Happy Independence Day! Last year for the Fourth of July, I wrote about Rutherford B. Hayes. Two years ago, on July 1st I wrote about John Tyler. This year, I’m writing about Theodore Roosevelt.

Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. was born to a well-off family in New York in 1858. Called Teedie, he was a sickly child who suffered from asthma and was extremely nearsighted. He read constantly and wanted to be a naturalist (he smelled of formaldehyde until he left for college). His mother once ordered the maid to clean the dead mice out of his bureau and he mourned “The loss to Science!”

He referred to himself, and his younger siblings Corinne and Elliott as “We Three” in his childhood diary. (His sister Anna, five years older, was classified as a grown up.) He’d sometimes play with his younger siblings, but preferred talking to adults. He was Dutch on his father’s side, Welsh, English, German, and Scotch-Irish on his mother’s.

His father had inherited some money and was an importer, banker, and philanthropist. He didn’t fight in the Civil War to avoid killing members of his wife’s family (she came from Georgia), but engaged in non-combat work to help the North.

In 1869, the family traveled to Europe. Teddy enjoyed the natural history museums. The children enjoyed frightening dogs with a cap gun. They happened to see Pope Pius IX in Rome one day and the Protestant children made fun of the Pope behind his back.

When he was ten, his parents insisted he become stronger and built a gymnasium on the second floor of their house with a punching bag, dumbbells, and horizontal bar. He wasn’t very enthusiastic about it until a couple years later when other children made fun of him for having an asthma attack. He tried to fight them, but they held him off easily. He then determined to get strong and took boxing lessons.

His favorite childhood magazine was titled Our Young Folks. It was filled with moralizing stories to teach children virtue and piety. He still considered it “the best magazine in the world” when he was in his mid-50s.

He abandoned his childhood nickname of Teedie and insisted on being called Theodore, although many called him Teddy anyway. He learned to ride and shoot. He loved hunting, although he’d sometimes feel bad about the animals he killed. He continued his enthusiasm for naturalism, referring to animals by their Latin names and dissecting them. He also took up taxidermy.

On another European trip, We Three learned the basics of the German language while living in Germany. As a result of this, Teddy viewed Germany favorably until the first World War. He got victories in dashes, the broad jump, and pole vault by the time he was almost seventeen.

His parents insisted that he go to Harvard and hired a tutor to prepare him. He passed the entrance exams and began attending Harvard in 1876. The elective system had been introduced recently, so students didn’t have to all take the same classes, but this was a controversial move amongst parents who also didn’t like that students were allowed a certain number of absences from chapel.

Teddy wasn’t a wild student. He never smoked or drank. He wanted to be a naturalist, but Harvard didn’t allow him to keep specimens in his dorm and classwork was restricted to indoors. He considered his beloved magazine Our Young Folks to have done a better job of teaching him than Harvard. He was awkward around other students, sometimes dropping by their room ostensibly for conversation, but becoming engrossed in a book instead.

He became more social and cultured by the end of his college experience. One of his favorite phrases was “By Jove!” He was a middling student, but he had a good memory and he was a voracious reader. One of his professors was the famous psychologist William James, but Teddy didn’t cultivate relationships with his professors. He sometimes took issue with professors in the classroom, which was unheard of. He was a poor boxer (although he’d later falsely claim he was lightweight champion at Harvard).

When he was almost twenty, he fell in love with a woman named Alice Hathaway Lee. He was a bit of a feminist. His senior dissertation was on “The Practicability of Equalizing Men and Women Before the Law.” He took Alice to lunch at the Porcelain Club which didn’t allow women. Alice was reluctant at first, but he eventually won her over. He was insanely jealous of any man she spent time with, sometimes challenging them to duels (although it never came to bloodshed). They married in October 1880 after he graduated. Since Teddy came from a family of means, he didn’t immediately embark on a career.

They lived with Teddy’s widowed mother. (Teddy called his father his best friend and considered it a good omen that he became president on his departed father’s birthday. He felt his father’s presence with him.) Teddy had abandoned his ambitions to be a naturalist and enrolled at Columbia Law School, although he didn’t stick with it very long. (Later in life, he’d falsely claim to be a lawyer.) In 1881, he and Alice took a trip to Europe.

He was then elected to the New York state legislature. Back then, it was considered manly to wear the same clothes for a week. Men like Roosevelt who wore clean clothes, had good manners, and spoke using correct grammar, were dismissed as “dudes” or elites. He was considered a joke for speaking in a high voice and wearing eyeglasses on a black silk cord.

