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THEODORE ROOSEVELT
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Nothing better illustrates the elasticity of American democratic life than the fact that within a span of forty years Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt were Presidents of the United States. Two men more unlike in origin, in training, and in opportunity, could hardly be found. Lincoln came from an incompetent Kentuckian father, a pioneer without the pioneer's spirit of enterprise and push; he lacked schooling; he had barely the necessaries of life measured even by the standards of the Border
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CHAPTER II. BREAKING INTO POLITICS
CHAPTER II. BREAKING INTO POLITICS
Roosevelt was a few months less than twenty-two years old when he graduated from Harvard. His career in college had wrought several important changes in him. First of all, his strength was confirmed. Although he still suffered occasionally from asthma, he was no longer handicapped. In business, or in pleasure, he did not need to consider his health. Next, he had come to some definite decision as to what he would do. His earlier dream of becoming a professor of natural history had faded away. Wit
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CHAPTER III. AT THE FIRST CROSSROADS
CHAPTER III. AT THE FIRST CROSSROADS
The year 1884 was a Presidential year, and Roosevelt was one of the four delegates-at-large* of New York State to the Republican National Convention at Chicago. The day seemed to have come for a new birth in American politics. The Republican Party was grown fat with four and twenty years of power, and the fat had overlain and smothered its noble aims. The party was arrogant, it was corrupt, it was unashamed. After the War, immense projects involving huge sums of money had to be managed, and the
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CHAPTER IV. NATURE THE HEALER
CHAPTER IV. NATURE THE HEALER
A perfect biography would show definitely the interaction between mind and body. At present we can only guess what this interaction may be. In some cases the relations are evident, but in most they are vague and often unsuspected. The psychologists, whose pretensions are so great and whose actual results are still so small, may perhaps lead, an age or two hence, to the desired knowledge. But the biographer of today must beware of adopting the unripe formulas of any immature science. Nevertheless
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CHAPTER V. BACK TO THE EAST AND LITERATURE
CHAPTER V. BACK TO THE EAST AND LITERATURE
One September day in 1886, Roosevelt was reading a New York newspaper in his Elkhorn cabin, when he saw that he had been nominated by a body of Independents as candidate for Mayor of New York City. Whether he had been previously consulted or not, I do not know, but he evidently accepted the nomination as a call, for he at once packed up his things and started East. The political situation in the metropolis was somewhat abnormal. The United Democracy had nominated for Mayor Abram S. Hewitt, a mer
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CHAPTER VI. APPLYING MORALS TO POLITICS
CHAPTER VI. APPLYING MORALS TO POLITICS
I have said that Roosevelt devoted the two years after he came back to New York to writing, but it would be a mistake to imagine that writing alone busied him. He was never a man who did or would do only one thing at a time. His immense energy craved variety, and in variety he found recreation. Now that the physical Roosevelt had caught up in relative strength with the intellectual, he could take what holidays requiring exhaustless bodily vigor he chose. The year seldom passed now when he did no
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CHAPTER VII. THE ROUGH RIDER
CHAPTER VII. THE ROUGH RIDER
When Roosevelt returned to Washington in March, 1897, to take up his duties as a subordinate officer in the National Government, he was thirty-eight years old; a man in the prime of life, with the strength of an ox, but quick in movement, and tough in endurance. A rapid thinker, his intellect seemed as impervious to fatigue as was his energy. Along with this physical and intellectual make up went courage of both kinds, passion for justice, and a buoying sense of obligation towards his fellows an
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CHAPTER VIII. GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK—VICE-PRESIDENT
CHAPTER VIII. GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK—VICE-PRESIDENT
While Roosevelt was at Montauk Point waiting with his regiment to be mustered out, and cheering up the sick soldiers, he had direct proof that every war breeds a President. For the politicians went down to call on him and, although they did not propose that he should be a candidate for the Presidency—that was not a Presidential year—they looked him over to see how he would do for Governor of New York. Since Cleveland set the fashion in 1882, the New York governorship was regarded as the easiest
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CHAPTER IX. PRESIDENT
CHAPTER IX. PRESIDENT
During the summer of 1901, the city of Buffalo, New York, held a Pan-American Exposition. President McKinley visited this and, while holding a public reception on September 6, he was twice shot by Leon Czolgosz, a Polish anarchist. When the news reached him, Roosevelt went straight to Buffalo, to attend to any matters which the President might suggest; but as the surgeons pronounced the wounds not fatal nor even dangerous, Roosevelt left with a light heart, and joined his family at Mount Tahawru
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CHAPTER X. THE WORLD WHICH ROOSEVELT CONFRONTED
CHAPTER X. THE WORLD WHICH ROOSEVELT CONFRONTED
