25 chapters
23 hour read
Selected Chapters
25 chapters
FOREWORD
FOREWORD
Naturally, there are chapters of my autobiography which cannot now be written. It seems to me that, for the nation as for the individual, what is most important is to insist on the vital need of combining certain sets of qualities, which separately are common enough, and, alas, useless enough. Practical efficiency is common, and lofty idealism not uncommon; it is the combination which is necessary, and the combination is rare. Love of peace is common among weak, short-sighted, timid, and lazy pe
4 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER I
My grandfather on my father's side was of almost purely Dutch blood. When he was young he still spoke some Dutch, and Dutch was last used in the services of the Dutch Reformed Church in New York while he was a small boy. About 1644 his ancestor Klaes Martensen van Roosevelt came to New Amsterdam as a "settler"—the euphemistic name for an immigrant who came over in the steerage of a sailing ship in the seventeenth century instead of the steerage of a steamer in the nineteenth century. From that t
2 hour read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
Looking back, a man really has a more objective feeling about himself as a child than he has about his father or mother. He feels as if that child were not the present he, individually, but an ancestor; just as much an ancestor as either of his parents. The saying that the child is the father to the man may be taken in a sense almost the reverse of that usually given to it. The child is father to the man in the sense that his individuality is separate from the individuality of the grown-up into
2 hour read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER III
When I left Harvard, I took up the study of law. If I had been sufficiently fortunate to come under Professor Thayer, of the Harvard Law School, it may well be that I would have realized that the lawyer can do a great work for justice and against legalism. But, doubtless chiefly through my own fault, some of the teaching of the law books and of the classroom seemed to me to be against justice. The caveat emptor side of the law, like the caveat emptor side of business, seemed to me repellent; it
2 hour read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER IV
Though I had previously made a trip into the then Territory of Dakota, beyond the Red River, it was not until 1883 that I went to the Little Missouri, and there took hold of two cattle ranches, the Chimney Butte and the Elkhorn. It was still the Wild West in those days, the Far West, the West of Owen Wister's stories and Frederic Remington's drawings, the West of the Indian and the buffalo-hunter, the soldier and the cow-puncher. That land of the West has gone now, "gone, gone with lost Atlantis
2 hour read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER V
In the spring of 1899 I was appointed by President Harrison Civil Service Commissioner. For nearly five years I had not been very active in political life; although I had done some routine work in the organization and had made campaign speeches, and in 1886 had run for Mayor of New York against Abram S. Hewitt, Democrat, and Henry George, Independent, and had been defeated. I served six years as Civil Service Commissioner—four years under President Harrison and then two years under President Cle
2 hour read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VI
In the spring of 1895 I was appointed by Mayor Strong Police Commissioner, and I served as President of the Police Commission of New York for the two following years. Mayor Strong had been elected Mayor the preceding fall, when the general anti-Democratic wave of that year coincided with one of the city's occasional insurrections of virtue and consequent turning out of Tammany from municipal control. He had been elected on a non-partisan ticket—usually (although not always) the right kind of tic
2 hour read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VII
I suppose the United States will always be unready for war, and in consequence will always be exposed to great expense, and to the possibility of the gravest calamity, when the Nation goes to war. This is no new thing. Americans learn only from catastrophes and not from experience. There would have been no war in 1812 if, in the previous decade, America, instead of announcing that "peace was her passion," instead of acting on the theory that unpreparedness averts war, had been willing to go to t
2 hour read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
APPENDIX A
APPENDIX A
There was a sequel to the "round robin" incident which caused a little stir at the moment; Secretary Alger had asked me to write him freely from time to time. Accordingly, after the surrender of Santiago, I wrote him begging that the cavalry division might be put into the Porto Rican fighting, preparatory to what we supposed would be the big campaign against Havana in the fall. In the letter I extolled the merits of the Rough Riders and of the Regulars, announcing with much complacency that each
3 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
APPENDIX B
APPENDIX B
The San Juan fight took its name from the San Juan Hill or hills—I do not know whether the name properly belonged to a line of hills or to only one hill. To compare small things with large things, this was precisely as the Battle of Gettysburg took its name from the village of Gettysburg, where only a small part of the fighting was done; and the battle of Waterloo from the village of Waterloo, where none of the fighting was done. When it became the political interest of certain people to endeavo
33 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER VIII
In September, 1898, the First Volunteer Cavalry, in company with most of the rest of the Fifth Army Corps, was disembarked at Montauk Point. Shortly after it was disbanded, and a few days later, I was nominated for Governor of New York by the Republican party. Timothy L. Woodruff was nominated for Lieutenant-Governor. He was my stanch friend throughout the term of our joint service. The previous year, the machine or standpat Republicans, who were under the domination of Senator Platt, had come t
52 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
APPENDIX A
APPENDIX A
As foreshadowing the course I later, as President, followed in this matter, I give extracts from one of my letters to the Commission, and from my second (and last) Annual Message. I spent the first months of my term in investigations to find out just what the situation was. On November 28, 1899, I wrote to the Commission as follows: ". . . I have had very many complaints before this as to the inefficiency of the game wardens and game protectors, the complaints usually taking the form that the me
8 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
APPENDIX B
APPENDIX B
My general scheme of action as Governor was given in a letter I wrote one of my supporters among the independent district organization leaders, Norton Goddard, on April 16, 1900. It runs in part as follows: "Nobody can tell, and least of all the machine itself, whether the machine intends to renominate me next fall or not. If for some reason I should be weak, whether on account of faults or virtues, doubtless the machine will throw me over, and I think I am not uncharitable when I say they would
