Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858---1919, (Oct. 27, 1858 - Jan. 6, 1919)twenty-sixth president of the United States, was born at No. 28 East 20th St., New York City, the son of Theodore and Martha (Bulloch) Roosevelt. Of the four children, Anna was older, and Elliott and Corinne were younger than he. In his Autobiography he stated that his ancestor, Klaes Martensen van Roosevelt, came from Holland to New Amsterdam as a "settler" about 1644; in various genealogies the name appears as Claes Martenszen van Rosenvelt and the date as 1649. Thereafter, six generations of Roosevelts before his own were identified with Manhattan, and the more recent of them were well-to-do. Robert Barnwell Roosevelt was his uncle. His mother, the daughter of James Stephens Bulloch of Roswell, Ga., and a descendant of first president of the Provincial Congress of Georgia, was of the aristocracy of the Old South. His parents maintained in their brownstone residence a home of dignity, culture, and restraint; they were established in, though not highly valuing, the society of New York. Handicapped in childhood by asthma, and always by defective eyesight, Theodore rebuilt his body from sheer determination, teaching himself to ride, shoot, and box, though his early interests were more in natural history than sport. His parents gave him tutors and travel as a child and sent him to Harvard. He made Phi Beta Kappa there, but was not thrilled by academic opportunity, and was graduated in 1880, lacking a career but free to choose one.

Law, which he undertook to read, failed to interest him; so he turned to the history of the United States, beginning, with the publication in 1882 of The Naval War of 1812; or, the History of the United States Navy During the Last War with Great Britain, a literary and historical career of which he never tired. A freelance historian, he later dreaded the possibility that he might be forced to enlist among "these small men who do most of the historic teaching in the colleges" (Bishop, TR, 2:140). Chance, however, saved him from this fate, for a local Republican boss needed an eminently respectable candidate for the 21st Assembly district. Roosevelt was sent to Albany for three sessions, 1882-84, and won acceptance as a leader on his merit. Here his freedom served him well. Irritating to his seniors, he was attractive to reporters in search of news. He attacked misbehavior as he chose, saw to it that the newspapers had his side of every story, and supported with zest laws for the relief of workingmen and for the better government of New York City. His associates saw him as "a light-footed, agile, nervous yet prompt boy, with light-brown, slightly curling hair, blue eyes and an eyeglass, and ready to rise and speak with a clear, sharp, boyish voice."

His father had died in 1878. Beginning late in 1883, Roosevelt risked more than $50,000 of his patrimony in ranch lands in Dakota Territory, which he retained until 1887. He lost most of his investment, but gained far more in access to the open air, in valuable experience in the ways of men and cattle, and in solace after the death of his young wife. On Oct. 27, 1880, he had married Alice Hathaway Lee, daughter of George C. Lee of Chestnut Hill, Mass. She died on Feb. 14, 1884, shortly after the birth of their daughter Alice Lee (later Mrs. Nicholas Longworth), and only a few hours after the death of Roosevelt's own mother. These tragic events darkened the year of his last fight in the legislature at Albany and his earnest effort to block the nomination of James G. Blaine for the presidency. Still under twenty-six, he won place as delegate at large to the Chicago Republican National Convention, where he stood by George F. Edmunds until the end. The ranch occupied his summer. He was discouraged by the nomination of Blaine and Logan, but came east at last to engage in what was described as a "most remarkable performance in the croweating line" (New York World, Oct. 19, 1884). He supported the ticket and always despised the Mugwumps. In quick succession he wrote Hunting Trips of a Ranchman (1885); Thomas Hart Benton (1886); Gouverneur Morris (1888); Ranch Life and the Hunting- Trail (1888); Essays on Practical Politics (1888); and the first two volumes of The Winning of the West (1889). He returned to practical politics in 1886, when he entered a thankless contest to run against Abram S. Hewitt and Henry George for mayor of New York. After finishing third in this election he hastened to London where, on Dec. 2, 1886, he was married to Edith Kermit Carow, in St. George's Church, Hanover Square. In 1888 he supported a winning presidential ticket and stood in line for a minor reward in national politics.

Harrison made him a civil-service commissioner in May 1889, and Roosevelt was soon convinced that the spoilsmen were alarmed at his arrival in Washington. There was some reason to fear that civil-service reform had died aborning, for politicians tried to evade the specific requirements of the Pendleton Act of 1883. The commissioners were inconspicuous until Roosevelt brought a glare of happy publicity into his petty office. For six years he lived in and learned his Washington. The Roosevelts kept simple but open house on a side street, the Adams-Hay circle accepted them, Lodge and Spring Rice were in and out. The mysteries of high policy and "backstage" intrigue were open before their eyes. Already set to the notion that in ethics lay the cure of politics, Roosevelt wrote and spoke as a lay evangelist, and applied great energy to the task of keeping out the crooks and protecting the competent. This philosophy remained with him for life (American Ideals and Other Essays, Social and Political, 1897). The personal conflicts that were its consequence made good news stories in which he was generally as right as he always looked (The Strenuous Life; Essays and Addresses, 1900).

The municipal election of 1894 brought him back to New York the following year, still with no fixed career, but with The Wilderness Hunter (1893) added to his list, and The Winning of the West (vols. III, IV, 1894-96) nearly done. Writing at the same time and following in the tracks of Frederick J. Turner, he missed the point that Turner raised in The Significance of the Frontier in American History (published separately in 1894), and remained of the school of Francis Parkman, ever interested in heroic events and literary narrative. As president of the American Historical Association in 1912, he expounded his theory at length (History as Literature, and Other Essays, 1913). In New York a reform mayor, William L. Strong, organized a non-political administration in 1895. Roosevelt took the presidency of the board of police commissioners, and for two years learned to command men. He was doubtless overzealous and accomplished relatively little, but, with Jacob A. Riis as his Boswell, he penetrated the lowest levels of slum life, observed an unholy alliance of graft, politics, and crime, and again by his ability to turn his daily routine into pungent news brought public attention to a focus on the cesspool.

He envied the career of his friend Henry Cabot Lodge, while Lodge was more than willing to assist him into one. There was chance of this after the election of McKinley in 1896, but it took laborious wire-pulling before McKinley could be persuaded to offer Roosevelt a place as assistant secretary of the navy. Roosevelt took this gladly, for it brought him back to Washington and to official society. In the Navy Department, with an easy- going chief, John D. Long, he was as jingo as Lodge, and hoped with Leonard Wood that war would come out of Cuba. He burned the naval appropriations in target practice, and showed the ambitious Dewey how to let politics aid merit. On an afternoon (Feb. 25, 1898) when Secretary Long was out of town he, as acting secretary, cabled Dewey in the event of war to "see that the Spanish squadron does not leave the Asiatic coast, and then offensive operations in Philippine Islands". Roosevelt, resigning on May 6, turned to active service in the field. Wood and he organized the first volunteer cavalry regiment, procured its equipment, and secured its inclusion in the expeditionary force mobilizing at Tampa. The Rough Riders, dismounted of necessity, fulfilled his expectations. In the fighting before Santiago they took Kettle Hill (July 1, 1898); and when Wood was promoted to higher rank Roosevelt became their colonel. Richard Harding Davis chronicled their glory, as did Roosevelt himself in The Rough Riders (1899). For the rest of his life he attended reunions of his men, found them jobs, and occasionally kept them out of jail. With no army career to risk, Roosevelt took a lead in the "round robin" of July, directing public attention to the precarious situation of the troops in the tropics, because of health and sanitary conditions. This insubordination caused acute irritation in the War Department; but most of the army was evacuated in August for hospitalization at Montauk Point, and he, now "Teddy" to everybody in spite of his intense dislike of the nickname, came home an authentic hero of the war. His sudden popularity, and his expansive grin beneath his spectacles and army hat, upset the plans of Thomas Collier Platt for the approaching campaign. Platt yielded gracefully to his nomination for the governorship. Roosevelt took his escort of Rough Riders up and down the state and was elected over Augustus Van Wyck by a small majority. He was inaugurated in January 1899.