To understand the work of a statesman we must know something of the world in which he lived. That is his material, out of which he tries to embody his ideals as the sculptor carves his out of marble. We are constantly under the illusions of time. Some critics say, for instance, that Washington fitted so perfectly the environment of the American Colonies during the last half of the eighteenth century, that he was the direct product of that environment; I prefer to think, however, that he possesse
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CHAPTER XI. ROOSEVELT'S FOREIGN POLICY
CHAPTER XI. ROOSEVELT'S FOREIGN POLICY
In taking the oath of office at Buffalo, Roosevelt promised to continue President McKinley's policies. And this he set about doing loyally. He retained McKinley's Cabinet,* who were working out the adjustments already agreed upon. McKinley was probably the best-natured President who ever occupied the White House. He instinctively shrank from hurting anybody's feelings. Persons who went to see him in dudgeon, to complain against some act which displeased them, found him "a bower of roses," too sw
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CHAPTER XII. THE GREAT CRUSADE AT HOME
CHAPTER XII. THE GREAT CRUSADE AT HOME
These early diplomatic settlements in Roosevelt's Administration showed the world that the United States now had a President who did not seek quarrels, but who was not afraid of them, who never bluffed, because—unlike President Cleveland and Secretary Olney with their Venezuela Message in 1895—he never made a threat which he could not back up at the moment. There was no longer a bed of roses to stifle opposition; whosoever hit at the United States would encounter a barrier of long, sharp, and un
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CHAPTER XIII. THE TWO ROOSEVELTS
CHAPTER XIII. THE TWO ROOSEVELTS
I do not wish to paint Roosevelt in one light only, and that the most favorable. Had no other been shed upon him, his Administration would have been too bland for human belief, and life for him would have palled. For his inexhaustible energy hungered for action. As soon as his judgment convinced him that a thing ought to be done he set about doing it. Recently, I asked one of the most perspicacious members of his Cabinet, "What do you consider Theodore's dominant trait" He thought for a while, a
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CHAPTER XIV. THE PRESIDENT AND THE KAISER
CHAPTER XIV. THE PRESIDENT AND THE KAISER
During the first years of Roosevelt's Administration he had to encounter many conditions which existed rather from the momentum they had from the past than from any living vigor of their own. It was a time of transition. The group of politicians dating from the Civil War was nearly extinct, and the leaders who had come to the front after 1870 were also much thinned in number, and fast dropping off. Washington itself was becoming one of the most beautiful cities in the world, with its broad avenu
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CHAPTER XV. ROOSEVELT AND CONGRESS
CHAPTER XV. ROOSEVELT AND CONGRESS
In a previous chapter I glanced at three or four of the principal measures in internal policy which Roosevelt took up and fought through, until he finally saw them passed by Congress. No other President, as has been often remarked, kept Congress so busy; and, we may add, none of his predecessors (unless it were Lincoln with the legislation required by the Civil War) put so many new laws on the national statute book. Mr. Charles G. Washburn enumerates these acts credited to Roosevelt's seven and
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CHAPTER XVI. THE SQUARE DEAL IN ACTION
CHAPTER XVI. THE SQUARE DEAL IN ACTION
Having seen briefly how President Roosevelt dealt with Capital, let us look even more briefly at his dealings with Labor. I think that he took the deepest personal satisfaction in fighting the criminal rich and the soulless corporations, because he regarded them not only as lawbreakers, malefactors of great wealth, but as despicably mean, in that they used their power to oppress the poor and helpless classes. The Labor groups when they burst out into violence merely responded to the passion whic
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CHAPTER XVII. ROOSEVELT AT HOME
CHAPTER XVII. ROOSEVELT AT HOME
Although Theodore Roosevelt was personally known to more people of the United States than any other President has been, and his manners and quick responsive cordiality made multitudes feel, after a brief sight of him, or after shaking his hand, that they were old acquaintances, he maintained during his life a dignified reticence regarding his home and family. But now that he is dead and the world craves eagerly, but not irreverently, to know as much as it can about his many sides, I feel that it
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CHAPTER XVIII. Hits And Misses
CHAPTER XVIII. Hits And Misses
In this sketch I do not attempt to follow chronological order, except in so far as this is necessary to make clear the connection between lines of policy, or to define the structural growth of character. But in Roosevelt's life, as in the lives of all of us, many events, sometimes important events, occurred and had much notice at the moment and then faded away and left no lasting mark. Let us take up a few of these which reveal the President from different angles. Since the close of the Civil Wa
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CHAPTER XIX. CHOOSING HIS SUCCESSOR
CHAPTER XIX. CHOOSING HIS SUCCESSOR
Critics frequently remark that Roosevelt was the most masterful politician of his time, and what we have already seen of his career should justify this assertion. We need, however, to define what we mean by "politician." Boss Platt, of New York, was a politician, but far removed from Roosevelt. Platt and all similar dishonest manipulators of voters—and the dishonesty took many forms—held their power, not by principles, but by exerting an unprincipled influence over the masses who supported them.