7 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER IX
There are men who love out-of-doors who yet never open a book; and other men who love books but to whom the great book of nature is a sealed volume, and the lines written therein blurred and illegible. Nevertheless among those men whom I have known the love of books and the love of outdoors, in their highest expressions, have usually gone hand in hand. It is an affectation for the man who is praising outdoors to sneer at books. Usually the keenest appreciation of what is seen in nature is to be
2 hour read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER X
On September 6, 1901, President McKinley was shot by an Anarchist in the city of Buffalo. I went to Buffalo at once. The President's condition seemed to be improving, and after a day or two we were told that he was practically out of danger. I then joined my family, who were in the Adirondacks, near the foot of Mount Tahawus. A day or two afterwards we took a long tramp through the forest, and in the afternoon I climbed Mount Tahawus. After reaching the top I had descended a few hundred feet to
2 hour read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XI
When Governor of New York, as I have already described, I had been in consultation with Gifford Pinchot and F. H. Newell, and had shaped my recommendations about forestry largely in accordance with their suggestions. Like other men who had thought about the national future at all, I had been growing more and more concerned over the destruction of the forests. While I had lived in the West I had come to realize the vital need of irrigation to the country, and I had been both amused and irritated
2 hour read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XII
One of the vital questions with which as President I had to deal was the attitude of the Nation toward the great corporations. Men who understand and practice the deep underlying philosophy of the Lincoln school of American political thought are necessarily Hamiltonian in their belief in a strong and efficient National Government and Jeffersonian in their belief in the people as the ultimate authority, and in the welfare of the people as the end of Government. The men who first applied the extre
2 hour read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIII
By the time I became President I had grown to feel with deep intensity of conviction that governmental agencies must find their justification largely in the way in which they are used for the practical betterment of living and working conditions among the mass of the people. I felt that the fight was really for the abolition of privilege; and one of the first stages in the battle was necessarily to fight for the rights of the workingman. For this reason I felt most strongly that all that the gov
40 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
APPENDIX
APPENDIX
As regards what I have said in this chapter concerning Socialism, I wish to call especial attention to the admirable book on "Marxism versus Socialism," which has just been published by Vladimir D. Simkhovitch. What I have, here and elsewhere, merely pointed out in rough and ready fashion from actual observation of the facts of life around me, Professor Simkhovitch in his book has discussed with keen practical insight, with profundity of learning, and with a wealth of applied philosophy. Crude t
3 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XIV
No nation can claim rights without acknowledging the duties that go with the rights. It is a contemptible thing for a great nation to render itself impotent in international action, whether because of cowardice or sloth, or sheer inability or unwillingness to look into the future. It is a very wicked thing for a nation to do wrong to others. But the most contemptible and most wicked course of conduct is for a nation to use offensive language or be guilty of offensive actions toward other people
2 hour read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
APPENDIX
APPENDIX
The rough draft of the message I had proposed to send Congress ran as follows: "The Colombian Government, through its representative here, and directly in communication with our representative at Colombia, has refused to come to any agreement with us, and has delayed action so as to make it evident that it intends to make extortionate and improper terms with us. The Isthmian Canal bill was, of course, passed upon the assumption that whatever route was used, the benefit to the particular section
6 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XV
There can be no nobler cause for which to work than the peace of righteousness; and high honor is due those serene and lofty souls who with wisdom and courage, with high idealism tempered by sane facing of the actual facts of life, have striven to bring nearer the day when armed strife between nation and nation, between class and class, between man and man shall end throughout the world. Because all this is true, it is also true that there are no men more ignoble or more foolish, no men whose ac
2 hour read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
APPENDIX A
APPENDIX A
[Written when Mr. Taft's administration brought suit to dissolve the steel corporation, one of the grounds for the suit being the acquisition by the Corporation of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company; this action was taken, with my acquiescence, while I was President, and while Mr. Taft was a member of my cabinet; at the time he never protested against, and as far as I knew approved of my action in this case, as in the Harvester Trust case, and all similar cases.] The suit against the Steel Trus
45 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
APPENDIX B
APPENDIX B
In his book "The New Freedom," and in the magazine articles of which it is composed, which appeared just after he had been inaugurated as President, Mr. Woodrow Wilson made an entirely unprovoked attack upon me and upon the Progressive party in connection with what he asserts the policy of that party to be concerning the trusts, and as regards my attitude while President about the trusts. I am reluctant to say anything whatever about President Wilson at the outset of his Administration unless I
30 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
APPENDIX C
APPENDIX C
In "The House of Harper," written by J. Henry Harper, the following passage occurs: "Curtis returned from the convention in company with young Theodore Roosevelt and they discussed the situation thoroughly on their trip to New York and came to the conclusion that it would be very difficult to consistently support Blaine. Roosevelt, however, had a conference afterward with Senator Lodge and eventually fell in line behind Blaine. Curtis came to our office and found that we were unanimously opposed
2 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter