How Theodore Roosevelt Became President
Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. was the second of four children born to socialite Martha Stewart "Mittie" Bulloch and businessman Theodore "Thee" Roosevelt, Sr. His youth was spent in his poor health due to severe asthma and he experienced sudden nighttime asthma attacks that gave him the sensation of being smothered. Doctors of the day knew of no cure. His father influenced his interest in nature and in cultural affairs. He wrote: "My father, Theodore Roosevelt, was the best man I ever knew. He combined strength and courage with gentleness, tenderness, and great unselfishness. He would not tolerate in us children selfishness or cruelty, idleness, cowardice, or untruthfulness."
On a vacation with his family in the Alps in 1869, Roosevelt found that he felt better after physical exertion, which served to minimize his asthma. He began a heavy regime of exercise. After being bullied by two older boys on a camping trip, he found a boxing coach to help him to learn how to stand up for himself. He also built courage through reading.
Roosevelt was mostly home schooled by tutors and his parents. His strongest subjects were geography, history, biology, French, and German, but he struggled in mathematics and the classical languages. In the fall of 1876 he entered Harvard College. He studied biology and became an accomplished naturalist and a published ornithologist. While at Harvard, he participated in rowing and boxing and was runner-up in a Harvard boxing tournament. He was also an editor of The Harvard Advocate. While he was at Harvard, his father died in 1878.
He attended Columbia Law School, but disliked the study of law and spent much of his time writing a book on the War of 1812. Roosevelt became involved in politics at Morton Hall, the headquarters for New York's 21st District Republican Association. He dropped out of law school to run for office.
On his 22nd birthday, Roosevelt married socialite Alice Hathaway Lee. Their daughter, Alice Lee Roosevelt, was born on February 12, 1884. Roosevelt's wife died two days after giving birth due to an undiagnosed case of kidney failure (called Bright's disease at the time). His mother, Mittie, had died of typhoid fever eleven hours earlier at 3:00 a.m., in the same house. Distraught, in his diary, Roosevelt wrote a large 'X' on the page and then, "The light has gone out of my life." Roosevelt left baby Alice in the care of his sister Bamie in New York City.
Roosevelt was elected as a member of the New York State Assembly in 1882, 1883 and 1884. He fought against corruption, leading opposition to an attempt by financier Jay Gould to lower his taxes. Roosevelt exposed suspected collusion in the matter by Judge Theodore Westbrook, and caused an investigation to proceed, aiming for the impeachment of the judge. The investigation committee rejected impeachment, but Roosevelt had exposed the corruption, enlarging his political profile in the process. In 1883, Roosevelt became the Assembly Minority Leader and in 1884, he lost the nomination for Speaker of the Assemblyby a vote of 41 to 29 in the GOP caucus. Roosevelt wrote more bills than any other legislator.
In 1886, Roosevelt was the Republican candidate for mayor of New York City. Roosevelt finished in third place with 27% (60,435 votes). He decided to leave New York following the deaths of his wife and mother and moved to Medora, North Dakota, where he built a ranch named Elk Horn. Roosevelt learned to ride western style, rope and hunt and served as a deputy sheriff. In that capacity, Roosevelt pursued three outlaws who had stolen his riverboat and escaped north up the Little Missouri River. He captured them, and transported the thieves to Dickinson for trial. The severe winter of 1886–1887 wiped out his herd of cattle and those of his competitors, and with it over half of his $80,000 investment. Roosevelt then returned to New York.
On December 2, 1886, Roosevelt married his childhood and family friend, Edith Kermit Carow. The couple married at St George's, Hanover Square in London, England and they honeymooned in Europe. They had five children together: Theodore "Ted" III (1887–1944), Kermit (1889–1943), Ethel (1891–1977), Archibald (1894–1979), and Quentin (1897–1918).
In the 1888 presidential election, Roosevelt successfully campaigned for Benjamin Harrison and Harrison appointed Roosevelt to the United States Civil Service Commission, where he served until 1895. While in office, Roosevelt fought against the spoils system and for enforcement of civil service laws. Despite Roosevelt's support for Harrison's reelection in 1892, Democratic President Grover Cleveland reappointed him to the Commission.
In 1894, a group of reform Republicans approached Roosevelt about running for Mayor of New York again, but he declined. He became president of the board of the New York City Police Commissioners for two years in 1895 and radically reformed the police force. The New York Police Department was then as one of the most corrupt police departments in America. To reform the department, Roosevelt implemented regular inspections of firearms and annual physical exams. He appointed 1,600 recruits based on their physical and intellectual qualifications, ignoring their political affiliation, and he established Meritorious Service Medals. He also had telephones installed in station houses and would regularly walk a police beat looking for officers who were derelict in their duty.
