Stebbins Oliver E. Livingston Tracy Bradish Dickinson Gardiner Lester Fish Patterson Church Raymond Selden Campbell Floyd-Jones Alvord Woodford Beach Robinson Dorsheimer Hoskins Hill McCarthy Jones Sheehan Saxton Woodruff Higgins Bruce Raines Chanler White Cobb Conway Glynn Wagner Schoeneck Walker Wood Lusk Lunn Lowman Corning Lehman Bray Poletti Hanley Wallace Hanley Moore Wicks Mahoney DeLuca Wilson Anderson Krupsak M. Cuomo DelBello Anderson Lundine McCaughey Donohue Paterson Bruno Skelos Smith Espada Ravitch Duffy Hochul Stewart-Cousins Benjamin Stewart-Cousins Delgado
Italics indicate acting officeholders

v t e Laureates of the Nobel Peace Prize
1901–1925	1901: Henry Dunant / Frédéric Passy 1902: Élie Ducommun / Charles Gobat 1903: Randal Cremer 1904: Institut de Droit International 1905: Bertha von Suttner 1906: Theodore Roosevelt 1907: Ernesto Moneta / Louis Renault 1908: Klas Arnoldson / Fredrik Bajer 1909: A. M. F. Beernaert / Paul Estournelles de Constant 1910: International Peace Bureau 1911: Tobias Asser / Alfred Fried 1912: Elihu Root 1913: Henri La Fontaine 1914 1915 1916 1917: International Committee of the Red Cross 1918 1919: Woodrow Wilson 1920: Léon Bourgeois 1921: Hjalmar Branting / Christian Lange 1922: Fridtjof Nansen 1923 1924 1925: Austen Chamberlain / Charles Dawes
1926–1950	1926: Aristide Briand / Gustav Stresemann 1927: Ferdinand Buisson / Ludwig Quidde 1928 1929: Frank B. Kellogg 1930: Nathan Söderblom 1931: Jane Addams / Nicholas Butler 1932 1933: Norman Angell 1934: Arthur Henderson 1935: Carl von Ossietzky 1936: Carlos Saavedra Lamas 1937: Robert Cecil 1938: Nansen International Office for Refugees 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944: International Committee of the Red Cross 1945: Cordell Hull 1946: Emily Balch / John Mott 1947: Friends Service Council / American Friends Service Committee 1948 1949: John Boyd Orr 1950: Ralph Bunche
1951–1975	1951: Léon Jouhaux 1952: Albert Schweitzer 1953: George C. Marshall 1954: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees 1955 1956 1957: Lester B. Pearson 1958: Georges Pire 1959: Philip Noel-Baker 1960: Albert Luthuli 1961: Dag Hammarskjöld 1962: Linus Pauling 1963: International Committee of the Red Cross / League of Red Cross Societies 1964: Martin Luther King Jr. 1965: UNICEF 1966 1967 1968: René Cassin 1969: International Labour Organization 1970: Norman Borlaug 1971: Willy Brandt 1972 1973: Lê Đức Thọ (declined award) / Henry Kissinger 1974: Seán MacBride / Eisaku Satō 1975: Andrei Sakharov
1976–2000	1976: Betty Williams / Mairead Corrigan 1977: Amnesty International 1978: Anwar Sadat / Menachem Begin 1979: Mother Teresa 1980: Adolfo Pérez Esquivel 1981: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees 1982: Alva Myrdal / Alfonso García Robles 1983: Lech Wałęsa 1984: Desmond Tutu 1985: International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War 1986: Elie Wiesel 1987: Óscar Arias 1988: UN Peacekeeping Forces 1989: Tenzin Gyatso (14th Dalai Lama) 1990: Mikhail Gorbachev 1991: Aung San Suu Kyi 1992: Rigoberta Menchú 1993: Nelson Mandela / F. W. de Klerk 1994: Shimon Peres / Yitzhak Rabin / Yasser Arafat 1995: Pugwash Conferences / Joseph Rotblat 1996: Carlos Belo / José Ramos-Horta 1997: International Campaign to Ban Landmines / Jody Williams 1998: John Hume / David Trimble 1999: Médecins Sans Frontières 2000: Kim Dae-jung
2001–present	2001: United Nations / Kofi Annan 2002: Jimmy Carter 2003: Shirin Ebadi 2004: Wangari Maathai 2005: International Atomic Energy Agency / Mohamed ElBaradei 2006: Grameen Bank / Muhammad Yunus 2007: Al Gore / Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2008: Martti Ahtisaari 2009: Barack Obama 2010: Liu Xiaobo 2011: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf / Leymah Gbowee / Tawakkol Karman 2012: European Union 2013: Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons 2014: Kailash Satyarthi / Malala Yousafzai 2015: Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet 2016: Juan Manuel Santos 2017: International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons 2018: Denis Mukwege / Nadia Murad 2019: Abiy Ahmed 2020: World Food Programme 2021: Maria Ressa / Dmitry Muratov 2022: Ales Bialiatski / Memorial / Center for Civil Liberties 2023: Narges Mohammadi 2024: Nihon Hidankyo

