Presidents in Retirement: Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt was President for almost all of William McKinley's second term (McKinley was inaugurated in March of 1901 and died the following September) as well as all of the term that he was elected to in 1904. Up to that point in time, no president had held the office for longer than eight years. (Another Roosevelt would be the first to do so in 1941). At that time a President could theoretically sit for more than two terms, but up to that point, everyone followed the precedent set by George Washington and did not sit longer than two full terms.
Theodore Roosevelt had mixed feelings about a third term/ He enjoyed being president and he was still relatively youthful. But he also believed that a limited number of terms provided a check against dictatorship. In 1904 Roosevelt had pledged not to run for a third term, and he stuck to that pledge when it came time to decide whether or not he would run for re-election in 1908. Roosevelt decided to throw his support behind a successor of his choosing instead. That man was his Secretary of War, William Howard Taft. Roosevelt and Taft had been friends since 1890, and Taft had consistently supported President Roosevelt's policies. At the 1908 Republican convention, Taft won the nomination after Henry Cabot Lodge made it clear that Roosevelt was not interested in a third term.
In the 1908 election, Taft easily defeated the Democratic nominee, three-time candidate William Jennings Bryan. Taft entered the Whit3e House sending signals that he intended to be his own man, rather than Roosevelt`s puppet. Taft was more deferential to the judicial branch of government. Taft supported the fight for lower tariff rates, but made deals with conservative leaders that kept overall rates high. The resulting Payne-Aldrich tariff of 1909 was too high for most progressives. Taft called it the best tariff ever, and while he intended to make the best of a bad situation, his position only served to offend both sides on the issue. Roosevelt had avoided the issue, knowing that it would be only serve to split the party.
In March 1909, shortly after the end of his presidency, Roosevelt left New York for the Smithsonian-Roosevelt African Expedition. This was a safari in east and central Africa outfitted by the Smithsonian Institution. Roosevelt arrived in Mombasa, British East Africa (now Kenya), traveled to the Belgian Congo (now Democratic Republic of the Congo), before following the Nile to Khartoum in modern Sudan. Financed in part by Andrew Carnegie, Roosevelt's party hunted for specimens for the Smithsonian Institution and for the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The group was led by the legendary hunter-tracker RJ Cunninghame. It included scientists from the Smithsonian, and was joined from time to time by Frederick Selous, the famous big game hunter and explorer.
Roosevelt and his companions killed or trapped approximately 11,400 animals, from insects to elephants. The 1,000 large animals consisted of 512 big game animals, including six rare White rhinos. Tons of salted animals and their skins were shipped to Washington; it took years to mount them all. The Smithsonian shared many duplicate specimens with other museums. Roosevelt wrote a detailed account of the safari in the book African Game Trails.
After leaving Africa in March 1910, Roosevelt toured Europe. Before reaching the continent, he made a stop in Egypt, where he commented favorably on British rule of the region, giving his opinion that Egypt was not yet ready for independence. When he arrived in Italy, he refused a meeting with the Pope. On his tour of Europe he met with Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, King George V of Great Britain, and other European leaders. In Oslo, Norway, Roosevelt delivered a speech calling for limitations on naval armaments, a strengthening of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, and the creation of a "League of Peace" among the world powers.He also delivered the Romanes Lecture at Oxford. It was in England where he met with Gifford Pinchot, his friend and fellow conservationist, who expressed his disappointment with the Taft Administration. Pinchot had been fired as head of the forest service after clashing with Taft's Interior Secretary, Richard Ballinger. Pinchot believed that Ballinger was placing development ahead of conservation. Roosevelt returned to the United States in June 1910.
