Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt - Quick Facts

Profile Overview of Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919) was the 26th president of the United States, serving from 1901 to 1909. Previously serving for six months as vice president under William McKinley, Roosevelt became president after McKinley's assassination in 1901. He was 42 years old upon his first inauguration, making him the youngest person to hold the office.

This profile of Theodore Roosevelt covers Early Life and Family Background, Education and Training, Naval history and strategy, New York State Assemblyman (1881–1884) and New York National Guard.

A sickly child with debilitating asthma, Roosevelt overcame health problems through a regime of vigorous exercise, which he called "the strenuous life". He was homeschooled and began a lifelong naturalist avocation before attending Harvard University. His book The Naval War of 1812 established his reputation as a historian and popular writer. Roosevelt became leader of the reform faction of Republicans in the New York State Legislature. After the simultaneous deaths of his first wife Alice Hathaway Lee Roosevelt and mother Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, he recuperated by buying and operating a cattle ranch in the Dakotas. Roosevelt served as the assistant secretary of the Navy under McKinley, and in 1898 helped plan the successful naval war against Spain. He resigned to help form and lead the Rough Riders, a unit that fought the Spanish Army in Cuba to great publicity. Returning a war hero, Roosevelt was elected New York's governor in 1898. Because the New York state party leadership disliked his ambitious state agenda, they convinced McKinley to choose him as his running mate in the 1900 presidential election. The McKinley–Roosevelt ticket won a landslide victory.

As a leader of the progressive movement, Roosevelt championed his "Square Deal" domestic policies after taking over as president, which called for fairness for all citizens, breaking bad trusts, regulating railroads, and pure food and drugs. His pursuit of antitrust litigation in particular earned him the nickname "the Trust Buster". Roosevelt prioritized conservation and established national parks, forests, and monuments to preserve U.S. Natural resources. In foreign policy, he focused on Central America, beginning construction of the Panama Canal. Roosevelt expanded the U.S. Navy and sent the Great White Fleet on a world tour to project naval power. His successful efforts to end the Russo-Japanese War won him the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize, the first non-European to win a Nobel Prize. He was elected to a full term in 1904 and convinced William Howard Taft, his Secretary of War, to succeed him in 1908.

Roosevelt grew frustrated with Taft's brand of conservatism yet failed to win the 1912 Republican presidential nomination. He founded the Bull Moose Party and ran in 1912; the split allowed the Democrat Woodrow Wilson to win. Roosevelt led a four-month expedition to the Amazon basin, where he nearly died of tropical disease. During World War I, he criticized Wilson for keeping the U.S. Out; his offer to lead volunteers to France was rejected. Roosevelt's health deteriorated and he died in 1919. Polls of historians and political scientists rank him as one of the greatest presidents in American history.

Early Life and Family Background of Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt Jr. Was born at 28 East 20th Street in Manhattan on October 27, 1858. His parents were Martha Stewart Bulloch and businessman Theodore Roosevelt Sr. He had an older sister Anna (called Bamie), a younger brother Elliott, and a younger sister Corinne.

Roosevelt's youth was shaped by his poor health and debilitating asthma attacks, which terrified him and his parents. Doctors had no cure. Nevertheless, he was energetic and mischievously inquisitive. His lifelong interest in zoology began at age seven when he saw a dead seal at a market; after obtaining the seal's head, Roosevelt and his cousins formed the "Roosevelt Museum of Natural History". Having learned the rudiments of taxidermy, he filled his makeshift museum with animals he killed or caught. At age nine, he recorded his observations in a paper entitled "The Natural History of Insects".

Family trips, including tours of Europe in 1869 and 1870, and Egypt in 1872, shaped his cosmopolitan perspective. Hiking with his family in the Alps in 1869, Roosevelt discovered the benefits of physical exertion to minimize his asthma and bolster his spirits. Roosevelt began a heavy regimen of exercise. After being manhandled by older boys on the way to a camping trip, he found a boxing coach to train him.

Education and Training of Theodore Roosevelt

Roosevelt was homeschooled. Biographer H. W. Brands wrote that, "The most obvious drawback...was uneven coverage of...various areas of...knowledge." He was solid in geography and bright in history, biology, French, and German; but he struggled in mathematics and the classical languages.

In September 1876, he entered Harvard University. His father instructed him to, "take care of your morals first, your health next, and finally your studies." His father's sudden death in 1878 devastated Roosevelt. He inherited US$60,000 (equivalent to $1.71 million in 2024), on which he could live comfortably for the rest of his life.

His father, a devout Presbyterian, had regularly led the family in prayers. While at Harvard, young adult Theodore emulated him by teaching Sunday School for more than three years at the Episcopal Christ Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts. When the minister at Christ Church insisted he become an Episcopalian to continue teaching, Roosevelt declined, and began teaching a mission class in a poor section of Cambridge.

Roosevelt did well in science, philosophy, and rhetoric courses, but struggled in Latin and Greek. He was already an accomplished naturalist and a published ornithologist, and studied biology intently. He read prodigiously with an almost photographic memory. Roosevelt participated in rowing and boxing, and was a member of the Alpha Delta Phi literary society, the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, and the prestigious Porcellian Club. In 1880, Roosevelt graduated Phi Beta Kappa (22nd of 177) with an A.B. Magna cum laude. Henry F. Pringle wrote:

Roosevelt gave up his plan of studying natural science and attended Columbia Law School, moving back into his family's home in New York. Although Roosevelt was an able student, he found law to be irrational. Determined to enter politics, Roosevelt began attending meetings at Morton Hall, the headquarters of New York's 21st District Republican Association. Though Roosevelt's father had been a prominent member of the Republican Party, Roosevelt made an unorthodox career choice for someone of his class, as most of Roosevelt's peers refrained from becoming too closely involved in politics. Roosevelt found allies in the local Republican Party and defeated a Republican state assemblyman tied closely to the political machine of Senator Roscoe Conkling. After his election victory, Roosevelt dropped out of law school, later saying, "I intended to be one of the governing class."

Naval history and strategy

While at Harvard, Roosevelt began a systematic study of the role played by the United States Navy in the War of 1812. He published The Naval War of 1812 in 1882. The book included comparisons of British and American leadership down to the ship-to-ship level. It was praised for its scholarship and style, and remains a standard study of the war.

Source: adapted from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Roosevelt), text available under CC BY-SA 4.0.