He would have been less than human if he had not now suspected that even higher place might come within his reach. He advanced practical reform as much as seemed possible without breaking with Platt, the most important contribution, in his own opinion, being a tax on corporation franchises. The abundant testimony (displayed in the libel suit of William Barnes in 1915) leaves it still uncertain whether he or Platt was boss; but there is no doubt that after two years of Roosevelt in Albany, Platt was ready for his promotion to any office outside the state. Roosevelt feared that he would be side-tracked as vice-president, but it suited Platt to encourage the boom; and the fact that Roosevelt was unacceptable to McKinley and Hanna was good reason for his endorsement by Quay. He was soon torn between his judgment that the vice-presidency was destructive of a future, and his desire to prove that he could not be kept off the ticket. He was nominated at Philadelphia in June 1900, with no negative voice but his own, and with McKinley prudently keeping hands off. His canvass matched that of Bryan in vivacity, making it possible for McKinley to remain at home in both dignity and safety. But when elected Roosevelt despaired of the future, talked of reading law under Justice White, and looked with reluctance to the tame life of president of the Senate. Just before his forty-third birthday, through the assassination of William McKinley, he became twenty-sixth president of the United States.

He took his oath of office in Buffalo, Sept. 14, 1901, pledging himself "to continue, absolutely unbroken, the policy of President McKinley for the peace, the prosperity, and the honor of our beloved country"; and suspecting that there were many who feared for the office in the hands of "this crazy man" . Since the basic pledges of the Republican party had been fulfilled, and since McKinley had given no more than a suggestion of a future course, this pledge was less informing than comforting to timid minds. Roosevelt might well have followed his urge as a reformer, exercising his great skill as an administrator, without breaking with the business statesmen. Yet there were new philosophies abroad, calling for more than an ethical approach to government. A younger generation of political leaders, among whom Robert M. La-Follette was best known, were leading crusades for fair play and governmental control, and were using the ideas of Populism which were now becoming respectable since there was no danger that the People's party would establish them. Roosevelt disliked the technical detail now at the bottom of reform, but there was a chance for a flexible president to place himself at the head of a national movement for the reorganization of the American pattern. For his first term he kept McKinley's advises in his cabinet, and announced no change in doctrine. Yet from the moment that he moved his family into the White House, with Alice and the five younger children--Theodore, Kermit, Ethel, Archibald, and Quentin--there was a new virility in the Executive Mansion and a new technique in the office of the president.

Quick administration was one of the changes. Roosevelt trusted his subordinates and cleared his desk, thus saving time to play where his predecessors felt forced to labor over bundles of official papers. He played beyond the speed of his secretarial advisers and soon surrounded himself with a group of agile companions--the "tennis cabinet"--for hikes, or rides, or games. Toward the end of his presidency, when the army complained of an order to keep physically fit, he rode (Jan. 13, 1909) one hundred miles over rough Virginia roads to shame it. From his playmates of the open he obtained a view of the workings of the government that was obscured by red tape from their superiors. At his hospitable table he sampled with insatiable curiosity the wit of the procession of visitors to Washington, meeting prize-fighter or royalty with equal ease. There was new dignity and formality in White House life, after the residence of several simpler predecessors; the paragraphers smiled at the cockades and livery on the White House coachmen. Decisions flowed from his desk, more often right than wrong, but always swiftly. Washington, under his eye and hand, turned into a world capital, with new monumental beauty and fresh, if somewhat disturbing, importance. There were changes in the diplomatic corps as Europe realized this fact. The French appreciated his tastes, and sent him Jusserand, who could both talk and tramp with him. The British fumbled after the death of Pauncefote, but in 1907 found him James Bryce, a mountain climber whose knowledge of American life was nearly as encyclopedic as his own. The Foreign Office also allowed Cecil Spring Rice, who was an honorary member of the Roosevelt household, to slip in and out of Washington and to maintain a revealing contact with the Roosevelt mind. The Germans, after Von Holleben, gave him his old friend Speck von Sternburg, with whom he had been intimate in Washington as a young man. Through these experiences, Roosevelt sat, mobile and watchful, rarely holding to a lesser advantage at the cost of a greater one, and bringing informed opportunism to a new level of national dignity.

