I | INTRODUCTION |
Theodore
Roosevelt (1858-1919), 26th president of the United States (1901-1909),
one of the strongest and most vigorous presidents in United States history. In
battles between business and labor, Roosevelt extended the power both of the
presidency and of the federal government to protect what he saw as the public
interest. He enjoyed the responsibilities of world power and greatly expanded
United States involvement in world affairs. His domestic social and economic
reforms were the first federal attempts to deal with the problems created by a
modern industrial society.
Roosevelt became the youngest man ever to be
president when he succeeded the assassinated William McKinley in 1901 at the age
of 42. However, he was older than John F. Kennedy when he was elected in his own
right. Roosevelt was adored by the majority of Americans. The reason, he
thought, was that he “put into words what is in their hearts and minds but not
their mouths.”
II | EARLY LIFE |
A | Family |
Theodore Roosevelt was a descendant of
Claes Martenssen van Rosenvelt, who migrated to New Amsterdam (now New York
City) from Zeeland, Holland (now in the Netherlands), in 1649. Roosevelt’s
father, Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., was a New York businessman who married Martha
Bulloch, a Southern belle from a prominent Georgia family.
The American Civil War (1861-1865) caused
the Roosevelts much distress, because Mrs. Roosevelt’s brothers fought for the
Confederacy. To spare his wife’s feelings, the elder Roosevelt did not enlist in
the armed forces, although he was a staunch supporter of the Union. During the
war he distinguished himself as an adviser to Union troops on missions that took
him to the front lines. To his son the elder Roosevelt was “the best man I ever
knew,” but the younger Roosevelt was ashamed all his life that his father had
not fought during the war. Although he was an uncompromising Unionist, Roosevelt
also took pride in the war exploits of his Southern relatives.
B | Youth |
“Teedie,” as he was known in his childhood,
was born in New York City on October 27, 1858, the second of four brothers and
sisters. He was educated privately. Although never a profound student and
despite having weak eyes, Roosevelt learned to read with phenomenal swiftness
and breadth of interest. His first love was natural history. The subject
fascinated him all his life, and he moved with considerable authority in its
various branches.
Roosevelt suffered ill health through
much of his youth, but his later battle for strength and manliness became a
model for generations of young people. Roosevelt’s frequent boxing, wrestling,
riding, hunting, and swimming activities, often under dangerous circumstances,
continued during his years in the White House, the presidential mansion. There a
boxing match with a professional fighter in December 1904 cost him the sight of
one eye.
C | Education |
Roosevelt traveled with several members of
his family to Europe and Egypt, and in 1872 and 1873 he lived with a family in
Germany. During his years at Harvard University, from 1876 to 1880, he was an
earnest student, achieving through hard work what others did through brilliance.
Young men of Roosevelt’s wealthy social position were supposed to remain distant
from the aggressive pursuits of the less wealthy, so his gusto, energy, and
versatility were unusual among his fellow students. He engaged not only in club
and literary activities but in athletics as well, riding horses at every
opportunity and making numerous camping and hunting trips.
In 1878 he met Alice Hathaway Lee, with
whom he fell in love. Married several months after his graduation, they settled
down to live in New York City.
III | EARLY CAREER |
Roosevelt explored several careers before
entering politics. He attended law classes at Columbia University, but he didn’t
enjoy it. He worked industriously at his first book, The Naval War of
1812, for which he had begun research while still at Harvard. A thorough
study of the subject, it was published in 1882. Although people of Roosevelt’s
social position often believed politics to be beneath them, Roosevelt declared
that he “intended to be one of the governing class.” Roosevelt easily won his
first election in 1881 to the state assembly in Albany, New York, as a member of
the Republican Party.
A | State Legislator |
Despite his extreme youth, his expensive
clothes, upper-class manners, and his high squeaky voice, Roosevelt immediately
made his mark. He won respect by exposing a corrupt judge and by learning to
work with men of both parties, notably Democratic Governor (later President)
Grover Cleveland. Roosevelt became leader of the Republican minority but earned
the ill will of powerful members of his party. In 1884, after rejecting what
would have been another term in the legislature, he went to the Republican
National Convention in Chicago, Illinois, as chairman of the New York
delegation. There he offended Republicans favoring reform by supporting the
party’s presidential choice, United States Senator James G. Blaine of
Maine.
B | Cowboy and Ranch Owner |
Roosevelt suffered a double shock on
February 14, 1884, with the death of both his mother and his wife. His wife died
while giving birth to their daughter, Alice. Although deeply grieved, he
continued to work, leaving Alice in the care of his older sister, Anna.
In 1883 Roosevelt had visited the West,
and the next year he started what became the Elkhorn Ranch on the Little
Missouri River, in Dakota Territory. During much of the next several years he
lived the hard life of a cowboy. At one time he took part in the capture of
three thieves, whom it took six days to escort at gunpoint to the authorities.
His accustomed heartiness and enthusiasm never flagged. He often traveled back
and forth to the East and published such different books as Hunting Trips of
a Ranch Man (1885) and the vigorous but lightly researched Thomas Hart
Benton (1886). Roosevelt, mistrusted by both liberals and party leaders,
remained unsure of his career in politics.
In 1885 Roosevelt fell in love with Edith
Kermit Carow, a life-long friend, and that year they became secretly engaged. In
1886 he went East to be the Republican candidate for mayor of New York City. He
ran a disheartening third.
Roosevelt then went abroad. On December
2, 1886, he and Edith were married in London. Roosevelt brought her back to the
new home he had built on Sagamore Hill, in Oyster Bay, Long Island. The couple
had five children, Theodore Jr., Kermit, Ethel Carow, Archibald Bullock, and
Quentin. They also raised Alice, Roosevelt’s daughter from his first
marriage.