However, he gained enemies when he called for an investigation into the corrupt attorney general and member of the state supreme court. One night when he was walking home, a woman fell in front of him and asked that he accompany her home. Instead, he put her into a cab and later learned that men were waiting for him at the address she had given.

He wrote a history book titled “The Naval War of 1812” which was published to much acclaim. Roosevelt was commissioned a second lieutenant in the New York National Guard in 1882 and promoted to captain in 1883. (He would later claim this as valuable military experience and use it to justify organizing the Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War, but the NY National Guard at the time was not well-trained or well-organized.)

He didn’t keep track of money very well. Wanting to become a publisher, he invested $20,000 in G.P. Putnam’s Sons, but it turned out he only had half that in the bank. His uncle bailed him out. While visiting the Dakota Badlands, he paid $14,000 for a share in a cattle ranch, but most of the cattle died during the bitter winter that year.

After giving birth to their daughter, Alice seemed fine, but suddenly died two days later of Bright’s disease on February 14, 1884. Teddy’s mother died of typhoid fever in the same house on the same day. “There is a curse on this house,” Teddy remarked. He didn’t mention Alice Lee in his autobiography and rarely spoke of her. His older sister raised his daughter Alice until she was three at which point Teddy took custody of her.

As a state legislator, T.R. was not a friend of the labor movement. He was opposed to a bill that would forbid streetcar employees from working more than 12 hours a day, considering the bill communist. He was opposed to ending prison slave labor, opposed to giving New York firemen a raise, and opposed to teachers getting a pension.

Roosevelt left politics and became a dude rancher in Missouri. He stood out from the other cowboys. He didn’t smoke or drink. His favorite profanity was “By Godfrey!” He was called Four-Eyes due to his spectacles. The real cowboys were amused by his faux-cowboy costume. He eventually grew on the townsfolk and became a deputy sheriff.

In 1886, while in London, he married his childhood friend Edith Carow with whom he had five more children. He also ran for mayor of New York City in 1886, but lost. Roosevelt returned to writing histories and biographies. He was appointed to the US Civil Services Commission in 1889. He was quite enthusiastic. He’d pace back and forth punching his fist into his hand while his secretary took dictation. He became a champion for civil service reform, rooting out corrupt officials including the Postmaster General.

When he was 36 in 1895, he was appointed to the Police Board of New York. He wanted to fight police corruption. He dressed flamboyantly in a black silk sash instead of a vest, combined with a pink shirt with tasseled ends dangling to his knees. He appointed a young woman as his secretary, a sensation in the male-dominated world of the time. Teddy was known for having big white teeth and rumor had it delinquent police officers feared the appearance of his gleaming molars.

A reporter at the time frightened officers by dressing like Teddy and chattering his teeth at them. Peddlers sold whistles supposed to be replicas of Teddy’s teeth. Teddy liked to prowl the streets at night with a black cloak covering his clothes and a wide-brimmed hat hiding his face. He reprimanded officers for being asleep on the job, drinking on the job, or chatting up sex workers. He wasn’t a prohibitionist, but he thought it wrong that police only enforced the no-selling-liquor-on-Sunday law against saloons that didn’t pay them a bribe. So he enforced the law against all saloons and lost popularity.

To reward Roosevelt for campaigning for him, President McKinley made him Assistant Secretary of the Navy, even though McKinley worried that he was too hot-headed and pro-war. Roosevelt often said the US needed a war and didn’t seem to mind who it was with. At various times, he was in favor of war with Mexico, Chile, Spain, Japan, England, and Canada. Roosevelt convinced McKinley that if appointed, he would suppress his jingo tendencies, however.

As Assistant Secretary, he called for war with Spain over Cuba, mainly because he wanted to try “both the Army and Navy in actual practice. I should be very sorry not to see us make the experiment of trying to land, and therefore to feed and clothe, an expeditionary force, if only for the sake of learning from our blunders. I should hope that the force would have some fighting to do. It would be a great lesson, and we would profit much by it.”

When the USS Maine sank (to this day it’s unknown whether it was attacked or suffered an internal explosion as similar ships were prone to), Roosevelt wanted war with Spain even more than he did before. While his boss was taking a day off, Roosevelt as Acting Secretary of the Navy ordered the fleet to begin “defensive operations” in the Philippines to prepare for war. He said war was necessary to prevent dishonor.

