Theodore Roosevelt

• 1. Introduction

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  Theodore Roosevelt was shot in the chest on the 14th of October 1912, while on his way to give a campaign speech in Milwaukee. The bullet passed through his eyeglass case and a 50-page folded copy of his speech before lodging in his chest muscle. He declined to go to the hospital. Instead, he stepped up to the podium and spoke for 90 minutes with blood seeping into his shirt. Only then did he accept medical attention. Doctors decided it was safer to leave the bullet inside him than to remove it, and Roosevelt carried it for the rest of his life. He later wrote to a friend that he minded it no more than if it were in his waistcoat pocket. That moment tells you something essential about the 26th president of the United States. Roosevelt was a man who had turned himself, almost by sheer force of will, from a sickly, asthmatic child into a war hero, a cattle rancher, a police commissioner, a naturalist, and eventually the youngest person ever to hold the American presidency. He died in 1919, and historians have consistently ranked him among the greatest presidents in American history. How did a boy who could barely breathe become the man who reshaped the modern American state? That is the question this documentary sets out to answer.

• 2. The Making of a Man

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  Theodore Roosevelt Jr. was born on the 27th of October 1858, at 28 East 20th Street in Manhattan. His parents were Martha Stewart Bulloch and businessman Theodore Roosevelt Sr. From his earliest years, debilitating asthma attacks terrified both Roosevelt and his family. Doctors had no cure. At age seven, he saw a dead seal at a market. He obtained the seal's head, recruited his cousins, and declared the formation of the "Roosevelt Museum of Natural History". He taught himself rudimentary taxidermy and filled the makeshift museum with animals he killed or caught. At age nine, he recorded his observations in a paper entitled "The Natural History of Insects". That same restless energy drove him outdoors and into the Alps during a family trip in 1869, where he discovered that physical exertion eased his asthma and lifted his spirits. He immediately began a heavy regimen of exercise. After being manhandled by older boys on the way to a camping trip, he sought out a boxing coach. His father's philosophy shaped every decision: look after your morals first, your health next, and your studies last. When his father died suddenly in 1878, Roosevelt was devastated. He had inherited $60,000, enough to live on comfortably for life. But idleness held no appeal. He graduated from Harvard in 1880, placing 22nd out of 177 students and earning his degree magna cum laude. He had already published work as an ornithologist before he received that degree. Biographer Henry F. Pringle recorded Roosevelt's own judgment that he had obtained little from Harvard, finding the institution too rigid and too focused on minutiae that were never connected to any larger whole. Roosevelt abandoned his plan to study natural science, tried Columbia Law School, found law irrational, and walked into the headquarters of New York's 21st District Republican Association. He had decided to be one of the governing class.

• 3. The Rough Rider

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  When the armored cruiser exploded in the harbor of Havana on the 15th of February 1898, killing hundreds of crew, Roosevelt had already been preparing for a war against Spain. As Assistant Secretary of the Navy, he had sent orders to naval vessels without approval from his superiors, orders that George Dewey later credited with enabling the American victory at the Battle of Manila Bay. Roosevelt resigned his post as soon as war was declared. Along with Army Colonel Leonard Wood, he formed the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry Regiment. His wife and many friends begged him to stay in Washington. He refused. When newspapers reported the regiment's formation, Roosevelt and Wood were flooded with applications from men who represented a deliberate cross-section of American life: Ivy Leaguers, frontiersmen, Native Americans, hunters, miners, former soldiers, and sheriffs. The press dubbed them the Rough Riders. They trained for several weeks in San Antonio, Texas, and landed in Daiquiri, Cuba, on the 23rd of June 1898. Roosevelt's first combat came at the Battle of Las Guasimas. On the 1st of July, in a combined assault with the Regulars, he led the charges up Kettle Hill and San Juan Hill that would make both him and the regiment famous. He was the only soldier on horseback. When his horse became entangled in barbed wire near the summit, he dismounted and walked the rest of the way up. The victories at San Juan Heights cost 200 killed and 1,000 wounded. Roosevelt personally killed one Spanish soldier with a revolver salvaged from the sunken warship during the assault. He later called San Juan Heights "the great day of my life". Returning to civilian life, he insisted on being called "Colonel Roosevelt". He openly despised the nickname "Teddy", though the public ignored his preference and used it anyway.

