Really Cool Stuff about Theodore Roosevelt
BTW: I actually couldn’t put everything that Teddy ever did on this list so you can thank me later for my superb editing skills.
1. In Dutch, Roosevelt means ‘Field of Roses.’
2. TR was a lifelong devotee of the noble art of boxing. However, while in the White House, TR’s sparring partner hit him a little too hard. “Roosevelt continued to box even in the White House, and while sparring with a military aide, suffered a blow that cost him the sight of his left eye. Characteristically, he hid the injury so the young man would not be concerned about having injured the president” (p. 49).
3. He wrote, or co-wrote, over 38 books. Beginning in 1882 with his first book, The Naval War of 1812, TR’s published works spanned the rest of his lifetime until 1918 and The Great Adventure. He also wrote Hunting Trips of a Ranchman, Thomas Hart Benton, Essays on Practical Politics, Gouverneur Morris, Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail, The Winnings of the West (4 vols), New York, The Wilderness Hunter, American Big-Game, Hero Tales from American History, Hunting in Many Lands, American Ideals, Some American Game, Trail and Campfire, The Rough Riders, Oliver Cromwell, The Strenuous Life, The Deer Family, Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter, Good Hunting, Outlook Editorials, African and European Addresses, African Game Trails, American Problems, The New Nationalism, Presidential Addresses and State Papers and European Addresses (8 vols), The Conservation of Womanhood and Childhood, Realizable Ideals, Autobiography, History as Literature and Other Essays, Progressive Principles, Life-Histories of African Game Animals, Through the Brazilian Wilderness, America and the World War, A Book-Lover’s Holidays in the Open, Fear God and Take Your Own Part, The Foes of Our Own Household, and National Strength and International Duty.
4. While on his honeymoon with Alice Lee, TR climbed the Matterhorn, one of the tallest mountains in Europe. “The mountain had first been conquered only sixteen years before by a team that had lost four of its members. Although the route to the top and been eased by the installation of chains and ropes at critical points, it was a difficult climb, particularly for an amateur who had been warned by his doctor not even to run upstairs” (p. 114-15).
5. TR’s first book, The Naval War of 1812, was an instant classic. “The Navy Department quickly recognized the book’s value. It decreed that at least one copy was to be placed on board every ship in commission and it became a textbook at the fledgling Naval War College” (p. 129).
6. Towards the end of Jefferson Davis’ life, he and TR got into a nasty exchange through letters after TR asserted that Davis should be compared with Benedict Arnold.
7. Along with several likeminded individuals, TR founded the first Boone and Crockett club. “But the settlement of the West made it difficult to carry out this objective [to protect big game from indiscriminate slaughter], and the club turned its energies to conservation, a transformation signified by the formation of a Committee on Parks. The membership included some of the nation’s leading lawmakers and eminent scientists, which gave it considerable influence upon public opinion and on Congress” (p. 196). The Boone and Crockett club also used its influence to save Yellowstone from further despoliation after the passage of the Park Protection Act in 1894.
8. After Alice’s death, TR grew to hate the nickname “Teddy” and close friends and relatives never used it.
9. TR coined the term “muckraking” in retaliation to crusading journalists.
10. TR made the term “White House” official. “Roosevelt’s arrival in the White House, a name he quickly made official by executive order, was like a blast of fresh and bracing air in the fetid atmosphere of Washington” (p. 358).
11. TR caused quite a stir when he allowed his good friend and the first black, Booker T Washington, to dine at the White House.
12. When President Roosevelt aided in breaking up the coal miner’s strike, he set a number of precedents for the executive office. “For the first time a president had intervened to bring about a negotiated settlement of a labor dispute; for the first time a president had proposed binding arbitration, and for the first time a president had threatened to use troops to seize a strike-bound industry” (p. 377).
13. Through his efforts in resolving the Russo-Japanese War, Roosevelt was the first American to ever win the Nobel Peace Prize.
14. Theodore walked Eleanor Roosevelt, his niece, down the aisle in her wedding to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
15. He was the very first president to ride in an airplane and a submarine.
16. TR’s association with the teddy bear began in Nov 1902 when TR refused to kill a bear that had already been roped because it was unsporting. “Clifford K Berryman of the Washington Post produced a whimsical cartoon based on the incident, ‘Drawing the Line in Mississippi.’ Morris Michtom, a Russian Jewish immigrant who ran a toy shop on Brooklyn, was inspired by the cartoon to create a cuddly stuffed bear for children. He gave it the president’s nickname, and the bear became an international phenomenon” (p. 423.)
