Theodore Roosevelt was born in New York City on 27 October 1858. He admired his father as the best person he ever knew because of his courage, gentleness, and unselfishness. He did not tolerate his children being selfish, cruel, idle, cowardly, or untruthful. His mother was from Georgia and supported the Confederacy. His father did not join the Union Army, but he helped start an allotment system that enabled Union soldiers to send pay to their families. Theodore began suffering from asthma when he was four. In 1863 his father hired a substitute to avoid conscription. Theodore was taught by tutors, and he went to Europe with his parents when he was ten. To improve his health he began lifting weights, and he took up boxing. He considered wrestling more violent than boxing. He also liked riding horses, walking, and climbing. He practiced with a rifle. In April 1869 his father helped establish the American Museum of Natural History. They went to Europe again, and Theodore took long walks in the Alps. He had trouble seeing until he was given spectacles before his trip to Europe in 1872. On the Nile River in Egypt he collected birds, shooting nearly 200. He spent five months with a family in Dresden and learned some German. He admired Germans for their hard work, duty, and interest in literature and science.
Before going to college he taught a mission class for three years. He studied and got into Harvard in the fall of 1876. He wanted to be a scientist like John James Audubon. President Hayes nominated his father, Theodore Roosevelt Sr., to be the Collector of Customs at the Port of New York; but the powerful Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York resented the snub and delayed the process until the Senate rejected Roosevelt in December. Two days later his father collapsed, and he died of stomach cancer on 9 February 1878. Theodore inherited $125,000 which gave him about $8,000 a year. On 22 March 1879 he weighed 135 pounds and fought a semifinal bout in the Harvard Athletic Association’s lightweight boxing championship and lost but did not give up.
Roosevelt at Harvard studied mostly sciences and languages. He excelled in German and took vertebrate physiology from William James. He graduated magna cum laude on 30 June 1880 ranked 21 in his class of 177, and his senior thesis was “The Practicability of Equalizing Men and Women Before the Law.” That summer he went hunting with his brother Elliott. He married Alice Lee on October 27 in a Unitarian Church. He entered the Columbia Law School, and he joined a Republican Association in New York City. In his Autobiography he later wrote, “Some of the teaching of the law-books and of the classroom seemed to me to be against justice.”1 He and Alice left for Europe on 12 May 1881 and returned on October 2. Roosevelt was nominated for the New York Assembly from the wealthiest district, and he easily defeated the Democrat on November 8.
On December 27 the New York Times exposed Jay Gould’s acquisition of the Manhattan Elevated Railroad and accused him of depressing its stock before his purchase. Roosevelt became concerned about the corrupt politicians who were called the “Black Horse Cavalry” because they traded political favors for money. The wealthy Gould manipulated the market to double the stock price, and then his allies amended a bill to reduce taxes on the elevated line by a third. Tammany Democrat Mike Costello opposed the corruption and began a filibuster and was arrested and removed from the chamber. At that moment Roosevelt rushed in and continued speaking. Amidst the chaos the Speaker pronounced the measure passed. Later more discussion persuaded Gov. Alonzo Cornell to veto the bill.
On 29 March 1882 Roosevelt demanded an investigation of the New York Supreme Court Judge T. R. Westbrook and Attorney General Hamilton Ward. They debated his resolution on April 5, and one week later the Assembly voted 104 to 6 for the investigation. The Judiciary Committee was to make its report on May 31, but early that morning bribes of $2,500 each persuaded committee members to withdraw their approval from the majority report. The chairman said that Westbrook was only guilty of “excessive zeal” to save the Manhattan Elevated Railroad. The Assembly voted 77 to 35 to accept the report, and they adjourned on June 2. Roosevelt in October helped to organize the City Reform Club in Manhattan. In his Autobiography he wrote about what he learned during his early period in politics.
I became so impressed with the virtue
of complete independence that I proceeded to act
on each case purely as I personally viewed it, without
paying any heed to the principles and prejudices of others.
The result was that I speedily and deservedly
lost all power of accomplishing anything at all;
and I thereby learned the invaluable lesson that
in the practical activities of life no man can render
the highest service unless he can act in combination
with his fellows, which means a certain amount
of give and take between him and them.2
Roosevelt’s The Naval War of 1812 got good reviews, and in 1886 a special order put at least one copy on every US Navy ship. In August 1882 he joined the New York National Guard as a second lieutenant, and he was promoted to captain in February 1883.
The New York Assembly met on 2 January 1883, and the minority Republicans elected Roosevelt their leader. He worked with Gov. Grover Cleveland on civil service reform. Roosevelt criticized Jay Gould and the “wealthy criminal class.” In September he went to the Dakota Badlands and invested $14,000 in two cattle-ranches by the Little Missouri River. There he had a “hardy life with horse and rifle.” He also worked as a deputy sheriff. In November he was re-elected to the Assembly.
The new Assembly session began on 1 January 1884, and Roosevelt investigated corruption. On 12 February 1884 his wife Alice gave birth to a daughter; but two days later both his mother and his wife died. In his diary he wrote, “The light has gone out of my life.”
Roosevelt because of health issues supported Samuel Gompers in his effort to ban work in the tenements. At this time Roosevelt was skeptical of government helping people, and he opposed a pay increase for firemen and pensions for teachers. He was elected as an at-large delegate to the 1884 National Republican Convention. He considered James Blaine dishonest and thought President Arthur was even worse. He became friends with Henry Cabot Lodge. At the Convention in Chicago on June 3 he seconded Lodge’s nomination of the black John R. Lynch of Mississippi who was anti-machine and was elected temporary chairman. They supported for President Vermont’s black Senator George Edmunds who was nominated by Gov. John Long of Massachusetts. Edmunds was third in the voting behind Blaine and Arthur, and Blaine was nominated on the fourth ballot; but he lost the election to the Democrats’ Grover Cleveland. Roosevelt criticized Gov. Cleveland for having vetoed a recent reform bill. Lodge was running for Congress, and Roosevelt campaigned for him in Massachusetts; but the incumbent Democrat Rep. Lovering defeated Lodge by less than one percent.
Roosevelt in late July began building a house on his ranch in the Dakota Badlands. In June 1885 he returned to New York and stayed for eight weeks with his sister Anna and his daughter Alice at his new home in Oyster Bay he had built for $45,000. His Hunting Trips of a Ranchman was published in July. He became secretly engaged to his childhood friend Edith Carow on November 17.
In the Badlands the Deputy Sheriff Roosevelt and two ranch hands went after Redhead Finnegan and the gunmen Burnsted and Pfaffenbach for horse-stealing. and they pursued them and on the Little Missouri River from 30 March 1886 to April 11 when they captured the three thieves. Roosevelt withdrew the charge against Pfaffenbach, and he was present in August when Finnegan and Burnsted were sentenced to three years in prison.
Roosevelt had sponsored a bill in the New York Assembly to give the Mayor of New York City more authority. The lawyer Elihu Root promoted Roosevelt, and Republicans nominated him on October 15 as a candidate for Mayor of New York. An early poll reported by the New York Tribune showed that he was leading, but on October 31 the Star reported that President Cleveland, after he vetoed Roosevelt’s Tenure of Office Bill, said, “Of all the defective and shabby legislation which has been presented to me, this is the worst and the most inexcusable.”3 The New York World reprinted it the next day. In the election on November 2 Roosevelt came in third behind the Democrat Abram Hewitt and the United Labor candidate Henry George.
Roosevelt married Edith Carow on 2 December 1886, and they traveled to Italy, France, and London. In April 1887 he went to the Badlands to try to save his dying cattle, and he ended up losing $20,000. He published his Life of Thomas Hart Benton. He also wrote Essays on Practical Politics and Gouverneur Morris: The Study of His Life and Work, and they were published in 1888.
In April 1889 President Benjamin Harrison appointed Roosevelt one of three members of the US Civil Service Commission. Even though it paid only $3,500 a year, he accepted and began on May 13. He insisted on enforcing the laws. By then the Republican administration had replaced many Democrats in Postal Service jobs. Roosevelt’s mandate only covered 28,000 of the 140,000 jobs in that department. On May 20 he began examining the New York Custom House, and he recommended dismissing three officials. The other two commissioners, Charles Lyman and Hugh Thompson, were older and let him lead, and in June they went to the Great Lakes post offices. At Milwaukee the superintendent Hamilton Shidy, testified that Postmaster George H. Paul gave lucrative post office jobs to “whomever he chose,” and he ordered Shidy to make the list appear that they passed examinations. Roosevelt advised the removal of Paul. On July 28 the ex-postmaster Frank Hatton, who edited the Washington Post and hated civil service reform, began a series of attacks on Roosevelt. President Harrison did not dismiss Paul, but he accepted his resignation. The frustrated Roosevelt decided to go west and hunt bear.
His first two volumes on The Winning of the West, which described the period from 1769 to 1783, came out in June. In the fall he rented a house in Washington DC where he could be near his friends Lodge, John Hay, Henry Adams, and the Speaker of the House Thomas Reed. His family joined him there at the end of the year.
In the 1890 elections Republicans lost 93 seats in the House of Representatives and their majority. In both houses of Congress the spoils politicians had a majority, and on 27 January 1891 the House Committee on Reform in the Civil Service was ordered to conduct an investigation led by the outgoing Rep. Hamilton Ewart of South Carolina and the prosecutor Frank Hatton as his assistant. Roosevelt welcomed the probe and actively defended the Civil Service Commission and his own actions in the hearings that began on February 19 with 12 charges. On June 13 the committee’s report stated, “The public service has been greatly benefitted, and the law, on the whole, well-executed.”4
Roosevelt in May had read and enthusiastically agreed with The Influence of Sea Power Upon History by Alfred Thayer Mahan that advocated continuous growth of the United States Navy. Roosevelt published his History of the City of New York and the 146-page Report of Commissioner Roosevelt Concerning Political Assessments and the Use of Official Influence to Control Elections in the Federal Offices at Baltimore, Maryland. He yielded to the advice of commissioners Lyman and Thompson to release it during the summer when it would arouse less resistance. On 8 March 1892 Roosevelt went to New York for the executive meeting of the City Civil Service Reform Association, and he accused Postmaster General John Wanamaker and President Harrison of obstructing justice. Carl Schurz suggested the House committee ask why 25 federal employees advised to be dismissed in July 1891 were still getting their pay in March 1892.
Roosevelt visited Indian reservations and was upset by the wretchedness at Pine Ridge. In a speech on civil service reform he said, “To the Indians the workings of the spoils system at the agencies is a curse and an outrage.”5
In February 1895 revolutionaries in Cuba declared war on Spanish colonialism, and expansionists in Washington began discussing how to support Cuban independence. Roosevelt wrote to New York’s Gov. Levi Morton asking that if there is a war against Spain that he be included in any regiment sent out by the state because he must have a commission in the force going to Cuba. Roosevelt and Cabot Lodge co-authored Hero Tales From American History. Their heroes included George Washington, Daniel Boone, George Rogers Clark, Gouverneur Morris, John Quincy Adams, Frances Parkman, Stonewall Jackson, General Grant, and Abraham Lincoln.
Roosevelt at the end of March expressed a desire to be one of the four New York Police Commissioners. On April 3 he said he would accept, and his appointment was confirmed on April 17. President Cleveland had kept him on in his Civil Service position, and in his letter of resignation Roosevelt reported to him, “Since you yourself took office this time nearly six thousand positions have been put into the classified service.”6
When the New York City’s Board of Police Commissioners met, they elected Roosevelt their president. A Fusion Party had elected Mayor William Strong who provided a break from Tammany Hall politics. Roosevelt moved against corrupt Police Chief Thomas Byrnes, and he resigned on May 28 followed by the Inspector “Clubber” Williams in late May. New York’s Sunday Excise Law banned selling alcohol on Sundays, and in 1892 the Democrats in the legislature reaffirmed the law. On 10 June 1895 Roosevelt directed his officers to enforce rigidly the closing of saloons from midnight Saturday for 24 hours. On July 16 he spoke to German-Americans of the Good Government Club and said,
Where justice is bought,
where favor is the price of money or political influence,
the rich man held his own
and the poor man went to the wall.
Now all are treated exactly alike.7
Roosevelt became good friends with the journalist Lincoln Steffens and the reformer Jacob Riis. They wondered if the president of the Police Board was working to become the US President, and Roosevelt said,
Never, never, you must never either of you remind
a man at work on a political job that he may be President.
It almost always kills him politically.
He loses his nerve; he can’t do his work;
he gives up the very traits that are making him a possibility.
I, for instance, I am going to do great things here,
hard things that require all the courage, ability,
work that I am capable of….
I won’t let myself think of it; I must not, because if I do,
I will begin to work for it, I’ll be careful, calculating,
cautious in word and act, and so—I’ll beat myself. See?8
Roosevelt published “The Enforcement of the Law” in the September 1895 Forum, writing,
On entering office we found, what indeed had long been
a matter of common notoriety, that various laws,
and notably the Excise Law, were enforced rigidly
against people who had no political pull,
but were not enforced at all against the men
who had a political pull, or who possessed sufficient means
to buy off the high officials who controlled,
or had influence in, the Police Department.
All that we did was to enforce the laws,
not against some wrongdoers,
but honestly and impartially against all wrongdoers.9
While he was president of the Police Board for nearly two years he increased the law-enforcement by 1,600 men who were more qualified. By keeping men on their beats he improved discipline, and crime decreased. He introduced the first bicycle squad that was adopted in other places. He provided New York City with an honest election, and he got rid of much corruption by removing venal officers. He lowered the maximum age required, and he used the civil service reform of written examinations. About a hundred of the worst tenement slums were closed.
On 2 January 1896 Roosevelt supported President Cleveland’s asking for Congress to support the US mediation in a dispute between Venezuela and British Guiana because he favored supporting the Monroe Doctrine. He wrote, “The Monroe Doctrine forbids us to acquiesce in any territorial aggrandizement by a European power on American soil at the expense of an American state.”10
On 6 April 1897 President McKinley nominated Theodore Roosevelt to be Assistant Secretary of the Navy with a salary of $4,500 a year under the Navy Secretary John Long. He began working on April 19, and in a memorandum on the preparation of the fleet that he wrote for McKinley one week later he included four warnings of “trouble with Cuba.” On June 2 he spoke to the graduates of the Naval War College at Newport, Rhode Island agreeing with George Washington who said, “To be prepared for war is the most effectual means to promote peace.” Roosevelt said, “We need a large navy, a full proportion of powerful battleships able to meet those of any other nation.” He argued that keeping foreign navies out of the western hemisphere would reduce the chance of an unnecessary war and that the US force would be able to win a necessary war. During his speech he used the word “war” 62 times. He also said,
All the great masterful races have been fighting races;
and the minute that a race loses the hard fighting virtues,
then … it has lost its proud right
to stand as the equal of the best.
Cowardice in a race, as in an individual,
is the unpardonable sin….
Better a thousand times err on the side of over-readiness
to fight, than to err on the side of tame submission to injury,
or cold-blooded indifference to the misery of the oppressed.
No triumph is quite so great
as the supreme triumphs of war….
It may be that at some time in the dim future of the race
the need of war will vanish; but that time is yet ages distant.
As yet no nation can hold its place in the world,
or can do any work really worth doing, unless it stands
ready to guard its rights with an armed hand….
It is too late to prepare for war
when the time for peace has passed….
We should have to build, not merely the weapons we need,
but the plant with which to make them
in any large quantity….
Since the change in military conditions in modern times,
there has never been an instance in which a war
between two nations has lasted more than about two years.
In most recent wars the operations of the first ninety days
have decided the results of the conflict….
Diplomacy is utterly useless
when there is no force behind it;
the diplomat is the servant, not the master of the soldier….
There are higher things in this life
than the soft and easy enjoyment of material comfort.
It is through strife, or the readiness for strife,
that a nation must win greatness.