• 4. Reform Before Power

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  Long before he reached the presidency, Roosevelt had built a track record of confronting institutions that resisted accountability. In 1881, he won election to the New York State Assembly representing the 21st district, which covered the Upper East Side. He moved immediately. He exposed the collusion between financier Jay Gould and Judge Theodoric R. Westbrook and argued publicly for the judge's impeachment. The investigation committee rejected the impeachment, but Roosevelt had put his name on the map. He won re-election in 1882 by a margin greater than two-to-one. He then allied with Governor Grover Cleveland to push through a civil service reform bill. As president of the New York City Police Commissioners from 1895 onward, he implemented regular firearm inspections, appointed recruits on merit rather than political affiliation, established Meritorious Service Medals, closed corrupt police hostelries, and had telephones installed in station houses. He personally walked officers' beats at night and early in the morning to check whether they were on duty. The muckraking journalist Jacob Riis, whom he met in 1894, described the effect of having Roosevelt as an ally in Mulberry Street: "for the first time a moral purpose came into the street. In the light of it everything was transformed." When he became Assistant Secretary of the Navy, he found Secretary John D. Long in poor health and making few major decisions. Roosevelt filled the vacuum. He called for a build-up of battleships, pressed his views on McKinley about Cuba and the Pacific, and set events in motion that Long and McKinley did not fully sanction. In each of these roles, the pattern was the same. Roosevelt identified what needed doing and did it, often before anyone in authority had told him to start.

• 5. The Square Deal Presidency

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  Roosevelt was sworn in as the 26th president at the Ansley Wilcox House after learning of McKinley's death on the 14th of September 1901. Ohio Senator Mark Hanna was particularly bitter; many conservatives feared the impulsive young president would upset the alliance between business and government that had delivered prosperity. Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin recorded that conservatives had dominated the Republican Party for three decades and dreaded what was coming. Roosevelt reassured fiscal conservatives with careful language about the delicacy of the business mechanism, then within a year opposed the merger that created the Northern Securities Company and challenged J.P. Morgan directly. His Square Deal program had three main goals: conservation of natural resources, control of corporations, and consumer protection. He brought 44 antitrust suits. His three predecessors combined had prosecuted 18. House Speaker Joseph Gurney Cannon observed that Roosevelt "wants everything from the birth of Christ to the death of the devil." In the coal strike of May 1902, Roosevelt threatened the coal operators with federal troops. He eventually brokered an agreement that gave miners more pay for fewer hours, becoming the first president to help settle a labor dispute. When the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act passed in 1906, Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle, published that same year, had galvanized public support for reform that conservatives had initially opposed. The Meat Inspection Act banned misleading labels and harmful preservatives. The Pure Food and Drug Act banned impure or falsely labeled food and drugs from being made, sold, or shipped. In 1906, Roosevelt also signed the Hepburn Act after negotiating with Democratic Senator Benjamin Tillman, giving the Interstate Commerce Commission the power to set maximum railroad rates. The ICC also gained regulatory authority over pipeline fees and storage contracts.