Discouraged with politics, Roosevelt
enjoyed family life and literary pursuits. He wrote Essays on Practical
Politics in 1888. The same year he also wrote an opinionated biography of
Gouverneur Morris, an American statesman who helped draft the Constitution of
the United States. The book revealed far more about Roosevelt’s mind than that
of his subject. Roosevelt then undertook what became his most famous book,
The Winning of the West, the four volumes of which appeared from 1889 to
1896.
C | Reformer |
C1 | Civil Service Commissioner |
Roosevelt was active in the
presidential campaign of 1888, when Benjamin Harrison defeated incumbent Grover
Cleveland. During this time, Roosevelt also spoke forcefully in favor of hiring
workers for government jobs (also called civil service jobs) based on their
skills. At that time many government workers were hired not because of their
skills, but because they were loyal members of the winning political party.
Giving out government jobs based on party loyalty was called patronage.
Harrison rewarded Roosevelt’s activities by appointing him U.S. Civil Service
commissioner in 1889. Roosevelt broadened his knowledge of capital politics and
became an intimate of intellectuals, like historian Henry Adams, and of
scholar-politicians like Massachusetts Representative Henry Cabot Lodge.
Roosevelt injected new life into the battle for competence in government
appointments. He exposed weaknesses in the patronage system and challenged the
postmaster general, a major dispenser of federal jobs. Roosevelt made the civil
service debate interesting, and, in the process, increased his own public
reputation. When Cleveland defeated Harrison and won election to a second
presidential term in 1892, he kept Roosevelt on as commissioner.
C2 | New York Police Commissioner |
Roosevelt’s fame as a public servant
spread, and in 1895 he returned to New York City to become president of the
police board. Roosevelt had long been interested in New York municipal
government, and in 1895 people in New York, like those in the rest of the
country, were beginning to demand reform. This period of reform was called the
Progressive era, and lasted from the last decade of the 19th century into World
War I (1914-1918). Reformers, or progressives as they were called, were
concerned about abuses of power by government and businesses. They wanted to
make the United States a better place to live, and like Roosevelt, they believed
that the government had an important role to play in this transformation. The
demands for reform in New York grew with the exposure of alliances between
criminals and police and by Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Lives (1890),
which exposed poverty and its effects. The book had deeply stirred Roosevelt.
Roosevelt’s war on police corruption and saloonkeepers was more apparent than
real, but it directed newspaper attention to the situation, enhanced Roosevelt’s
public image, and broadened his experience.
D | Assistant Secretary of the Navy |
Roosevelt was eager to be involved in
national affairs and hoped for military adventures. Roosevelt believed that
strong nations survived and weak ones died; thus the United States had to
struggle with other powerful nations for influence and territory abroad. He
admired the writings of U.S. Navy Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, whose The
Influence of Sea Power Upon History (1890) advocated a strong navy as a key
part of national policy. Roosevelt also dreamed of a canal through Central
America, which would connect the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans, to be built
and owned by the United States. During a boundary dispute in 1895 over the line
between British Guiana and Venezuela, President Cleveland aggressively
challenged Britain’s right to intervene in Latin America. Roosevelt was
delighted and talked freely to the press in extremely warlike terms.
With the election of Ohio Governor
William McKinley to the presidency in 1896, Roosevelt urged influential friends,
including Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, to obtain for him the position of assistant
secretary of the navy. McKinley reluctantly granted him the office. Roosevelt
acted quickly and played a key role in building the Navy and preparing it for
action. Roosevelt looked ahead to war, as differences mounted between the United
States and Spain.
A Cuban struggle for independence from
the Spanish Empire had become an active revolution in 1895 because Spain failed
to institute reforms promised to the Cuban people in 1878. In December 1897 the
U.S. battleship Maine was sent to the port of Havana, Cuba, to protect
U.S. citizens and property. On the night of February 15, 1898, the ship was sunk
by a tremendous explosion, and 266 lives were lost. Reports about the explosion
pointed to sabotage, but in 1976 the U.S. Navy published a study, which
suggested that spontaneous combustion in the ship’s coal bunkers caused the
explosion.
On February 25, 1898, while the secretary
of the navy was out of Washington, Roosevelt, as acting secretary, cabled
Commodore George Dewey, who was commanding the U.S. Asiatic Squadron. He
instructed Dewey to sail for Hong Kong. He hinted that war was at hand, in which
case “offensive operations in Philippine Islands” should follow.
The next month Senator Redfield Proctor
of Vermont made a speech in the Senate describing the inhumane conditions he had
observed in Cuba. On April 20 President McKinley approved a congressional
resolution that called for immediate Spanish withdrawal from Cuba, and on April
24 the Spanish government declared war. On April 25 the Congress of the United
States announced that the United States was at war with Spain, and on April 30,
1898, United States Commodore George Dewey began his “offensive operations” by
attacking the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay, the Philippines (see
Spanish-American War).
IV | THE ROUGH RIDERS |
As the war fever mounted, Roosevelt became
impatient with administrative duties and eager to participate in actual combat.
He had served three years in the National Guard, gaining the rank of captain. He
then associated himself with Leonard Wood, who had been commissioned a colonel
of the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry.
Roosevelt resigned his Navy post in May
1898 to serve as lieutenant colonel under Wood. He raised volunteers from among
both his cowboy and socialite companions. Cutting through government red tape,
he organized what became known as the Rough Riders. Roosevelt again took the
initiative to get them moved out of their training station in Tampa, Florida,
and on transports to Cuba.
A | San Juan Hill |
From June 22 to June 24, 1898, troops,
including the Rough Riders, were landed in Cuba on Daiquiri Beach. In
engagements at Las Guásimas, Caney, and finally San Juan Hill, outside the
strategic city of Santiago de Cuba, the Rough Riders performed brilliantly under
difficult conditions. The newspapers reported stories of many U.S. heroes in the
Spanish-American War, and Roosevelt, who had been the subject of 15 years of
newspaper fame and notoriety, became the best-known U.S. hero. Journalists
reported his daring under fire and his maneuvers to avoid defeat.