We ask for a great navy, partly because we feel that
no national life is worth having if the nation is not willing,
when the need shall arise,
to stake everything on the supreme arbitrament of war, and
to pour out its blood, its treasure, and its tears like water,
rather than submit to the loss of honor and renown.11
The entirety of this speech was printed in major newspapers across the nation with sensational results.
On May 3 Roosevelt had written to Alfred Thayer Mahan,
This letter must, of course, be considered
as entirely confidential, because in my position I am merely
carrying out the policy of the secretary and the President.
I suppose I need not tell you that as regards Hawaii
I take your views absolutely,
as indeed I do on foreign policy generally.
If I had my way we would annex those islands tomorrow.
If that is impossible
I would establish a protectorate over them.12
The Assistant Secretary of State William Day with support from Lodge and other expansionists persuaded President McKinley to approve the annexation of Hawaii on June 16. The next morning the Navy Secretary Long went on a two-week vacation. While he was gone, Roosevelt prepared a new war plan that was completed by June 30 and prepared for a war against Spain to liberate Cuba. The US Navy was to attack the Philippine Islands and perhaps even Spain in Europe.
On September 27 Roosevelt learned that Michigan’s Senator Zach Chandler was advising Long to put Commodore John A. Howell in command of the Asiatic Station. Roosevelt wanted Commodore George Dewey, and he got Senator Redfield Proctor of Vermont to persuade McKinley to appoint Dewey instead. Before Long returned, Roosevelt urged the construction of 6 battleships, 6 large cruisers, 75 torpedo-boats, 4 dry docks, and 95 rapid-fire guns along with 9,000 armor-piercing projectiles and 2 million pounds of smokeless gunpowder. In 1897 he published American Ideals and Other Essays.
Roosevelt was pleased that the battleship Maine was sent to Havana Harbor where it arrived on 25 January 1898. On the night of February 15 an explosion on the USS Maine caused the ship to sink as 262 men died. Roosevelt soon called it “an act of dirty treachery on the part of the Spaniards.”13 When Navy Secretary Long left for the afternoon on February 25, Roosevelt sent the following telegram to:
Dewey, Hong Kong: ORDER THE SQUADRON,
EXCEPT THE MONOCACY, TO HONG KONG.
KEEP FULL OF COAL.
IN THE EVENT OF DECLARATION OF WAR BY SPAIN,
YOUR DUTY WILL BE TO SEE THAT THE SPANISH
SQUADRON DOES NOT LEAVE THE ASIATIC COAST, AND THEN OFFENSIVE OPERATIONS IN PHILIPPINE ISLANDS.
KEEP OLYMPIA UNTIL FURTHER ORDERS.
Roosevelt14
He also alerted all other commanders to “Keep full of coal.” After Congress appropriated $50 million for the military, Roosevelt negotiated with the financier Charles R. Flint to buy the Brazilian ship Nictheroy for $500,000.
On March 28 Roosevelt sent a memo to Long that a flying machine built by Samuel Langley could be used in a war, and that year Langley would get $50,000 from the War Department and $20,000 from the Smithsonian to develop his “Aerodrome.” While McKinley was preparing to declare war against Spain in early April, Roosevelt said, “McKinley has no more backbone than a chocolate éclair.”15
Roosevelt was looking for a fighting commission in the army after having “the Navy in good shape,” and he managed to be appointed a Lt. Col. under Col. Leonard Wood. On May 1 Commodore Dewey’s force destroyed Spain’s Asiatic Squadron in Manila Harbor. Roosevelt recruited volunteers for what he called the “Rough Riders” from Harvard and other colleges. They gathered in San Antonio, Texas. Men were drawn more to the ambitious Roosevelt because they noticed that Wood often asked for advice but rarely sought information while Roosevelt sought information but never advice. On May 29 they loaded 1,200 horses and mules on seven trains that took them in four days nearly to Tampa, Florida. They rode horses for the last six miles.
A fleet of ships carried them to the southern coast of Cuba, and on June 22 they debarked at Daiquirí and marched to Siboney. Col. Wood’s Rough Riders took a trail at dawn on June 24, and in the battle of Las Guasimas they had to overcome Spanish snipers to attack entrenched Spaniards on a ridge. The Americans with some Cuban rebels fought under General Joseph Wheeler and had 1,764 men against 1,500 Spanish soldiers. The allies with only one field gun attacked the Spaniards who had two mountain guns. The Spaniards fled to Santiago. The American side had 17 killed and 52 wounded while the Spanish had only 21 casualties. On June 30 Wood was promoted to brigadier general, and Roosevelt became a regimental commander. General William Rufus Shafter led 8,412 men with 4 Gatling guns toward Santiago on July 1 while Roosevelt led the Rough Riders in attacks on Kettle Hill and San Juan Hill. They defeated 521 Spaniards, though the Americans had more men killed, wounded, and missing. The Rough Riders had 89 casualties. Roosevelt at Santiago spent $5,000 of his own money to make sure his men had good food and medicine. They suffered from malaria, and on August 3 he wrote a petition demanding they be sent to the Northern coast of the United States lest they be destroyed by yellow fever. On August 15 they reached Montauk on Long Island. President McKinley came there and shook hands with the popular hero Roosevelt.
The Republican Gov. Frank Black of New York was tarnished by a scandal, and even Tom Platt agreed to support Roosevelt for governor. He had declared he was a legal resident of Washington since October 1897 which enabled him to save $50,000 in taxes. Yet the New York Constitution required candidates to reside continuously in New York for five years prior to nomination. He consulted his lawyers Joseph Choate and Elihu Root, and no one accused him of wrong-doing. On October 3 Roosevelt sent a check for $995 to pay his New York City taxes. Republicans and Independents nominated Roosevelt, and he defeated the Democratic candidate, Judge August van Wyck by 17,794 votes.
On 1 January 1899 Theodore Roosevelt became Governor of New York. At midnight he had to break glass to get into the executive mansion because servants had locked the doors. New York’s US Senator Thomas Platt wanted to control Roosevelt who found ways to come to terms with him. In his first annual message on January 2 Gov. Roosevelt said he would be “an independent organization man of the best type.” He declined to appoint Platt’s choice of Francis Hendricks as the Superintendent of Public Works. He gave Platt four names he would accept, and Platt chose Col. John Nelson Partridge on January 13. Roosevelt spent 15 minutes twice a day answering questions by reporters. In his Autobiography he wrote,
At that time neither the parties nor the public
had any realization that publicity was necessary,
or any adequate understanding of the dangers
of the “invisible empire”
which throve by what was done in secrecy.”16
In the first seven years of the 1890s there had been 156 industrial mergers in the United States, and in 1898 the $900 million of capital incorporated set a new record. On March 18 Roosevelt announced that he wanted a system to tax corporations on the public franchises they controlled. Platt demanded a joint legislative committee to investigate the issue and then report in 1900, and Roosevelt agreed; but on April 7 he said he would sign Senator John Ford’s Franchise Bill if it passed which it did with amendments on May 27. Roosevelt considered it “the most important law passed in recent times by any State Legislature.” On May 2 he had signed the Hallock Bird Protection Bill that outlawed killing and selling nongame birds for commercial purposes. He hired scientists to work for New York’s Fisheries, Game, and Forest Commission.
On June 29 he announced that he was not a candidate for President, and he endorsed McKinley. Roosevelt wrote a short biography of Oliver Cromwell in one month and published it in August. In a letter he wrote about Cromwell, “His making himself a dictator was unnecessary and destroyed the possibility of making the effects of that particular revolution permanent.”17 That summer he published The Rough Riders.
Roosevelt had helped Gov. Cleveland pass a Civil Service law in 1883, but it was repealed in 1897. He managed to get a Civil Service Act that was more advanced than that of any other state. Gov. Roosevelt signed bills that improved working conditions in tenement sweatshops, improved factory inspections, limited working hours by women and children, and put state workers on an eight-hour day. On 28 September 1899 Gov. Roosevelt led a parade in New York City that included Admiral Dewey, President McKinley, Senator Mark Hanna, and 35,000 marchers. Vice President Hobart died on November 21.
Gov. Roosevelt in his annual message in December asked for more public control over public utilities that were acquiring wealth immorally, and he wanted lumber laws altered to prohibit dumping wood-dyes, sawdust, and other industrial products in Adirondack streams. He asked for a forest system conducted by scientific principles. He pleaded for protecting birds, especially songbirds. He wanted to dismiss the Superintendent of Insurance Louis F. Payn who had been loaned $435,000, and he ordered an investigation. On 20 January 1900 Tom Platt told Roosevelt not to fire Payn. Roosevelt asked Platt to find a replacement, or he would make his own choice which turned out to be Hendricks. Platt announced that in his opinion Roosevelt “ought to take the Vice-Presidency both for National and State reasons.”18
On March 2 Orville Platt’s amendment defined the withdrawal of US troops but also authorized the United States to intervene in Cuba if requested by Cuban authorities, and this was put in the Cuba constitution.
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge urged Roosevelt to run for Vice President, and newspapers began suggesting that. McKinley appointed Lodge the chairman of the Republican Convention. Roosevelt was not sure he wanted to be Vice President, and he asked to be re-nominated as Governor. On April 17 he was elected as a New York delegate-at-large to the convention in Philadelphia. On May 11 President McKinley gave a dinner in honor of Roosevelt. Yet he complained when he heard that McKinley and his advisors did not want him to run. Then Roosevelt said he would accept, if the Convention wanted him. When he arrived in Philadelphia, he was cheered. While seconding the nomination of McKinley, Roosevelt said,
We stand on the threshold of a new century
big with the fate of mighty nations.
It rests with us now to decide whether in the opening years
of that century we shall march to fresh triumphs or whether
at the outset we shall cripple ourselves for the contest.
Is America a weakling,
to shrink from the work of the great world-powers?
No. The young giant of the West stands on a continent
and clasps the crest of an ocean on either hand.
Our nation, glorious in youth and strength,
looks into the future with eager eyes
and rejoices as a strong man to run a race.19
All 926 delegates nominated McKinley for President again. Roosevelt for Vice President got 925 with only himself voting no. During the campaign while McKinley stayed home, Roosevelt traveled 21,209 miles in 24 states and gave 673 speeches in 567 towns to 3 million people. In the election on November 6 the Republicans had their greatest victory since Grant was re-elected in 1872. Roosevelt’s governorship ended on the last day of 1900, and he was inaugurated as Vice President on 4 March 1901. Four days later the US Senate adjourned until December, and Roosevelt went home to Oyster Bay.
In a speech at the Minnesota State Fair on September 2 Roosevelt said,
There is a homely adage which runs,
“Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.”
If the American nation will speak softly
and yet build and keep at a pitch
of the highest training a thoroughly efficient navy,
the Monroe Doctrine will go far.20
On September 6 he was at a luncheon of the Vermont Fish and Game League on an island in Lake Champlain. That afternoon he was notified that President McKinley had been shot in Buffalo, and Roosevelt immediately went to see him. When McKinley seemed to be recovering, Roosevelt joined his family in the Adirondacks. On September 14 he received a telegram that the President had died.
Not yet 43 Theodore Roosevelt became the youngest President in the history of the United States. He traveled all night to Buffalo, and in the afternoon of September 14 he took the oath of office. War Secretary Elihu Root advised him to declare his “intention to continue unbroken the policy of President McKinley for the peace, prosperity, and honor of the country,”21 and Roosevelt in the shortest address by a new US President said,
I will take the oath.
And in this hour of deep and terrible national bereavement,
I wish to state that it shall be my aim to continue, absolutely
without variance, the policy of President McKinley,
for the peace and honor of our beloved country.
He announced that the six cabinet officers would remain “at least for the present.” His first presidential order proclaimed September 19 a day of official mourning.
Late at night on September 29 Roosevelt met secretly with Booker T. Washington in the White House. After the death of a Federal judge in Montgomery, Alabama, Washington in a letter asked the President to appoint the former governor Thomas G. Jones because he was for a fair election law, opposed lynching, and advocated education for both races. Although Jones was a Democrat, who voted for Bryan, Roosevelt appointed him. When news got out that Booker T. Washington dined at the White House on October 16, there was a backlash that surprised Roosevelt.
On November 18 Secretary of State John Hay and the British Ambassador Julian Paunceforte signed a treaty that granted to the United States the exclusive right to build a canal in Central America.
Roosevelt asked the Attorney General Philander Knox to help him with his First Annual Message to Congress which he read aloud to his cabinet on November 22 before it was delivered to Congress on December 3. He began with another calamity of an assassinated President, and he suggested that politically violent immigrants “should be kept out of this country.” Then he paid tribute to President McKinley and the enormous prosperity of the American economy. He admitted that the accumulation of wealth had led to abuses, and he noted that the evil of over-capitalization needed correction. He suggested the first step is knowing the facts through publicity. He wrote,
It is no limitation upon property rights
or freedom of contract to require that
when men receive from Government
the privilege of doing business under corporate form,
which frees them from individual responsibility,
and enables them to call into their enterprises
the capital of the public,
they shall do so upon absolutely truthful representations
as to the value of the property
in which the capital is to be invested.
Corporations engaged in interstate commerce
should be regulated if they are found to exercise
a license working to the public injury.
It should be as much the aim of those
who seek for social-betterment
to rid the business world of crimes of cunning
as to rid the entire body politic of crimes of violence.
Great corporations exist only because
they are created and safeguarded by our institutions;
and it is therefore our right and our duty to see that
they work in harmony with these institutions.
The first essential in determining
how to deal with the great industrial combinations
is knowledge of the facts—publicity.
In the interest of the public, the Government should have
the right to inspect and examine the workings
of the great corporations engaged in interstate business.
Publicity is the only sure remedy which we can now invoke.
What further remedies are needed
in the way of governmental regulation, or taxation,
can only be determined after publicity has been obtained,
by process of law, and in the course of administration.
The first requisite is knowledge, full and complete—
knowledge which may be made public to the world.
Artificial bodies, such as corporations
and joint stock or other associations, depending upon
any statutory law for their existence or privileges,
should be subject to proper governmental supervision,
and full and accurate information as to their operations
should be made public regularly at reasonable intervals.
The large corporations, commonly called trusts,
Though organized in one State,
always do business in many States,
often doing very little business in the State
where they are incorporated.
There is utter lack of uniformity
in the State laws about them;
and as no State has any exclusive interest in
or power over their acts,
it has in practice proved impossible
to get adequate regulation through State action.
Therefore, in the interest of the whole people,
the Nation should, without interfering
with the power of the States in the matter itself,
also assume power of supervision and regulation
over all corporations doing an interstate business.
This is especially true where the corporation derives
a portion of its wealth from the existence of some
monopolistic element or tendency in its business.22x
He asserted that railways are public servants, and their rates should be just and open to all. He was also concerned about the workers and wrote,
The most vital problem with which this country,
and for that matter the whole civilized world, has to deal,
is the problem which has for one side the betterment
of social conditions, moral and physical, in large cities,
and for another side the effort
to deal with that tangle of far-reaching questions
which we group together when we speak of “labor.”
The chief factor in the success of each man—
wage-worker, farmer, and capitalist alike—
must ever be the sum total
of his own individual qualities and abilities.
Second only to this comes the power
of acting in combination or association with others.
Very great good has been and will be accomplished
by associations or unions of wage-workers,
when managed with forethought,
and when they combine insistence upon their own rights
with law-abiding respect for the rights of others.23
Roosevelt placed great value on forests, and he wrote,
The forests are natural reservoirs.
By restraining the streams in flood
and replenishing them in drought
they make possible the use of waters otherwise wasted.
They prevent the soil from washing,
and so protect the storage reservoirs from filling up with silt.
Forest conservation is therefore
an essential condition of water conservation.
The forests alone cannot, however, fully regulate
and conserve the waters of the arid region.
Great storage works are necessary to equalize
the flow of streams and to save the flood waters.