17. TR appointed the first Jew to the cabinet. “Oscar Straus, a New York businessman-politician became the first Jew to be appointed to the Cabinet when Roosevelt named him secretary of commerce and labor” (p. 424). The cabinet post of commerce and labor had just recently been added by TR.
18. TR was a great, but unknown, proponent of the arts. “He appointed a fine arts council to advise the federal government on building design, and he is credited with not only being the real father of the National Gallery of Art but supporting the architects that restored Washington to the original L’Enfant plan” (p. 426).
19. Let’s not forget all the things that Edith, as First Lady, accomplished. “She was the first to hire a social secretary—Isabelle Hagner, member of a an old Washington family—the first to establish her own office, and the first to include a cameo of herself along with that of the president on the engraved formal invitations sent out by the White House. She also began the White House china collection and that of portraits of first ladies, which were installed in a special gallery” (p. 427-28).
20. When TR won re-election in 1904, it was by an enormous amount. “’I have the greatest popular majority and the greatest electoral majority ever given a candidate for President,’ Roosevelt wrote to Kermit” (p. 435).
21. TR created the frontrunner of the FBI. “Congress refused to rescind the ban [on using the Secret Service to ‘ferret out corruption in government’], but by executive order the president created an investigatory agency within the Department of Justice that eventually became the Federal Bureau of Investigation” (p. 493).
22. As TR was touring around Europe, he was befriended by Kaiser Wilhelm II. “The Kaiser broke all precedents by inviting Roosevelt to attend the field maneuvers of the German Army—making him the first civilian to be so honored” (p. 508).
23. TR has a river named in his honor after his trek down the Amazon. “But in spite of their privations, Roosevelt and his party had mapped the 1,500 miles of the River of Doubt, a powerful waterway as long as the Rhine of the Elbe, which the Brazilians renamed the Rio Roosevelt in his honor. In Brazil, it is popularly known as the Rio Teodoro” (p. 538).
I really enjoyed this biography and I realize that part of that is just Theodore Roosevelt himself. What an interesting dude! He was exciting and quotable and full of adventures—what could be better for a biographer, right? Nathan Miller immediately gave us his reasons for writing this biography on TR. “This book, the first full-scale, one-volume biography in more than three decades, is intended for those readers who wish to know the full story of his life. Moreover, I have had access to the letters of Roosevelt’s courtship and marriage to his first wife, Alice Lee, that were unavailable to earlier writers. Although I have placed emphasis upon Roosevelt’s public career, I was attracted by the man himself and by his relations with his close associates and family, his children, and particularly his two wives. I have tried to portray a three-dimensional figure of flesh and blood who confronted failures as well as triumphs” (p. 10-11).
Not only did Miller bring TR to life, but he also did a great job of showing both the good and the bad sides of his character. Miller mentions that at one point stories about TR were used by the opposition to show mental imbalance, whereas TR’s friends used them to show his indomitability. Miller also lets us know that TR had a tendency towards avoidance like how he handled his father’s and first wife’s deaths. There were times that he experienced panic and depression and he would jump to conclusions about events and people. “Despite Roosevelt’s high moral tone, he possessed a streak of ruthlessness and at times broke his own rules for fairness and justice. Individuals were condemned without hearing, he rarely admitted the possibility of error, and upon occasion employed the dangerous tactic of guilt by association. Opponents who could not be won over were dismissed as traitors or worse. Critics called him cunning, selfish, vindictive, melodramatic, megalomaniacal, dishonest, shallow, and cynical. Perhaps Roosevelt’s greatest failure was his insistence on being both a political and moral leader. When he tried to justify political acts in moral terms, he sometimes cast himself in the role of insufferable hypocrite” (p. 412).
You can’t help but like Teddy Roosevelt, I’m afraid. Even with all the bad traits thrown in it was impossible not to like this guy. TR somehow had a rare gift that seemed to break down people’s conceptions of him and for making the right decisions at the right time. For instance, his avoidance issues led him to move out to the Badlands after Alice’s death. However, that minor act led all the way to the presidency. “Roosevelt had three major liabilities in politics; he was an aristocrat, he was an intellectual, and he was an easterner. Altogether, he spent only about three years in the Bad Lands, a period interrupted by sometimes lengthy stays in the East. Yet he so successfully, identified himself with the West that for the remainder of his life, the public thought of him as a rough-riding cowboy rather than a New York dude. This western experience removed the stigma of effeminacy, ineffectuality, and intellectualism that clung to most reformers” (p. 164). There are also other examples in his life of brilliant political decisions that did not seem so at the time like quitting his job as Assistant Secretary of the Navy to go to war or like leaving for Africa after Taft won the election to keep himself out of the way. It’s this sort of innate political prescience that typifies Roosevelt’s existence and makes him just so irresistible.
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