Roosevelt was offended on election night when Taft wrote and indicated that his success had been possible not just through the efforts of Roosevelt, but also his brother Charley. Roosevelt was also upset that Taft did not consult him about cabinet appointments. Roosevelt and other progressives were also disappointed with Taft's conservation policies and his handling of the tariff. Roosevelt wanted to see Progressives in control of the Republican Party. In August 1910, Roosevelt gave notable speech at Osawatomie, Kansas, which initiated his break with the Taft administration and the conservative Republicans. Roosevelt emphasized the priority of labor over capital interests. He returned to New York, where he began a battle to take control of the state Republican party from William Barnes, Jr. as the state party boss. Taft had pledged his support to Roosevelt in this fight, but failed to back Roosevelt at the 1910 state convention. In the 1910 elections, the Democrats gained control of the House for the first time since the 1890s. Among the newly elected Democrats was New York state senator Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who argued that he represented his cousin's policies better than his Republican opponent.
The Republican progressives saw the 1910 defeats as calling for the complete reorganization of the party. Senator Robert M. La Follette Sr. of Wisconsin joined with Pinchot, William White, and California Governor Hiram Johnson to create the National Progressive Republican League. Their goals were to defeat the power of political bossed and to replace Taft. Roosevelt expressed general support for progressive principles. Roosevelt continued to criticize Taft after the 1910 elections, and the break between the two men became final after the Justice Department filed an anti-trust lawsuit against US Steel in September 1911. Roosevelt had personally approved of an acquisition that the Justice Department was now challenging.
In November 1911, a group of Ohio Republicans endorsed Roosevelt for the party's nomination for president. These included James R. Garfield and Dan Hanna. This was notable, as the endorsement came from leaders of President Taft's home state. Roosevelt said, "I am really sorry for Taft. I am sure he means well, but he means well feebly, and he does not know how! He is utterly unfit for leadership and this is a time when we need leadership." In January 1912, Roosevelt declared "if the people make a draft on me I shall not decline to serve". When Roosevelt proposed that court decisions should be able to be overturned by popular vote, Taft said, "Such extremists are not progressives—they are political emotionalists or neurotics".
In February 1912, Roosevelt announced in Boston, "I will accept the nomination for president if it is tendered to me. The 1912 primaries represented the first extensive use of the presidential primary, a reform brought about by the progressive movement. The primaries where party bosses dominated, went for Taft. Roosevelt won primaries in Illinois, Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota, California, Maryland and Pennsylvania; Roosevelt also won Taft's home state of Ohio. These primary elections were not as important as they are today. The final credentials of the state delegates at the national convention were determined by the national committee, which was controlled by the party leaders, who were loyal to Taft. The party nominated Taft, as expected, and Roosevelt announced that he would "accept the progressive nomination on a progressive platform and I shall fight to the end, win or lose". Roosevelt asked his followers to leave the hall, and they moved to the Auditorium Theatre. Then Roosevelt, along with key allies such as Pinchot and Albert Beveridge, created the Progressive Party, popularly known as the "Bull Moose Party", after Roosevelt told reporters, "I'm as fit as a bull moose". At the 1912 Progressive National Convention, Roosevelt cried out, "We stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord." California Governor Hiram Johnson was nominated as Roosevelt's running mate.
On October 14, 1912, while campaigning in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Roosevelt was shot by a saloonkeeper named John Flammang Schrank. The bullet lodged in his chest after penetrating his steel eyeglass case and passing through a thick (50 pages) single-folded copy of the speech titled "Progressive Cause Greater Than Any Individual", which he was carrying in his jacket. Roosevelt, as an experienced hunter and anatomist, knew that since he was not coughing blood, the bullet had not reached his lung. he refused to go to the hospital immediately. Instead, he delivered his scheduled speech while blood reddened his shirt. He spoke for 90 minutes before completing his speech, before accepting medical attention. His opening comments to the gathered crowd were, "Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose." An x-ray showed that the bullet had lodged in Roosevelt's chest muscle, but did not penetrate the pleura. Doctors concluded that it would be less dangerous to leave it in place than to operate to remove it. Roosevelt carried the bullet with him for the rest of his life.
Roosevelt ceased campaigning after the shooting. The other two campaigners also stopped their own campaigns during the week Roosevelt was in the hospital, but they resumed it once he was released. On election day Roosevelt won 4.1 million votes (27%), compared to Taft's 3.5 million (23%). Woodrow Wilson received 6.3 million votes (42% of the total), enough for a massive landslide in the Electoral College, with 435 electoral votes. Roosevelt won 88 electoral votes, and Taft had 8. Roosevelt won the highest share of the popular vote of any third party presidential candidate in history.