Their construction has been conclusively shown to be
an undertaking too vast for private effort.24
President Roosevelt did not allow reporters to quote him, and paraphrases had to be approved. Grover Cleveland said, “Roosevelt is the most perfectly equipped and the most effective politician thus far seen in the Presidency.”25
The US House of Representatives voted 308 to 2 for a canal in Nicaragua on 9 January 1902. Yet on Saturday the 18th Roosevelt issued a press release that the Canal Commission had decided that Panama is best, and the report was given to Congress on Monday. Roosevelt replaced the Postmaster General Charles Emory Smith and the First Assistant Perry S. Heath who were accused of using their positions for political purposes. Roosevelt replaced Smith with Henry Payne on January 9 and Treasury Secretary Lyman Gage with L. M. Shaw on February 1.
Mail to the President demanded the prosecution of trusts, and the US Attorney General Philander Knox began working on it in February. He found that in 483 CE the Eastern Roman Emperor Zeno ordered,
No one may presume to exercise a monopoly of any kind …
and if anyone shall presume to practice a monopoly,
let his property by forfeited
and himself condemned to perpetual exile.26
Roosevelt and Knox agreed with the British philosopher Benjamin Kidd who wrote in Social Evolution that laissez-faire may suit one phase of national development but not the next. Since the Sherman Anti-trust Act of 1890 the US Supreme Court in U.S. v. E. C. Knight in 1895 tolerated monopolies, but U.S. v. Trans-Missouri Freight Association in 1897 decided that any combination restraining trade was unlawful. Justice John Harlan had argued, “Combinations, governed entirely by the law of greed … threaten the integrity of our institutions,”27 and he was still on the Court. Knox told Roosevelt he could win a suit. By February 20 the US was suing the Northern Securities Company for having combined the Northern Pacific and Great Northern railway systems. J. P. Morgan and members of his Corsair Club were opposed, and even the War Secretary Root was concerned that he was not consulted. On March 10 Knox named Morgan, James J. Hill, and E. H. Harriman as defendants. Bankers and industrialists began to consider Senator Mark Hanna as a presidential candidate in 1904. Hanna received visitors in the Capitol’s vice-presidential suite.
General Nelson Miles was angry about secret reports of American atrocities against Filipinos in the insurrection, and these stories spread in March. War Secretary Root wrote to Senator Lodge acknowledging 44 cases of American cruelty with 39 soldiers already convicted by military justice. Major Cornelius Gardener governed Tayabas and reported that American officers and soldiers called the Filipinos “niggers,” and Governor Taft suppressed his report for seven weeks. Lodge’s committee published the Gardener Report on April 11, provoking outrage. On the 13th the Anti-Imperialist League distributed testimony by Major C. M. Waller who was being tried for atrocities in Samar. He said that General Jacob Smith had ordered killed all persons able to bear arms over the age of ten. Roosevelt on April 15 told Root to cable General Adna Chaffee, the US commander in the Philippines “to see that the most vigorous care is exercised to detect and prevent any cruelty or brutality, and that men who are guilty thereof are punished.”28 Roosevelt ordered General Smith to be brought before a court martial. Taft wrote that Filipinos are liars, satanic, and unscrupulous, that they were “utterly unfit for self-government.” He predicted, “They need the training of fifty to a hundred years before they shall even realize what Anglo-Saxon liberty is.”29
Navy Secretary Long retired on April 30, and he was replaced by Congressman William Moody of Massachusetts. After visiting Cuba the War Secretary Root returned to find that the Anti-Imperialist League had published an inaccurate account of his war “severities.” Roosevelt asked Senator Lodge to defend Root in a speech that he made on May 5 in which he described cruelties experienced by American prisoners of war in the Philippines. During the debate Senator Hoar joined Democrats in voting for complete Filipino independence. In his speech Hoar said,
You have wasted six hundred millions of treasure.
You have sacrificed nearly ten thousand American lives—
the flower of our youth.
You have devastated provinces.
You have slain uncounted thousands
of the people you desire to benefit.30
On May 20 President Roosevelt directed General Leonard Wood in Havana to transfer the government to the representatives of the people of Cuba, and President Tomás Estrada Palma accepted the documents. During the American occupation Cuba became free of yellow fever for the first time in nearly two centuries. On Memorial Day (May 30) Roosevelt attempted to defend his Philippine policy, but his comparing the inhuman cruelty and barbarity of “lynchings” to what US troops had done in the Philippines alienated the South and bothered northerners. On June 3 Senate Republicans except Hoar approved the Philippines bill.
On June 13 Roosevelt sent Congress a Special Message on Cuba. Although Cubans resented the United States garrison at Guantánamo, he was asking Congress to approve reciprocal trade with an independent Cuba.
On that day he sent a letter to the House Appropriations Committee chairman Cannon asking him to support the National Reclamation Bill to give relief to arid regions in the West. Congress passed it, and the President signed on June 17 what funded 600 persons working on civil engineering in the National Geological Survey. The federal irrigation project affected 16 states in the West. The US Senate had begun debating the Central American canal on June 4, and on the 19th they voted 67 to 6 to build a Panama canal and 44-34 for the Spooner Amendment which approved purchasing assets from the French effort for $40 million. The bill became law on June 28, and Congress adjourned on July 1.
US Supreme Court Justice Horace Gray resigned, and on August 11 Roosevelt nominated the Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, Oliver Wendell Homes Jr.
Anthracite coal miners had gone on strike in eastern Pennsylvania on May 12, and by summer about 250,000 coal miners were on strike. Roosevelt went on a tour of New England. On August 20 he proclaimed the Alexander Archipelago Forest Reserve in Alaska. On the 23rd he spoke to 20,000 people outside City Hall in Providence, saying,
At a time when most men prosper somewhat
some men always prosper greatly….
Under present-day conditions it is as necessary
to have corporations in the business world as it is
to have organizations, unions, among wage workers….
The great corporations which we have grown to speak of
rather loosely as trusts are the creatures of the State,
and the State not only has the right to control them,
but it is in duty bound to control them
wherever need of such control is shown.31
On August 26 he spoke to about 250,000 people from the back of a train. On September 3, the last day of the tour, a trolley car ran into the President’s carriage, and Roosevelt was thrown down, smashing his face on the ground and injuring a shin while his Secret Service bodyguard “Big Bill” Craig was killed. Roosevelt’s face was swollen, and the injury to his shin developed into a large tumor that required two operations to remove. He had to use a wheelchair for a time and then crutches.
Iowa’s Gov. Albert Cummins got the state platform to adopt a policy to prohibit discriminatory ratemaking and to modify tariff schedules to prevent them from sheltering a monopoly. Roosevelt did not like this and went on a trip to the Midwest to argue against them; but his swollen shin caused him to return to Washington on September 24.
On the 30th the Massachusetts Gov. Murray Crane told Roosevelt he must intervene to end the coal strike before it has dreadful consequences. The strike had been going for five months. Roosevelt agreed to mediate, and the meetings began in Washington in October with George Baer and two other railway owners and John Mitchell of the United Mine Workers. Grover Cleveland agreed to sell his coal shares in order to help the mediation. Roosevelt instructed General John Schofield how he may need to intervene to end the strike, dispossess the owners, and run the mines. On October 13 J. P. Morgan met with the owners, and they devised a 5-man commission of experts to make a ruling. This was accepted after it was increased to seven including one labor man. Roosevelt was credited with helping to resolve a very large problem. In March 1903 the Anthracite Coal Commission presented to Roosevelt a report that granted the coal miners a 10% increase in wages, a 9-hour workday, and arbitration for job disputes, but beyond their mandate they considered recognizing the United Mine Workers .
In the elections on 4 November 1902 the Democrats gained 25 seats in the US House of Representatives while Republicans gained 6 and maintained a 206-176 advantage. In the US Senate the Democrats gained one more seat as Republicans still had a 57-32 majority. Roosevelt appointed the African-American, Dr. William D. Crum, as Collector of Customs in Charleston, South Carolina.
The President went hunting in Mississippi on November 14, and despite efforts of others to help him shoot a bear, he failed to do so. The Washington Post cartoonist Clifford Berryman began depicting Roosevelt with a black bear. More cartoons made the bear look cute, and a toy company in Germany began producing bear cubs that sold for $1.50 in New York. For decades these “Teddy Bears” would multiply into millions.
The Roosevelts moved into the refurbished White House, and he worked on his Second Annual Message which he sent to Congress on December 2. He reported on the prosperous economy, suggested adjusting tariffs, and proposed creating a Secretary of Commerce. He described a favorable trend for humanity writing,
As civilization grows warfare becomes less and less
the normal condition of foreign relations.
The last century has seen a marked diminution of wars
between civilized powers;
wars with uncivilized powers are largely mere matters
of international police duty,
essential for, the welfare of the world.
Wherever possible, arbitration or some similar method
should be employed in lieu of war
to settle difficulties between civilized nations,
although as yet the world has not progressed sufficiently
to render it possible, or necessarily desirable,
to invoke arbitration in every case.
The formation of the international tribunal
which sits at The Hague is an event of good omen
from which great consequences
for the welfare of all mankind may flow.
It is far better, where possible,
to invoke such a permanent tribunal
than to create special arbitrators for a given purpose.
It is a matter of sincere congratulation to our country that
the United States and Mexico should have been the first
to use the good offices of The Hague Court.32
He hoped the planned canal across Central America would benefit the United States and be important for the world. He claimed that no nation need fear aggression from the United States. He hinted at a future way of preventing wars when he wrote,
More and more the increasing interdependence
and complexity of international political
and economic relations render it incumbent
on all civilized and orderly powers
to insist on the proper policing of the world.33
He believed there was no chance of trouble with a foreign power, and as usual he called for a strong navy to “insure its continuance.” He reported, “For the first time in our history naval maneuvers on a large scale are being held under the immediate command of the Admiral of the Navy.”34 Then he described the need for more funds for the US Navy.
On November 25 Britain and Germany had informed the United States that they intended to proceed against Venezuela to collect their debts. Yet in his message he never mentioned Germany nor Venezuela. By December 4 the US Navy Secretary Moody had deployed 53 warships near Venezuela where Germany and their British ally had only 29. On the 7th Germany and Britain told Venezuela’s President Cipriano Castro that they were closing their consulates in Caracas. The next day the German ambassador Theodor von Holleben met with Roosevelt in the White House. The President later reported that he warned him,
I should be obliged to interfere, by force if necessary,
if the Germans took any action which looked like
the acquisition of territory in Venezuela
or elsewhere along the Caribbean.35
Roosevelt told him secretly that Berlin had ten days to send “a total disclaimer,” or he would order Admiral Dewey “to observe matters along Venezuela.” On December 9 allied ships from the blockade destroyed four Venezuelan gunboats. President Castro proposed arbitrating all the claims, and he asked the United States to intercede. US Secretary of State John Hay sent that proposal to London and Berlin. Kaiser Wilhelm II decided to refrain from using force and said they would follow the British lead. After Venezuelans boarded a British merchant ship and briefly arrested the crew, the British did not get an apology. On December 13 their ships and one German cruiser bombarded Venezuelan forts at Puerto Cabello. On the 19th Britain and Germany asked Roosevelt to arbitrate their claims against Venezuela.
As the US Congress gathered for its last session on 5 January 1903 before the inauguration of the new Congress on March 4, President Roosevelt was ready with his legislative priorities. The power of the corporations and the American economy were growing so fast that oil production in 1902 had increased by 27%. His three ways to control the trusts included a new Commerce Department with a Bureau of Corporations for investigations, banning railway rebates for big corporations, and the Expedition Act to fund the Justice Department’s actions to break up large combinations that were illegal. Rep. Charles Littlefield of Maine had a bill to empower the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) against monopolies, but Roosevelt considered his Commerce Department’s Bureau of Corporations more practical. Attorney General Knox wanted government and industry to cooperate by exchanging information.
President Roosevelt and Secretary of State John Hay hosted a diplomatic reception at the White House on January 8. Hay told Cuba’s minister Don Gonzalo de Quesada that if Congress did not approve their reciprocal trade treaty by March 4, the President would summon the new Congress to a special session. Roosevelt warned Venezuela’s President Castro that he had the means to enforce the arbitration agreement. Columbia’s chargé d’affaires, Dr. Thomas Herrán, was getting ambiguous directions from Bogotá on the canal treaty through Panama. On January 22 Roosevelt conferred with Senators Hanna, Spooner, and the Foreign Relations chairman Shelby Cullom of Illinois on the Panama Canal Treaty. Columbia wanted more money for the land, and on that day Hay wrote to Herrán that the US would increase the annual payment from $100,000 to $250,000. Herrán had orders to accept an offer to avoid a long delay, and he signed the treaty. On January 24 Hay and the British ambassador Michael H. Herbert signed a treaty that established the boundary between the US Territory of Alaska and Canada.
Roosevelt came to the defense of the black Mrs. Minnie Cox who had been appointed postmaster in Indianola, Mississippi by President Benjamin Harrison. A meeting of whites demanded she resign, and Indianola’s mayor threatened her with violence if she came back. Roosevelt did not accept her resignation. He kept the Indianola post office closed, and they had to get their mail 30 miles away in Greenville. On January 12 Roosevelt appointed a black Assistant District Attorney in Boston. These issues provoked a backlash and filibusters by southern Democrats in the US Senate.
On February 7 Roosevelt told France’s new ambassador, Jules Jusserand, that he was not for disarmament and that he was building up the army and navy to handle any foes. The US House of Representatives approved four new battleships and two armored cruisers, and the US Senate created an Army General Staff that Root wanted. Congress approved the US Department of Commerce and Labor on February 14. Four days later George Cortelyou, who had been McKinley’s personal secretary and a top advisor to Roosevelt, became the new Secretary of Commerce and Labor in the cabinet. These successes led the Washington Evening Star to call President Roosevelt the original “trust-buster.” When Admiral Dewey bragged that the Venezuelan solution was “an object lesson to the Kaiser,” Roosevelt reprimanded him and wrote to him,
Do let me entreat you to say nothing that can be
taken hold of by those anxious to foment trouble
between ourselves and any foreign power,
or who delight in giving the impression that as a nation
we are walking about with a chip on our shoulder.
We are too big a people to be able to be careless
in what we say.36
As the old Congress was ending without voting on Cuban reciprocity, Roosevelt proclaimed that the US Senate would meet on March 5. If funds were not provided for the Navy, the House would be called back too. On March 3 a House-Senate conference approved funding for five new battleships, but the filibustering Senator Tillman of South Carolina demanded money for his state. On March 17 the US Senate approved the Hay-Herrán Treaty voting 73 to 5. One week later Roosevelt sent the Isthmian Canal Commission to Panama to report on what had been done there.
Roosevelt in March took on the challenge of saving the bird rookeries of Florida. The Indian River Lagoon contained Pelican Island and 4,300 species of animals and plants including 685 fish and 370 bird species. Fishermen did not like competing with the skillful brown pelicans, and some shot at them. Paul Kroegel aimed to save the 3,000 pelicans on Pelican Island, and Roosevelt enforced the Lacey Act and had those who shot the protected nongame birds put in jail. The ornithologist Frank M. Chapman helped Roosevelt establish federal bird reservations, and the President made Kroegel the first national wildlife refuge warden on Pelican Island on April 1. Roosevelt also organized the Biological Survey for wildlife protection. When the Warden Guy Bradley tried to arrest violators, a member of Walter Smith’s gang shot Bradley dead. Roosevelt responded by appointing more wardens in Florida in collaboration with the Audubon Society and expanded federal bird reservations to include protection of cormorants, herons, egrets, and other nongame birds.
On April 1 Roosevelt boarded a train at Altoona, Pennsylvania for a 66-day and 14,000-mile trip to the West that would take him to 150 towns in 25 states where he gave over 260 speeches. At Chicago he spoke to a crowd of 6,000 in an auditorium designed for 5,000, and he gave them his “big stick” speech that discussed how to implement the Monroe Doctrine. At St. Paul he talked about tariffs, then addressed labor issues in Sioux Falls, and his Philippines debacle in Fargo.