Roosevelt assumed the rank of colonel and
the command of his regiment on July 8, when Wood was appointed brigadier general
of volunteers. Roosevelt’s determined efforts to take the soldiers home,
following the Spanish surrender in Cuba, augmented his popularity. He began to
be called “Teddy” in newspaper articles and cartoons.
B | Governor of New York |
Soon after Roosevelt returned to New York
City with his men on August 15, he accepted an invitation from the state
Republican leader, U.S. Senator Thomas C. Platt, to run for governor. Senator
Platt distrusted Roosevelt’s reform tendencies but needed a strong candidate for
what looked like a difficult contest. Roosevelt entered the race and did not
hesitate to emphasize his recent war service. Overcoming great political odds
and campaigning tirelessly, he won by a small majority.
As governor, Roosevelt continued to be
unpredictable. He had disturbed the reformers by promising to consult with
Platt, but he had not promised to accept Platt’s views. He opposed Platt on
several issues, as when he pressed independently for a tax on public-service
businesses. On the other hand, Roosevelt failed to create a broad program of
reform, and his assertive attitudes were disliked by many people. In 1900 he
published his account of the Spanish-American War, The Rough Riders.
Popular humorist Finley Peter Dunne, speaking through his fictitious
bartender-philosopher Mr. Dooley, thought Roosevelt should have called his book
“Alone in Cubia.” Roosevelt had the wit to appreciate Dunne’s criticism, and the
two men became close friends.
C | Vice President |
Platt quickly tired of the governor’s
energy and feared his independence, so he conceived a plot to bury Roosevelt in
the vice presidency. Roosevelt didn’t want an office that would make him
politically powerless, but having no political organization of his own, he
decided to follow his party’s desires. He was nominated in 1900 as McKinley’s
running mate and contributed his great energy to the successful campaign.
McKinley’s victory at first seemed to be a
triumph for the conservative wing of the Republican Party, but on September 6,
1901, McKinley was shot by an assassin in Buffalo, New York. Eight days later,
McKinley died, and the 42-year-old Roosevelt assumed the presidency.
V | PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES |
A | Life in the White House |
Roosevelt had become known universally,
except to his associates, as “Teddy,” a name he hated, but which he endured for
public purposes. He and his family quickly became institutions. The White House
was run with an aristocratic smartness and distinction that had been lacking for
generations. Mrs. Roosevelt also made the White House a home in which children
played and in which friends were warmly received. The country became familiar
with the children: “Lady Alice,” the grown child of Roosevelt’s first marriage,
and Theodore, Jr., Kermit, Ethel, Archibald, and Quentin. Celebrities streamed
into the White House in response to the president’s universal interests and were
amazed by his detailed knowledge of their professional concerns. Roosevelt had
strong and often debatable opinions, as in his distaste for Leo Tolstoy, the
great Russian novelist. On the other hand, he had to his honor such an
achievement as an unsolicited article, published in Outlook magazine on
August 12, 1905, about Edwin Arlington Robinson’s volume of poems Children of
the Night. This article, written when Robinson was unknown and totally
discouraged, changed the poet’s life and began his rise to fame.
Roosevelt was known for his irrepressible
energy, his rapid and continuous talk and movement, and his joyous and explosive
exclamation “Bully!” which he said when he particularly enjoyed something. He
was also famous for his expeditions, especially to Rock Creek Park in
Washington, D.C. There he led associates and diplomats on walking, climbing,
running, and even swimming adventures, often under astonishingly difficult
circumstances. These activities were accompanied by animated discussions across
a wide range of subjects. Roosevelt was undoubtedly foolhardy in many of his
ventures, but many Americans accepted his spirit as a true expression of their
own.
B | Tennis Cabinet |
Over the course of his two terms in office
Roosevelt gradually developed what he called his Tennis Cabinet, an informal
group of people whom he trusted in matters of state and whose company he
enjoyed. They included Leonard Wood, then a major general; James R. Garfield,
son of President James A. Garfield and Roosevelt’s secretary of the interior
after 1907; and Gifford Pinchot, an outstanding conservationist and chief of the
Forestry Service. The Tennis Cabinet also included such friends as the French
historian and Ambassador to the United States Jean Jules Jusserand and Sir Cecil
Arthur Spring-Rice, a member of the British embassy in the United States.
C | Domestic Affairs |
Roosevelt sought to reassure those who
believed that an uncontrollable radical had seized the White House. He announced
that he would retain McKinley’s Cabinet of advisors and said he would continue
McKinley’s program, but he soon caused controversy. Shortly after he became
president, he invited the black educator and leader Booker T. Washington to dine
with him at the White House. Southern politicians were furious with Roosevelt.
He held his ground, but he did not invite Washington to the White House
again.
C1 | Pennsylvania Coal Strike |
Another controversy arose over
Roosevelt’s handling of an anthracite coal strike in Pennsylvania. In May 1902,
150,000 coal miners went out on strike, demanding recognition of their union,
the United Mine Workers; a 20-percent increase in pay; and a nine-hour workday.
The mine owners refused to negotiate, and the strike dragged on for five months
with no apparent hope of settlement. The nation was faced with a severe coal
shortage, with winter approaching.
In October, Roosevelt summoned the owners
and the miners’ representatives to Washington, D.C. When the owners still
refused to negotiate, the president announced that he would appoint an
investigative commission and, in effect, threatened to use U.S. Army troops to
run the mines. At the same time he persuaded the financier John Pierpont Morgan
to talk to the owners. Morgan got them to agree to arbitration, and they asked
Roosevelt to appoint a commission. The miners then returned to work, and the
following year the commission’s report led to the adoption of a nine-hour day, a
10-percent increase in pay, and a process for negotiating disputes within the
industry. However, the owners refused to recognize the United Mine Workers.