After the election, Roosevelt's friend, Father John Augustine Zahm, a Catholic priest and scientist at the University of Notre Dame, persuaded Roosevelt to participate in an expedition to South America. To finance the expedition, Roosevelt received support from the American Museum of Natural History. He wrote of this trip in his book, Through the Brazilian Wilderness. The expedition, was led by Brazilian explorer Cândido Rondon. Once in South America, a new leg of the journey was added: to find the headwaters of the Rio da Duvida, the River of Doubt, and trace it north to the Madeira and to the Amazon River. It was later renamed Roosevelt River in his honor. Roosevelt's crew consisted of his son Kermit, naturalist Colonel Rondon, George K. Cherrie, sent by the American Museum of Natural History, Brazilian Lieutenant João Lira, team physician Dr. José Antonio Cajazeira, and 16 skilled paddlers and porters. The initial expedition began on December 9, 1913, at the height of the rainy season. The trip down the River of Doubt started on February 27, 1914.
During the trip down the river, Roosevelt suffered a minor leg wound after he jumped into the river to try to prevent two canoes from smashing against the rocks. The wound resulted in his contracting tropical fever. Because the bullet lodged in his chest from the assassination attempt in 1912 was never removed, his health worsened from the infection. This weakened Roosevelt so greatly that six weeks into the adventure, he had to be attended to day and night by the expedition's physician and his son Kermit. He could not walk because of the infection in his injured leg. Roosevelt experienced chest pains, fighting a fever that rose to 103 °F (39 °C) and at times made him delirious. Regarding his condition as a threat to the survival of the others, Roosevelt insisted he be left behind to allow the poorly provisioned expedition to proceed as rapidly as it could. His son persuaded him to continue. He lost over 50 pounds from his illness.
When Roosevelt returned to New York, friends and family were startled by his physical appearance and fatigue. Roosevelt wrote to a friend that the trip had cut his life short by ten years. For the rest of his life heplagued by flare-ups of malaria and leg inflammations so severe as to require surgery. When he had recovered sufficiently, he addressed a standing-room-only convention organized in Washington, D.C., by the National Geographic Society.
In 1914,. Roosevelt was outraged by the Wilson Administration's conclusion of a treaty that expressed "sincere regret" for the way in which the United States had acquired the Panama Canal Zone. But he approved of many of the progressive reforms passed under Wilson. Progressives asked Roosevelt to run for Governor of New York in 1914, but he was still recovering from malaria. Roosevelt made several campaign appearances for the Progressives, but the 1914 elections were a disaster for that party. Roosevelt had ideas of making another run for president, this time with himself at the head of the Republican Party. Conservatives in the party remained opposed to Roosevelt. The Progressives scheduled the 1916 Progressive National Convention at the same time as the 1916 Republican National Convention. When the Republicans nominated Charles Evans Hughes on the third ballot, Roosevelt declined the Progressive nomination. He instead chose to endorse Hughes, with whom he largely supported on policy. Many Progressives followed Roosevelt in rejoining the Republican Party. Wilson won the 1916 election by a narrow margin. The Progressives disappeared as a party following the 1916 election, and Roosevelt and many of his followers re-joined the Republican Party.
When World War I had began in 1914, and Roosevelt strongly supported the Allies. He called for a harsher policy against Germany, especially regarding submarine warfare. Roosevelt angrily spoke out against the the foreign policy of President Woodrow Wilson. He criticized Wilson for his weak response against atrocities in Belgium and the violations of American rights. In 1916, while campaigning for Hughes, Roosevelt denounced Irish-Americans and German-Americans whom he described as unpatriotic, saying they put the interests of Ireland and Germany ahead of America's by supporting neutrality. He told his audience that Americans had to be 100% American, not "hyphenated Americans" with divided loyalties.