Roosevelt camped in the Yellowstone National Park from April 8 to the 24th, and they learned that the US Circuit Court in St. Louis had decided unanimously that any combination that could restrain trade whether exercised by a holding company or not violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. At Yellowstone he spent time with John Burroughs who wrote about nature and published John James Audubon in 1902 and Camping and Tramping with Roosevelt in 1905. Roosevelt spoke near the Northern Pacific Railroad depot in Gardiner, Montana about how national parks are essential to democracy to protect it from vandals and exploiters, and the Forest and Stream magazine published the whole speech.
About 50,000 people welcomed Roosevelt to Omaha, Nebraska, and he urged them to plant more trees. His executive orders in 1902 established the Dismal River Reserve and the Niobrara Forest Reserve, and in the spring of 1903 they had planted 70,000 jack pine seeds from Minnesota and 30,000 ponderosa seedlings from the Black Hills. Roosevelt’s Union Pacific train stopped at Oskaloosa, Iowa on April 28 so that he could see Rep. John F. Lacey who did more to protect wildlife than anyone else in Congress. About 30,000 people came to his speech dedicating a new YMCA building. Lacey urged him to protect historic sites in New Mexico and forests in Alaska.
Roosevelt met Grover Cleveland in St. Louis at the World’s Fair dedication honoring Thomas Jefferson and celebrating the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase. In his presidency Roosevelt would preserve over 234 million acres which was half the size of that territorial expansion. Between 1899 and 1907 the Roosevelt Administration helped indict 1,021 timber violators and convicted 126.
On May 6 Roosevelt arrived at the Grand Canyon in the Arizona Territory with Governor Brodie, and he was impressed by the immense canyon. People there had been discussing whether to preserve it in its natural condition or begin mining it for zinc, copper, asbestos, and other precious metals. Roosevelt said,
I want to ask you to do one thing in connection with it.
In your own interest and the interest of all the country
keep this great wonder of nature as it now is.
I hope you won’t have a building of any kind
to mar the grandeur and sublimity of the cañon.
You cannot improve upon it.
The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it.
Keep it for your children and your children’s children
and all who come after you
as one of the great sights for Americans to see.37
Roosevelt would proclaim the Grand Canyon Game Preserve in November 1906, and it would become a National Monument in January 1908 and a National Park in February 1919.
During the spring of 1903 irrigation projects were being constructed in Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, and the Arizona Territory where a large dam was being built in the Salt River Valley. They were expected to cost about $7 million, and then the settlers would repay the government over ten years. In addition to reclamation and preservation Roosevelt approved engineering projects to promote irrigation and renewable hydropower that also caused some environmental disruption.
Roosevelt spent three days with John Muir in Yosemite National Park, and he praised California for its beautiful flowers. On May 11 he said, “I am glad to see your big trees and to see that they are being preserved. They should be, as they are the heritage of the ages.”38 They honored Roosevelt by naming a redwood tree after him. On May 13 Stanford University’s President David Starr Jordan introduced Roosevelt who talked about Congress saving the wilderness heritage. Over 200,000 people gathered along the streets to see him in San Francisco. In his speech he predicted, “In the century that is opening the commerce and the progress of the Pacific will be factors of incalculable moment in the history of the world.”39 He went from Sacramento to Mount Shasta, and at Portland, Oregon, 20,000 people turned out for the dedication of a Lewis and Clark Memorial.
The Roosevelt Special train left Seattle and stopped at Walla Walla, Washington and in Helena, Montana on its way back to Washington DC where it arrived on June 5. By then Republican organizations in 16 states had endorsed him for the 2004 nomination. In his speeches he had begun offering people a Square Deal.
The American Hebrew reported that a Russian pogrom, which was probably ordered by Tsar Nicholas II, in April killed about 120 Jews in Kishinev and injured over 500. On June 15 Leo N. Levi and five Jewish leaders told President Roosevelt that Americans were contributing to help 10,000 homeless refugees. Roosevelt asked Hay and Root if he should offer $100 of his own money, and they said it was not politically wise to interfere in a sovereign nation. Roosevelt expressed sympathy and told how he had sent forty Jewish police to protect an agitator who was denouncing Jews in New York, and he promised to read their petition very carefully. Roosevelt agreed to have Secretary of State Hay send a cable to Russia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs in July with the text of conditions for Jews in Russia in the petition which could be published worldwide.
On the night of June 22 a mob near Wilmington, Delaware broke into a prison and burned to death a black man named White who had killed a white girl in her teens. On August 9 Roosevelt sent an open letter to Indiana’s Gov. Winfield T. Durbin thanking him for taking some action against lynching. He wrote,
Even where the real criminal is reached, the wrong done
by the mob to the community itself is well-nigh as great.
Especially is this true
where the lynching is accompanied with torture.
There are certain hideous sights which when once seen
can never be wholly erased from the mental retina.
The mere fact of having seen them implies degradation.
This is a thousandfold stronger when instead of
merely seeing the deed the man has participated in it.
Whoever in any part of our country has ever taken part
in lawlessly putting to death a criminal
by the dreadful torture of fire must forever after
have the awful spectacle of his own handiwork
seared into his brain and soul.
He can never again be the same man.40
By August there had been 3,500 nationwide strikes in 1903. James S. Clarkson headed patronage outside Washington and sent Roosevelt statistics showing that socialists’ votes were increasing, and he reminded the President that he was promising “a square deal.” He had enforced an open shop in the Government Printing Office, and Roosevelt said, “I will not for one moment submit to dictation by the labor unions any more than by the trusts.”41
After a long lunch with Roosevelt the incoming House Speaker Joseph Cannon visited Wall Street on July 23 and said he could not discuss financial legislation during a financial panic. Banks stopped giving credit, and syndicates sold investments in high-grade securities. This caused US Steel stock to go down over 50%, and J. P. Morgan’s United States Shipbuilding Company became bankrupt. Four brokers were out of business.
At night on September 1 a youth with a gun was trying to shoot Roosevelt through a White House window because he was not helping organized labor and the working man; but two guards overcame him before he could shoot. Roosevelt gave a speech on September 7 (Labor Day) in Syracuse. He said that true liberties can only come through order and square-dealing between capitalists and workers. When there is a recession or strikes and violence, the first to suffer most are those “who are least well off.”
On June 13 the New York World published an article on how Roosevelt was determined to build a canal in Panama even if Panamanians had to secede from Colombia which had rejected the deal offered them. On August 12 the Colombian Senate voted 24 to 0 with 2 abstaining to reject the US treaty offer. They demanded at least $5 million more in addition to kickbacks from the Panama Railroad and the Compagnie Nouvelle in which Philippe Bunau-Varilla had large investments. After meeting with Roosevelt two days later the Senate chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee Shelby Cullom told the press that the Roosevelt Administration might make a treaty with Panama which may break away from Colombia.
The expert on international law, John Bassett Moore, assured Roosevelt that the 1846 US treaty with New Granada, which later became Colombia, could be considered still valid. US President Fillmore had sent troops to the Isthmus in 1852, and Colombia did not object. Roosevelt found that since 1846 there had been 53 insurrections, riots, and revolts in Panama, and he stated the United States had not perpetrated any of them. At least ten times the US intervened against rebels on the Panama Railroad, and Bogotá had requested six of them including two during Roosevelt’s administration. He believed that building the canal was morally justified. He welcomed an uprising in Panama; but he would not say so publicly because it would be instigating a revolt. On October 7 Roosevelt declared, “No one connected with this government had any part in preparing, inciting or encouraging the revolution.”42
The Western Federation of Miners was on strike in various places in Colorado from March 1903 to June 1904. Ray Stannard Baker was working on a long article “The Reign of Lawlessness: Anarchy and Despotism in Colorado.” On October 21 he asked Roosevelt for permission to quote this statement:
I believe in corporations. I believe in labor unions.
Both have come to stay
and are necessities in our present industrial system.
But where, in either the one or the other,
there develops corruption or
mere brutal indifference to the rights of others …
then the offender, whether union or corporation,
must be fought.43
Colorado’s Gov. James Peabody in November asked Roosevelt to send federal troops because the strike had stopped mining in most of the state. Roosevelt telegraphed that he had no lawful authority to intervene unless an insurrection could not be controlled by civil police or state forces.
Captain Chauncey Humphrey had been to Panama, and he told Roosevelt that the junta had 500 troops, 2,500 arms, and $365,000 in cash and promises. Bunau-Varilla transferred $100,000 from Paris to New York.
By November 2 the Navy Secretary Moody had sent several ships to Panama. While Roosevelt was traveling on trains to New York to vote and then back to Washington, changes were occurring in Panama. The USS Nashville reached Colón. The next morning the Colombian troopship Cartagena brought 500 tiradores to the Panama Railroad dock. The US Consul Oscar Malmros telegraphed the State Department that 400 men under General Tovar had arrived but that they would not stop the revolution. In the evening the junta began organizing a Provisional Government for Panama. Roosevelt ordered the Nashville to stop the Colombian troops from going to Panama City and sent the USS Atlanta and the USS Boston to help. Colombia’s General Tovar and his officers were in jail with Governor Obaldía.
US Rear Admiral John Hubbard on the Nashville ordered American men in Colón to take cover while women and children were urged to board steamers. Colombia’s Col. Torres had the 500 tiradores surround the railroad yard. Bunau-Varilla cabled 50,000 pesos (about $25,000), a quarter of his pledge, to his friend in Panama City. Hubbard let two Colombian envoys have safe conduct to Panama City with Col. James Shaler who was the Superintendent of the Panama Railroad. People celebrated revolutionary bonuses in Panama City while in Bogotá mobs rioted and stoned President Marroquín’s house. Malmros cabled Washington that the Panamanians had taken possession in Colón. Hubbard deployed cannons around the depot where Col. Torres waited for an order from General Tovar. At sunset Torres accepted an $8,000 indemnity from Col. Shaler. The Royal Mail Company steamship captain agreed to take the tiradores home to Colombia for $1,000 credit, and 465 men and 13 women boarded. Then the USS Dixie arrived with 400 US Marines. The junta asked for diplomatic recognition for the Republic of Panama.
The first strong critic of the operation was Oswald Garrison of the New York Post who disparaged “indecent haste” and called it “ignoble beyond words.” Most of the conservative newspapers supported Roosevelt’s venture. On November 18 Bunau-Varilla as the Minister Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Panama signed a treaty with US Secretary of State Hay in the White House. The treaty authorized the $10 million indemnity and the $250,000 annual rent to begin “nine years after the opening date” for a US monopoly on the Panama Canal Zone that is ten miles wide.
President Roosevelt summoned a special session of the Congress before Thanksgiving. The 1900 Census had increased the House of Representatives to 386 members, and more than half the 120 freshmen elected in 1902 were Democrats; but the Republicans still had thirty more seats. On November 19 the US Senate passed the Cuban reciprocity bill. The beet-sugar interests in the Senate wanted adjournment; but House Speaker Cannon argued that the House must vote on that and on the Cuban bill which kept them in session through Thanksgiving. Most major nations recognized Panama, and Nicaragua was the first Latin American country to do so.
In his Third Annual Message on December 7 Roosevelt reviewed the achievements of the year including starting the Department of Commerce and Labor with the Bureau of Corporations, a surplus for the fiscal year of $54,297,667, efforts to enforce the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, punishment of the bribery conviction in St. Louis, agreement on the Alaska border, enforcing international law at the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, a commercial treaty with China, progress in the Philippines and Puerto Rico, improved irrigation, and more civil service employees selected by competitive exams. He asked for better education in the Indian Territory and for continued improvements for the Navy. Finally he described in detail the history and revolution in Panama that created a republic. He explained,
The possession of a territory fraught with
such peculiar capacities as the Isthmus in question
carries with it obligations to mankind.
The course of events has shown that
this canal can not be built by private enterprise.44
Roosevelt inherited $30,000 from an uncle who died, and his publisher paid him the same amount for a new edition of The Works of Theodore Roosevelt in 14 volumes.
On 4 January 1904 President Roosevelt sent to the US Congress information supporting the US construction by the Panama Canal Company with numerous documents. In justification he argued,
That the canal was eagerly demanded by the people
of the locality through which it was to pass,
and that the people of this locality no less eagerly
longed for its construction under American control,
are shown by the unanimity of action
in the new Panama Republic.45
William Howard Taft retired from being Governor-General of the Philippines on 23 December 1903, and he became the Secretary of War on 1 February 1904, replacing Elihu Root who wanted to return to his law practice. Russia had been expanding its empire in the East into Manchuria and appeared to be threatening Korea. Japan was an advancing nation, and on February 8 and 9 their navy led by Admiral Heihachiro Togo with only minor losses damaged seven of the 13 ships in Russia’s fleet at Port Arthur. On February 11 Roosevelt announced the neutrality of the United States, though Russians believed he favored the Japanese. Battles near Port Arthur continued until May 15 when Japan lost two of their six battleships.
After debating the Panama Canal Treaty for nine weeks, the US Senate ratified it 66 to 14 on February 23. On March 14 the US Supreme Court announced their decision on U.S. v. Northern Securities. Justice Harlan reviewed the facts of the case, and he argued that the merger of the Great Northern and Northern Pacific railroads effectively and certainly suppressed free competition. The Court affirmed the lower court’s decision. The vote was 5-4, and Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes issued a strong dissenting opinion. He believed that the Northern Securities Company was not a monopoly and may have restrained competition, but he argued it did not violate the Sherman Act by restraining trade. He suggested that Congress had exceeded its constitutional powers.
Before the Congress could improve the benefits of veterans, Roosevelt issued an executive order moving up benefits to the age of 62. Traditional Republicans expected Indiana’s Senator Charles W. Fairbanks to be nominated for Vice President. The Dominican Republican was having trouble paying their debts to Germany, and the US Navy was conducting exercises in the Caribbean. On February 1 Kaiser Wilhelm II had written a letter to Roosevelt praising him, “You must accept it as a fact that your figure has moved to the foreground of the world.”46 The Dominican Foreign Minister Juan Franco Sanchez asked Washington for annexation, but Roosevelt commented that he could not stomach that. On April 28 he signed An Act to Provide for the Temporary Government of the Canal Zone at Panama, the Protection of the Canal Works, and Other Purposes, and he appointed the new War Secretary Taft as the chief authority in the Canal Zone to supervise the Isthmian Canal Commission that included Admiral John G. Walker as chairman, Major General George W. Davis, USMC as Governor of the Zone, and five engineers. The rights of all inhabitants of the Canal Zone were to be protected, and Roosevelt added,
I desire that every possible effort be made
to protect our officers and workmen from the dangers
of tropical and other diseases, which in the past
have been so prevalent and destructive in Panama.47
On April 30 he opened the World’s Fair in St. Louis, and he praised Thomas Jefferson for making the Louisiana Purchase a century ago.
On May 10 Cornelius Bliss declined to be chairman of the Republican Party, and Roosevelt said he would recommend Commerce and Labor Secretary George B. Cortelyou who had been the private secretary to Cleveland, McKinley, and Roosevelt.
On May 18 the wealthy Greek-American Ion Perdicaris, who was living in Tangier, Morocco, was abducted with his stepson Cromwell Varley by the insurgent leader Ahmad al-Raisuni and his men. The American Consul General Gummeré cabled the State Department asking for a man-of-war for a serious situation. Secretary Hay was out of town, and his Assistant Francis Loomis replied that ships would be sent. On May 20 Roosevelt wrote a letter that Elihu Root read during his speech to the Cuba Society of New York which said,
Brutal wrongdoing, or an impotence which results
in a general loosening of the ties of a civilized society,
may finally require intervention by some civilized nation,
and in the Western Hemisphere the United States
cannot ignore this duty, but it remains true that
our interests, and those of our southern neighbors,
are in reality identical.48
Conservative Senators led by Aldrich of Rhode Island and Spooner of Wisconsin came to the White House to oppose Cortelyou as National chairman because of his inexperience. The White House released the news that after the election Cortelyou would become Postmaster General, a position with much patronage. Roosevelt said that if he is the candidate, then Cortelyou will be chairman.