Although Roosevelt had made unprecedented use of his presidential powers, public
opinion was solidly behind him.
C2 | Northern Securities Case |
Also unprecedented was Roosevelt’s
prosecution of the Northern Securities Company, a group of several railroad
companies run as though they were one company in order to reduce competition and
control prices. Huge combinations like Northern Securities were called
trusts. Roosevelt, through his attorney general, Philander C. Knox, sued
Northern Securities for violating the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, which
outlawed such mergers. The lawsuit implied that the government would enforce the
antitrust act more forcefully than it had in the past, but it also emphasized to
the nation’s industrial and financial directors that their interests were
subservient to national interests. However, dissolving the railroad trust was
not followed by a wave of antitrust actions. It established a principle, rather
than set a program in motion.
C3 | Square Deal |
Through these and other actions,
Roosevelt sought to create what he called the Square Deal. Americans were not to
be given special privileges because they were rich or because they were poor. He
adopted a moral approach to many social problems. For example, he distinguished
between what he considered good and bad trusts and he would not respect labor
organizations simply because they represented groups of workers. As he said in a
speech in Syracuse, New York, on September 7, 1903, “We must treat each man on
his worth and merits as a man. We must see that each is given a square deal,
because he is entitled to no more and should receive no less.”
The new president formulated his
policies in the midst of a reform movement rising out of city and farm unrest
and growing to national proportions. Central to this development was the
creation of a popular press, which revolutionized periodical literature as well.
Newspapers headed by such powerful publishers as Joseph Pulitzer, William
Randolph Hearst, and Edward W. Scripps competed for circulation. They discovered
that Americans were interested in exposures of corruption and in the ways in
which they were being exploited by politicians.
D | Foreign Policy |
D1 | The Big Stick |
During Roosevelt’s administration many
politicians and intellectuals accused Roosevelt of imperialism, the practice by
which powerful nations seek to control or influence weaker ones. European
imperialism had been characterized by territorial acquisition. Roosevelt had no
intention of acquiring colonies. He wanted treaties that would facilitate the
success of U.S. businesses.
In diplomatic affairs, Roosevelt believed
that it was important to “Speak softly and carry a big stick,” which implied
that effective control could be exercised without the formality of colonial
rule. The “big stick” often meant the threat of war, and while it was seldom
used against powerful nations in Europe or Asia, Roosevelt’s administration did
pressure Latin American countries. “The big stick” became one of Roosevelt’s
most quoted phrases. Roosevelt was moderate in some of his decisions in
diplomacy, although he acted boldly where he thought the situation required
firmness or where he thought conditions could carry the weight of forceful
action. He advocated a larger and more efficient army and navy, but Congress and
public opinion would not permit a rapid increase of military forces. However,
his secretary of the army, New York lawyer and future Nobel Prize-winner Elihu
Root, made significant reforms to improve the Department of War. They involved
the creation of an effective general staff under a chief of staff and the
reorganization and enlargement of the army school system.
Roosevelt endorsed the policy of his
governor for the Philippines, future U.S. president William Howard Taft, who
approved the military subjugation of the Filipino nationalists but also
advocated aid and the building of trade relations. Roosevelt later made Taft his
troubleshooter and secretary of war.
D2 | Alaskan Boundary Dispute |
A major point of possible contention
between the United States and the United Kingdom was the question of a proper
boundary between lower Alaska and Canada. The question had been aggravated by
the discovery of gold in the Canadian Klondike, as well as in Alaska. Roosevelt
was first tempted to make a show of arms, but he decided to take part in a
tribunal to arbitrate the dispute and appointed as United States representative
his own trusted friend Henry Cabot Lodge. In 1903 the tribunal backed the U.S.
claims.
D3 | Roosevelt Corollary |
Unlike other U.S. nationalists, Roosevelt
opposed annexing Cuba and Santo Domingo (now the Dominican Republic), despite
the weakness of their regimes. With Venezuela in debt to the United Kingdom and
Germany, Roosevelt kept an eye on Venezuela’s affairs and threatened to send
ships to the vicinity if any country sent in armed forces to collect the debts.
He did not, however, use the fighting language he had used in 1895. A crisis was
avoided when Germany agreed to submit its claims to the Hague Tribunal, which
would decide how to settle the question. The tribunal scaled down the German
claims from $40 million to $8 million and ruled that it was improper to use
force for the collection of debts. In 1904 Roosevelt spelled out his policy in
what became known as the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.
President James Monroe had announced what
became the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, saying that Europeans were not to interfere
in the affairs of the western hemisphere. Although the doctrine had no force in
international law, it had been adopted by each succeeding president. Roosevelt
added a new meaning to the Monroe Doctrine when he declared in a message to
Congress that if any nation in the western hemisphere acted “wrongly” and in a
fashion that might incite foreign intervention in its affairs, the United States
would act to prevent such an occurrence. He added that the United States did not
intend to take over the governing of these countries.
Roosevelt applied his corollary first to
Santo Domingo, which was having trouble paying its debts to foreign countries.
Roosevelt, fearing that the country might be occupied by a European power to
force the repayment of debts, used negotiations and veiled threats to take
control of the Santo Domingo customs house. The United States used the money
collected there to pay Santo Domingo’s debts and support its government.
D4 | Panama Canal |
The most notable event in foreign affairs
during Roosevelt’s first administration involved the settling of the question of
a canal across the Isthmus of Panama. Roosevelt had long feared that another
power would successfully build a canal in Central America and would thus control
that vital artery. A U.S.-held canal would boost U.S. and world trade, as well
as allow U.S. ships to move swiftly between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in
case of military emergency. The Spooner Act of 1902 settled the question of a
route, giving preference to Panama (then part of Colombia). The Colombian senate
refused to ratify the treaty, wanting more than the $10 million offered as an
initial payment.