In 1894, Roosevelt met investigative journalist Jacob Riis, who was profiling the terrible conditions of the city's millions of poor immigrants with his famous book "How the Other Half Lives." According to Riis, Roosevelt expressed genuine concern and came to see the problems for himself. In seeking to bring about reforms in his city, he ran up against boss Tom Platt and the Tammany Hall political machine, who took steps to legislate the Police Commission out of existence.
Roosevelt had demonstrated a wealth of knowledge about naval history, through his writing. President William McKinley, urged by Roosevelt's close friend Congressman Henry Cabot Lodge, appointed Roosevelt as the Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1897. Roosevelt's boss, Secretary of the Navy John D. Long was in poor health, and left many major decisions to Roosevelt. Roosevelt seized the opportunity and began to make many strategic decisions for the department. Roosevelt was particularly adamant that Spain give up control of Cuba. Ten days after the battleship Maine exploded in Havana harbor of Havana, with Secretary Long away from the office, Roosevelt became Acting Secretary for four hours. He cabled the Navy to prepare for war, ordered ammunition and supplies, brought in experts and went to Congress asking for the authority to recruit as many sailors as he felt were necessary. He prepared the department for the coming war with Spain.
Prior to the Spanish–American War, Roosevelt had already seen reserve military service from 1882 to 1886 with the New York National Guard. When the United States and Spain declared war against each other in late April 1898, Roosevelt resigned from his job as Assistant Secretary of the Navy on May 6 and formed the First US Volunteer Cavalry Regiment under Army Colonel Leonard Wood. Dubbed by the press as the "Rough Riders", the regiment was a temporary units active only for the duration of the war. He obtained modern multiple-round Krag smokeless carbine rifles, for the regiment, which began training in San Antonio, Texas. The regiment included Ivy Leaguers, professional and amateur athletes, gentlemen from New York's upper class, as well as cowboys, frontiersmen, Native Americans, hunters, miners, prospectors, former soldiers, tradesmen, and sheriffs. The Rough Riders were part of the cavalry division commanded by former Confederate general Joseph Wheeler. It was one of three divisions in the V Corps under Lieutenant General William Rufus Shafter.
Roosevelt and his men departed Tampa on June 13, landed in Daiquiri, Cuba, on June 23, 1898, and marched to Siboney. The Rough Riders had a minor skirmish known as the Battle of Las Guasimas where they fought their way through Spanish resistance. The Rough Riders became famous for the charge up Kettle Hill on July 1, 1898. In the charge, Roosevelt had the only horse, and rode back and forth between rifle pits at the forefront of the advance. He was forced to walk up the last part of Kettle Hill, because his horse had been entangled in barbed wire. The charge was victorious, but came at a cost of 200 killed and 1000 wounded. Roosevelt later recalled the Battle of Kettle Hill (part of the San Juan Heights) as "the great day of my life." Denied the honor for political reasons during his lifetime, in 2001, Roosevelt was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions. He had been nominated during the war, but Army officials, annoyed at his grabbing the headlines, blocked it. After returning to civilian life, Roosevelt preferred to be known as "Colonel Roosevelt" or "The Colonel".
After leaving the Army, Roosevelt was sought after by New York Republicans as a candidate for the office of Governor because their current governor was tainted by scandal. He won the 1898 gubernatorial election by a margin of 1%.
As governor, Roosevelt was exposed to the problems of trusts, monopolies, labor relations, and conservation. He held twice-daily press conferences and successfully pushed the Ford Franchise-Tax bill, which taxed public franchises granted by the state and controlled by corporations. He once again clashed with political boss Platt, who demanded to be consulted on state appointment. Roosevelt pretended to comply, but then made his own decisions. In the spring of 1899, he was able to secure passage of a civil service bill that the secretary of the Civil Service Reform Association called "superior to any civil service statute heretofore secured in America."
Roosevelt wanted a second term as governor. Instead he was promoted for the office of Vice President, by friends as well as foes. Platt engineered Roosevelt's removal from the state by pressuring him to accept the GOP nomination as Vice President in 1900. The post was vacant following the death of Garrett Hobart and President McKinley accepted the nomination, although his campaign manager, Mark Hanna, thought Roosevelt was too cowboy-like.
The office of Vice President was virtually a powerless position, and did not suit Roosevelt's aggressive temperament. Roosevelt loyally and energetically threw himself into the 1900 election campaign, crisscrossing the nation denouncing the radicalism of William Jennings Bryan. Roosevelt spent six months as Vice President (from March to September 1901), a time of relative boredom for him.
Things changed when, on September 6, President McKinley was shot by anarchist Leon Czolgosz, while in Buffalo, New York at the Pan-American Exposition. Initial reports suggested that McKinley would recover from his wounds, so Roosevelt, after visiting the ailing president, embarked for the west. When McKinley's condition worsened, Roosevelt rushed back. McKinley died on September 14, and Roosevelt was sworn in at the Ansley Wilcox House.