When war was declared, Roosevelt wanted to join the fight to gain glory and honor. His wife had recently given birth to their fifth child and was so ill, their New York doctor had been summoned to Washington. One of his other small boys was sick, and T.R. was strapped for cash. Despite all this, he wanted to actively participate on the battlefield and resigned from his job.

He was commissioned lieutenant colonel of the First Volunteer Cavalry (dubbed the Rough Riders by the press). All his family and friends were opposed, but he insisted he wasn’t doing this “in a mere spirit of recklessness or levity.” On the other hand, he was self-aware enough to add, “I don’t want you to think that I am talking like a prig, for I know perfectly well that one never is able to analyze with entire accuracy all of one’s motives.” And later he wrote, “Really, we are all fake heroes.” A part of him wanted to fulfil his boyhood dream of gaining glory on the battlefield.

Roosevelt was worried the war would be over before he had a chance to join it. “It will be awful if we miss all the fun,” he wrote to his sister. He had his optician make a dozen pairs of steel-rimmed spectacles so he’d have plenty of backups if his glasses broke or were lost on the battlefield. He picked “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” for the Rough Rider theme song.

Teddy, not having been in the army before, was very informal with his men and would buy them beer and drink with them. When they were scheduled to be taken to Cuba, Roosevelt discovered the same boat had been assigned to two other regiments as well. Terrified he’d miss out on the war, he made his men race to the boat to get there before the other regiments. When they finally got underway, Roosevelt was so excited, he gave an impromptu war dance.

When they landed in Cuba, there was a mad dash to kill the Spaniards before the other regiments got there. Most of their horses had been left back in Tampa. They threw what horses they had overboard, hoping they’d manage to swim to shore. During the mad dash, two men drowned in the surf. Learning the Spanish had retreated to Santiago, the unmounted cavalry had to rush if they wanted to be the first to engage the enemy.

The Rough Riders managed to get into a skirmish with the Spanish first, although there later arose controversy regarding whether they’d been ambushed or not. Another controversy arose regarding whether the Rough Riders charged up San Juan Hill or Kettle Hill at Santiago, although it really doesn’t matter. In either case, Roosevelt, either brave or reckless, ordered his volunteers to charge the hill ahead of the regular army. “The percentage of loss of our regiment was about seven times that of the other five volunteer regiments,” he wrote. Roosevelt himself survived the deadly charge and wrote home, “the charge itself was great fun.”

Santiago was soon captured and the Rough Riders returned home. Roosevelt, now a military hero, was elected governor of New York and gave appointments to his Rough Riders over better qualified men. (Later, when he was president, he even appointed one of his Rough Riders in prison for murder to be the warden of that prison!)

He technically wasn’t eligible to run for governor since he hadn’t been a resident of New York the last few years. He had even signed an affidavit swearing that his residence was in Washington D.C in order to avoid paying taxes in New York. (He’d also signed an affidavit swearing his residence was New York to avoid paying taxes in Washington.) But this tax dodge was swept aside and he became governor anyway.

While running for governor, he begged McKinley to award him the Medal of Honor to help him get elected, but he didn’t get it. As governor, he changed his mind about labor unions being evil and called for a tax on corporation franchises.

He then became vice president in 1901 for McKinley’s second term. McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist a few months later and Theodore Roosevelt was suddenly president. He was only 43, the youngest president in history to this day.

He made enemies of Southerners by inviting Booker T. Washington to the White House. They were infuriated that he treated a Black man as equal to White men. Roosevelt claimed the invitation had been spur of the moment (even though it wasn’t) and never invited another black man to the White House again. He once joked, after inviting a white man to dinner, “you need not black your face.”

He fought against monopolies which he called “the tyranny of plutocracy.” He ordered the dissolution of the Northern Securities Company (a railroad monopoly).

Miners routinely worked long hours, had to put up with unfair prices at the company store, and had to deal with filthy housing accommodations. In 1901, there were 441 fatal coal mining accidents. Before workmen’s compensation, the only recourse in cases of death was a long lawsuit. In 1902, miners asked for a pay increase and a shorter working day, but the head of the coal company ignored them. In May, they began a nonviolent strike. The price of coal rose. Roosevelt delayed doing anything.

On September 3rd, Roosevelt’s carriage was struck by a trolley car. One of his secret service agents was killed. Roosevelt himself was badly injured. His face was bruised and he walked with a limp. He ignored his leg injury until weeks later when an abscess on his leg had to be opened at a hospital. He’d come close to dying and had to use a wheelchair for a while after.

