Teddy Roosevelt (стр. 1 из 2)

Report

Theodore Roosevelt

Icon of the American Century

“The joy of living is his who has the heart to demand it.”

Theodore Roosevelt

executed: Magomedova Z.A.

examined: Akhmedova Z.G.

Makhachkala 2001

Contents

1. Introduction page 3
2. Maverick in the Making , 1882 – 1901 page 3
3. Rough Rider in the White House , 1901 – 1909 page 7
4. The Restless Hunter , 1909 – 1919 page 10
5. Chronology of the Public Career of Theodore Roosevelt page 14
6. Source page 15

Introduction

The life of Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) was one of constant activity, immense energy, and enduring accomplishments. As the twenty-sixth President of the United States, Roosevelt was the wielder of the Big Stick, the builder of the Panama Canal, an avid conservationist,

and the nemesis of the corporate trusts that threatened to monopolize American business at the start of the century. His exploits as a Rough Rider in the Spanish-American War and as a cowboy in the Dakota Territory were indicative of his spirit of adventure and love of the outdoors. Reading and hunting were lifelong passions of his; writing was a lifelong compulsion. Roosevelt wrote more than three dozen books on topics as different as naval history and African big game. Whatever his interest, he pursued it with extraordinary zeal. "I always believe in going hard at everything," he preached time and again. This was the basis for living what he called the "strenuous life," and he exhorted it for both the individual and the nation.

Roosevelt's engaging personality enhanced his popularity. Aided by scores of photographers, cartoonists, and portrait artists, his features became symbols of national recognition; mail addressed only with drawings of teeth and spectacles arrived at the White House without delay. TR continued to be newsworthy in retirement, especially during the historic Bull Moose campaign of 1912, while pursuing an elusive third presidential term. He remains relevant today. This exhibition is a retrospective look at the man and his portraiture, whose progressive ideas about social justice, representative democracy, and America's role as a world leader have significantly shaped our national character.

Maverick in the Making , 1882 - 1901

Theodore Roosevelt was born on October 27, 1858, in a brownstone house on Twentieth Street in New York City. A re-creation of the original dwelling, now operated by the National Park Service, replicates the tranquility of Roosevelt's earliest years. His father, Theodore Roosevelt Sr., was a prosperous glassware merchant, and was one of the wealthy old Knickerbocker class, whose Dutch ancestors had been living on Manhattan Island since the 1640s. His mother, Martha Bulloch, was reputedly one of the loveliest girls to have been born in antebellum Georgia. Together the parents instilled in their eldest son a strong sense of family loyalty and civic duty, values that Roosevelt would himself practice, and would preach from the bully pulpit all of his adult life.

Unfortunately the affluence to which the young Theodore grew accustomed could do little to improve the state of his fragile health. He was a sickly, underweight child, hindered by poor eyesight. Far worse, however, were the life threatening attacks of asthma he had to endure until early adulthood. To strengthen his constitution, he lifted dumbbells and exercised in a room of the house converted into a gymnasium. He took boxing lessons to defend himself and to test his competitive spirit. From an early age he never lacked energy or the will to improve himself physically and mentally. He was a voracious reader and writer; his childhood diaries reveal much about his interests and the quality of his expanding mind. Natural science, ornithology, and hunting were early hobbies of his, which became lifelong.

In the fall of 1876, Roosevelt entered Harvard University. By the time he graduated magna cum laude, he was engaged to be married to a beautiful young lady named Alice Lee. The wedding took place on Roosevelt's twenty-second birthday. Amid the intense happiness he experienced during his first year of marriage, he laid the foundations of his historic public career. "I rose like a rocket," he said years later. Ironically, when he chartered his own path for public office--the White House in 1912--he failed bitterly. When others had selected him--as they did for the New York Assembly in 1881, for the governorship in 1898, and for the vice presidency in 1900--his election was almost a foregone conclusion. Politics aside, Roosevelt shaped and molded his life as much as any person could possibly do. He could not control fate, however. On Valentine's Day, 1884, his mother died of typhoid fever and his wife died of Bright's disease, two days after giving birth to a daughter, Alice Lee. Amidst this personal trauma, Theodore Roosevelt was on the verge of becoming a national presence.