In March 1917, Congress gave Roosevelt the authority to raise a maximum of four divisions similar to the Rough Riders. Major Frederick Russell Burnham was put in charge of both the general organization and recruitment. But President Wilson, announced that he would not send Roosevelt and his volunteers to France. Instead would send an American Expeditionary Force under the command of General John J. Pershing. Roosevelt was forced to disband the volunteers. He published The Foes of Our Own Household, an indictment of Wilson and his weak response to Germany. Roosevelt's youngest son, Quentin, had become a pilot with the American forces in France. Quentin was shot down behind German lines on July 14, 1918, at the age of 20. Quentin's death distressed Roosevelt greatly.
Roosevelt's attacks on Wilson helped the Republicans win control of Congress in the off-year elections of 1918. He once again declined a request from New York Republican to run for governor, but attacked Wilson's Fourteen Points, calling instead for the unconditional surrender of Germany. Roosevelt was popular enough to be considered as a leading contender for the 1920 Republican nomination, but his health was precarious. because of the lingering malaria. His family and supporters threw their support behind Roosevelt's old military companion, General Leonard Wood.
Roosevelt would not live to see the 1920 presidential election. On the night of January 5, 1919, Roosevelt suffered breathing problems. After receiving treatment from his physician, Dr. George W. Faller, he went to bed. Roosevelt's final and rather mundane words were "Please put out that light, James", said to a family servant James Amos. Between 4:00 and 4:15 the next morning, Roosevelt died in his sleep at Sagamore Hill after a blood clot had detached from a vein and traveled to his lungs. He was just sixty years old.
Upon receiving word of his death, Roosevelt's son Archibald telegraphed his siblings with the message reading: "The old lion is dead." Woodrow Wilson's vice president, Thomas R. Marshall, put it best. He said: "Death had to take Roosevelt sleeping, for if he had been awake, there would have been a fight." Following a private farewell service in the North Room at Sagamore Hill, a simple funeral was held at Christ Episcopal Church in Oyster Bay. Vice President Thomas R. Marshall, Charles Evans Hughes, Warren Harding, Henry Cabot Lodge, and William Howard Taft were among the mourners. The procession route to Youngs Memorial Cemetery was lined with spectators and a squad of mounted policemen who had ridden from New York City. Roosevelt was buried on a hillside overlooking Oyster Bay.
Theodore Roosevelt had mixed feelings about a third term/ He enjoyed being president and he was still relatively youthful. But he also believed that a limited number of terms provided a check against dictatorship. In 1904 Roosevelt had pledged not to run for a third term, and he stuck to that pledge when it came time to decide whether or not he would run for re-election in 1908. Roosevelt decided to throw his support behind a successor of his choosing instead. That man was his Secretary of War, William Howard Taft. Roosevelt and Taft had been friends since 1890, and Taft had consistently supported President Roosevelt's policies. At the 1908 Republican convention, Taft won the nomination after Henry Cabot Lodge made it clear that Roosevelt was not interested in a third term.
In the 1908 election, Taft easily defeated the Democratic nominee, three-time candidate William Jennings Bryan. Taft entered the Whit3e House sending signals that he intended to be his own man, rather than Roosevelt`s puppet. Taft was more deferential to the judicial branch of government. Taft supported the fight for lower tariff rates, but made deals with conservative leaders that kept overall rates high. The resulting Payne-Aldrich tariff of 1909 was too high for most progressives. Taft called it the best tariff ever, and while he intended to make the best of a bad situation, his position only served to offend both sides on the issue. Roosevelt had avoided the issue, knowing that it would be only serve to split the party.
In March 1909, shortly after the end of his presidency, Roosevelt left New York for the Smithsonian-Roosevelt African Expedition. This was a safari in east and central Africa outfitted by the Smithsonian Institution. Roosevelt arrived in Mombasa, British East Africa (now Kenya), traveled to the Belgian Congo (now Democratic Republic of the Congo), before following the Nile to Khartoum in modern Sudan. Financed in part by Andrew Carnegie, Roosevelt's party hunted for specimens for the Smithsonian Institution and for the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The group was led by the legendary hunter-tracker RJ Cunninghame. It included scientists from the Smithsonian, and was joined from time to time by Frederick Selous, the famous big game hunter and explorer.