He took over the presidency in the midst of readjustments caused by the war with Spain. Hay had nearly completed a new isthmian canal treaty with Great Britain, allowing the United States a free hand. This superseded both the old Clayton-Bulwer Treaty (1850) and Hay's own first agreement with Lord Pauncefote, which the Senate had wrecked in 1900. Roosevelt, then governor, had opposed it; but he approved the new treaty, signed Nov. 13, 1901, and the Senate gave assent within a month. In the following June, Congress, by passing the Spooner Act, approved the Panama route for the canal, if an agreement could be made in "a reasonable time" with Colombia; otherwise, the canal was to be built in Nicaragua. Under Roosevelt's immediate direction the Hay-Herran Treaty was soon negotiated; it was ratified by the United States Senate on Mar. 17, 1903, but on Aug. 2 was rejected by Colombia. The Colombians objected to certain limitations upon their sovereignty and sought more money, though it would appear that they expected this to come out of the payment of $40,000,000 from the United States to the New Panama Canal Company rather than from the Treasury itself. Roosevelt, enraged at the "inefficient bandits," apparently did not consider turning to Nicaragua, and regretted that in his official position he could not stir up secession in Panama. Representatives of the New Panama Canal Company, who had long been active propagandists for the Panama route, did the necessary stirring. Roosevelt was prepared to interpret an old treaty of 1846 with New Granada (now Colombia) as warranting the preservation of peace on the isthmus by the United States, even against Colombia when trying to put down insurrection. Panama seceded Nov. 3, 1903, received prompt recognition from the United States, and within the month negotiated in its own name the treaty that Colombia had rejected. "I took the canal zone and let Congress debate, and while the debate goes on the canal does also," said Roosevelt later, on one of the many occasions when he felt prodded to defend the summary action. He guided every step in the construction of the canal. On Apr. 20, 1921, in the administration of Harding, the Senate ratified a treaty with Colombia, whereby $25,000,000 was paid that aggrieved republic though without the formal apology that Wilson had favored.

Panama was only one among Roosevelt's problems. China was in disorder; and so near to China lay the Philippines that the safety of the islands was involved. Hay continued to press discreetly for the extension of the doctrine of the "Open Door." The Latin-American republics were troubled by the consequences of economic penetration and their own recklessness, and, in the United States, capital was for the first time showing serious desire for the profits to be obtained in the exploitation of backward economic nations. In 1902 there was European intervention in Venezuela that bore on both the Monroe Doctrine and canal strategy. Roosevelt had announced that the Monroe Doctrine did not guarantee the Latin republics immunity from punishment after misbehavior, but it was no accident that Dewey was in Caribbean waters at the end of 1902 when intervention began with a "pacific blockade." Later, Roosevelt remembered an informal verbal "ultimatum" to Von Holleben which has not been corroborated. The Venezuelan claims were compromised or submitted to arbitration, and the blockade was lifted, but the dilemma remained. Should the Monroe Doctrine be abandoned, or should the United States permit the doctrine to protect defaulters and assume, itself, their liabilities? When in 1904 the Dominican Republic was threatened with intervention Roosevelt persuaded it to invite him to set up a financial receivership, with an American comptroller to collect and disburse its revenues. The Roosevelt corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, now advanced, asserted the interest of the United States in so guiding the affairs of weaker neighbors that they might avoid clashes likely otherwise to involve the Monroe Doctrine. Roosevelt's Dominican convention, submitted in February 1905, lacked Senate confirmation for two years (until February 1907) but his comptroller began work at once. The Senate resented but could not block his action.

He settled the old Alaskan boundary dispute on his own terms, by an adjudication under a convention signed on Jan. 24, 1903; and he recognized no American limits to American interests, but took a hand with Germany and France at Algeciras. His cautious and friendly pressure upon Russia and Japan resulted in the Peace of Portsmouth, Sept. 5, 1905. Behind this diplomatic play the defenses of the United States were being modernized. Roosevelt had no confidence in arbitration as a substitute for preparedness. Elihu Root, as secretary of war, continued the army reforms of the McKinley administration, set up a general staff (1903), and returned to law in New York. The navy, new for the war with Spain, became newer each year until it could assemble a battle fleet of sixteen units. It was most likely to be tested in the Orient. Japan was sensitive, feeling its new strength, and finding the position of Orientals in the United States humiliating to them and at the same time unacceptable to American labor interests and Pacific Coast opinion. San Francisco, in 1906, engaged in discussions over the proper status of adult Japanese in attendance with American children in the lower grades of the schools, until Roosevelt was drawn into the discussion because of Japanese protest. Openly he soothed Japan, procured a "gentlemen's agreement" to prevent the emigration of Japanese laborers, and exercised coercive pressure on the San Francisco schoolboard; privately he was uneasy lest Japan might have overt action in mind. Against this background, and because no one yet knew how effective any fleet could be in long-range operations, he sent the whole fleet to the Pacific, and then around the world, on a practice cruise. He asked no permission for the demonstration, and left Congress no option but to pay the bills. The tour was a triumph of accurate administration. The fleet kept to its schedule, was greeted with enthusiastic hospitality in Japan, and, on Feb. 22, 1909, was welcomed back at the Capes of the Chesapeake, whence Roosevelt had dispatched it Dec. 16, 1907. "Speak softly," he liked to say, "and carry a big stick, you will go far" (Roosevelt to Henry L. Sprague, Jan. 26, 1900, cited in Pringle, p. 214).