Roosevelt was furious. He had no respect
for the Colombian politicians and little faith that Panamanians felt a strong
loyalty to them. He therefore did not discourage native groups and foreign
businessmen when they began a revolt against Colombia on November 3, 1903. Three
days later the United States recognized the new Panamanian government. United
States ships prevented Colombian troops from suppressing the uprising, and the
new Panamanian government received the money by signing a treaty granting the
United States building and supplementary rights to a 16-km (10-mi) strip of
land. Plans to build the canal started immediately.
Roosevelt believed this achievement was
historic. He followed every detail of the building of the canal, visited it in
1906, and defended his actions at all times, although the United States later
paid compensation to Colombia for its loss.
E | Election of 1904 |
Roosevelt wanted to win the presidency in
his own right. Republican leader Mark Hanna of Ohio, who wanted the office for
himself, sought to block a resolution by the 1903 Ohio Republican convention
endorsing Roosevelt’s candidacy for the following year. Roosevelt outmaneuvered
Hanna, who died before the Republican National Convention. At the national
convention, Roosevelt won the nomination as its presidential candidate by
acclamation.
Members of the Democratic Party were
disappointed with the showing of Nebraska editor and reformer William Jennings
Bryan in 1900, and nominated the conservative judge Alton B. Parker of New York.
Roosevelt, however, proved himself appealing to minority groups, armed services
veterans, and many reformers. He also won support from major financiers who
trusted his belief in law and order. His election pledge not to run for a
“third” term was to embarrass him on later occasions, and he regretted having
made it, nevertheless his victory in 1904 was spectacular. Roosevelt won 336
electoral votes to 140 for Parker, whose votes came entirely from the South and
who fared worse than Bryan. Charles W. Fairbanks of Indiana became Roosevelt’s
vice president.
VI | SECOND TERM AS PRESIDENT |
A | Domestic Affairs |
Roosevelt’s second administration opened
in an already matured atmosphere of domestic reform. The nation faced massive
problems involving basic government policy on such issues as food, railroads,
and the public domain. Roosevelt was eager to push for conservation of natural
resources and for curbing great private fortunes through income and inheritance
taxes, but he was still reluctant to increase government controls over
business.
A1 | Pure Food |
At a Senate investigation in 1899,
Roosevelt had denounced the poorly processed beef that his soldiers had been
given to eat during the Spanish-American War and said he would as soon have
eaten his old hat. However, meat preparation, like all food and drug
preparations, seemed safe from government intervention. Investigations focused
on patent medicines and helped stimulate congressional action in favor of a pure
food and drugs bill. The meat-packers were exposed in the Upton Sinclair novel
The Jungle (1906).
The novel caused discomfort because of
its vivid description of unsanitary meat handling. Roosevelt, who had earlier
believed a report that meat was being safely processed, sent another commission
to Chicago and released to the press a report highly critical of the
meat-packers’ methods. Succeeding agitation during 1906 helped Congress to pass
a bill providing for meat inspection. The controversy also greatly aided the
success of the fight to pass the Pure Food and Drug Act, which prohibited the
manufacture of unsafe foods or drugs.
A2 | Railroad Regulation |
A bill for revitalizing the Interstate
Commerce Commission (ICC) was long overdue. Unfair business practices that the
commission could not control not only led to unjust rates but also threatened
public safety. Roosevelt was suspicious of unbridled free enterprise, but he
opposed Bryan’s demand that the railroads be taken over by the government.
Roosevelt was also unsympathetic to the aggressive campaign of United States
Senator Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin to discredit the railroads’
policies.
In 1905 Roosevelt urged “government
supervision and regulation of charges by the railroads,” although he also warned
against “radical” legislation. Representative William P. Hepburn of Idaho became
his congressional spokesman for a moderate regulatory measure. Reformers and
journalistic supporters helped him overcome strong conservative resistance to
what was hailed as a major precedent-setting achievement. As a farsighted
conservative noted, “It saved us from government ownership.”
The Hepburn Act of 1906 authorized the
Interstate Commerce Commission to determine and prescribe maximum rates and to
order the railroads to conform to them within 30 days. It also extended the
regulatory powers of the commission to sleeping car, pipeline, and express
companies. Four years later it was extended to telephone and telegraph
companies.
A3 | Conservation |
One of Roosevelt’s major interests was
public land. Although he learned much about it from Chief U.S. Forester Gifford
Pinchot, his own studies in natural history and his travels about the country
convinced him of the need to preserve the country’s natural heritage. Forest,
mineral, and water controls seemed to him basic to guarantee the nation’s
resources. Giving more attention to the problem than any previous president, he
set aside some 60 million hectares (150 million acres) of public lands to
protect them from exploitation by private interests. He later added 34 million
hectares (85 million acres) in Alaska and the Northwest to the public domain.
The Reclamation Act of 1902 established irrigation and other services for
Western lands. One of the many tangible monuments to his program was the
Roosevelt Dam, built by the Reclamation Service, near Phoenix, Arizona.
Roosevelt’s regard for natural resources and other aesthetic and practical
aspects of conservation inspired him in 1908 to convene a “Congress of
Governors” of all the states, plus many experts and legislators, to discuss
national policy. Some members of Congress were annoyed by his free spending,
which they were required to support, and sought to make political capital of the
fact. Nevertheless the session was a landmark in conservation.
A4 | Muckrakers |
Roosevelt was troubled by the spirit of
some reformers who had amassed both reputation and followers and whose goals, it
seemed to him, could only bring the nation to socialism. Roosevelt detested
socialism, a system that advocates state ownership of natural resources, basic
industries, banking and credit facilities, and public utilities. His
dissatisfaction reached its height with the publication in Cosmopolitan
magazine of the series “The Treason of the Senate,” by David Graham Phillips.
