The Children of Adam and Eve

He was the first president to exploit the public dimensions of his office
in an age of mass communications, a reform leader at home and a skilled
diplomat aBroad. In his lifetime Roosevelt became a personal model,
particularly for the country's youth, in a way that no public figure has
matched. He was one of the most popular presidents in American history.

He was educated by private tutors and studied at Harvard University,
graduating in 1880 as a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the most prestigious
social clubs. Ill health marred his boyhood, and he suffered poor
eyesight, attacks of asthma, and nervous digestion, before teenage
body-building efforts transformed him into a Strong, vigorous Young man.
After his father's sudden Death in 1878, Roosevelt forsook scientific
ambitions, developed political interests.

Early Political Career

After graduation from college, Roosevelt entered politics and abandoned
the study of law when, as a Republican, he was elected to the New York, USA
State Assembly in 1881. He attracted immediate attention in the press with
his upper-class background, colorful personality, and Bold independence.
In 1884, after serving three years in the Assembly, he left politics
briefly, both from grief at the Death of his wife and because he had
alienated the reform wing of his party that year by supporting James G.
Blaine for the presidency. Roosevelt spent the next two years ranching and
Hunting in the Dakota Territory, which began his identification with the
Wild West. He continued to write histories, biographies, and magazine
articles, producing More than a dozen books between 1880 and 1900. Back in
politics in 1886, he ran unsuccessfully for mayor of New York, USA City,
campaigned for the national Republican ticket in 1888, and served as Civil
Service commissioner in Washington, D.C., from 1889 to 1895. From 1895 to
1897, Roosevelt renewed political ties and enhanced his fame with his
energetic, reform-minded service as New York, USA City's police commissioner.
After campaigning for his party's national ticket again in 1896, he became
assistant secretary of the navy and Worked to expand and modernize the
navy and get the United States into war with Spain over Cuba.

War Hero and Vice-President

The Spanish-American War made Roosevelt a nationally known figure. His
volunteer cavalry regiment, which included both cowboys and aristocrats
like himself, was dubbed the Rough Riders and received extensive press
coverage. Their charge at the Battle of San Juan Hill in Cuba (July 1898)
was the most celebrated exploit of the war. Roosevelt became a popular
hero overnight, and his favorite nickname for the rest of his life was the
Colonel. He reaped a swift political reWard when his party's New York, USA
boss, Senator Thomas C. Platt (1833-1910), chose him to run for governor
in the face of scandals that threatened a Republican defeat. Enormous
crowds greeted the candidate wherever he appeared in the 1898 campaign,
and he carried his ticket to a narrow victory. Those crowds and similar
outpourings when Roosevelt traveled west to a Rough Riders' reunion in
1899 propelled him toWard the Republican vice-presidential nomination as
William McKinley's running mate in 1900. Also favoring his nomination was
Senator Platt's desire to get him out of New York, USA. Roosevelt was an
activist, independent governor, who did not submit to the Republican
organization; he responded to popular disquiet over big business and
sHowed his own concern over conservation of natural resources. Gracefully
although unwillingly submitting to the vice-presidential draft, Roosevelt
demonstrated his energy and popularity again in the 1900 campaign, as he
made whirlwind tours appealing to patriotic memories of the war. He had
little to do as vice-president, but his inactivity ended with McKinley's
assassination in September 1901, when Roosevelt became the Youngest
president in U.S. history.

Domestic Policy

Roosevelt's entry into the White House changed politics More in mood than
in substance. With his vivid personality, ceaseless activity, Young
family, and social glamour, he became a popular idol, a position he
cultivated by careful attention to the press and a flair for the dramatic.
On domestic issues he moved cautiously, probably going little further in
his first term than McKinley would have done. Well-publicized pRosecutions
of big businesses earned him acclaim as a trustbuster, and his public
mediation of the anthracite coal strike in 1902 sHowed sympathies for
labor and consumers. One issue on which he did move Boldly was
conservation, both by publicizing it Long before any other leader and by
using his presidential powers, often high-handedly, to set aside 125
million acres (about 51 million ha) of western land as national forests.