But the embarrassments due to too big a stick, or to one too often displayed, were visible in Latin America where recent events seemed to set a pattern of North American aggression inconsistent with the altruistic promise of the Monroe Doctrine. South American jurists insisted that their own courts ought to be final over aliens, and Drago of Argentina had recently added a protest against the forcible collection of debts. These matters were scheduled for debate by the third Pan-American conference to be held at Rio de Janeiro in July-August 1906, and were likely to want a hearing at The Hague in 1907. To explain away the illusion of a North American menace, Root, now secretary of state after the death of Hay, was sent on tour among the southern neighbors.

Roosevelt's freedom of action in foreign affairs was in sharp contrast to presidential limitations at home, where the industrial revolution was remaking American society. He had need of such a technique as would recognize the existence of Congress, of the courts, and of a public opinion faster than which it was hazardous to go. This technique he never found. He threw aside obstacles until, by their mere accumulation, they jammed his progress. Always a boxer, he clung to his maxim: "Don't hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft" (Bishop, II, 437). He knew that the best defence is to hit one's adversary first; but this sometimes made it hard for his friends to work with him, and embittered his enemies more than was necessary. He maintained that no utterance purporting to be from him was true unless he authorized as well as uttered it. He contradicted many who tried to interpret him; and from denial passed easily to the lie direct. The cartoonists recalled the biblical story of Ananias and devised a club to which none was eligible until he had been called a liar by Theodore Roosevelt. As the membership grew, it included some who were merely indiscreet or inconvenient. E. H. Harriman and the Bellamy Storers, Alton B. Parker, "Ben" Tillman and William E. Chandler, Delavan Smith, George Harvey, Thomas Collier Platt, William J. Long, Poultney Bigelow were added to the list of the Ananias Club, until unseemly altercation became a jest rather than a discredit. Yet behind these costly quarrels lay the fact that Roosevelt was trying to dominate a government of checks and balances in which the coordinate branches were as constitutional as was the President himself. No President since Thomas Jefferson had ranged his mind over so broad a field. None since Andrew Jackson had been so certain that he had a special mandate.

The domestic wrangle grew steadily more acrimonious, with the direction of Roosevelt swerving cautiously towards the left. Republicans of the school of McKinley sensed this, and feared and fought him. Radical aspirants tried to steal his glory. The fight involved a new hypothesis of the control of industrial society in order to save individual economic freedom. Through the four Congresses of his presidency the Republican party controlled the federal government. There was no effective Democratic opposition. But the key positions were held by conservative leaders, who were more apt to distrust Roosevelt's applications of the "square deal" than to cooperate with him. Joseph G. Cannon, speaker in the last three of his Congresses, was "stand-pat" and unashamed. Nelson W. Aldrich, and his elderly and seasoned coadjutors in the Senate, made no pretense of favoring a new theory of government. Furthermore, Roosevelt's relations with those who saw with him were hindred by the roughness of his technique.