Notes

1. [Thomas A. Bailey, Presidential Greatness (1966) p. 308
2. Editors (2006). Month=June&Date=26 "Theodore Roosevelt - The 20th Century Express - "At home and abroad, Theodore Roosevelt was the locomotive President, the man who drew his flourishing nation into the future" ". Retrieved March 26, 2006.
3. "TR's Legacy - The Environment". Retrieved March 6, 2006.
4. Thayer, William Roscoe (1919). Theodore Roosevelt: An Intimate Biography, Chapter I, p. 20. Bartleby.com.
5. Roosevelt, Theodore (1913). Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography, Chapter I, p. 13. Macmillan. ISBN 1-58734-045-3.
6. "The Film & More: Program Transcript Part One". Retrieved March 9, 2006.
7. PBS American Experience http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/presidents/26_t_roosevelt/t_roosevelt_early.html
8. T. R.: The Last Romantic by H. W. Brands P. 49-50
9. Brands p. 62
10. Thayer, Chapter I, pp. 30, 36.
11. Thayer, Chapter I, p. 37.
12. "The Naval War of 1812 by Theodore Roosevelt".
13. Brands, pp 123-29
14. Brands pp 175-79
15. Thayer, Chapter II, p. 29.
16. Thayer, Chapter V, pp. 4, 6.
17. Thayer, Chapter VI, pp. 1–2.
18. Thayer, Chapter VI, pp. 18–24.
19. Thayer, Chapter VII, pp. 20–26.
20. Thayer, Chapter VIII, p. 7.
21. Thayer, Chapter VIII, p. 19.
22. Thayer, Chapter VIII, pp. 27–28.
23. The Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia (2005). "Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909)". Retrieved March 6, 2006.
24. ^ Hanson, David C. (2005). "Theodore Roosevelt: Lion in the White House". Retrieved March 6, 2006.
25. Smith, Ira R. T.; Morris, Joe Alex (1949). "Dear Mr. President": The Story of Fifty Years in the White House Mail Room, p. 52. Julian Messner.
26. Kennedy, Robert C. (2005). "'I hear there are some kids in the White House this year'". Retrieved March 6, 2006.
27. Pringle 465-7
28. (Some sources attribute this quote to one of Roosevelt's sons instead.) Thayer, Chapter XIII, p. 7.
29. O'Toole, Patricia (2005) When Trumpets Call, p. 67, Simon and Schuster, ISBN 0-684-86477-0
30. Thayer, Chapter XXI, p. 10.
31. Thayer, Chapter XXII, pp. 25–31.
32. Thayer, Chapter XXIII, pp. 4–7.
33. Brands 781-4
34. {{cite book|author=Dalton, Kathleen |title=Theodore Roosevelt - A Strenuous Life|publisher=Vintage Book|year=2002|id=ISBN 0-679-44663-X, 507
35. Larson, Keith (2006). "Theodore Roosevelt". Retrieved March 6, 2006.
36. {{cite book|author=Dalton, Kathleen |title=Theodore Roosevelt - A Strenuous Life|publisher=Vintage Book|year=2002|id=ISBN 0-679-44663-X, 507
37. "The Religious Affiliation of Theodore Roosevelt U.S. President". Retrieved March 7, 2006.
38. Reynolds, Ralph C. (1999). "In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash". Retrieved March 7, 2006.
39. Matinecock Masonic Historical Society. "History". Retrieved March 12, 2006.
40. Thayer, Chapter XVII, pp. 22–24.
41. Shaw, K.B. & Maiden, David (2006). "Theodore Roosevelt". Retrieved March 7, 2006.
42. Amberger, J Christoph, Secret History of the Sword Adventures in Ancient Martial Arts 1998, ISBN 1-892515-04-0.
43. David H. Burton, The Learned Presidency 1988, p 12.
44. The Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia (2005). "Biography: Impact and Legacy". Retrieved March 7, 2006.
45. "Legacy". Retrieved March 7, 2006.
46. "History of the Teddy Bear". Retrieved March 7, 2006.

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