Roosevelt kept McKinley's Cabinet and promised to continue McKinley's policies. In the November 1904 presidential election, Roosevelt won the presidency in his own right in a landslide victory.
On a vacation with his family in the Alps in 1869, Roosevelt found that he felt better after physical exertion, which served to minimize his asthma. He began a heavy regime of exercise. After being bullied by two older boys on a camping trip, he found a boxing coach to help him to learn how to stand up for himself. He also built courage through reading.
Roosevelt was mostly home schooled by tutors and his parents. His strongest subjects were geography, history, biology, French, and German, but he struggled in mathematics and the classical languages. In the fall of 1876 he entered Harvard College. He studied biology and became an accomplished naturalist and a published ornithologist. While at Harvard, he participated in rowing and boxing and was runner-up in a Harvard boxing tournament. He was also an editor of The Harvard Advocate. While he was at Harvard, his father died in 1878.
He attended Columbia Law School, but disliked the study of law and spent much of his time writing a book on the War of 1812. Roosevelt became involved in politics at Morton Hall, the headquarters for New York's 21st District Republican Association. He dropped out of law school to run for office.
On his 22nd birthday, Roosevelt married socialite Alice Hathaway Lee. Their daughter, Alice Lee Roosevelt, was born on February 12, 1884. Roosevelt's wife died two days after giving birth due to an undiagnosed case of kidney failure (called Bright's disease at the time). His mother, Mittie, had died of typhoid fever eleven hours earlier at 3:00 a.m., in the same house. Distraught, in his diary, Roosevelt wrote a large 'X' on the page and then, "The light has gone out of my life." Roosevelt left baby Alice in the care of his sister Bamie in New York City.
Roosevelt was elected as a member of the New York State Assembly in 1882, 1883 and 1884. He fought against corruption, leading opposition to an attempt by financier Jay Gould to lower his taxes. Roosevelt exposed suspected collusion in the matter by Judge Theodore Westbrook, and caused an investigation to proceed, aiming for the impeachment of the judge. The investigation committee rejected impeachment, but Roosevelt had exposed the corruption, enlarging his political profile in the process. In 1883, Roosevelt became the Assembly Minority Leader and in 1884, he lost the nomination for Speaker of the Assemblyby a vote of 41 to 29 in the GOP caucus. Roosevelt wrote more bills than any other legislator.
In 1886, Roosevelt was the Republican candidate for mayor of New York City. Roosevelt finished in third place with 27% (60,435 votes). He decided to leave New York following the deaths of his wife and mother and moved to Medora, North Dakota, where he built a ranch named Elk Horn. Roosevelt learned to ride western style, rope and hunt and served as a deputy sheriff. In that capacity, Roosevelt pursued three outlaws who had stolen his riverboat and escaped north up the Little Missouri River. He captured them, and transported the thieves to Dickinson for trial. The severe winter of 1886–1887 wiped out his herd of cattle and those of his competitors, and with it over half of his $80,000 investment. Roosevelt then returned to New York.
On December 2, 1886, Roosevelt married his childhood and family friend, Edith Kermit Carow. The couple married at St George's, Hanover Square in London, England and they honeymooned in Europe. They had five children together: Theodore "Ted" III (1887–1944), Kermit (1889–1943), Ethel (1891–1977), Archibald (1894–1979), and Quentin (1897–1918).
In the 1888 presidential election, Roosevelt successfully campaigned for Benjamin Harrison and Harrison appointed Roosevelt to the United States Civil Service Commission, where he served until 1895. While in office, Roosevelt fought against the spoils system and for enforcement of civil service laws. Despite Roosevelt's support for Harrison's reelection in 1892, Democratic President Grover Cleveland reappointed him to the Commission.
In 1894, a group of reform Republicans approached Roosevelt about running for Mayor of New York again, but he declined. He became president of the board of the New York City Police Commissioners for two years in 1895 and radically reformed the police force. The New York Police Department was then as one of the most corrupt police departments in America. To reform the department, Roosevelt implemented regular inspections of firearms and annual physical exams. He appointed 1,600 recruits based on their physical and intellectual qualifications, ignoring their political affiliation, and he established Meritorious Service Medals. He also had telephones installed in station houses and would regularly walk a police beat looking for officers who were derelict in their duty.
In 1894, Roosevelt met investigative journalist Jacob Riis, who was profiling the terrible conditions of the city's millions of poor immigrants with his famous book "How the Other Half Lives." According to Riis, Roosevelt expressed genuine concern and came to see the problems for himself. In seeking to bring about reforms in his city, he ran up against boss Tom Platt and the Tammany Hall political machine, who took steps to legislate the Police Commission out of existence.