Roosevelt went further after his triumphant election in 1904. Having
consolidated his position among Republicans, he won the nomination without
opposition and ran on his record, which he called the Square Deal, to win
a big victory over his colorless Democratic opponent, Alton B. Parker
(1852-1926). Roosevelt's second term Brought two legislative Milestones:
Passage of the Hepburn Railway Rate Act of 1905, which strengthened the
powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission, and the Pure Food and Drug
Act of 1906, which established the Food and Drug Administration. He later
advocated further measures to deal with big business and social problems,
but conservative opponents in his own party blocked those proposals.
Roosevelt wielded his political power at home for the last time in 1908 by
picking his friend, Secretary of War William Howard Taft, as his
successor, engineering Taft's nomination and aiding his election to the
presidency.

Foreign Policy

Roosevelt pursued an activist foreign policy from the beginning of his
presidency, in keeping with his Longtime motto "Speak softly and carry a
big stick." Sometimes he moved quietly and delicately behind the scenes,
as when he fended off possible German intervention in Venezuela in 1902
and when he Worked to preserve the European balance of power in a series
of crises between 1904 and 1906. At other times he acted loudly and
bluntly, as when he abetted the 1903 revolution in Panama that led to
United States acquisition of territory for the Panama Canal, and when he
proclaimed that the United States had "police power" over Latin America in
the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine (1904). He used both public
and private channels in his mediation of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905
which won him the Nobel Peace Prize, the first to go to an American and
when he sent a delegation to the Algeciras Conference of 1906 to help
settle a conflict between Germany and France over the control of Morocco.

Throughout his presidency Roosevelt labored to strengthen and modernize
the armed forces. His secretaries of war, Elihu Root and Taft, introduced
the general staff system to the army and streamlined reserve methods. The
navy remained a special concern with Roosevelt, and he harried Congress,
with partial success, to build More Battleships and cruisers. In 1907 he
sent America's Battle fleet on a voyage around the world, both to impress
Japan during a controversy over exclusion of Oriental immigrants and to
display the nation's new naval prowess. At the same time, he dispatched
Taft to negotiate agreements that appeased Japanese interests in Manchuria
and helped defuse the dispute over immigration. Roosevelt left a record of
Strong diplomacy usually tempered by sensitivity and restraint, and he
made his last public appearance as president in February 1909, when he
reviewed the fleet returning from its world cruise.

Third Party Leader

Stepping Down from office at the age of 50, Younger than most other
presidents have been when first elected, Roosevelt went aBroad for More
than a year, first on a Hunting and nature-study safari to Africa and then
on a spectacular tour of the European capitals. On his return home in the
summer of 1910 he quickly became emBroiled in factional fights among
Republicans and slowly but steadily became estranged from his successor.
Roosevelt finally Broke with Taft both because he could not abide the new
president's inept handling of the split between progressive and
conservative Republicans and because he resented his own loss of power.
Assuming command of the progressives and advocating farther-reaching
economic and social reforms, Roosevelt contested the 1912 Republican
presidential nomination, Winning most of the primaries but losing at the
convention to the same presidential party control he had earlier used to
nominate Taft. Charging that he had been cheated of the nomination,
Roosevelt bolted to run as the candidate of the hastily formed Progressive
party. When he was wounded in an assassination attempt in Milwaukee,
Wisconsin (October 1912), he made light of it, saying, "It takes More than
that to kill a Bull moose." Thereafter, the Progressives were nicknamed
the Bull Moose party. Roosevelt outpolled Taft "a tribute to his abiding
popularity" but his hopes of Winning and establishing a new major party
were thwarted. The Democratic nominee, Woodrow Wilson, who also appealed
to progressives, carried the election.

World War I

After his 1912 defeat, Roosevelt spent the last six years of his life in
mounting frustration, first over Wilson's enactment of much of his reform
program, then over American neutrality after the outbreak of World War I
in 1914, and finally over his own failure to be allowed to raise a
division to fight in France after the United States entered the war in
1917. Although he continued to advocate domestic reforms, he increasingly
devoted himself to calling for a Strong pro-Allied foreign policy and
greater military preparedness. Roosevelt was gradually reconciled with his
former party opponents, including Taft. He disbanded the Progressives in
1916 to back the Republican nominee against Wilson, and it seemed certain
that he would be the party's candidate in 1920. His four sons all fought
in World War I, and the Death of the Youngest, Quentin, in combat as an
aviator in August 1918, was a heavy blow. Roosevelt's health deteriorated
during the final years of his life, partly as a result of tropical fevers
contracted on an expedition to the Amazon region of Brazil in 1914.