• 6. Conservation and Executive Power

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  Roosevelt considered his conservation work the proudest achievement of his presidency. He worked closely with Interior Secretary James Rudolph Garfield and Gifford Pinchot, Chief of the United States Forest Service, to push programs through despite resistance from Western members of Congress such as Charles William Fulton. He established the United States Forest Service, signed five National Parks into existence, and proclaimed 18 new U.S. National Monuments under the 1906 Antiquities Act. He established the first 51 bird reserves, four game preserves, and 150 National Forests. The total area he placed under public protection amounted to approximately 230 million acres. When Senator Fulton attached an amendment to an agricultural appropriations bill that would have prevented any further land reservations, Roosevelt established an additional 21 forest reserves and waited until the last possible moment before signing the bill. In total he established 121 forest reserves across 31 states by executive order. He issued 1,081 executive orders during his presidency. That number exceeded every previous president except Grover Cleveland, who had issued 253. The first 25 presidents combined had issued a total of 1,262 executive orders. Roosevelt's willingness to use executive power extended into domains that surprised even his allies: he forced retention of martial arts classes at the U.S. Naval Academy, revised disciplinary rules, attempted to alter the design of a coin he disliked, and ordered simplified spellings for 300 words. He rescinded the spelling order after ridicule from the press and a formal protest from the House. The conservation work, however, he never rescinded and never apologized for.

• 7. World Stage and Nobel Prize

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  From 1904 to 1905, Japan and Russia were at war. Both sides asked Roosevelt to mediate, and he organized a peace conference held in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. His efforts earned him the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize, making him the first non-European to win a Nobel Prize. He had secretly favored Japan to emerge victorious. The Great White Fleet of American battleships visited Japan in 1908, intended to demonstrate the superiority of the American navy over the smaller Japanese fleet. The Japanese welcomed the visitors with enthusiasm rather than resentment, and that goodwill helped produce the Root-Takahura Agreement of November 1908, which reaffirmed Japanese control of Korea and American control of the Philippines. In Latin America, Roosevelt positioned the Panama Canal as the centerpiece of his foreign policy ambitions. When Colombia rejected the canal treaty, a Panamanian rebellion followed and succeeded; Roosevelt supported it. A treaty with the new Panamanian government was reached in 1903. He paid $40 million to the bankrupt Panama Canal Company and the New Panama Canal Company for the rights and equipment to build the canal. Critics charged that an American investor syndicate divided the money among themselves. When newspapers pressed the charge, Roosevelt brought criminal libel cases against the New York World and the Indianapolis News in January 1909. Both cases were dismissed by federal district courts. On the 6th of November 1906, Roosevelt became the first president to leave the continental United States on an official diplomatic trip, making a 17-day visit to Panama and Puerto Rico. He toured the canal worksite and attended diplomatic receptions in both territories. Henry Kissinger later described Roosevelt as the first president to develop the principle that the United States had a duty to make its power felt globally, rejecting the idea of a passive example-setting role in favor of active intervention.

• 8. After the White House

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  Roosevelt left office in 1909 having convinced his Secretary of War, William Howard Taft, to succeed him. He had known Taft since 1890. He wrote to Taft that he would "break their necks with the utmost cheerfulness" if any federal officials needed to be removed to smooth Taft's path. Yet Taft proved a less adroit politician. When Taft tackled the tariff boldly and produced the Payne-Aldrich Tariff of 1909, he alienated reformers across the party. Roosevelt was touring Africa and Europe and initially gave Taft space. By November 1911, Roosevelt said of Taft that he "means well feebly, and he does not know how" and was "utterly unfit for leadership". At the 1912 Republican National Convention, Taft won the nomination on the first ballot and Roosevelt believed the nomination had been stolen from him. He closed his speech to supporters at the convention by declaring: "We stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord." He left the Republican Party, founded the Progressive Party, and ran in the general election. Publisher Frank Munsey provided cash; Jane Addams campaigned vigorously for the party; Gifford Pinchot represented the environmentalist wing. In the November election, Roosevelt won 4.1 million votes, or 27% of the popular vote. Woodrow Wilson won with 6.3 million votes and 435 electoral votes. Taft received only 8 electoral votes. Roosevelt's vote share remained the highest ever recorded by a third-party presidential candidate. After the campaign, he led a four-month expedition to the Amazon basin and nearly died of tropical disease. During World War I, he criticized Wilson for keeping the United States out of the fighting, and his offer to lead volunteers to France was rejected. His health deteriorated steadily in his final years, and he died on the 6th of January 1919.