By October, New York schools had closed due to lack of coal. The coal shortage was quickly becoming a public emergency. Roosevelt called both the railroad operators and the strikers to a meeting in Washington, but the railroad operators refused to budge. Roosevelt called upon the military to mine the coal unless the strike was resolved. The operators eventually agreed to a pay increase.

Roosevelt’s foreign policy was “speak softly and carry a big stick.”  To him, maintaining honor was more important than peace. Concerning Englishmen, he said, “I wish him well, but I wish him well at a good distance from me.”

Venezuela was unable to pay its debt to England and Germany. The European powers blockaded Venezuela and fired upon it. They eventually agreed to arbitration. Years later during the first World War, Roosevelt claimed he threatened to attack Germany back in 1902 if it didn’t withdraw, but official documents don’t back up this account.

When gold was discovered in the Klondike region in 1896, the boundary between Alaska and British Colombia came into dispute with both nations naturally claiming the gold fields. Roosevelt prepared for war. In 1903, a compromise was reached which awarded the land to the US (which had the better claim) and gave two uninhabited islands to Canada as a consolation prize.

In 1904, Roosevelt noticed a dimness of vision in his left eye after exercise. A few days before, he’d been struck in the eye while boxing and had been seeing black spots floating in front of his eye. He was blind in his left eye by 1908, but kept it secret from the general public.

In 1904, Santo Domingo was having trouble paying its foreign debts. Bypassing the Senate, Roosevelt ordered the US to supervise customs receipts in Santo Domingo to ensure foreign debts were paid.

The Philippine-American War continued under President Roosevelt. Cuba was granted independence, but American troops occupied Cuba again between 1906-1909 to ensure fair elections.

The Panama Canal was originally planned to go through Nicaragua, but a volcano erupted there and it was deemed too dangerous. Colombia disagreed with the treaty which took away much of their sovereignty and paid them too little. Roosevelt angrily referred to the Colombians as “contemptible little creatures” and said, “we may have to give a lesson to those jack rabbits.” He threatened “action might be taken […] which every friend of Colombia would regret.”

Colombia rejected the treaty and Roosevelt prepared for war. He sent army officers to map out the area and prepared to take the isthmus by force of arms. However, before he could, Panama seceded from Colombia. Roosevelt denied playing a part in the Panamanian Revolution at the time, but later claimed credit for it. He did have meetings with Frenchman Philippe Bunau-Varilla who funded the revolution, wrote Panama’s new constitution and their declaration of independence, and had his wife make their new flag (the Panamanians later changed the design).

One of the leaders of the revolution and Panama’s future president, Manuel Amador, was an employee of William Nelson Cromwell who was working with Bunau-Varilla. With help from the American-owned Panama Railroad and Steamship Company, and American warships off the coast, the revolutionaries gained their independence from Colombia. Bunau-Varilla became Panama’s minister and signed over the right to build the canal before the new president of Panama could haggle over the price.

The US paid $40 million dollars to the stockholders of the Panama Canal Company, but their identity remains a mystery to this day. It was originally a French company that tried to build a canal years before, but there were rumors that Americans profited from it. In 1908, a newspaper called the New York World accused Cromwell, Bunau-Varilla, Roosevelt’s brother-in-law Douglas Robinson, and Charles P. Taft, the future president’s brother, of being the mysterious stockholders. The Indianapolis News also wondered where the money had gone.

Roosevelt was violently angry over these newspaper articles, but waited until after Taft was elected to attack. He sued the newspapers for libel against the US government, but libel was a state, not federal matter. Besides, the statements Roosevelt made about the canal payment were proven false. The Supreme Court ruled against Roosevelt.

Conscious of public perception, when Teddy went hunting, he insisted he be the one to shoot the first bear or mountain lion rather than any of his fellow hunters. Roosevelt enjoyed playing tennis, but kept it secret from the public for fear he’d be accused of being too aristocratic.

He acted friendly towards corporations in order to get campaign contributions from them. After reelection in 1904, however, he embraced the anti-corporate policy of his presidential rival William Jennings Bryan and the Democratic party. He met with Bryan in the White House and Bryan pledged the support of Democrats with regards to his railroad legislation. T.R. took a long tour through the South and praised the Confederacy. There were rumors he’d run for reelection in 1908 as a Democrat.

In February 1904, Japan attacked the Russian fleet. The US, UK and Japan had a monopoly on foreign trade in Manchuria, but Russia began obstructing them. The US and UK approved of the attack. Roosevelt had been thinking about going to war with Russia himself. He made preparations to join the war on Japan’s side.