Pennsylvania’s Senator Matthew Quay died on May 28, and on June 10 Gov. Samuel Pennypacker announced that he would replace him with Philander Knox who resigned as Attorney General. Roosevelt replaced him with Navy Secretary Moody. The businessman Paul Morton became Navy Secretary on July 1 for exactly one year.
On June 21 Elihu Root in the keynote address at the Republican National Convention in Chicago reviewed the achievements of the Roosevelt administration without mentioning his name. He noted the increased number of ships in the Navy with 13 battleships and 13 cruisers being built.
Ion Perdicaris and his stepson were supposed to be released on June 21, and Gummeré and Admiral Chadwick on the USS Brooklyn asked Secretary Hay for an ultimatum with an indemnity for each day of delay and with Marines seizing customs. The next day at the Convention the clerk read the following bulletin: “Washington, June 22. Secretary of State Hay has sent instructions to Consul General Samuel R. Gummeré, as follows: ‘We want either Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead.’”49 The delegates cheered and shouted. The next day New York’s former Gov. Frank S. Black nominated Roosevelt and said,
A profound student of history,
he is today the greatest history maker in the world….
Whether we wish it or not, America is abroad in the world.
Her interests are on every street,
her name is on every tongue.
Those interests so sacred and stupendous should be trusted
only to the care of those whose power,
skill and courage have been tested and approved.
And in the man whom you will choose,
the highest sense of every nation in the world beholds
a man who typifies as no other living American does,
the spirit and purposes of the twentieth century.50
The cheering and demonstration went on for 21 minutes. The delegates unanimously nominated Roosevelt for President and Fairbanks for Vice President, and they confirmed Cortelyou as the party chairman. Early the next morning Perdicaris and other hostages were taken back to Tangiers and released.
In 1904 the former President Grover Cleveland and the 1896 and 1900 Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan declined to run for President. Alton Brooks Parker, the Chief Justice of the New York Court of Appeals, emerged as a likely candidate, and he decided to run. When the Democratic National Convention met in St. Louis on July 6, about 200 delegates were pledged to the radical newspaper owner William Randolph Hearst. Cleveland endorsed Parker. Democrats worked on their platform. On July 8 a newspaper editorial suggested that “sound-money Democrats will demand that he declare, that the gold monetary standard, as now established by law, is permanent.”51 Parker sent a telegram to the convention stating that he “regarded the gold standard as firmly and irrevocably established.” He asked to have his view made known to delegates. If it was “unsatisfactory to the majority,” he would decline the nomination. Delegates nominated him and then chose the wealthy 80-year-old Henry G. Davis of West Virginia for Vice President. Five New York newspapers endorsed Parker including the Times, the Herald, and the World.
Both Roosevelt and Parker declined to make speeches during the campaign except one accepting the nomination, and each also wrote a letter. On July 27 no less than 43 Republicans went to Roosevelt’s home on Sagamore Hill to notify him that he got the Republican nomination. Roosevelt was concerned that Turkey was not granting American missionaries the privileges that Europeans experienced. On August 5 he ordered Admiral Jewell to take three cruisers to the Levant as a gesture of “goodwill.” Cornelius Bliss agreed to supervise eastern fund-raising for the Republicans. On August 8 Secretary of State Hay directed the US Minister in Constantinople to go to the Sublime Porte of the Ottoman Empire once more. As the warships arrived at Smyrna, the Sultan Abdul Hamid II granted all of the minister’s claims. Roosevelt told Leishman to accept the Sultan’s promise and to bring the fleet home.
In his acceptance speech Parker said,
I protest against the feeling, now far too prevalent,
that by reason of the commanding position
we have assumed in the world we must take part
in the disputes and broils of foreign countries.52
Parker got the most applause when he said he would serve for only one term. Roosevelt wrote 20,000 words in his acceptance letter and listed 18 achievements of his presidency. He also wrote letters to journalists throughout the country. Ray Stannard Baker’s article “Parker and Roosevelt on Labor: Real Views of the Two Candidates on the Most Vital National Problems” was published in McClure’s Magazine. Jacob Riis wrote the campaign biography Theodore Roosevelt: The Citizen.
Lincoln Steffens came to the White House and urged Roosevelt to return corporate contributions and seek donations from the general public for his campaign because that would make millions feel they were part of the campaign. Steffens believed this would start a new era in politics. Roosevelt did not agree and believed he was “beholden to the many more than to the few.” He accepted large donations as long as
they were given and received with no thought of
any more obligation on the part of the National Committee
or of the National Administration than is implied in the
statement that every man shall receive a square deal.53
The Standard Oil Company gave Bliss a $100,000 check for the Republicans. Joseph Pulitzer in his New York World asked how much the seven trusts of beef, paper, coal, sugar, oil, tobacco, steel, and insurance contributed to Mr. Cortelyou for Roosevelt’s campaign along with the national banks and six major railroads. As Roosevelt was sure to win, his donations slowed down and were less than half of what Mark Hanna had raised for McKinley in 1900. Roosevelt in October met with E. H. Harriman who promised to raise $260,000 for New York Republicans. George J. Gould for Western Union and the New York Life Insurance Company topped them all by giving $500,000. George Perkins wrote three checks that added up to $450,000 from Morgan, New York Life Insurance, and himself. Senator Chauncey Depew was also chairman of the New York Central Railroad and provided $100,000. Henry Clay Frick put in $50,000. Republicans also got support from National City Life, General Electric, American Can, and International Harvester. Parker criticized the “menace” of campaign funds from corporations as “debasing and corrupt.” Because they wanted to “control the results of election contests.” Roosevelt wrote a posterity letter to Cortelyou telling him to return the $100,000 to Standard Oil.
Five days before the election on November 8 the Republican National Committee accused Parker of “blackmail,” and they threatened to release information from the Bureau of Corporations. That night Roosevelt released his statement of over 1,000 words. On November 4 he wrote to the historian George Otto Trevelyan, “A public man’s usefulness in the highest position becomes in the end impaired by the mere fact of too long continuance in that position.” He believed,
In 1908 it would be better to have some man
like Taft or Root succeed me in the presidency,
at the head of the Republican party,
than to have me succeed myself.
In all essentials of policy they look upon things as I do.54
The Socialist Party of America nominated Eugene Debs. They raised only $32,700, but he made many speeches and got 402,810 votes (3%). Roosevelt dominated with 7,630,457 votes to 5,083,880 for Parker. Roosevelt won in 34 states with 336 electoral votes, the most so far. Parker prevailed in only 12 southern states with 140 electoral votes. On election night Roosevelt made a brief statement that in reverence to George Washington he would not be a candidate again for President.
In his 4th Annual Message to Congress on December 6 Roosevelt began by confirming the continued prosperity. He discussed the relations and responsibilities of labor and capital. He noted that the safety-appliance law, which was amended in March 1903, proved beneficial to railway employees. He emphasized investigating the problems of child labor. He affirmed that the National Government alone was capable of dealing with the great corporations and that they “should be managed with due regard to the interest of the public as a whole.”55 He reported that the Bureau of Corporations was investigating important corporations. He was concerned about the increasing mortality in overcrowded tenements. He urged passing a law requiring the school attendance of all children in Washington DC. He discussed foreign trade, agriculture, and the value of forest reserves. He called for better service by the employees in the Indian Service. He favored admitting more healthy immigrants of good character. He recommended improving the naturalization laws. He hoped that the government of the Alaska Territory would be improved. He reminded Americans,
It is our duty to remember that a nation has no more right
to do injustice to another nation, strong or weak,
than an individual has to do injustice to another individual;
that the same moral law applies
in one case as in the other….
In international law we have not advanced by any means
as far as we have advanced in municipal law.
There is as yet no judicial way of enforcing
a right in international law….
Under any circumstances a sufficient armament would have
to be kept up to serve the purposes of international police;
and until international cohesion and the sense
of international duties and rights are far more advanced
than at present, a nation desirous both
of securing respect for itself and of doing good to others
must have a force adequate for the work which it feels
is allotted to it as its part of the general world duty.
Therefore it follows that a self-respecting, just,
and far-seeing nation should on the one hand endeavor
by every means to aid in the development of the various
movements which tend to provide substitutes for war, which
tend to render nations in their actions toward one another,
and indeed toward their own peoples, more responsive
to the general sentiment of humane and civilized mankind;
and on the other hand that it should keep prepared, while
scrupulously avoiding wrongdoing itself, to repel any wrong,
and in exceptional cases to take action which in a more
advanced stage of international relations would come
under the head of the exercise of the international police.
A great free people owes it to itself and to all mankind
not to sink into helplessness before the powers of evil.56
This has been called the “Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.” He urged developing arbitration of international disputes, and he promoted a second Hague conference. He discussed the Monroe Doctrine and current issues involving Russia. He reported that the US reduced its troops in the Philippines to 28,000 men. He concluded by asking Americans to invest capital in those “islands in railroads, in factories, in plantations, and in lumbering and mining.”
On 1 February 1905 President Roosevelt announced the transfer of the federal forest reserves from the Interior Department, and the Forest Service was established in the Agriculture Department on March 3. On February 7 the Dominican Republican agreed to a diplomatic protocol that gave the United States the responsibility of collecting Dominican customs and of managing their foreign debt, though the US Senate avoided the two attempts at ratification by adjourning. Roosevelt’s Administration would continue managing these until the end of July 1907.
Ida Tarbell had begun writing a 19-part series on the history of the Standard Oil Company in November 1902, and she completed it in October 1904 and published it as a book. In the winter of 1905 the Hutchinson News reported, “Kansas is in the clutches of the Standard Oil Company and is howling for relief.”57 In February President Roosevelt sent the Bureau of Corporations director James Garfield to investigate Standard Oil’s operations in Kansas. He studied Tarbell’s history and her documentary evidence and published a report in two parts exposing in the first Standard Oil’s “unjust and illegal” dealings with railroads involving rebates, bribes, and kickbacks. In the second part Garfield described Standard Oil’s petroleum monopoly. Roosevelt sent the first part to Congress with a special message directing the government to prosecute the Rockefeller trust. The US Justice Department found evidence of illegal rebates based on the 1903 Elkins Act, and in regard to the Sherman Anti-Trust Act they charged Standard Oil with a “conspiracy in restraint of trade.” The trial would be in July 1907.
On 28 January 1905 the journalist Ray Stannard Baker had lunch with Roosevelt, and a long conversation led to him getting support for his research from the Interstate Commerce Commission. Baker in March began writing the six-part series “The Railroads on Trial.”
In his Second Inaugural Address on March 4 Roosevelt affirmed that the United States had become a great nation that should fulfill its responsibilities by having good relations with all nations. Then he asked people to consider the modern challenges they face from the increasing industrial wealth. He said,
Modern life is both complex and intense,
and the tremendous changes wrought by the extraordinary
industrial development of the last half century
are felt in every fiber of our social and political being.
Never before have men tried so vast and formidable
an experiment as that of administering the affairs
of a continent under the forms of a Democratic republic.
The conditions which have told
for our marvelous material well-being,
which have developed to a very high degree
our energy, self-reliance, and individual initiative,
have also brought the care and anxiety inseparable from
the accumulation of great wealth in industrial centers.
Upon the success of our experiment much depends,
not only as regards our own welfare,
but as regards the welfare of mankind.….
We know that self-government is difficult.
We know that no people needs such high traits of character
as that people which seeks to govern its affairs aright
through the freely expressed will
of the freemen who compose it.
But we have faith that we shall not prove false
to the memories of the men of the mighty past.58
On April 5 Roosevelt visited Frederick, Oklahoma and began his speech by expressing his hope that Oklahoma would soon become a state. He also discussed the Monroe Doctrine and Indian rights before going on a wolf hunt. On June 2 he would proclaim the return of buffalo to the Wichita Mountains.
Roosevelt had advised the ailing Secretary of State John Hay on March 10 to inform the Japanese Government that he would “be glad to be of use” to work out a negotiated settlement of its war against Russia. On that day the Japanese army ended an 18-day battle at Mukden by defeating a larger Russian army. Hay told Lloyd C. Griscom, the US Minister to Japan, that the President was available. On March 17 Roosevelt went to New York to give away his niece Eleanor Roosevelt in a wedding to his fifth cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
At this time neither the Russians nor the Japanese wanted to lose face by asking for an end to the war. On April 3 Roosevelt left to go hunting for wolves in Oklahoma and bears in Colorado. He left War Secretary Taft in charge, and on April 18 the Japanese Minister Takahira met with Taft and implied that Japan would accept Roosevelt as a mediator. He explained that Japan would negotiate directly and would not make any pledges in advance. Roosevelt telegraphed Taft that he accepted that, and he said that Japan must adhere to the Open Door in Manchuria and accept its restoration as part of China. On April 25 Japan’s Foreign Minister Baron Jutaro Komura sent a wire that he agreed on the Manchuria issues, and Roosevelt’s private secretary William Loeb carried it to him.
Roosevelt sent Taft in May to a conference of 300 railway executives in Washington, and he advised them,
Railroads are a public institution—
an institution which must be regulated by law.
You cannot run the railroads
as you would run a private business.
You must respond to the public demand.59
Roosevelt returned to Washington on May 11. After the Japanese naval victory that devastated the Russian fleet in the Tsushima Strait and killed over 5,000 on May 27 and 28, the Japanese asked Roosevelt to mediate the conflict with Russia. The President advised Tsar Nicholas II that Russia was facing more losses in East Asia and should send representatives to discuss peace. Nicholas accepted that offer to negotiate on June 7.
Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II wrote to Roosevelt about his concern over France’s intervention in Morocco, and Roosevelt feared a “world conflagration” in Europe. Secretary of State John Hay died on July 1, and Roosevelt persuaded Elihu Root to replace him. US Navy Secretary Paul Morton was accused of previous wrong-doing as a railroad executive, and he resigned and was replaced by the progressive lawyer Charles Bonaparte.
Japan’s army invaded Sakhalin Island on July 7 and occupied it by the end of the month as the Russians surrendered. Taft and Roosevelt’s daughter Alice arrived at Tokyo on July 25, and two days later Taft took notes in a conversation with Japan’s Prime Minister Taro Katsura that Taft cabled to Roosevelt. Katsura said that Korea was the cause of the war, and he believed that Japan should have sovereignty over Korea. Taft and Roosevelt accepted that.
Russian and Japanese diplomats began negotiating with Roosevelt at Portsmouth, New Hampshire on August 6. Baron Komura demanded that Russia withdraw troops from Manchuria and cease trading there, recognize Japan’s interests in Korea, pay an indemnity for Japan’s war costs, and accept Japan’s control of the Liaotung Peninsula and Sakhalin Island. Roosevelt urged both sides to make concessions. Japan agreed to let go of Vladivostok, and Russia’s Finance Minister Sergei Witte suggested that Japan could have economic interests in southern Sakhalin if Russia had a security zone in the north. On August 25 Roosevelt sent a telegram to the US Minister Meyer at St. Petersburg for Tsar Nicholas II that concluded,
If peace is not made now and war is continued,
it may well be that, though the financial strain
upon Japan would be severe, yet in the end
Russia would be shorn of those east Siberian provinces
which have been won by her by the heroism
of her sons during the last three centuries.
The proposed peace leaves
the ancient Russian boundaries absolutely intact.
The only change will be that Japan will get
that part of Sakhalin which was hers up to thirty years ago.
As Sakhalin is an island it is,
humanly speaking impossible that the Russians should
reconquer it in view of the disaster to their navy;
and to keep the northern half of it is a guarantee for
the security of Vladivostok and eastern Siberia to Russia.
I seems to me that every consideration
of national self-interest, of military expediency
and of broad humanity makes it eminently wise and right
for Russia to conclude peace substantially along these lines,
and it is my hope and prayer
that your Majesty may take this view.60
Roosevelt warned the Japanese that being greedy for the money and refusing to make concessions could cost them more in another year of war. Then he made the following appeal:
Ethically it seems to me that
Japan owes a duty to the world at this crisis.