Between 1882 and 1884, Theodore Roosevelt represented the Twenty-first District of New York in the state legislative assembly in Albany. An 1881 campaign broadside noted that the young Republican candidate was "conspicuous for his honesty and integrity," qualities not taken for granted in a city run by self-serving machine politicians. This was the start of Roosevelt's long career as a political reformer.

Roosevelt's political alliance with Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts began in 1884, when the two were delegates to the Republican National Convention in Chicago. In time, both men would become leaders of the Republican Party. Their extensive mutual correspondence is an insightful record of shared interests and American idealism at the turn of the twentieth century. After serving in the United States House of Representatives for six years, Lodge became a senator in 1893 and retained his seat for the rest of his life. Like Roosevelt, Lodge was an advocate of civil service reform (he recommended Roosevelt to be a commissioner in 1889), a strong navy, the Panama Canal, and pure food and drug legislation. A specialist in foreign affairs, Lodge acted as one of Roosevelt's principal advisers during his presidency. Yet Lodge did not support many of Roosevelt's progressive reforms—women's suffrage, for instance—and he refused to endorse his friend in the Bull Moose campaign of 1912.

Love of adventure and the great outdoors, especially in the West, were the bonds that sealed the friendship between Theodore Roosevelt and Frederic Remington. "I wish I were with you out among the sage brush, the great brittle cottonwoods, and the sharply-channeled barren buttes," Roosevelt wrote to the western artist in 1897 from Washington. After the death of his wife Alice Lee in 1884, Roosevelt moved temporarily to the Bad Lands in the Dakota Territory, where he owned two cattle ranches. In 1888, Century Magazine published a series of articles about the West written by Roosevelt and illustrated by Remington. In a May article, Roosevelt told the story of his daring capture of three thieves who had stolen a boat from his Elkhorn Ranch. Remington depicted their capture in this painting.

Jacob Riis was a valuable friend and source of information for Roosevelt when he became a New York City police commissioner in the spring of 1895. As a police reporter for the New York Evening Sun, Riis understood the reforms needed within the police department, as well as the evils in the slums, which he frequented to gather stories. Riis was successful in awakening public awareness to the plight of New York's tenement population, especially the children, in several books, including his classic How the Other Half Lives. In 1904 Riis published a biography of his good friend, with whom he used to walk the streets of New York, titled Theodore Roosevelt: The Citizen.

I have "developed a playmate in the shape of Dr. Wood of the Army, an Apache campaigner and graduate of Harvard, two years later than my class," Roosevelt wrote from Washington in 1897. "Last Sunday he fairly walked me down in the course of a scramble home from Cabin John Bridge down the other side of the Potomac over the cliffs." Theodore Roosevelt and Leonard Wood liked each other from their first meeting that spring. Both were robust and athletic, and both, from the vantage points of their respective jobs—Roosevelt as assistant secretary of the navy, and Wood as an army officer (and the physician of President and Mrs. William McKinley)—took a belligerent attitude toward Spain with respect to Cuba. When Roosevelt was offered the chance to raise a regiment of volunteer cavalry, he in turn recruited the more experienced Wood to be the regiment's colonel and commander. After the war in Cuba, Wood remained as military governor of Santiago, and shortly thereafter was appointed to administer to the affairs of the entire island.

John Singer Sargent painted this portrait of Wood in 1903, when he went to Washington to do the official portrait of President Roosevelt. Sargent recalled then that the two veteran Rough Riders enjoyed competing against each other with fencing foils.