United States senators were then, under law, chosen by their state legislatures,
rather than by popular vote, and often represented special conservative
interests. Phillips drew powerful individual portraits of the senators and
explained their deeds in terms that stirred wide resentment. It also provided
information that in the future would help the campaign, initiated in 1913 by the
passage of the 17th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, for
popular election of senators.
In 1906, while Phillips’s series was
still running, Roosevelt delivered a speech, first privately at a gathering of
journalists and then publicly, on April 14, at the dedication of a government
building in Washington, D.C. Roosevelt denounced the writer, who seemed to him
to court sensationalism for its own sake and “... who could look no way but
downward with the muckrake in his hand ... (and) continued to rake himself the
filth of the floor.” Conservatives were pleased by the president’s rejection of
the reformers. The reformers themselves, however, took the term “muckraker” as a
badge of honor.
A5 | Panic of 1907 |
Roosevelt’s grasp of economics was weak
and his regard for it small. His moral approach to individuals and industries
sufficed for him. He asked Congress to establish the Department of Commerce and
Labor in 1903 but did not make it a major instrument of policy formulation or
government action. The banking and stock-market systems were beyond his interest
or experience. The so-called money panic of 1907 occurred because banks were
then totally dependent on their own currency resources. They could thus be
jeopardized by rumors or special financial crises, despite their good financial
condition. There were no preparations, official or otherwise, for such an
event.
The fall of the Knickerbocker Bank, a
large, powerful bank, in New York City under such circumstances affected a large
number of smaller institutions and set off a panic that threatened to throw the
country into a deep depression. Roosevelt’s leadership in the crisis was
minimal. He gave his secretary of the treasury, George B. Cortelyou, a free
hand. Cortelyou worked with a group of financiers, headed by J. P. Morgan, to
support threatened financial establishments. One result of this cooperation was
the purchase of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company by the U.S. Steel
Corporation—dominated by the Morgan interests—an act that some reformers looked
on with great misgivings.
The government’s offer to place money in
approved banks facing difficulties stopped the panic. However, it did not
examine the reasons for the panic, reimburse losers, or provide machinery for
making sure another panic did not occur. The fact that so powerful an
institution as the Knickerbocker Bank could fail for lack of currency, even
though it owned sound assets, made an impact on congressional conservatives.
They perceived that no institution was secure simply by virtue of size. The
Aldrich-Vreeland Currency Act of 1908 was a stopgap measure intended to support
unstable banks by enabling them to issue circulating notes under particular
conditions.
B | Foreign Policy |
Roosevelt still believed that powerful
nations survived and weak ones died. He had faith in the virtues of war, and
continued to assume that the United States was playing a noble mediating role
among fighting or lesser-developed nations.
B1 | Treaty of Portsmouth |
In an age that saw ships as the major
vehicle of foreign policy, Roosevelt carefully watched naval developments in the
far corners of the world. He also thought it necessary to balance the interests
of powers that could challenge or curb U.S. influence abroad. Roosevelt
suspected Russia’s power and designs, and he admired and respected Japan’s
forceful military development. His respect was confirmed during the
Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, when Japan soundly defeated the Russians in
several battles. The Japanese, victorious but financially exhausted, agreed to
Roosevelt’s offer to negotiate a peace treaty. The Treaty of Portsmouth, ending
the war, was hailed as a triumph of Roosevelt’s diplomacy, and in 1906 Roosevelt
was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
B2 | Gentleman’s Agreement |
Roosevelt’s policy toward Japan was a
combination of courtesy and show of strength. In that same year, San Francisco
ordered the segregation of all Japanese, Chinese, and Korean children in a
separate school, greatly offending recently victorious Japan. Roosevelt was
deeply disturbed and convinced the local school board to withdraw their
decision. In exchange, he discussed with Japanese ambassadors an immigration
policy that would better control the entrance of their nationals into the United
States. The so-called Gentleman’s Agreement of 1907 stopped most Japanese
immigration. Although it did not wholly please the Japanese government, it
permitted Japan to save face by voluntarily restraining its people from seeking
entry into the United States.
B3 | Mediation in European Affairs |
Roosevelt’s attitude toward European
nations was modified by what he called their more “advanced” nature. Otherwise,
his goal was the same: to maintain a balance among the powers and to advance
U.S. interests.
Although he was not interested in
disarmament, Roosevelt developed an early interest in reduction of armaments and
conducted various negotiations in these connections. He also encouraged the
convening of the Second Hague Conference on peace in 1907. However, he permitted
the Russian tsar the satisfaction of calling the meeting.
B4 | Algeciras Conference |
In 1905 German Kaiser William II
startled European governments by visiting Morocco and assuring its sultan of his
support of Moroccan autonomy and of its right to trade on equal terms with
various nations, including Germany. This action was widely interpreted as a
challenge to France, which, with British support, believed Morocco to be in its
sphere of influence. War seemed possible.
With German encouragement, Roosevelt
took the initiative in calling a conference of nations on the Moroccan question
in 1906 and sent a U.S. delegate, Henry White. This action aroused some
criticism from isolationists at home because it involved the United States in
foreign affairs. Roosevelt himself felt that he had prevented a general war when
the conference found a solution to the conflict.
B5 | Great White Fleet |
Roosevelt thought it wise to implement
diplomacy with displays of U.S. power. In 1907 he ordered a world tour by the
U.S. fleet. It was intended particularly to impress the Japanese, who, however,
received the Great White Fleet, as it was called, with enthusiasm.
At home, Roosevelt continued to urge a
stronger and more efficient U.S. Army. When army officers protested against an
order to keep fit, Roosevelt himself led a party on a 160-km (100-mi) ride in
inclement weather to show how little was being asked.