Roosevelt had demonstrated a wealth of knowledge about naval history, through his writing. President William McKinley, urged by Roosevelt's close friend Congressman Henry Cabot Lodge, appointed Roosevelt as the Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1897. Roosevelt's boss, Secretary of the Navy John D. Long was in poor health, and left many major decisions to Roosevelt. Roosevelt seized the opportunity and began to make many strategic decisions for the department. Roosevelt was particularly adamant that Spain give up control of Cuba. Ten days after the battleship Maine exploded in Havana harbor of Havana, with Secretary Long away from the office, Roosevelt became Acting Secretary for four hours. He cabled the Navy to prepare for war, ordered ammunition and supplies, brought in experts and went to Congress asking for the authority to recruit as many sailors as he felt were necessary. He prepared the department for the coming war with Spain.
Prior to the Spanish–American War, Roosevelt had already seen reserve military service from 1882 to 1886 with the New York National Guard. When the United States and Spain declared war against each other in late April 1898, Roosevelt resigned from his job as Assistant Secretary of the Navy on May 6 and formed the First US Volunteer Cavalry Regiment under Army Colonel Leonard Wood. Dubbed by the press as the "Rough Riders", the regiment was a temporary units active only for the duration of the war. He obtained modern multiple-round Krag smokeless carbine rifles, for the regiment, which began training in San Antonio, Texas. The regiment included Ivy Leaguers, professional and amateur athletes, gentlemen from New York's upper class, as well as cowboys, frontiersmen, Native Americans, hunters, miners, prospectors, former soldiers, tradesmen, and sheriffs. The Rough Riders were part of the cavalry division commanded by former Confederate general Joseph Wheeler. It was one of three divisions in the V Corps under Lieutenant General William Rufus Shafter.
Roosevelt and his men departed Tampa on June 13, landed in Daiquiri, Cuba, on June 23, 1898, and marched to Siboney. The Rough Riders had a minor skirmish known as the Battle of Las Guasimas where they fought their way through Spanish resistance. The Rough Riders became famous for the charge up Kettle Hill on July 1, 1898. In the charge, Roosevelt had the only horse, and rode back and forth between rifle pits at the forefront of the advance. He was forced to walk up the last part of Kettle Hill, because his horse had been entangled in barbed wire. The charge was victorious, but came at a cost of 200 killed and 1000 wounded. Roosevelt later recalled the Battle of Kettle Hill (part of the San Juan Heights) as "the great day of my life." Denied the honor for political reasons during his lifetime, in 2001, Roosevelt was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions. He had been nominated during the war, but Army officials, annoyed at his grabbing the headlines, blocked it. After returning to civilian life, Roosevelt preferred to be known as "Colonel Roosevelt" or "The Colonel".
After leaving the Army, Roosevelt was sought after by New York Republicans as a candidate for the office of Governor because their current governor was tainted by scandal. He won the 1898 gubernatorial election by a margin of 1%.
As governor, Roosevelt was exposed to the problems of trusts, monopolies, labor relations, and conservation. He held twice-daily press conferences and successfully pushed the Ford Franchise-Tax bill, which taxed public franchises granted by the state and controlled by corporations. He once again clashed with political boss Platt, who demanded to be consulted on state appointment. Roosevelt pretended to comply, but then made his own decisions. In the spring of 1899, he was able to secure passage of a civil service bill that the secretary of the Civil Service Reform Association called "superior to any civil service statute heretofore secured in America."
Roosevelt wanted a second term as governor. Instead he was promoted for the office of Vice President, by friends as well as foes. Platt engineered Roosevelt's removal from the state by pressuring him to accept the GOP nomination as Vice President in 1900. The post was vacant following the death of Garrett Hobart and President McKinley accepted the nomination, although his campaign manager, Mark Hanna, thought Roosevelt was too cowboy-like.
The office of Vice President was virtually a powerless position, and did not suit Roosevelt's aggressive temperament. Roosevelt loyally and energetically threw himself into the 1900 election campaign, crisscrossing the nation denouncing the radicalism of William Jennings Bryan. Roosevelt spent six months as Vice President (from March to September 1901), a time of relative boredom for him.
Things changed when, on September 6, President McKinley was shot by anarchist Leon Czolgosz, while in Buffalo, New York at the Pan-American Exposition. Initial reports suggested that McKinley would recover from his wounds, so Roosevelt, after visiting the ailing president, embarked for the west. When McKinley's condition worsened, Roosevelt rushed back. McKinley died on September 14, and Roosevelt was sworn in at the Ansley Wilcox House.
Roosevelt kept McKinley's Cabinet and promised to continue McKinley's policies. In the November 1904 presidential election, Roosevelt won the presidency in his own right in a landslide victory.