Roosevelt, Theodore

Roosevelt, Theodore (1858–1919), twenty‐sixth president of the United States.Born in New York City, Theodore Roosevelt grew up in comfortable circumstances in the wealthy family of Theodore Roosevelt Sr. and Mittie Bulloch Roosevelt. He struggled with asthma and poor eyesight as a child but also showed the determination to excel, love of books, and fascination with the outdoors that marked his life. A graduate of Harvard, he married Alice Lee in 1880. Fascinated with politics, he won election to the New York Assembly in 1881. The sudden deaths of his mother and his wife on the same day in February 1884 left him with a baby daughter, Alice Lee Roosevelt, and a desire to escape New York. He ranched in the Dakotas for several years.

In 1886, Roosevelt married Edith Kermit Carow, a childhood friend, with whom he had five children. He ran for mayor of New York that year, but came in third. Appointed to the U.S. Civil Service Commission in 1889, he served until 1895. In 1897, after two years as the president of New York City's Board of Police Commissioners, he resigned to become assistant secretary of the navy in the administration of President William McKinley. In that office he urged the expansion of the navy and lobbied for war with Spain.

When the Spanish‐American War began in April 1898, Roosevelt volunteered. The regiment that he led, known as the Rough Riders, attacked the Spanish in Cuba on 1 July 1898 in a battle that made him a national hero. That fall, running on the Republican party ticket, he was elected governor of New York State in a close election. An activist governor, Roosevelt spoke out for worker protection, the conservation of natural resources, and the mild regulation of corporations, lending the state's Republican boss, Thomas C. Platt, to conclude that Roosevelt would be less troublesome as vice president. In the absence of credible alternatives, and since he also had the support of western Republicans and younger party members, Roosevelt joined the national Republican ticket in 1900 and campaigned vigorously for McKinley's reelection. He was inaugurated as vice president on 4 March 1901.

On 6 September 1901, McKinley was shot by an assassin; he died eight days later. At forty‐two, Roosevelt became the nation's youngest president. He promised to continue McKinley's policies, but his energy, activism, and distinct leadership style soon led him in fresh directions. Taking on corporate America and revitalizing the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act, he ordered the Justice Department to file what proved to be a successful suit to break up the Northern Securities Company, a railroad conglomerate, early in 1902. He also helped settle a bitter anthracite coal strike later that year on terms that established him as a champion of the “Square Deal” for labor. In foreign policy, he settled an Alaska boundary dispute with Canada, and in 1903 secured control of the Panama Canal Zone in a manner that outraged Colombia but pleased most Americans. He pushed construction of the Panama Canal and became the first president to leave the continental United States when he visited the Canal Zone in 1906. Roosevelt's achievements and popularity secured his election to the presidency in his own right in 1904 when he decisively defeated the Democratic nominee, Alton B. Parker. On election night he announced that he would not be a candidate in 1908.

Roosevelt pursued a more activist course in his second term. In foreign affairs, he acted as peacemaker for the Russo‐Japanese War in 1905, winning the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. His diplomacy facilitated the Algeciras Conference of 1906 that quieted differences between France and Germany over Morocco, and he sent a powerful naval force, the “Great White Fleet,” around the world in 1907–1909 as a display of American strength. In Latin America, he proclaimed the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, warning European nations against exploiting the troubles of Caribbean countries for military or political advantage.

In domestic affairs, Roosevelt championed railroad regulation through the Hepburn Act, sponsored the Pure Food and Drug Act, and secured meat‐inspection legislation, all in a single year, 1906. More reformist as his term progressed, he pushed for corporate regulation, toughened the antitrust laws, and promoted sweeping conservation policies. Although he invited Booker T. Washington to the White House, his peremptory dishonorable discharge of African‐American soldiers in 1906 because of their purported participation in a shooting incident in Brownsville, Texas, marred his record and reflected his ambiguity on the race issue.

Roosevelt hand‐picked William Howard Taft as his successor and helped Taft win the White House in 1908. Upon leaving office, he went on safari in Africa in 1909–1910. Progressive Republicans' increasing unhappiness with Taft's policies, culminating in the Ballinger‐Pinchot controversy, led Roosevelt to announce his candidacy for the Republican nomination in 1912. Losing the nomination to Taft after a bruising primary battle and a tumultuous national convention, Roosevelt bolted the Republican party and ran on the Progressive party ticket. He spoke out for social justice, but finished second to the Democratic nominee, Woodrow Wilson.

The Progressive party did not prosper and Roosevelt returned to his Republican roots soon after World War I broke out in 1914. Unhappy with Wilson's neutrality, he urged the country to prepare for war and, if necessary, intervene on the side of the Allies. Roosevelt lost to Charles Evans Hughes in the race for the 1916 Republican nomination. Once the United States entered the war in April 1917, Roosevelt sought to raise a volunteer division to fight in France. Wilson and the army refused. Theodore Roosevelt was the likely candidate for the Republican presidential race in 1920, but he died on 6 January 1919.

A major figure in establishing the presidency in its modern form, TR (a nickname he favored) was both intensely controversial and a political celebrity of vast popularity. A forceful orator and an advocate of the strenuous life (he installed a boxing ring in the White House), Roosevelt with his bushy mustache, pince‐nez, and wide, toothy grin was a caricaturist's delight. Vigorous and outspoken, he basked in the limelight: “He wanted to be the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral,” a relative commented. A century after he came to the White House, his fame still endured.
See also Antitrust Legislation; Brownsville Incident; Civil Service Reform; Conservation Movement; Economic Regulation; Expansionism; Federal Government, Executive Branch: The Presidency; Foreign Relations: U.S. Relations with Asia; Foreign Relations: U.S. Relations with Latin America; Northern Securities Case; Progressive Party of 1912–1924.

Bibliography

John Morton Blum , The Republican Roosevelt, 1954.
Willard B. Gatewood , Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of Controversy: Episodes of the White House Years, 1970.
William H. Harbaugh , The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt, 1975.
David McCullough , Mornings on Horseback, 1981.
John Milton Cooper Jr. , The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt, 1983.
Lewis L. Gould , The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 1991.

Lewis L. Gould