The civilized world looks to her to make peace;
the nations believe in her; let her show her leadership
in matters ethical no less than matters military.
The appeal is made to her
in the name of all that is lofty and noble;
and to this appeal I hope she will not be deaf.61
On August 29 Russia’s Witte made a final offer that was less generous than what Tsar Nicholas II had proposed a week earlier. After a long silence Baron Komura said that he accepted the division of Sakhalin at 50 degrees north latitude, and he withdrew the request for an indemnity. The treaty was signed on September 5, and it was ratified by Japan on October 10 and by Russia four days later. Henry Adams called Roosevelt “the best herder of Emperors since Napoleon.”
Roosevelt toured the south in October to promote his policies. Ray Stannard Baker in the November issue of McClure’s Magazine in the first article in a railroad series wrote,
We are at this moment facing a new conflict in this country,
the importance of which
we are only just beginning to perceive.
It lies between two great parties,
one a progressive party seeking
to give the government more power in business affairs,
the other a conservative party
striving to retain all the power possible in private hands.
One looks toward socialism,
the other obstinately defends individualism.
It is industrialism forcing itself into politics.
And the crux of the new conflict in this case,
recognized by both sides, is the Railroad Rate.62
On November 11 Baker explained to Roosevelt in a letter that fixing the maximum rate was not unjust, but the trusts’ compelling railroads to give them lower rates than others was the “evil power.” The problem was the minimum rate, and the solution was to “fix a definite rate.”
Roosevelt in his Fifth Annual Message to Congress on December 5 wrote,
Normally the wage-worker, the man of small means, and
the average consumer, as well as the average producer,
are all alike helped by making conditions such that
the man of exceptional business ability
receives an exceptional reward for his ability.
Something can be done by legislation
to help the general prosperity;
but no such help of a permanently beneficial character
can be given to the less able and less fortunate, save as
the results of a policy which shall inure to the advantage
of all industrious and efficient people who act decently;
and this is only another way of saying that any benefit
which comes to the less able and less fortunate
must of necessity come even more
to the more able and more fortunate.
If, therefore, the less fortunate man is moved by envy
of his more fortunate brother to strike at the conditions
under which they have both, though unequally, prospered,
the result will assuredly be that
while danger may come to the one struck at,
it will visit with an even heavier load
the one who strikes the blow.
Taken as a whole we must all go up or down together.63
The concern was to get rid of discriminatory rates. A commission of the Interstate Commerce Commission should have the right to establish a maximum reasonable rate when a rate was unfair. The unfair rates were the minimum rates for big shippers and excessive rates for the small ones. In this message Roosevelt proposed 73 moderately progressive new laws, and he worked with Iowa’s Senator Jonathan P. Dolliver on a railroad bill.
Roosevelt also called the Department of Commerce and Labor to investigate the working conditions of many employed women. He wrote,
Over five million American women
are now engaged in gainful occupations;
yet there is an almost complete dearth of data upon which
to base any trustworthy conclusions as regards a subject
as important as it is vast and complicated.
There is need of full knowledge on which to base action
looking toward State and municipal legislation
for the protection of working women.64
Roosevelt repeated the request he had made in his previous message on his concern about elections. He wrote,
The power of the Government to protect the integrity
of the elections of its own officials is inherent
and has been recognized and affirmed
by repeated declarations of the Supreme Court.
There is no enemy of free government more dangerous
and none so insidious as the corruption of the electorate.
No one defends or excuses corruption,
and it would seem to follow that
none would oppose vigorous measures to eradicate it.
I recommend the enactment of a law directed against
bribery and corruption in Federal elections.
The details of such a law may be safely left
to the wise discretion of the Congress,
but it should go as far as under the Constitution
it is possible to go, and should include severe penalties
against him who gives or receives a bribe
intended to influence his act or opinion as an elector;
and provisions for the publication
not only of the expenditures for nominations and elections
of all candidates, but also of all contributions received
and expenditures made by political committees.65
On the universal application of ethics he wrote,
The Golden Rule should be,
and as the world grows in morality it will be, the guiding rule
of conduct among nations as among individuals;
though the Golden Rule must not be construed,
in fantastic manner,
as forbidding the exercise of the police power.
This mighty and free Republic should ever deal
with all other States, great or small,
on a basis of high honor, respecting their rights
as jealously as it safeguards its own.66
Roosevelt discussed the Monroe Doctrine, and he wrote,
We must ourselves in good faith try to help upward
toward peace and order those of our sister republics
which need such help.
Just as there has been a gradual growth
of the ethical element in the relations
of one individual to another, so we are, even though slowly,
more and more coming to recognize the duty
of bearing one another’s burdens,
not only as among individuals but also as among nations.67
He also discussed the situation of Santo Domingo, and he hoped to allow them the progress already gained by the Cubans. He urged establishing a Federal Bureau of Naturalization, and he described the value of the Reclamation Act. He regretted the injustice of excluding Chinese immigrants and suggested encouraging immigration of “Chinese students, business and professional men of all kinds.” He defended the civil service reforms including the examinations for selecting employees.
He advised regulation of food, drinks, and drugs, writing,
I recommend that a law be enacted to regulate
inter-State commerce in misbranded
and adulterated foods, drinks, and drugs.
Such law would protect legitimate manufacture
and commerce, and would tend to secure
the health and welfare of the consuming public.
Traffic in food-stuffs which have been debased
or adulterated so as to injure health
or to deceive purchasers should be forbidden.68
He noted, “The law forbidding the emission of dense black or gray smoke in the city of Washington has been sustained by the courts.” He reviewed the series of disasters that were occurring in the Philippines and some improvements in harbors, roads, and bridges that were being made. He praised “the number of enrolled students in the public schools” that increased “from 300,000 to half a million pupils.”
A few days later US Attorney General Moody was ordering prosecutions of shippers, and many corporations were being indicted including three who were part of the beef trust exposed by articles in Collier’s magazine.
When the McClure Newspaper Syndicate sent Lincoln Steffens to Washington to write about the Federal government, on 9 January 1906 Roosevelt gave him the note “To any officer of or employee of the Government” that ordered,
Please tell Mr. Lincoln Steffens anything whatever
about the running of the government that you know
(not incompatible with the public interests) and provided only that you tell him the truth—no matter what it may be—
I will see that you are not hurt.69
On January 15 The Cosmopolitan magazine began publishing “The Treason of the Senate” by David Graham Phillips. The first article criticized New York’s Senators Thomas Platt and Chauncey Depew. Roosevelt wrote to New York’s Attorney General Julius Mayer because he believed the publisher William Randolph Hearst controlled so many newspapers and magazines that had an “influence for evil upon the social life of this country.”
Senator Dolliver sent his bill, which expanded the power of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), from the Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee to the House of Representatives where it was sponsored by Rep. William Hepburn of Iowa on January 4 and gave the ICC the authority to set “just and reasonable” maximum rates. To get the Speaker Joseph Cannon to allow the bill on the floor Roosevelt agreed to preserve protective tariffs. On February 8 the House passed it with only seven votes opposing. The US Senate began debating it on February 28, and it passed on May 18 with a vote of 71 to 3.
On February 17 Roosevelt’s daughter Alice was wedded in the White House to Congressman Nicholas Longworth of Ohio after she received many valuable wedding gifts.
The editor of the popular socialist magazine, The Appeal to Reason, in 1905 had offered Upton Sinclair $500 to serialize his next novel. After the serialization The Jungle was published as a book on 26 February 1906, and it exposed the corruption of the meat-packing industry. Senator Aldrich was moved to withdraw his opposition to the Pure Food Bill even though he had invested in the food industry. On February 21 the US Senate passed the bill 63 to 4. In a speech to the Gridiron Club on March 17 Roosevelt quoted a passage about a “muckraker” from Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan. Many began using this term to criticize investigative journalists. He referred to the expression again at a dedication of the House Office Building on April 14 and talked about the problems in a capitalist society, saying,
No amount of charity in spending such fortunes
in any way compensates for misconduct in making them.
As a matter of personal conviction, and without pretending
to discuss the details or formulate the system,
I feel that we should ultimately have to consider
the adoption of some such scheme as that of a
progressive tax on all fortunes, beyond a certain amount,
either given in life or devised or bequeathed
upon the death of any individual—
a tax so framed as to put it out of the power of the owner
of one of these enormous fortunes to hand on
more than a certain amount to any one individual.70
US Supreme Court Justice Henry Billings Brown had announced his retirement in March. Senator Knox, who had been Attorney General, declined the nomination.
On May 22 Senator Albert Beveridge introduced a bill to institute federal inspection of the meat-packing industry from the slaughter of the animals to the production of sausage and canned meat. Unhealthy food was condemned, and food that was inspected and passed got a government label of approval. Roosevelt warned senators that if the legislation was not passed quickly, he would make public the government’s report on the unhealthy working conditions. Within three days the Senate passed the bill.
Many of the policies Roosevelt had asked for in his annual message were included in An Act for the Preservation of American Antiquities that he signed on June 8. This law covered national monuments, historic sites, insurance for job accidents, and statehood for Oklahoma. In the last three days of the month they protected Niagara Falls from hydro-elective power, gave witnesses immunity in antitrust cases, raised naturalization standards, established a lock system for the Panama Canal, approved the major reforms of Railroad Rate Regulation, and provided $3 million for the Meat Inspection Act.
Samuel Hopkins Adams had written 11 articles for Collier’s magazine on patent medicines in 1905. He found experts who had tested over 200 medicines most of which were “harmless frauds or deleterious drugs.” This research led to passing the Pure Food and Drug Act on June 30.
On August 16 Roosevelt received a telegram from the mayor and citizens of Brownsville, Texas that on the 13th at night about 25 men of the US 25th infantry, who were colored, had fired rifles at police and citizens and into buildings. After shooting about 200 bullets the soldiers returned to their barracks. One policeman was wounded and had an arm amputated. The angry soldiers threatened to repeat the incident, and the town was terrorized.
Roosevelt ordered the War Department to make a report, and they learned that the black soldiers who had arrived three weeks before were being discriminated against, beaten, and threatened with death because of an alleged rape of a white woman who could only describe the khaki trousers of the alleged assailant. About 15 men went on the rampage, and at a call to arms all the men were in the barracks. On August 18 General William McCaskey telegraphed the US War Department saying, “Citizens of Brownsville entertain race hatred to an extreme degree … provocation given the soldiers not taken into account.”71 At least 70 Army-rifle casings were found. Five officers considered the 25th Infantry guilty. On the 20th Roosevelt ordered the battalion moved to a nearby fort and then most of them to Fort Reno, Oklahoma. Major Blocksom found that the rioters were soldiers, and he suggested discharging them and debarring them from re-enlistment. Roosevelt sent the new Army Inspector General Ernest Garlington to Oklahoma and Texas to question the quarantined infantry.
The Brownsville incident provoked a mob in Atlanta, and they killed twenty blacks and wounded hundreds because of rumors that white women had been assaulted.
On September 28 Cuba’s President Estrada Palma resigned during an uprising to protest alleged election rigging. He advised American control instead of sharing power with an insurrection. War Secretary Taft felt bound by the Platt Amendment to order an American intervention in Cuba, and Roosevelt sent him 6,000 more troops and emphasized there was to be no bloodshed between Americans and Cubans. Taft installed the pliant Charles Magoon as Cuba’s Provisional Governor and then went back to Washington. Senator Foraker was pleased, and he urged Roosevelt to improve race relations at home.
On October 12 Roosevelt’s friend Arthur Lee came to Washington from England, and Roosevelt told him that he wanted to deal with him because the British Ambassador Mortimer Durand was unsuitable and ineffective. Roosevelt shared private correspondence with Lee showing how the German and French embassies were so much better than the British.
Roosevelt consulted with Taft, Secretary of State Elihu Root, justices, and senators and then nominated William Moody of Massachusetts for the US Supreme Court. His name was leaked on October 24 to gain more voters from that state.
General Garlington reported that none of the suspects in San Antonio would talk about the Brownsville rampage even though they all would be found guilty. Roosevelt decided that all 167 should be dishonorably discharged.
On October 30 Roosevelt met with Booker T. Washington and told him he was going to dismiss 167 soldiers without a court martial or trial. Washington said it would be a mistake not to let even one man testify. On November 3 he wrote to the President that he had more information to consider before he acted.
On the day before the election Elihu Root implied that he and Roosevelt believed that William Randolph Hearst was responsible for McKinley’s death. New York voters chose Charles Evan Hughes over Hearst for governor, and black voters helped Rep. Nicholas Longworth get re-elected. Democrats gained 28 seats in the US House of Representatives but were still a minority, and Republicans took over three more seats in the US Senate. Socialist candidates did not get many votes. Roosevelt’s decision to discharge the 167 black soldiers was released after the election. Blacks’ attitudes toward Roosevelt changed. He defended himself by saying that he would have done the same thing if it had been white men.
From November 14 to 17 Roosevelt visited the work on the Panama Canal. This was the first time a US President left the United States while in office. The blacks from the West Indies, whom they had hired over Americans because they were used to the heat, were complaining about the yams. Roosevelt learned that the yams were rotting from the heat. In the previous month 85 men had died of pneumonia, and Roosevelt advised men not to sleep in the wet clothes they used for working.
Taft cabled him that the New York Republican Club and many others were protesting the discharging of colored troops without a hearing. Taft had suspended the cases, and Roosevelt reversed that unless there was new evidence. The multi-racial Constitution League financed an investigation. Their black attorney Gilchrist Stewart in late November brought a 4-page report to the White House, but Roosevelt’s secretary William Loeb said the President was not available. Stewart then gave it to Senator Foraker.
In his Sixth Annual Message to Congress on December 3 Roosevelt again recommended prohibiting corporations from making political contributions. He warned against the judiciary abusing its use of injunctions. He quoted a long passage written by Judge Taft in 1895 that begins,
The opportunity freely and publicly to criticize judicial action
is of vastly more importance to the body politic
than the immunity of courts and judges
from unjust aspersions and attack.”72
The President in eight paragraphs strongly condemned racial hatred and lynching. He expounded extensively on the relations of labor and capital, and he reviewed the progress of congressional efforts on reforms. He discussed various taxes. He suggested how conditions for workers and farmers were improving. He reported on conditions in the Philippines, and he urged granting citizenship to Puerto Ricans. Isolated Hawaii and Alaska had different needs. He asked for good will toward immigrants from all nations. He noted sporadic hostility toward Japanese, and he asked that the earlier tradition of friendship be continued. He wished that the Army and Navy could be used to protect the rights of aliens. He described the recent problems in Cuba and noted that peace had been maintained. He commended the recent International Conference of American Republics which met for six weeks at Rio de Janeiro. He suggested the following ideals:
We wish for no victories but those of peace;
for no territory except our own;
for no sovereignty except the sovereignty over ourselves.
We deem the independence and equal rights of the smallest
and weakest member of the family of nations entitled to
as much respect as those of the greatest empire,
and we deem the observance of that respect the chief
guaranty of the weak against the oppression of the strong.
We neither claim nor desire
any rights or privileges or powers that
we do not freely concede to every American Republic.
We wish to increase our prosperity, to extend our trade,
to grow in wealth, in wisdom, and in spirit,
but our conception of the true way to accomplish this
is not to pull down others and profit by their ruin,
but to help all friends to a common prosperity
and a common growth,
that we may all become greater and stronger together.73
On December 10 Roosevelt learned that he won the Nobel Peace Prize “for his role in bringing to an end the bloody war recently waged between two of the world’s great powers, Japan and Russia.” He donated the prize of about $37,000 to “a foundation to establish at Washington a permanent Industrial Peace Committee.”
Roosevelt appointed the first Jew to a US cabinet office, and on December 17 Oscar S. Straus became Secretary of Commerce and Labor.
Foraker in the Senate proposed a resolution directing the War Secretary to provide all US Senators with copies of all the official documents in the Brownsville case and the service records of all the soldiers discharged. Taft complied and defended the President’s prerogative. Roosevelt studied the reports and asked Taft to make a thorough investigation. On December 19 the President sent a special message to Congress summarizing the evidence against the soldiers who fired the rifles and the complicity of the others who protected them.