Roosevelt and his companions killed or trapped approximately 11,400 animals, from insects to elephants. The 1,000 large animals consisted of 512 big game animals, including six rare White rhinos. Tons of salted animals and their skins were shipped to Washington; it took years to mount them all. The Smithsonian shared many duplicate specimens with other museums. Roosevelt wrote a detailed account of the safari in the book African Game Trails.
After leaving Africa in March 1910, Roosevelt toured Europe. Before reaching the continent, he made a stop in Egypt, where he commented favorably on British rule of the region, giving his opinion that Egypt was not yet ready for independence. When he arrived in Italy, he refused a meeting with the Pope. On his tour of Europe he met with Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, King George V of Great Britain, and other European leaders. In Oslo, Norway, Roosevelt delivered a speech calling for limitations on naval armaments, a strengthening of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, and the creation of a "League of Peace" among the world powers.He also delivered the Romanes Lecture at Oxford. It was in England where he met with Gifford Pinchot, his friend and fellow conservationist, who expressed his disappointment with the Taft Administration. Pinchot had been fired as head of the forest service after clashing with Taft's Interior Secretary, Richard Ballinger. Pinchot believed that Ballinger was placing development ahead of conservation. Roosevelt returned to the United States in June 1910.
Roosevelt was offended on election night when Taft wrote and indicated that his success had been possible not just through the efforts of Roosevelt, but also his brother Charley. Roosevelt was also upset that Taft did not consult him about cabinet appointments. Roosevelt and other progressives were also disappointed with Taft's conservation policies and his handling of the tariff. Roosevelt wanted to see Progressives in control of the Republican Party. In August 1910, Roosevelt gave notable speech at Osawatomie, Kansas, which initiated his break with the Taft administration and the conservative Republicans. Roosevelt emphasized the priority of labor over capital interests. He returned to New York, where he began a battle to take control of the state Republican party from William Barnes, Jr. as the state party boss. Taft had pledged his support to Roosevelt in this fight, but failed to back Roosevelt at the 1910 state convention. In the 1910 elections, the Democrats gained control of the House for the first time since the 1890s. Among the newly elected Democrats was New York state senator Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who argued that he represented his cousin's policies better than his Republican opponent.
The Republican progressives saw the 1910 defeats as calling for the complete reorganization of the party. Senator Robert M. La Follette Sr. of Wisconsin joined with Pinchot, William White, and California Governor Hiram Johnson to create the National Progressive Republican League. Their goals were to defeat the power of political bossed and to replace Taft. Roosevelt expressed general support for progressive principles. Roosevelt continued to criticize Taft after the 1910 elections, and the break between the two men became final after the Justice Department filed an anti-trust lawsuit against US Steel in September 1911. Roosevelt had personally approved of an acquisition that the Justice Department was now challenging.
In November 1911, a group of Ohio Republicans endorsed Roosevelt for the party's nomination for president. These included James R. Garfield and Dan Hanna. This was notable, as the endorsement came from leaders of President Taft's home state. Roosevelt said, "I am really sorry for Taft. I am sure he means well, but he means well feebly, and he does not know how! He is utterly unfit for leadership and this is a time when we need leadership." In January 1912, Roosevelt declared "if the people make a draft on me I shall not decline to serve". When Roosevelt proposed that court decisions should be able to be overturned by popular vote, Taft said, "Such extremists are not progressives—they are political emotionalists or neurotics".