Though president by accident, Roosevelt assumed headship of the Republican party in 1901. Before he moved into the White House he was in contact with Booker T. Washington on the problem of Negro appointments; and shortly thereafter he slipped into the political error of inviting the Negro educator to a meal in the White House (Oct. 16, 1901). This undermined his effort to break the Solid South by annoying the white South. He annoyed the Negroes by summary dismissal of Negro soldiers after the Brownsville, Tex., riot (Aug. 13-14, 1906), which also brought the fiery Foraker upon his trail. But he kept to his task; occasional Negroes received federal appointment, while he held the Southern white Republicans as well, so that the votes of their delegations to national conventions in 1904 and 1908 were at his disposal. He had greater difficulty with Senator Marcus A. Hanna, who was chairman of the Republican National Committee and understood both business men and organized labor. In 1903 Roosevelt took from the Ohio convention an endorsement of himself over Hanna's undisguised opposition, on the ground of impropriety. But Hanna was ill; he died in 1904, leaving to conservative Republicans no possible leader. His supporters were ready for peace, and Roosevelt was willing to pay something for an undivided front in a campaign in which he hoped for election in his own right. His fear of missing this was far greater than any of the obstacles. Nominated at Chicago without opposition, he put the national committee in its place, appointing a member of his cabinet, George B. Cortelyou, as chairman. The canvass against Judge Alton B. Parker, choice of the anti-Bryan Democrats, was without clear issue. The easy victory gained, Roosevelt issued on election night, Nov. 8, 1904, a disclaimer of a third term for himself, holding to the merit of the two-term tradition and conceding that for its purpose his fractional term constituted a first term. He later regretted the pledge, but it gave him freedom.

Among the specific domestic problems that confronted him in both terms, the tariff was a vexatious embarrassment. From the liberal western Republicans came the "Iowa idea" that the tariff made life too easy for the trusts and needed to be revised. This was anathema to protectionists, and though Roosevelt approved it the time never seemed ripe for action. The sharp fight that delayed his Cuban reciprocity bill (Dec. 17, 1903) indicated the risk that would be run in a general revision. As his second term ended, this revision was indicated as the first thankless task for his successor.

The trusts, however, were fair game. The Republican party had no official policy respecting them, while there was enthusiastic public approval for every exposure of their bad behavior. The "muck-rakers" were raging, but Roosevelt had preceded them, demanding at Pittsburgh, July 4, 1902, that trusts be subjected to public control in the public interest. His speeches were popular in both parties, revealing a cleavage that cut across party lines. They had political value in covering the threatened tariff defection in the West, where Speaker David B. Henderson (Sept. 16, 1902) declined even to submit his record to his Iowa district, and left politics. Through Attorney-General Philander C. Knox, Roosevelt attacked the Northern Securities Company as a conspiracy in restraint of trade, and on Mar. 14, 1904, procured its dissolution by the Supreme Court (Northern Securities Company vs. the United States, 193 United States, 197), so that he was a "trustbuster" in time for the campaign. He urged, and Congress added to the cabinet in 1903, a secretary of commerce and labor, whose bureau of corporations was to be the eye of the government in matters of business. The Elkins Law (Feb. 19, 1903) forbade one form of vicious favoritism, the rebate of freight rates. The expedition act (Feb. 11, 1903) gave the government power to hasten to trial its prosecutions under the interstate commerce and anti-trust acts. But there was more enthusiasm than certainty in trust control. Most efforts were based on resentment rather than understanding, and politicians were impatient of the scientific harness with which economists were likely to hamper their freedom of action. The guides to sound decisions lagged behind the desire for correction. But in 1906 the interstate commerce act was strengthened; while the unpopularity of business, increased by the "muck-rakers," made possible sweeping laws for the protection of the consumer of food and drugs. So violently did the orgy of exposure and denunciation proceed that when David Graham Phillips launched his series on "The Treason of the Senate" in Hearst's Cosmopolitan Magazine, March 1906, Roosevelt himself tried to call a halt. First in the privacy of the Gridiron Club, Mar. 17, 1906, then publicly, Apr. 14, 1906, he spoke to the text of "The Man with the Muck Rake," and emphasized the need for constructive law. The "muck-rake" period gradually died out, but he was left unpopular with business and the party stalwarts. A financial reverse in Wall Street in 1907, caused by gross speculation, was termed the Roosevelt panic, and he was described as an enemy of business and of his class. But he was on his way to another extension of government control, this time over natural resources.