C | Election of 1908 |
Roosevelt could almost certainly have won
renomination and reelection to the presidency in 1908, but he honored his pledge
not to run again. William Howard Taft had won his full confidence as a loyal and
competent supporter of his ideas. Roosevelt was not disturbed by the criticism
of labor leaders that Taft was an “injunction judge” quick to prevent effective
labor action. Roosevelt believed that labor required the same curbing as capital
when its leaders were “bad” or “wrong,” as, in his view, they had been in
several major cases during his administration. Roosevelt, therefore, strongly
and effectively backed Taft for the nomination and subsequently saw him elected
to the presidency.
VII | LATER LIFE |
A | African and European Adventures |
When Roosevelt left the White House in
1909, he went to Africa on a hunting and collecting tour, partly in pursuit of
long-established interests and recreations and partly not to embarrass the new
president with his vivid presence at home. The African adventure produced a
unique collection of animals for the Smithsonian Institution in Washington,
D.C., and a book, African Game Trails (1910). After the tour his family
joined him and he made a triumphal tour of Europe, reviewing armies and
lecturing at universities.
While in Europe, Roosevelt received
letters from progressives who complained that Taft was abandoning his program.
Gifford Pinchot went abroad to meet him and personally inform him that the
government was moving away from the conservation strategies that he and
Roosevelt had established. Pinchot accused Richard Achilles Ballinger, Taft’s
secretary of the interior, of abandoning Roosevelt’s conservation policies.
Ballinger was supported by President Taft, who in 1910 dismissed Pinchot for
insubordination, but Roosevelt refused to take a stand in opposition to
Taft.
B | Break with Taft |
Roosevelt returned to the United States
to receive a stirring and exceptional welcome. Political observers watched his
movements closely for light on his attitude toward the Republican
administration. The Republicans had received a severe rebuff by voters in the
congressional elections. Taft had antagonized those who wanted a lower tariff by
signing the Payne-Aldrich Bill, which raised taxes on many items, and compounded
the injury by calling it “the best tariff bill that the Republican Party ever
passed.” Taft also supported the speaker of the House of Representatives, Joseph
Cannon, who was the target of discontented progressives in the House. Taft told
his side of the controversy to Roosevelt but received neither support nor
repudiation.
Roosevelt was much impressed by Herbert
Croly’s The Promise of American Life (1909), a book that denounced the
individualism of Thomas Jefferson and called for unity behind a national program
of improvement and control. This among other influences was the basis for what
became Roosevelt’s New Nationalism program. He undertook a Western tour that
drew many Republicans to his side. At Osawatomie, Kansas, on August 31, 1910, he
put “the national need before sectional or personal advantage.” He took a
radical stand on the Supreme Court of the United States, accusing it of having
restricted necessary social action. He also demanded stronger executive
action.
Roosevelt continued to establish a
progressive plan of action, helped by Republicans who called for his candidacy
in 1912 and who rejected the progressive La Follette. Roosevelt decided to run
for the presidency in 1912 when Taft’s attorney general filed a law suit to
dissolve the U.S. Steel Corporation. The suit noted U.S. Steel’s acquisition of
the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company as one reason for the suit. The charge
enraged Roosevelt, who regarded it as a personal insult because he had approved
the purchase as part of J. P. Morgan’s strategy for ending the Panic of 1907.
Roosevelt broke openly with Taft. On February 21, 1912, he announced,”My hat is
in the ring.”
C | Election of 1912 |
Roosevelt hoped that his tactics would
cause delegates to the Republican National Convention to flock to his banner and
permit him to overthrow the alliance supporting Taft’s renomination. Roosevelt’s
showing in the Republican direct primaries before the Chicago convention
encouraged this hope; unfortunately most delegates were not chosen in direct
primary elections. Taft’s managers were thus able to keep control of the
convention. Roosevelt charged fraud with long-practiced forthrightness and led
his followers out of the convention. His supporters reconvened in Chicago on
August 5 and nominated Roosevelt as their so-called Bull Moose, or Progressive,
candidate in the election (see Progressive Party).
The split in the Republican Party was
inevitable in view of the basic split between conservatives and progressives.
Moreover, it practically ensured the election of the Democratic candidate,
Woodrow Wilson. Nevertheless, Roosevelt conducted a whirlwind campaign. The
Kansas journalist William Allen White, analyzing the New Nationalism program, as
distinguished from Wilson’s New Freedom program, concluded that the difference
was between “Tweedledum and Tweedledee.”
On October 14, 1912, Americans were
shocked by an attempt to assassinate Roosevelt while he was visiting Milwaukee,
Wisconsin. The bullet fired at him just missed entering his right lung, but
Roosevelt delivered his scheduled speech before entering the hospital.
In the electoral college, Wilson won by a
landslide, with 435 votes. Roosevelt was still a popular hero. His 4,126,020
votes topped Taft’s 3,483,922. Both totals added up to substantially more than
Wilson’s 6,286,124 votes, which constituted only 42 percent of the popular vote.
Some Progressive Party members hoped Roosevelt had begun a crusade that he might
fulfill in later elections. Roosevelt had promised as much in the course of the
campaign. However, although Roosevelt continued to support the Progressive
Party, he turned to other concerns.
D | Amazon Adventure |
Roosevelt received a proposal to explore
the River of Doubt (now the Roosevelt River) in Brazil. “I had to go,” he later
said. “It was my last chance to be a boy.” Roosevelt was received with acclaim
in Brazil and also in Argentina and Chile, where he delivered lectures. In
December 1913, with a number of scientists and explorers, Roosevelt pushed into
the wilderness. Although he thought of the trip chiefly in terms of its
naturalist aspects and collected specimens for the American Museum of Natural
History in New York City, he also enjoyed the hunting and other adventures. The
expedition’s trials and successes were recorded in one of Roosevelt’s most
popular books, Through the Brazilian Wilderness (1914), written in the
course of travel. Although Roosevelt regained the weight and the appearance of
vigor that had characterized him, he was a sick man whose jungle ordeal
contributed to his premature death.