In February 1912, Roosevelt announced in Boston, "I will accept the nomination for president if it is tendered to me. The 1912 primaries represented the first extensive use of the presidential primary, a reform brought about by the progressive movement. The primaries where party bosses dominated, went for Taft. Roosevelt won primaries in Illinois, Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota, California, Maryland and Pennsylvania; Roosevelt also won Taft's home state of Ohio. These primary elections were not as important as they are today. The final credentials of the state delegates at the national convention were determined by the national committee, which was controlled by the party leaders, who were loyal to Taft. The party nominated Taft, as expected, and Roosevelt announced that he would "accept the progressive nomination on a progressive platform and I shall fight to the end, win or lose". Roosevelt asked his followers to leave the hall, and they moved to the Auditorium Theatre. Then Roosevelt, along with key allies such as Pinchot and Albert Beveridge, created the Progressive Party, popularly known as the "Bull Moose Party", after Roosevelt told reporters, "I'm as fit as a bull moose". At the 1912 Progressive National Convention, Roosevelt cried out, "We stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord." California Governor Hiram Johnson was nominated as Roosevelt's running mate.
On October 14, 1912, while campaigning in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Roosevelt was shot by a saloonkeeper named John Flammang Schrank. The bullet lodged in his chest after penetrating his steel eyeglass case and passing through a thick (50 pages) single-folded copy of the speech titled "Progressive Cause Greater Than Any Individual", which he was carrying in his jacket. Roosevelt, as an experienced hunter and anatomist, knew that since he was not coughing blood, the bullet had not reached his lung. he refused to go to the hospital immediately. Instead, he delivered his scheduled speech while blood reddened his shirt. He spoke for 90 minutes before completing his speech, before accepting medical attention. His opening comments to the gathered crowd were, "Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose." An x-ray showed that the bullet had lodged in Roosevelt's chest muscle, but did not penetrate the pleura. Doctors concluded that it would be less dangerous to leave it in place than to operate to remove it. Roosevelt carried the bullet with him for the rest of his life.
Roosevelt ceased campaigning after the shooting. The other two campaigners also stopped their own campaigns during the week Roosevelt was in the hospital, but they resumed it once he was released. On election day Roosevelt won 4.1 million votes (27%), compared to Taft's 3.5 million (23%). Woodrow Wilson received 6.3 million votes (42% of the total), enough for a massive landslide in the Electoral College, with 435 electoral votes. Roosevelt won 88 electoral votes, and Taft had 8. Roosevelt won the highest share of the popular vote of any third party presidential candidate in history.
After the election, Roosevelt's friend, Father John Augustine Zahm, a Catholic priest and scientist at the University of Notre Dame, persuaded Roosevelt to participate in an expedition to South America. To finance the expedition, Roosevelt received support from the American Museum of Natural History. He wrote of this trip in his book, Through the Brazilian Wilderness. The expedition, was led by Brazilian explorer Cândido Rondon. Once in South America, a new leg of the journey was added: to find the headwaters of the Rio da Duvida, the River of Doubt, and trace it north to the Madeira and to the Amazon River. It was later renamed Roosevelt River in his honor. Roosevelt's crew consisted of his son Kermit, naturalist Colonel Rondon, George K. Cherrie, sent by the American Museum of Natural History, Brazilian Lieutenant João Lira, team physician Dr. José Antonio Cajazeira, and 16 skilled paddlers and porters. The initial expedition began on December 9, 1913, at the height of the rainy season. The trip down the River of Doubt started on February 27, 1914.
During the trip down the river, Roosevelt suffered a minor leg wound after he jumped into the river to try to prevent two canoes from smashing against the rocks. The wound resulted in his contracting tropical fever. Because the bullet lodged in his chest from the assassination attempt in 1912 was never removed, his health worsened from the infection. This weakened Roosevelt so greatly that six weeks into the adventure, he had to be attended to day and night by the expedition's physician and his son Kermit. He could not walk because of the infection in his injured leg. Roosevelt experienced chest pains, fighting a fever that rose to 103 °F (39 °C) and at times made him delirious. Regarding his condition as a threat to the survival of the others, Roosevelt insisted he be left behind to allow the poorly provisioned expedition to proceed as rapidly as it could. His son persuaded him to continue. He lost over 50 pounds from his illness.
When Roosevelt returned to New York, friends and family were startled by his physical appearance and fatigue. Roosevelt wrote to a friend that the trip had cut his life short by ten years. For the rest of his life heplagued by flare-ups of malaria and leg inflammations so severe as to require surgery. When he had recovered sufficiently, he addressed a standing-room-only convention organized in Washington, D.C., by the National Geographic Society.