More than most presidents, Roosevelt knew the West. In 1902 he approved the Newlands Act for a reclamation service, and the conviction grew on him that the national endowment had been squandered. To call attention to the problem, and to the inadequacy of existing law, he made enlargements of the forest reserves, withdrawing land from entry whether suitable for forests or not when he had reason to think that a useful resource lay within its area. He named a public lands commission in 1903, drafting civilian experts who knew the land, and placing at their service the clerical staff of the government ("Report of the Public Lands Commission," 1905, 58 Cong., 3 Sess., Senate Document No. 189). There was a similar inland waterways commission in 1907 ("Preliminary Report," 60 Cong., 1 Sess., Senate Document No. 325). On May 13, 1908, he assembled at the White House a conference of governors of most of the states, and elder statesmen of every persuasion, to discuss the inclusive theme of natural resources; and in June he named a conservation commission with Gifford Pinchot at its head. The report of this body in three volumes (60 Cong., 2 Sess., Senate Document No. 676) roused resentment because of its intrusion upon a field of action that Congress had left untouched. Congress forbade its wide circulation as a public document and rebuked Roosevelt by prohibiting further use of public funds upon any investigation not authorized in advance by law. Roosevelt avowed in retort that he was free to do as he pleased in that "twilight zone" lying between the prohibitions of the law and duties required by specific enactments. His presidency ended in open defiance on the part of Congress, which restricted the secret-service appropriations lest they be used to trail congressmen.

Blocked though Roosevelt was, the "Roosevelt policies" gained repute, and the question of a third term died hard. His decision to sponsor actively the candidacy of his secretary of war, William Howard Taft , seems to have been due to his desire to quiet suspicions of his own intentions. By the use of traditional methods, which four years later Roosevelt condemned, the nomination of Taft was effected. Roosevelt was happy in the hope that his administrative team would be held together. He had in both terms escaped the ineptitudes of a cabinet made for politics. His official family had worked well in harness. Taft, after his election in 1908, preferred to select his own cabinet, and Roosevelt left office somewhat disappointed, it may be, but still cordial.

The activities of the presidency, many as they were, could not keep Roosevelt busy. He had continued to write. He had traveled much, breaking a precedent when he left the country to visit the canal in 1906; and breaking it still more by reading Milton and Tacitus in odd moments. His letters were voluminous, and his talk was incessant. His enemies called him "quack," "demagogue," and "liar"; and even "drunkard" until he quieted this by a libel action at Marquette, Mich., in 1913. But his intimates loved him with an unreasoning devotion. To the ordinary voter he had become the prophet of the "square deal."

Out of office in 1909, he had to find work. His comfortable estate (probated at under a million) yielded less income than he required. He took a post with the Outlook as contributing editor, sold literary work to the Metropolitan Magazine and the Kansas City Star, and received generous royalties from the publishers of his books, describing himself as "an elderly literary man of pronounced domestic tastes." But before taking up letters as an ex-President he arranged a hunt (African Game Trails: An Account of the African Wanderings of an American Hunter-Naturalist, 1910). There were only occasional echoes from the jungle while he was buried in it; but on his emergence at Khartum, Mar. 14, 1910, there began a progress of unexpected sparkle. He discussed intimate problems of colonial government with a pungency that made men gasp (African and European Addresses, 1910); visited the Kaiser to tell him that he alone among European sovereigns could carry his ward in New York; rebuked the Vatican and snubbed its critics; lectured formally at the Sorbonne, at Oxford, and at Christiania in return for his Nobel Prize; counted the birds in New Forest with Sir Edward Grey; and represented the United States at the funeral of Edward VII,where he had the time of his life. On June 18, 1910, he returned home to a triumphant reception.

Already he had learned of the growing breach between the conservative and insurgent groups in the Republican party, and tales told on Taft were reaching him. He said that all he wanted was privacy, but it was not in his nature to abstain from political activity. He soon entered the unsuccessful fight for a direct primary law in New York and made it clear that in state affairs he would support the progressives. In the late summer he began a speaking tour in the West. On Aug. 31, at Ossawatomie, Kan., he declared that "property shall be the servant and not the master," and that the Constitution if too rigid to conform to the needs of life must be amended [Roosevelt, The New Nationalism, 1910). In the autumn he did more speaking, and asserted his leadership in New York, where he was elected temporary chairman of the Republican state convention and brought about the nomination of Henry L. Stimson for the governorship, though he was unable to bring about his election in November. His meetings with Taft had been unsatisfactory. By the summer or early autumn of 1911 the unhappy estrangement of the two friends had become complete. Roosevelt might have forced the nomination of La Follette, the most conspicuous member of the progressive group that was seeking to block the renomination of Taft in 1912, but he did not believe that La Follette could command the movement and allowed himself to be persuaded that the "Roosevelt policies" were lost unless he reëntered politics. His reëntry was staged to follow an appeal from seven Republican governors; he declared to a reporter that his hat was in the ring and on Feb. 25 released his acceptance of the memorial. Taking the aggressive by advocating direct primaries instead of conventions, he rolled up majorities wherever he could enter primary contests and demonstrated that he was the choice of the Republican rank and file. By his advocacy of the initiative, referendum, and recall, however, he had alienated the conservative leaders, among them his old friend Henry Cabot Lodge; and the administration controlled the party machinery, as it had four years before. Elihu Root steered the convention that seated Taft delegates in disputed cases and renominated him. In vain Roosevelt shouted "naked theft!" His delegation became the nucleus of the Progressive party which met Aug. 5, 1912, to nominate him for president and Gov. Hiram Johnson of California for vice-president on a platform that embraced most of the programs of liberal reform. He led Taft in November, but only succeeded in opening the breach through which Woodrow Wilson marched to victory as minority president.