Japan did better against Russia than anyone expected. By 1905, Roosevelt began to worry Japan was getting too strong. He offered to serve as a negotiator for peace between the two nations. Russia had basically been defeated by this point, but threatened to keep the war going. Roosevelt got the two nations to agree to peace and the war ended. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 for ending the Russo-Japanese War.

“To be polite and sympathetic and patient in explaining for the hundredth time something perfectly obvious, when I really want to give utterance to whoops of rage and jump up and knock their heads together–well, all I can hope is that the self-repression will be ultimately good for my character.”

France wanted to push Germany out of Morocco’s markets. War was a distinct possibility. Roosevelt was once again able to get the nations to negotiate and war was averted.

In 1906, a US patrol attacked Japanese vessels poaching seals off the coast of the Alaskan islands. Five Japanese were killed. Japan admitted the US had been in the right, but tensions escalated between the two countries. Later that year, the San Francisco school board ruled that Japanese were to be excluded from all schools. There were riots against Japanese shopkeepers. Fearing war with Japan, Roosevelt demanded California back down or he’d send in troops. He made a gentleman’s agreement with Japan that the school restrictions would be lifted in exchange for Japan limiting immigration of unskilled laborers to the US. Japan didn’t limit immigration, however, and Roosevelt prepared for war.

There were rumors Japan wanted to wrest the Philippines from the US. By 1907, the German Kaiser warned Roosevelt that war with Japan was certain. France, Germany, and England believe the US would lose. There were rumors England was building battleships for Japan. Germany claimed Japanese soldiers were amassing in Mexico posing as field hands. Roosevelt considered abandoning the Philippines, but Secretary of War Taft went to Japan and reported to the president that Japan was not actually preparing for war.

Roosevelt launched an investigation into Standard Oil which revealed they had received secret lower rates from the railroad companies. The sugar monopoly also enjoyed lower rates. Big companies getting secret rebates meant higher prices for everybody else who transported things by rail. Roosevelt got Congress to pass a law making railroads more regulated and transparent.

Although called “Trust Buster”, Roosevelt didn’t actually break up any monopolies. His rhetoric did get the ball rolling for future administrations, however.

After publication of Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle in 1906, Roosevelt launched an investigation into the meat packing industry. Packing houses were full of filth and tuberculosis was rampant among its workers. Old bits of rope were discovered in chopped meat. The buildings were dark, damp, and badly ventilated. The report led to passage of an inspection bill. Roosevelt also got the Pure Food Bill passed and spoke out against child labor.

Roosevelt was also a champion on water conservation and forest preservation. He had no head for economics, however, and did little for financial reform. He was even tricked by the US Steel corporation into letting it purchase Tennessee Coal and Iron for a fraction of its worth, convincing him this was necessary to avoid financial disaster.

T.R. had many public fights. He fought with General Nelson Miles for disagreeing with him. Roosevelt’s former friend, railroad magnate Edward H. Harriman, became his enemy when he tried to take control of the New York Republican party in 1907. Roosevelt doctored some letters between them to make it appear Teddy hadn’t asked for Harriman’s support in the presidential election.

Roosevelt secretly pushed for the Vatican to elevate Archbishop Ireland from Minnesota, friendly to his administration, to be a cardinal. When this was made public, it looked bad for Roosevelt to be interfering with Vatican matters. He denied it and ordered his former friend Bellamy Storer, the ambassador to Austria-Hungary to retire.

White supremacists in Brownsville, Texas resented the presence of a black regiment at Fort Brown. The people of Brownsville claimed to have seen a dozen black soldiers raiding and firing upon the town, even though the soldiers were accounted for at the fort during the time of the alleged riot. Their rifles were inspected and found clean the next morning, meaning they hadn’t been fired recently. Roosevelt dishonorably discharged all 160 soldiers anyway, including six who had been awarded the Medal of Honor. They no longer qualified for pensions and in some cases would be left destitute.

Senator Foraker investigated the Brownsville matter. He didn’t believe the witnesses and thought it odd the fired shells were all found in one spot rather than throughout the town as the story would suggest. The shells had double indents on them because they were used for target practice when the soldiers first got there. At that time, the shells were covered with packing grease which made firing twice necessary. Foraker thought the residents of Brownsville had scattered the shells to frame the soldiers. Roosevelt refused to admit he was wrong, although he did eventually allow some of the soldiers to rejoin the army.