In 1914,. Roosevelt was outraged by the Wilson Administration's conclusion of a treaty that expressed "sincere regret" for the way in which the United States had acquired the Panama Canal Zone. But he approved of many of the progressive reforms passed under Wilson. Progressives asked Roosevelt to run for Governor of New York in 1914, but he was still recovering from malaria. Roosevelt made several campaign appearances for the Progressives, but the 1914 elections were a disaster for that party. Roosevelt had ideas of making another run for president, this time with himself at the head of the Republican Party. Conservatives in the party remained opposed to Roosevelt. The Progressives scheduled the 1916 Progressive National Convention at the same time as the 1916 Republican National Convention. When the Republicans nominated Charles Evans Hughes on the third ballot, Roosevelt declined the Progressive nomination. He instead chose to endorse Hughes, with whom he largely supported on policy. Many Progressives followed Roosevelt in rejoining the Republican Party. Wilson won the 1916 election by a narrow margin. The Progressives disappeared as a party following the 1916 election, and Roosevelt and many of his followers re-joined the Republican Party.
When World War I had began in 1914, and Roosevelt strongly supported the Allies. He called for a harsher policy against Germany, especially regarding submarine warfare. Roosevelt angrily spoke out against the the foreign policy of President Woodrow Wilson. He criticized Wilson for his weak response against atrocities in Belgium and the violations of American rights. In 1916, while campaigning for Hughes, Roosevelt denounced Irish-Americans and German-Americans whom he described as unpatriotic, saying they put the interests of Ireland and Germany ahead of America's by supporting neutrality. He told his audience that Americans had to be 100% American, not "hyphenated Americans" with divided loyalties.
In March 1917, Congress gave Roosevelt the authority to raise a maximum of four divisions similar to the Rough Riders. Major Frederick Russell Burnham was put in charge of both the general organization and recruitment. But President Wilson, announced that he would not send Roosevelt and his volunteers to France. Instead would send an American Expeditionary Force under the command of General John J. Pershing. Roosevelt was forced to disband the volunteers. He published The Foes of Our Own Household, an indictment of Wilson and his weak response to Germany. Roosevelt's youngest son, Quentin, had become a pilot with the American forces in France. Quentin was shot down behind German lines on July 14, 1918, at the age of 20. Quentin's death distressed Roosevelt greatly.
Roosevelt's attacks on Wilson helped the Republicans win control of Congress in the off-year elections of 1918. He once again declined a request from New York Republican to run for governor, but attacked Wilson's Fourteen Points, calling instead for the unconditional surrender of Germany. Roosevelt was popular enough to be considered as a leading contender for the 1920 Republican nomination, but his health was precarious. because of the lingering malaria. His family and supporters threw their support behind Roosevelt's old military companion, General Leonard Wood.
Roosevelt would not live to see the 1920 presidential election. On the night of January 5, 1919, Roosevelt suffered breathing problems. After receiving treatment from his physician, Dr. George W. Faller, he went to bed. Roosevelt's final and rather mundane words were "Please put out that light, James", said to a family servant James Amos. Between 4:00 and 4:15 the next morning, Roosevelt died in his sleep at Sagamore Hill after a blood clot had detached from a vein and traveled to his lungs. He was just sixty years old.
Upon receiving word of his death, Roosevelt's son Archibald telegraphed his siblings with the message reading: "The old lion is dead." Woodrow Wilson's vice president, Thomas R. Marshall, put it best. He said: "Death had to take Roosevelt sleeping, for if he had been awake, there would have been a fight." Following a private farewell service in the North Room at Sagamore Hill, a simple funeral was held at Christ Episcopal Church in Oyster Bay. Vice President Thomas R. Marshall, Charles Evans Hughes, Warren Harding, Henry Cabot Lodge, and William Howard Taft were among the mourners. The procession route to Youngs Memorial Cemetery was lined with spectators and a squad of mounted policemen who had ridden from New York City. Roosevelt was buried on a hillside overlooking Oyster Bay.