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United States Presidents

Theodore Roosevelt,
1901- 1909

	Twenty-sixth President Republican Vice President -  Charles Warren Fairbanks Born: October 27, 1858 New, York, New York Occupation: Author, Public Official, Rancher Married Alice Hathaway Lee Edith Kermit Carow Died: January 6, 1919 Oyster Bay, New York

Early Years:  Roosevelt overcame poor health through sports and exercise.  He was tutored at home until he went to Harvard where he was a Phi Beta Kappa honor student.  He later became an author.  

His Presidency:  Roosevelt's first term brought about the Square Deal to regulate big business and provide favorable conditions for workers.  His second term brought the regulation of railroads, meat inspection, the Pure Food and Drug Act and employers' liability legislation.  Roosevelt also made great progress in the conservation of natural resources.  

His Life:   With the assassination of President McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, not quite 43, became the youngest President in the Nation's history. He brought new excitement and power to the Presidency, as he vigorously led Congress and the American public toward progressive reforms and a strong foreign policy.

He took the view that the President as a "steward of the people" should take whatever action necessary for the public good unless expressly forbidden by law or the Constitution." I did not usurp power," he wrote, "but I did greatly broaden the use of executive power."

Roosevelt's youth differed sharply from that of the log cabin Presidents. He was born in New York City in 1858 into a wealthy family, but he too struggled--against ill health--and in his triumph became an advocate of the strenuous life.

In 1884 his first wife, Alice Lee Roosevelt, and his mother died on the same day. Roosevelt spent much of the next two years on his ranch in the Badlands of Dakota Territory. There he mastered his sorrow as he lived in the saddle, driving cattle, hunting big game--he even captured an outlaw. On a visit to London, he married Edith Carow in December 1886.

During the Spanish-American War, Roosevelt was lieutenant colonel of the Rough Rider Regiment, which he led on a charge at the battle of San Juan. He was one of the most conspicuous heroes of the war.

Boss Tom Platt, needing a hero to draw attention away from scandals in New York State, accepted Roosevelt as the Republican candidate for Governor in 1898. Roosevelt won and served with distinction.

As President, Roosevelt held the ideal that the Government should be the great arbiter of the conflicting economic forces in the Nation, especially between capital and labor, guaranteeing justice to each and dispensing favors to none.

Roosevelt emerged spectacularly as a "trust buster" by forcing the dissolution of a great railroad combination in the Northwest. Other antitrust suits under the Sherman Act followed.

Roosevelt steered the United States more actively into world politics. He liked to quote a favorite proverb, "Speak softly and carry a big stick. . . . "

Aware of the strategic need for a shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific, Roosevelt ensured the construction of the Panama Canal. His corollary to the Monroe Doctrine prevented the establishment of foreign bases in the Caribbean and arrogated the sole right of intervention in Latin America to the United States.

He won the Nobel Peace Prize for mediating the Russo-Japanese War, reached a Gentleman's Agreement on immigration with Japan, and sent the Great White Fleet on a goodwill tour of the world.

Some of Theodore Roosevelt's most effective achievements were in conservation. He added enormously to the national forests in the West, reserved lands for public use, and fostered great irrigation projects.

He crusaded endlessly on matters big and small, exciting audiences with his high-pitched voice, jutting jaw, and pounding fist. "The life of strenuous endeavor" was a must for those around him, as he romped with his five younger children and led ambassadors on hikes through Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C.

Leaving the Presidency in 1909, Roosevelt went on an African safari, then jumped back into politics. In 1912 he ran for President on a Progressive ticket. To reporters he once remarked that he felt as fit as a bull moose, the name of his new party.

While campaigning in Milwaukee, he was shot in the chest by a fanatic. Roosevelt soon recovered, but his words at that time would have been applicable at the time of his death in 1919: "No man has had a happier life than I have led; a happier life in every way."

Did you know?  Roosevelt could read a page as quickly as someone else could read a sentence.  He had a photographic memory.  

Quotations

Theodore Roosevelt - 

"We have got but one life here. It pays, no matter what comes after it, to try and do things, to accomplish things in this life and not merely to have a soft and pleasant time."

Theodore Roosevelt - 

"Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country."

Theodore Roosevelt - 

"A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car, but if he has a university education, he may steal from the whole railroad."

Theodore Roosevelt - 

"All the resources we need are in the mind."

"In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing."

Theodore Roosevelt - 

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americans . . .The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities."

Theodore Roosevelt - 

"The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it."

Theodore Roosevelt - 

"No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expedience."

Theodore Roosevelt - 

"Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far."

Theodore Roosevelt - 

"No man is above the law and no man below it; nor do we ask any man's permission when we ask him to obey it."

Theodore Roosevelt - 

The most successful politician is he who says what everybody is thinking most often and in the loudest voice."

Theodore Roosevelt - 

"The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything."

Theodore Roosevelt - 

"The man who loves other countries as much as his own stands on a level with the man who loves other women as much as he loves his own wife."

Theodore Roosevelt - 

"A muttonhead, after an education at West Point—or Harvard—is a muttonhead still."

Theodore Roosevelt - 

"There is only one quality worse than hardness of heart and that is softness of head."

Theodore Roosevelt - 

"To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society."

Theodore Roosevelt - 

"Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive."

Theodore Roosevelt - 

". . . while I agree heartily that the Constitution of the United States represents a fixed series of principles, yet I hold that it must be interpreted not as a strait-jacket, not as laying the hand of death upon our development, but as an instrument designed for the life and healthy growth of the Nation."

Theodore Roosevelt - 

"Please put out the lights." 

Theodore Roosevelt -  (His dying words)

Speeches

Inaugural address, 1905

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