After his return from the war in Cuba, Colonel Roosevelt posed for this photograph at Montauk, Long Island, shortly before his First Volunteer Cavalry Regiment was mustered out of service in September 1898. Later, in a letter to sculptor James E. Kelly—who like Frederick MacMonnies sculpted a statuette of the Rough Rider upon a horse—Roosevelt described in detail how he looked and dressed in the war. Unlike his image here, he said, "In Cuba I did not have the side of my hat turned up."

Theodore Roosevelt emerged from the Spanish-American War a national hero. His military fame now enhanced his reputation as a reform politician in his home state of New York, where he was nominated to run for the governorship that fall of 1898.

This cartoon appeared in Judge, October 29, 1898, just prior to Roosevelt's successful election, and predicted his ultimate political destiny, the White House.

President William McKinley represented the status quo for most Americans at the turn of the century. By and large, they were comfortable with him in the White House. As the standard bearer of the Republican Party, he was an unassuming bulwark of conservatism. He stood for the gold standard, for protective tariffs, and of course for a strong national defense during the Spanish-American War. McKinley's personal attributes were affability and constancy, not dynamism and originality. Politically he was a follower and not a reformer, like Roosevelt. If the idea of having TR on the ticket as Vice President seemed at odds with the President's relaxed style, it was perfectly like Mckinley to go along with what the party and the people wanted. He never admitted to sharing the fears of his good friend and political advisor, Ohio Senator Marcus Hanna, who was also chairman of the national Republican committee. For Hanna, Roosevelt was too young, too inexperienced and too much of a maverick. He could not help but think: What if McKinley should die in office?

Rough Rider in the White House , 1901 - 1909

No event had a more profound effect on Theodore Roosevelt's political career than

the assassination of President William McKinley in September 1901. At the age of forty-two, Vice President Theodore Roosevelt took the oath of office, becoming the youngest President of the United States before or since. From the start, Roosevelt was committed to making the government work for the people, and in many respects, the people never needed government more. The post-Civil War industrial revolution had generated enormous wealth and power for the men who controlled the levers of business and capital. Regulating the great business trusts to foster fair competition without socializing the free enterprise system would be one of Roosevelt's primary concerns. The railroads, labor, and the processed food industry all came under his scrutiny. Although the regulations he implemented were modest by today's standards, collectively they were a significant first step in an age before warning labels and consumer lawsuits.

Internationally, America was on the threshold of world leadership. Acquisition of the Philippines and Guam after the recent war with Spain expanded the nation's territorial borders almost to Asia. The Panama Canal would only increase American trade and defense interests in the Far East, as well as in Central and South America. In an age that saw the rise of oceanic steamship travel, the country's sense of isolation was on the verge of suddenly becoming as antiquated as yardarms and sails.

A conservative by nature, Roosevelt was progressive in the way he addressed the nation's problems and modern in his view of the presidency. If the people were to be served, according to him, then it was incumbent upon the President to orchestrate the initiatives that would be to their benefit and the nation's welfare. Not since Abraham Lincoln, and Andrew Jackson before him, had a President exercised his executive powers as an equal branch of government. If the Constitution did not specifically deny the President the exercise of power, Roosevelt felt at liberty to do so. "Is there any law that will prevent me from declaring Pelican Island a Federal Bird Reservation? . . .Very well, then I so declare it!" By executive order in March 1903, he established the first of fifty-one national bird sanctuaries. These and the national parks and monuments he created are a part of his great legacy.

Theodore Roosevelt's dynamic view of the presidency infused vigor into a branch of government that traditionally had been ceremonial and sedate. His famous "Tennis Cabinet" was indicative of how he liked to work. Riding and hiking were daily pastimes; one senator jested that anyone wishing to have influence with the President would have to buy a horse. When the press could keep pace with him, it reveled in his activities, making him the first celebrity of the twentieth century. His spectacled image adorned countless magazine covers before beauty, sex, and scandal became chic. This image of Roosevelt by Peter Juley appeared on the cover of Harper's Weekly, July 2, 1904.