President Roosevelt had kept on McKinley’s Interior Secretary Ethan Hitchcock; but in January 1907 he was suspected of corruption with the extraction industries in the West, and he was declining in old age. Roosevelt replaced him with the former President’s son James R. Garfield who was confirmed as the new Secretary of the Interior on January 15. On January 14 Roosevelt sent another special message to the Congress on the dismissed Brownsville soldiers, and most of the US Senate decided that he had not exceeded his constitutional powers.
George W. Perkins worked for J. P. Morgan on complicated deals such as the 1902 merger of the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company and other companies to form the International Harvester Company, and he arranged for its president Cyrus McCormick to meet with U.S. Steel’s chairman, Judge Elbert H. Gary and with Roosevelt’s Corporation Commissioners, the outgoing James Garfield and the incoming Herbert Knox Smith. Roosevelt wanted to alleviate Wall Street’s concern about his radical reforms, and they met on January 18 in a New York hotel. The US Congress wanted to know if McCormick’s company was a monopoly, and its board members Perkins and Gary wanted most-favored-trust status. Garfield and Roosevelt made a gentlemen’s agreement even though they knew that the Harvester Company controlled 85% of the reaping and harvesting market.
On January 26 Roosevelt and Senator Foraker of Ohio got into a contentious debate over the Brownsville debacle that delayed the dining at the Gridiron Club.
Roosevelt was also concerned about how the labor unions in San Francisco were opposing Japanese immigration even though Japan had contributed $100,000 in emergency aid after the San Francisco earthquake in April 1906. The city segregated the Japanese in the public schools. Japan’s government in Tokyo promised Secretary of State Root that they would restrict their emigration. On February 13 two cabinet officers in the White House tried to get San Francisco’s Mayor Eugene Schmitz to persuade the school board to admit Japanese students who spoke English and were not too old. The President wanted a new immigration act to facilitate the naturalization of the Japanese. The San Francisco Chronicle called Roosevelt unpatriotic. Japan had proved they had a powerful navy, and Roosevelt wanted large battleships called “dreadnoughts.” The House of Representatives funded them on February 15, and three days later Congress passed the immigration bill with an exclusion amendment.
On February 22 Oregon’s Republican Senator Charles Fulton added an amendment to the Agricultural Appropriations bill excluding forest reserves in six northwestern states, and it passed on the 25th; but Roosevelt never signed the bill. Then on March 2 he proclaimed 21 new forest reserves in those six states.
On March 4 the old Congress adjourned, and Roosevelt made some changes in his cabinet. Cortelyou became Treasury Secretary, and the former ambassador to Italy and Russia, George von L. Meyer, replaced Cortelyou as Postmaster General. Victor Metcalf became Navy Secretary, and James R. Garfield was the new Secretary of the Interior.
When the New York Stock Exchange fell sharply on March 14, Cortelyou quickly deposited $12 million in gold from the US Treasury into New York banks to replenish their money supply. This prevented the need for J. P. Morgan, E. H. Harriman, and other investors to do something similar. Because of the reforms of unfettered capitalists many investors had become hesitant to risk their assets in railroad construction and improvements. Roosevelt invited Morgan, Harriman, and railroad executives to the White House, but none came.
The Immigration Act did not slow down the Japanese workers coming to California, and anti-immigrant riots broke out in San Francisco in May.
Senator Foraker announced that he was opposing Taft’s running for President even though Taft had not declared his candidacy. On June 22 Secretary of War Taft gave Roosevelt his detailed plan for defending the Philippines, Hawaii, Guam, and the Pacific Coast. The President transmitted this in code to General Leonard Wood in the Philippines on July 6.
Roosevelt in late June had met with Navy Secretary Metcalf, Postmaster General Meyer, and representatives of the Navy and the Army. The Japanese immigration crisis in San Francisco led to the opposition in Japan calling for war, though Secretary of State Root assured Roosevelt that it was “an ordinary diplomatic affair.” The President told Meyer,
The business of statesmen is to try constantly
to keep international relations better,
to do away with the causes of friction,
and to secure as nearly ideal justice
as actual conditions will permit.”74
US Navy Intelligence informed Roosevelt that Japan was preparing for war by purchasing armored ships from Europe. Roosevelt said that he did not believe there was a real chance for war between Japan and the United States in the near future, though he predicted there would be a war between the US and Japan someday. Admiral Dewey advised sending a battle fleet to the Orient, and Roosevelt ordered Metcalf to stockpile coal at Subic Bay in the Philippines, move guns there from Cavite, and send four armored cruisers to the West Coast. The President wanted the Atlantic fleet to go to San Francisco in October.
On August 3 Standard Oil was found guilty of getting illegal rebates on 1,462 carloads of oil, and Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis fined the company $20,000 for each carload for a total of $29,240,000. That verdict caused the stock market to go down. John D. Rockefeller did not expect to pay the fine, and in July 1908 the Appeals Court Judge Peter Grosscup negated the fine, criticized the 1,462 separate counts, and ordered a retrial. Roosevelt called that a “miscarriage of justice,” and he said it proved that judges had too much power. He noted that the markets in Britain, France, Germany, and Canada were also failing. He said the government would prosecute Standard Oil again because the defendant was guilty. Yet he ordered the Attorney General Bonaparte to postpone the prosecution of International Harvester.
The environmentalist W. J. McGee wanted to make a massive hydro-system in the United States, and his friend Gifford Pinchot persuaded Roosevelt to form the Inland Waterways Commission to develop a plan to improve and control rivers in the US. He appointed McGee the chairman and directed him to file a report within one year. On October 1 Roosevelt joined McGee and Pinchot on a steamer at Keokuk, Iowa with twenty governors of states, and on the way to Memphis they planned a great conference at the White House in the spring of 1908. On October 4 Roosevelt spoke at Memphis about the Deep Waterways Convention. Then he spent two weeks hunting bears in Louisiana.
The bank magnates F. August Heinz and Charles W. Morse tried to corner the copper market in October by driving up prices. When their stock became depressed, people learned that their speculation had been financed by the Knickerbocker Trust Company. That caused it to collapse on October 18 and provoked a panic. The Treasury Secretary Cortelyou worked with financier J. P. Morgan to prevent bank failures. By the time Roosevelt returned to the White House the loan rates had risen 125%. Treasury Secretary Cortelyou deposited $25 million in national banks. The next day the president of the New York Stock Exchange warned Morgan that he would have to shut it down. Morgan asked for time, and with chief executives of New York’s largest banks they pledged $25 million which kept it open as stocks began to recover. On October 28 New York City could not get a loan and was about to default. Morgan persuaded U.S. Steel to save Moore & Schley by buying the collateral shares for its loans. Elbert Gary would not join the plan unless Roosevelt endorsed it also. Henry Clay Frick agreed with Gary, and Frick on November 4 went to the White House and quickly persuaded the President to grant his approval. That day the market was relieved as prices rose.
On November 11 Roosevelt signed 46 copies of a document that called for a national conservation conference at the White House in May 1908, and they were sent to the states with 500 more going to influential people including Congress, the US Supreme Court, newspaper editors, scientists, and tycoons. Roosevelt considered it important because he did not know how long the natural resources of the country would last.
Roosevelt in his Seventh Annual Message to Congress on December 4 explained how the dishonest can delude innocent people. He wrote,
There may be honest differences of opinion
as to many governmental policies;
but surely there can be no such differences
as to the need of unflinching perseverance
in the war against successful dishonesty.75
He discussed the economy and government’s role in preserving justice. He urged the Congress to extend the 8-hour day to more workers. He discussed the value of the waterways. He gave a detailed account of the progress being made on the Panama Canal. He called for a national gallery of art in the capital city, and he explained the work being done by the Biological Survey. He denied that militarism has ever caused any evil “in this country.” He hoped that the next Hague Conference would deal with the limitation of armaments.
On December 11 Roosevelt announced that he would not seek another nomination for President.
On December 16 the Great White Fleet of 16 warships left the James River estuary after Roosevelt secretly ordered Admiral Robley D. Evans to stay in the Pacific Ocean for several months before returning by way of the Indian Ocean and the Suez Canal.
On 6 January 1908 the United States Supreme Court ruled that the Employers’ Liability Act of 1906 could not be applied to intrastate corporations because that violated states’ rights. President Roosevelt sent to Justice William R. Day the book Moral Overstrain by George W. Alger that argued federal liability law should protect workers. Roosevelt wrote,
If the spirit which lies behind these two decisions
obtained in all the actions of the Federal and State courts,
we should not only have a revolution,
but it would be absolutely necessary to have a revolution,
because the condition of the worker
would become intolerable.76
Roosevelt was concerned that Senator Foraker of Ohio and New York’s Gov. Charles Evans Hughes were challenging William Howard Taft for the Republican nomination. When Hughes spoke to the New York Republican Club on January 31, Roosevelt sent a radical Special Message to Congress to distract attention away from Hughes. The President’s message urged the Congress to revise the employers’ liability law to please the Supreme Court, and he argued, “Exactly as the working man is entitled to his wages, so he should be entitled to indemnity for the injuries sustained in the natural course of his labor.”77 Roosevelt believed that he was “campaigning against privilege” in an “ethical movement.” A few progressive Republicans and many moderate Democrats responded to his appeal and passed a re-enacted Federal Employers’ Liability Act, the Workman’s Compensation Act for federal employees, and the Child Labor Act for the District of Columbia.
On May 12 Roosevelt welcomed 45 state and territorial governors and 30 other prominent men to a dinner at the White House before the 3-day Conservation Conference. The next day 360 political and social leaders including all nine Supreme Court Justices attended the conference, though Sarah S. Platt-Decker, president of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, was the only woman. The governors of most states attended, but Texas and a few others states sent their lieutenant governors. W. J. McGee had prepared the conservation issues into the following subjects: Mineral Fuels, Ores and Related Materials, Soil, Forests, Sanitation, Reclamation, Land Laws, Grazing and Stock Raising, Relations Between Rail and Water Transportation, Navigation, Power, and Conservation as a National Policy. After an invocation by the US Senate’s Chaplain Edward Everett Hale, Roosevelt made the first speech on “Conservation as a National Duty.” On the afternoon of May 15 a garden party was attended by the participants and their wives. In their declaration the governors promoted continuing and extending the Administration’s forest and water policies, advised enacting laws against harmful practices in mining and industry, and they concluded,
This conservation of our natural resources is a subject
of transcendent importance, which should engage
unremittingly the attention of the Nation, the States,
and the People in earnest cooperation.78
On June 8 Roosevelt proclaimed a National Conservation Commission with Gifford Pinchot as chairman. In six months he had authorized 16 national monuments, 20 federal irrigation projects in 14 states by the National Reclamation Act, 13 more national forests, and 16 federal bird refuges. On June 23 he declared thousands of acres in the Grand Canyon a game preserve.
During the seven and a half years of his presidency Roosevelt created or enlarged 150 National Forests, and all but eleven of these were proclaimed in his last year. All but four of these were west of the Mississippi River, and those were in Florida or northern Michigan. Of the 51 bird reservations he established all but fifteen were created in his last year. Most of them were also in the West with ten in Florida, and four in Louisiana and two in Michigan. He also proclaimed 18 national monuments all of which are west of the Mississippi, and he added five National Parks in the West.
On June 16 at the Republican National Convention in Chicago the permanent chairman Senator Lodge called Theodore Roosevelt “the best abused and most popular man in the United States today,” and mentioning his name started a demonstration that went on for 49 minutes. Roosevelt answered many requests that he run by repeating that he would not be a candidate. When Taft was nominated, the demonstrating lasted 30 minutes. Six other men were also nominated, and on the first ballot Taft got 702 votes, Senator Knox 68, Gov. Hughes 67, Speaker Cannon 58, Vice President Fairbanks 40, Senator LaFollete 25, and Senator Foraker 16. Hughes declined to be the Vice President candidate, and Taft chose Rep. James S. Sherman of New York. In his acceptance speech Taft promised that he would “clinch what has already been accomplished at the White House,” and he would work “to complete and perfect the machinery by which the President’s policies may be maintained.”79 Taft resigned as War Secretary on June 30, and Roosevelt appointed Luke Wright who had been Governor-General of the Philippines for two years and then ambassador to Japan for over a year.
On July 10 the Democratic National Convention meeting at Denver nominated for the third time William Jennings Bryan as their candidate for President.
Roosevelt spent most of the summer at his Sagamore Hill home, and he returned to Washington on September 23. He issued public statements criticizing Democratic candidates he considered corrupt or vulnerable. Charles Haskell, the treasurer of the Democratic campaign, resigned after he was exposed for having connections with the Standard Oil Company. On October 26 Roosevelt released a long letter on Taft’s labor policies as a judge and over four years as Secretary of War which included his supervising workers in the Panama Canal Zone.
In the election on November 3 Taft won the presidency with a majority of the popular votes and a 321-162 advantage in the Electoral College. He won in 29 states and lost in 13 southern states as well as in Nebraska, Colorado, and Nevada.
The Great White Fleet had a friendly visit with Japan in October. Secretary of State Root negotiated a treaty in Washington with the Japanese minister Kogoro Takahira, and they signed a peace treaty on November 30 that continued the open door with China and respected China’s territory.
In his last Annual Message to Congress on December 8 Roosevelt advised a continuation of the increasing power of the Federal government in order to control the abuses of corporations and to protect workers. He reported on finances of the Federal Government. In the next section on “Corporations” he suggested putting them under the Interstate Commerce Commission which should be given the authority to supervise securities. This could also include telegraph and telephone companies. In the “Labor” and “Protection for Wageworkers” sections he urged many reforms in order to increase their prosperity. In “The Courts” he proposed increasing the salaries of judges so that they would not be subject to “popular prejudice and passion.” In the section “Forests” he explained how they need to be nurtured to safeguard the future. “Inland Waterways” also required action.
The other sections of the Message were National Parks, Denatured Alcohol, Pure Food, Indian Service, Secret Service, Postal Savings Banks, Parcel Post, Education, Census, Public Health, Redistribution of Bureaus, Government Printing Office, Soldiers’ Homes, Independent Bureaus and Commissions, Statehood (for New Mexico and Arizona), Interstate Fisheries, Fisheries and Fur Seals, Foreign Affairs, Latin-American Republics, Panama Canal, Ocean Mail Liners, Hawaii, The Philippines, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Japanese Exposition, The Army, National Guard, and The Navy.
At Roosevelt’s last cabinet dinner on December 17 the Vice President-elect James Sherman attended along with Senator Philander Knox who was expected to become Taft’s Secretary of State.
The Congress was concerned that Roosevelt was using the secret service to investigate Congressmen, and they passed an amendment to restrict it to protecting the President and investigating counterfeiting. On 4 January 1909 Roosevelt sent another Special Message to Congress in which he criticized their action and impugned their motives writing,
The chief argument in favor of the provision was that
the Congressmen did not themselves
wish to be investigated by Secret Service men….
This amendment has been of benefit only,
and could be of benefit only, to the criminal class.80
On January 8 the House of Representatives reacted by voting 212-35 to reject the President’s message because they found that it was not respectful.
On January 22 he sent another Special Message to Congress as he transmitted the report of the National Conservation Commission which focused on waters, forests, lands, and minerals. In conclusion he concurred with the report’s recommendations, and he requested an appropriation of $50,000 for the expenses of the National Conservation Commission.
Secretary of State Elihu Root in January was elected a US Senator by New York’s legislature, and he resigned on January 27 and was replaced for 37 days by the Assistant Secretary Robert Bacon. Roosevelt believed that after history was written, his administration would be known for its ideals.
Roosevelt established the Country Life Commission, and on February 9 he sent their report to the US Senate which included “The General Corrective Forces That Should Be Set in Motion.”