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CHAPTER XX. WORLD HONORS
CHAPTER XX. WORLD HONORS
What to do with ex-Presidents is a problem which worries those happy Americans who have nothing else to worry over. They think of an ex-President as of a sacred white elephant, who must not work, although he has probably too little money to keep him alive in proper ease and dignity. In fact, however, these gentlemen have managed, at least during the past half-century, to sink back into the civilian mass from which they emerged without suffering want themselves or dimming the lustre which radiate
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CHAPTER XXI. WHICH WAS THE REPUBLICAN PARTY?
CHAPTER XXI. WHICH WAS THE REPUBLICAN PARTY?
Did those words of Roosevelt spring from his sense of humor—humor which recognizes the topsy-turvy of life and its swift changes, and still laughs—or from the instinct which knows that even in the sweetest of all experiences there must be a drop of bitterness? Whatever their cause, they proved to be a true foreboding. He had not been home twenty four hours before he perceived, on talking with his friends, that the Republican Party during his absence had drifted far from the course he had charted
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CHAPTER XXII. THE TWO CONVENTIONS
CHAPTER XXII. THE TWO CONVENTIONS
During the weeks while Roosevelt had been deliberating over "throwing his hat into the ring," his opponents had been busily gathering delegates. By this delay they gained a strategic advantage. According to the unholy custom which gave to the Republicans in the Southern States a quota of delegates proportioned to the population and not to the number of Republican voters, a large Southern delegation was pledged for Mr. Taft very early. Most of the few Southern Republicans were either office-holde
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CHAPTER XXIII. THE BRAZILIAN ORDEAL
CHAPTER XXIII. THE BRAZILIAN ORDEAL
"They will be throwing rotten apples at me soon," Theodore had said to his sister, on the day when New York went frantic in placing him among the gods. His treatment, after he championed Progressivism, showed him to be clairvoyant. Not only did his political opponents belabor him—that was quite natural—but his friends, having failed to persuade him not to take the fatal leap, let him see plainly that, while he still had their affection, they had lost their respect for his judgment. He himself bo
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CHAPTER XXIV. PROMETHEUS BOUND
CHAPTER XXIV. PROMETHEUS BOUND
The event which put Roosevelt's patriotism to the final test, and, as it proved, evoked all his great qualities in a last display, was the outbreak of the Atrocious World War in August, 1914. By the most brutal assault in modern times, Germany, and her lackey ally, Austria, without notice, overran Belgium and Northeastern France, and devastated Serbia. The other countries, especially the United States, were too startled at first to understand either the magnitude or the possible implications of
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CHAPTER XXV. PROMETHEUS UNBOUND
CHAPTER XXV. PROMETHEUS UNBOUND
During the winter of 1916-17, Roosevelt never relaxed his criticism of President Wilson's dilatory and evasive policy, or his efforts to arouse the American people to a sense of their duty to civilization. By this time the President himself felt that it was safe for him to speak up in behalf of Americanism. The year before, Roosevelt having been assured that it would be dangerous to make American and pro-Ally speeches in the Middle West, went straight to the so-called German cities, and was most
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