Shot by a fanatic in Milwaukee, Oct. 14, Roosevelt recovered in time to finish his canvass, but the days of his youth were gone. In 1914 he tried one more major expedition, and one too many. Visiting the republics of La Plata he plunged into the blank spaces of the map (Through the Brazilian Wilderness, 1914), where he found the "River of Doubt," but whence he narrowly escaped with his life. He never recovered from the tropical infections, and was already blind in one eye, the consequence of a boxing accident while in the White House. He returned to his desk (A Book-Lover's Holidays in the Open, 1916) to watch the world at war. Roosevelt was a neutral until his old suspicions of Germany were revived, his sympathies with the Allies aroused, and he had persuaded himself that had he been president he would have stopped the war. The diplomatic course of President Wilson was generally offensive to him. Army officers told him stories, he supported the National Security League, and with tongue and pen sought to arouse the country (America and the World War, 1915; Fear God and Take Your Own Part, 1916; The Foes of Our Own Household, 1917). He was convinced that the Progressive party was dead and in 1916 he had a moment of hope that the Republican breach might be healed behind him, again a candidate. Between Hughes and Wilson he had to support Hughes, though each time he spoke he alienated the German vote which Hughes must gain to win.

When war came at last, his four sons were soon at the front while he besieged the War Department and overcame aversion to besiege the White House for permission to raise a volunteer division and to command one of its brigades. Despite the incumbrances of age, accident, disease, and the lack of professional military training, he found no justice in the refusal to accept his service. Bitter, he stayed at home to talk and write (The Great Adventure; Present-Day Studies in American Nationalism, 1918), until in January 1918, he rushed to Washington "to tell the truth and speed up the war." It may be that the way was being paved for his return as the presidential candidate of a united party in 1920. But, on Jan. 6, 1919, he died peacefully in his sleep. His career had personalized the American recognition of a changing world. His flaws were on the surface and undisguised; his human values were timeless.

Recent Publications:

Roosevelt's letters are amazingly revealing. Start with The Selected Letters of Theodore Roosevelt edited by H. W. Brands (2001). A remarkable 8-volume collection is Elting E. Morison, John Morton Blum and Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., eds., The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt [1951-1954); Henry Cabot Lodge, ed., Selections from the Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge 2 vols. (New York, 1925).

For interpretive essays see John M. Blum, The Republican Roosevelt (1977); Morton Keller, ed., Theodore Roosevelt (1967) consists of sharply focused excerpts from a variety of original sources. The best single biography remains William H. Harbaugh, Power and Responsibility: The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt (1975). Also excellent are Henry F. Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt; A Biography (1931, abridged ed 1955), is a penetrating study with an excellent command of politics. W. R. Thayer, Theodore Roosevelt, An Intimate Biography (1919) is not very profound, but it is online. H. W. Brands, T.R.: The Last Romantic (1997) is well-written. John Milton Cooper, Jr., The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt is an impressive comparative biography. Roosevelt's early life is brilliantly covered in Carleton Putnam, Theodore Roosevelt: Volume One, The Formative Years, 1858-1886 (1958); see also Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (1979).
The best monographs include Howard K. Beale, Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of America to World Power (1956), Lewis Gould, The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt (1991). George E. Mowry, The Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 1900-1912 (1958), remains essential reading for understanding TR's understanding of the Progressive Era.