On February 22 he proudly witnessed the return of the 28 ships in the Great White Fleet from their historic voyage around the world. During his presidency the Roosevelt Administration spent $900 million on the Navy that increased from 19,000 men to 44,500. He added ten more battleships to make 27, but the US was still behind Britain and Germany. On his last day on March 4 he signed the bills Congress had passed overnight.
On 4 November 1901 the Philippine Commission enacted the Sedition Law with a possible death penalty for anyone advocating independence or separation from the United States. In December the Americans had 126,000 troops and 639 military posts. Both sides used brutality. Americans burned towns and tortured prisoners with the “water cure” and the “rope cure” to try to get information. They poured several gallons of water down a prisoner’s throat until he talked, and at least one died after the third water-cure treatment. Two American officers were convicted of nearly hanging six Filipinos and were reprimanded. Prisoners were tied to trees, shot in the legs, and left all night. If they did not confess the next day, the process was repeated until they talked or died. Earlier Col. Funston had ordered all prisoners shot, and Major Metcalf and Captain Bishop had enforced his orders.
The Americans herded many thousands of Filipinos into “reconcentration” areas. Any man found outside the that area after 1 January 1902 without a pass could be imprisoned or shot if he ran away. Some Filipino rebels under General Vicente Lukban mutilated and killed 59 American soldiers in Balangiga on Samar while about 250 Filipinos were killed. In revenge General Jacob Smith ordered villages burned and all males older than ten killed instead of taking prisoners. After this brutal campaign he was court-martialed and retired. Lukban was captured on 27 February 1902, ending resistance in Samar, and General Malvar surrendered on April 16. On the 28th the Anti-Imperialist League formed the Philippine Investigation Committee, and in June they sent a petition to the United States Senate asking for an examination of the atrocities conducted by anti-imperialists.
Reverend W. H. Walker received a letter from his son and showed it to the Boston Journal, which reported about it on May 5. The letter described how 1,300 prisoners were executed over a few weeks. A priest heard their confessions for several days and then was hanged. Twenty prisoners at a time were made to dig their mass graves and then were shot. The young Walker wrote, “To keep them prisoners would necessitate the placing of the soldiers on short rations if not starving them. There was nothing to do but kill them.”81
President Theodore Roosevelt sent Taft to the Vatican in June 1902, and the US bought 410,000 acres of the Catholic friars’ land in the Philippines for $7,543,000. The land, which had about 60,000 tenants, was gradually sold in small parcels to 50,000 Filipinos over the next ten years. By the end of 1903 only 200 Spanish priests remained in the Philippines. The Americans took over the capitalistic hacienda system from the Spaniards. Also in July the US Congress passed the Organic Act by which the sugar beet lobby prevented the sugar industry from purchasing large tracts of land by restricting corporations from buying or leasing more than 2,500 acres.
President Roosevelt proclaimed victory on 4 July 1902, granting amnesty to all insurgents, but 120,000 American troops were still occupying the Philippines and suppressing resistance. The Americans had lost 4,234 soldiers dead, 2,818 wounded, and spent $600,000,000 on the war. About 20,000 Filipino soldiers died in battle. American records showed a 15-to-1 ratio between the dead and wounded Filipinos, indicating that most of the wounded were probably left to die or were shot. At least 200,000 civilians died from disease, hunger, torture, or execution. About 90% of the water buffalos (caraboas) died or were slaughtered; this hampered planting and harvesting, and rice production went down to a quarter of what it had been.
The US Tariff Act of 1902 reduced the duty on Philippine exports to the United States by 25% and removed the tariff on American products going to the Philippines. The US share of the import and export trade of the Philippines rose from 11% in 1900 to 41% by 1910. Because the US could import hemp duty-free, their advantage depressed the price paid to Filipino farmers from $170 per metric ton in 1902 to $97 per metric ton in 1911. The Filipinos suffered from mercantilism as they exported raw materials for low prices and imported expensive manufactured goods.
A cholera epidemic between 1902 and 1904 took another 200,000 Filipino lives, and in 1903 this was aggravated by a drought and locusts. In Albay province Simeon Ola led a revolt with 1,500 men in 1902 until he surrendered on 25 September 1903. The Americans re-concentrated 300,000 Filipinos in Albay with a high mortality rate.
In September 1902 General Luciano San Miguel consolidated the resistance in Rizal and Bulacan under his command. In January 1903 he tried to unite the factions from the old Katipunan to revive the movement. He used a three-week truce to build up his forces to three hundred men with two hundred guns. American officers led hundreds of Constabulary and municipal police into Rizal and Bulacan, and they arrested many citizens they suspected of supporting the resistance. Farmers and their water buffalos were re-concentrated into towns, disrupting their agriculture. The Amigo Act was passed because so many Filipinos were allowing the guerrillas to hide among the people. The Constabulary found San Miguel’s headquarters. After three attacks on two hundred of his men, San Miguel was killed on March 28. New leaders scattered to different areas, and Faustino Guillermo was captured and publicly executed in May 1904.
The Union de Impresores de Filipinas (UIF) had been formed on 30 December 1901, and on 2 February 1902 a labor congress founded the Union Obrera Democrata (UOD) with tobacco workers, carpenters, cooks, mariners, and laborers. On July 4 the UOD held a mass meeting with 50,000 people in Manila calling for independence, and on August 2 they demanded wage increases. The US cavalry intimidated strikers, and De los Reyes was arrested for sedition. The strike was broken, and the ilustrado Dr. Dominador Gomez became president of the Union Obrera Democratica de Filipinas (UODF), which had 150 unions and 20,000 members by February 1903. When Taft refused to declare May Day a holiday, the UODF turned out 100,000 people for a demonstration in Manila on May 1. Dr. Gomez was indicted for sedition and illegal association. The American judge John G. Sweeney sentenced him to 50 months hard labor and a fine of 3,250 pesos. Not until 28 September 1907 did the Supreme Court rule that the evidence was insufficient. The Court may have been influenced because Gomez had recently persuaded Macario Sakay to surrender. Taft brought in Edward Rosenberg, a representative of the American Federation of Labor, and on 13 June 1903 he persuaded the UODF leaders to form the Union del Trabajo de Filipinas (UTF) under the leadership of journalist Lope K. Santos.
On 12 November 1902 Taft got the Brigandage Act passed, declaring any resistance activity robbery or disturbances. Membership in an armed band could be punished by death or 20 years in prison, and aiding “brigands” could get 10 years. The prisons were overcrowded. Americans administered the Billibad Prison in Manila where the death rate went from 72 per thousand in 1902 to 438 per thousand in 1905. The Philippine Commission passed the Reconcentration Act in June 1903, authorizing the provincial governors to move all residents from outlying barrios into the towns. Taft left the Philippines in December 1903 to become Secretary of War, and Luke Wright became governor.
The Muslims in the southern islands were called Moros, and in 1899 the US General John C. Bates had made an agreement with the Sultan Jamalul Kiram II of Sulu that American sovereignty would not interfere with their religion and customs. The Moro Province was established in June 1903 with Major General Leonard Wood as governor, but the next year the US abrogated the Bates Treaty and imposed martial law. The Moros rebelled, and the climactic battle was at the Bud Dajo crater near Jolo on March 5-7 in 1906. About 900 Moros fought the US Army, but only six survived the onslaught. The American press publicized the massacre that included women and children. General Wood argued that women fought and that children were used as shields, and Governor-General Ide claimed that they were killed by artillery. Wood was replaced by General Tasker H. Bliss, and the US became more conciliatory.
In the outlying areas the resistance movements often had religious leaders who promised redemption or miraculous protection with amulets. Ruperto Rios led peasants in the hills of Tayabas, and the military governor, Col. Harry Bandholtz, had the Constabulary round up for reconcentration thousands of people suspected of aiding his guerrillas. His group diminished, and Rios fled to Laguna where he was turned in and hanged in December 1903. After the US Army completed its withdrawal from Negros in January 1903, Papa Isio revived the revolt. Captain John R. White ordered the Constabulary to burn villages suspected of supporting him. As the sugar harvest improved in 1905, support for Isio declined. He tried to instigate an uprising in February 1907 by attacking Suay and burning houses. He gained a hundred new recruits but had to surrender in August, when he was tried and executed.
In Cebu the brothers Quintin and Anatalio Tabal led the pulajanes who wore red uniforms. They killed four American teachers and faced the vengeance of the Constabulary with their amulets. Because they had popular support, about 5,000 people were re-concentrated into 14 barrios guarded by Constabulary forces. Eventually Governor Sergio Osmeña negotiated the surrender of the Tabal brothers. For five years until he was captured on 11 June 1907 the peasant Faustino Ablen was called Pope (Papa) and led the Dios-Dios revolt on the island of Leyte. The pulajanes and the Dios-Dios believers were also active on Samar. They were led by Papa Pablo, and by 1905 they dominated much of the island. In 1906 Nazario Aguillar led a group that pretended to surrender to Governor Curry but then started fighting. In November the pulajan chief De la Cruz and other officers were captured, and a few days later the constables surprised and killed Papa Pablo. Papa Otoy eluded them for four more years, but the Constabulary force finally found his band and killed him in October 1911. About 7,000 pulajanes died in the resistance movement on Samar.
On 26 February 1904 General Ricarte called for a Filipino uprising, but Ricarte was captured again on June 7 and was put in solitary confinement for six years and then banished again to Hong Kong. Macario Sakay issued a manifesto in April 1904 urging the patriotic duty to fight for independence. In September the resistance groups in Cavite joined with Sakay, Julian Montalan, and Cornelio Felizardo. They established the Tagalog Republic with Sakay as president. They raided Cavite and Batangas to steal arms and ammunition. Constabulary troops were sent in, and on 31 January 1905 the writ of habeas corpus was suspended in those two provinces. Montalan taxed merchants, farmers, and laborers 10% of their income. Sakay ordered those who could pay but refused to do so to be arrested and put to work. Suspected informers were tortured or had their ears and lips cut off as a warning to others. Felizardo was captured and killed by two men pretending to be deserters, and they collected 5,000 pesos reward money from the Americans. Manuel Tomines led the resistance in Isabela, but he was captured and hanged on 10 April 1905. Sakay was invited to negotiate in Manila in July, but he was treacherously captured, tried, and then hanged with Col. Lucio de Vega on 13 September 1907.
Felipe Salvador was also known as Apo Ipe. He treated the peasants well and promised them land. His Santa Iglesia movement spread in Bulacan, Pampanga, Tarlac, Pangasinan, and Nueva Ecija. A reward of 2,000 pesos was offered for Salvador’s capture. By May 1906 he had an army of 300 men with 100 rifles. Santa Iglesia suffered a major defeat in July, and for the next four years Apo Ipe fled alone from place to place. Salvador was finally caught, prosecuted, and executed in August 1910.
In 1904 Elihu Root informed the Federal party leaders Tavera and Legarda that Americans would not accept the Philippines as a state because “The Negroes are a cancer on our body politic, a source of constant difficulty, and we wish to avoid developing another such problem.”82 When Governor Luke Wright taxed cigars and alcohol to balance the budget, Tavera, whose wealth came from tobacco, and Legarda, who owned distilleries, complained and lost their patronage. Secretary of War Taft visited the Philippines in 1905 and replaced Wright with James F. Smith. The Federal Party became the Progressive Party (Progresistas), and on 21 May 1905 they abandoned the lost hope of becoming a state in the US and favored “eventual” independence. No party was allowed to mention independence until Governor Henry C. Ide lifted the ban in early 1906.
In January the radical leaders Justo and Vicente Lukban, Alberto Baretta, Fernando Ma Guerrero, Sergio Osmeña, and Manuel L. Quezon founded the Partido Independista Inmediatista, but later in the year they merged with two more conservative parties to form the Union Nacionalista party. By the first national election of 1907 every party had independence as a top priority. Out of eight million Filipinos only about 150,000 in the upper class were eligible to vote. To qualify one had to be male, 21, a resident for six months, and either an office-holder prior to 13 August 1898 or an owner of real property worth 500 pesos or be able to read, write, or speak English or Spanish.
In 1907 in the civil service Americans had an average income of $1,504, but the average Filipino civil servant earned only $419. Local governments spent almost all their funds on salaries with little left for public works. Governor-General James F. Smith explained to Taft in a letter that the real political parties in the Philippines were the Ins and the Outs. Those in power were conservative to preserve their positions while those out of office were radical to impress the people.
The Taft administration sent a hundred Filipino students to the United States in 1903, and by 1912 two hundred had earned degrees. David Barrows ran the education program in the Philippines from 1902 until he was succeeded by Frank White in 1909. By then the Philippines had 4,000 elementary schools with 355,722 pupils but only 3,404 high school students. Five-sixths of the students dropped out before reaching the fourth grade.
1. T.R.: The Last Romantic by H. W. Brands, p. 125.
2. Ibid., p. 150.
3. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris, p. 354-355.
4. Ibid., p. 425.
5. Ibid., p. 455.
6. Ibid., p. 478.
7. Ibid., p. 503.
8. Ibid., p. 510-511.
9. The Annals of America Volume 12 1895-1904, p. 68.
10. Ibid., p. 84.
11. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris, p. 569-571.
12. The Annals of America Volume 12 1895-1904, p. 150.
13. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris, p. 600.
14. Ibid., p. 602.
15. Ibid., p. 610.
16. Ibid., p. 693.
17. Ibid., p. 707.
18. Ibid., p. 715.
19. Ibid., p. 729.
20. The Annals of America Volume 12 1895-1904, p. 84.
21. Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris, p. 14.
22. Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1908, Volume 10, p. 424-425.
23. Ibid., p. 426-427.
24. Ibid., p. 433.
25. Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris, p. 83.
26. Ibid., p. 88.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid., p. 100-101.
29. Ibid., p. 102.
30. Ibid., p. 110.
31. Ibid., p. 138-139.
32. Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1908, Volume 10, p. 535-536.
33. Ibid., p. 536.
34. Ibid., p. 540.
35. Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris, p. 186-187.
36. Ibid., p. 210.
37. The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America by Douglas Brinkley, p. 527.
38. Ibid., p. 532.
39. Ibid., p. 534.
40. T.R.: The Last Romantic by H. W. Brands, p. 497.
41. Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris, p. 259.
42. Theodore Roosevelt by Henry F. Pringle, p. 225.
43. The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism by Doris Kearns Goodwin, p. 402.
44. Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1908, Volume 10, p. 666.
45. Ibid., p. 682.
46. Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris, p. 317.
47. Ibid., p. 321.
48. Ibid., p. 326.
49. Ibid., p. 335.
50. Ibid., p. 336.
51. Ibid., p. 341.
52. Ibid., p. 350.
53. The Bully Pulpit by Doris Kearns Goodwin, p. 417-418.
54. Ibid., p. 422.
55. Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1908, Volume 10, p. 807.
56. Ibid., p. 830-831.
57. The Bully Pulpit by Doris Kearns Goodwin, p. 436.
58. Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1908, Volume 10, p. 839, 840.
59. The Bully Pulpit by Doris Kearns Goodwin, p. 448.
60. Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris, p. 412.
61. Ibid., p. 413.
62. Ibid., p. 426.
63. Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1908, Volume 11, p. 1131-1132.
64. Ibid., p. 1142.
65. Ibid., p. 1148.
66. Ibid. p. 1152.
67. Ibid. p. 1154-1155.
68. Ibid. p. 1148.
69. Lincoln Steffens: a biography by Justine Kaplan, p. 145.
70. Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris, p. 444.
71. Ibid., p. 454.
72. Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1908, Volume 11, p. 1186.
73. Ibid., p. 1217.
74. Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris, p. 492-493.
75. Ibid., p. 501.
76. Ibid., p. 506.
77. Ibid., p. 507.
78. Ibid., p. 518.
79. Ibid., p. 534.
80. T.R.: The Last Romantic by H. W. Brands, p. 633.
81. Boston Journal, May 5, 1902 in “Benevolent Assimilation” by Stuart Creighton Miller, p. 239.
82. In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines by Stanley Karnow, p. 177.
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