E | Prophet of Preparedness |
Roosevelt had developed an uncompromising
antipathy to President Wilson’s temperament and political approach, which he
called “ridiculous and insincere.” He particularly despised Wilson’s “pacifism,”
which to him was the product of fear and ineptitude, rather than of strength and
the ability to control events. Roosevelt believed that Wilson’s incapacity, as
he interpreted it, compounded crises at home, as well as abroad. Thus a major
strike against the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company, bringing troops into bloody
conflict with mine workers, seemed to him to require a kind of government action
Wilson could not comprehend.
Wilson’s response to the overthrow of the
Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz in 1911 and the subsequent struggles of
revolutionary generals did not impress Roosevelt favorably. Wilson’s policy
infuriated him. He scorned it as “grape juice diplomacy,” a reference to
Wilson’s secretary of state, William Jennings Bryan, a firm pacifist who drank
no alcohol.
At the outbreak of World War I in 1914,
Roosevelt hesitated to take a stand against either the Allies or the Central
Powers. He had many close friends on both sides, and each urged him to
understand their causes. However, his dilemma did not make him more sympathetic
to Wilson’s predicament as president. Wilson’s appeals for Americans to be
neutral “in fact as well as in name” impressed Roosevelt as feeble.
Wilson’s later assertion that “there is
such a thing as a man being too proud to fight” offended every principle that
had governed Roosevelt’s life. As early as 1890 he called for naval
preparedness. In 1897 he had proclaimed preparedness for war as the best
guarantor of peace, and it became the principal tenet of his political
philosophy.
Germany’s violation of Belgian neutrality
won Belgium Roosevelt’s sympathy, although he restrained expression of it at
that time. On May 7, 1915, a German submarine torpedoed without warning the
British steamship Lusitania off the southern coast of Ireland. The ship sank in
less than 20 minutes with the loss of 1198 people, including 128 Americans.
Thereafter Roosevelt felt less restraint and without specifying an enemy, he
distinguished between those who advocated action and those who temporized. He
denounced “hyphenated Americans,” theoretically both German Americans and those
overly sympathetic to the United Kingdom. However, as the United States
identified more with the Allied cause and Roosevelt’s own sympathies shifted,
the phrase became criticism of those opposed to the British.
Roosevelt’s insistence on preparedness
made him impatient with the very word “peace.” His slogan became, “Fear God and
take your own part.”
F | Election of 1916 |
Early in 1916 Wilson began to take a
position in favor of national defense, he did so in roundabout ways that
irritated Roosevelt. Wilson, in praising what he termed American “passion for
peace,” probably better reflected the mood of a nation divided by minority
sympathies. Nevertheless, Roosevelt was convinced that the American public was
tired of Wilson and would not reelect him. He therefore supported Charles Evans
Hughes, the Republican candidate for president in 1916. The famous Democratic
Party slogan, “He kept us out of the war,” which contributed to Wilson’s
victory, was evidence that Roosevelt was part of a minority.
In a letter, Roosevelt himself admitted
that the country’s need of him “has probably passed.” He continued, summing up
what seemed to him his achievements: “My great usefulness as President came in
connection with the Anthracite Coal Strike (Pennsylvania), the voyage of the
battle fleet around the world, the taking of Panama, the handling of Germany in
the Venezuelan business, England in the Alaska boundary matter, the irrigation
business in the West, and finally, I think, the toning up of the government
service generally.”
G | War Efforts |
The entry of the United States into the
war in 1917 did not reconcile Roosevelt to his great antagonist, Wilson. He
protested against the belief, held by many of his friends, that it was their
duty to stand behind the president. It was their duty, he thought, to support
Wilson when he was right and to attack him when he was in error. Nevertheless,
Roosevelt made a strenuous effort to get into the war himself. His call for a
voluntary division of soldiers roused a great popular response from would-be
recruits but failed to gain Roosevelt a commission from Wilson’s secretary of
war. Roosevelt even promised Wilson himself that, given any chance to serve
overseas, he would abstain from active politics. These pleas failed,
however.
As spokesman for an all-out military
effort, Roosevelt took the belligerent tone in his public speeches and writings
that opposition always incited in him. He expected patriotic Americans to
express “intense Americanism.” He considered anyone who did less to be no
American at all. He opposed tolerance on the issue. Because he then held Germany
in the greatest abhorrence, he also felt free to characterize those who, in his
view, interfered with the efficient prosecution of the war as among “the Huns
within our own gates.”
Roosevelt took great satisfaction in the
congressional elections of 1918, which, in effect, repudiated Wilson. The
president had asked for a Democratic majority, thus injecting politics into
pursuit of the war. Roosevelt and Taft, friends once again, declared that
Republican candidates would be more dependable in ensuring the unconditional
surrender of Germany. The statement was widely read and probably contributed to
the Republican victory.
Republican leaders looked forward with
confidence to the 1920 election, cheered by the upsurge of their party and
Americans’ uneasiness with Wilson’s commitment to the League of Nations, an
association of the world’s nations that was the first organization dedicated to
international peace. None of the outstanding Republicans had Roosevelt’s
prestige or record of principles. Many observers were confident that he would
receive the Republican nomination without difficulty.
H | Last Days |
Roosevelt, however, was a sick man and
complained of being old. He was ill during 1918 and late in the year was
hospitalized. He lost the hearing in one ear. The death of his youngest son,
Quentin, in action overseas had been a severe blow. To one correspondent he
wrote that it was indeed a serious thing for a father to encourage a son to
actions that might bring him death, “but I would not have cared for my boys and
they would not have cared for me if our relations had not been along that line.”
Roosevelt remained active to the end and died in his sleep at his Oyster Bay
home on January 6, 1919.
No comments:
Post a Comment