Roosevelt loved expressing his opinions and enjoyed the controversy they inspired. When public opinion was against him, he didn’t apologize, but instead distracted everyone by weighing in on a different topic. He advocated simplified spelling such as “dropt” instead of “dropped” “thru” instead of “through” and “thoroly” instead of “thoroughly”, but quickly backed down when Congress didn’t approve.

Many books were published after 1900 by pseudo-naturalists, claiming woodcocks had fashioned splits for their broken limbs and other fantastical anecdotes. Roosevelt enjoyed the Uncle Remus stories, but was annoyed by these fictions passing themselves off as fact. He criticized them in public, including a Jack London story.

Despite his feminist leanings when he was younger, President Roosevelt believed men should be manly and women should be womanly. “I am the father of three boys, if I thought any one of them would weigh a possible broken bone against the glory of being chosen to play on Harvard’s football team I would disinherit him.” He also hated birth control and divorce.

Roosevelt invited authors who wrote wholesomely to the White House, which increased their royalties. He disapproved of authors who wrote about sex and their royalties increased even more. He hated Tolstoy for preaching against war and marriage. He hated Dickens for criticizing America in Martin Chuzzlewit. He enjoyed the poetry of Edwin Arlington Robinson and appointed him to the Custom House in New York. Robinson rarely went to his job, but Roosevelt’s endorsement lifted him from obscurity and made him a famous poet.

Roosevelt was only 50 when he retired from the presidency. He disapproved of Andrew Jackson picking his presidential successor, thinking the people should be free to decide rather than being told who they should pick. Despite this, Roosevelt went ahead and made sure Taft would be his successor. He was a backseat candidate, writing Taft daily with advice, including encouraging him to smile more so voters would think he was friendly.

He decided to spend a year hunting in Africa. His friends were worried something might happen to him. He was blind in one eye and didn’t see well with the other. He was overweight and not in the best of health. He ended up being sick only 5 days during his trip. The Smithsonian Institution sent taxidermists along with Roosevelt to preserve his kills, although they only kept 50 of the 296 animals he killed which made him angry.

He spoke with people in Sudan and Egypt who wanted independence from English colonialism. He told them English rule was in their best interest. He was invited to give speeches throughout Europe. A group of American Methodist missionaries in Rome called the Pope “the whore of Babylon.” The Pope wanted to meet with Roosevelt, but only if he agreed not to meet with the Methodists. Roosevelt refused and ended up not meeting Pius X. He’d been scheduled to meet the Methodists, but canceled meeting them when they further criticized the Vatican.

Roosevelt was originally supportive of Taft and didn’t mind that he selected his own Cabinet or dismissed other Roosevelt appointees, however, after they’d split later, Roosevelt’s memory changed and he believed the split with Taft had occurred earlier. When Roosevelt returned to America, Taft’s enemies came to him and painted Taft in a bad light. Taft was eager to please Roosevelt, but Roosevelt wouldn’t tell him what he wanted him to do.

Roosevelt traveled the country making speeches, supposedly to support the Republican party, but in reality, he was promoting a new way of doing things he called New Nationalism. He called for corporate regulation, worker’s rights, an inheritance and income tax to disrupt generational wealth, a non-partisan tariff commission, and conservation of natural resources. He was coming close to becoming the socialist he’d previously despised.

“We are face to face with new conceptions of the relations of property to human welfare. The man who wrongly holds that every human right is secondary to his profit must now give way to the advocate of human welfare, who rightly maintains that every man hold his property subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require it.”

By 1912, Roosevelt was running for president against Taft. Taft won the Republican nomination, so Teddy created the Progressive Party, nicknamed the Bull Moose party. While on campaign in Milwaukee, Roosevelt was shot by a would-be assassin. The bullet entered his right lung, although it had been slowed by his overcoat, spectacles case, and the folded up paper of his speech. Physicians advised him to go to the hospital, but he ignored their advice and proceeded to make his speech.

“I am going to ask you to be very quiet and please excuse me from making a long speech. I’ll do the best I can, but there is a bullet in my body. It is nothing. I am not hurt badly. I have a message to deliver and will deliver it as long as there is life in my body.”

The speech was delivered haltingly. Members of the audience begged him to stop. Most people in attendance had no idea what his speech was even about.

Roosevelt split the Republican vote causing Democrat Woodrow Wilson to win. In 1916, when Roosevelt was called to run for the Progressive party again, he said the party was over and they should go back to being Republicans.

In 1912, he sued a newspaper editor for calling him a drunk. Although he possessed the ruddy face and bombastic manner of a drunkard, Roosevelt actually drank very little, sometimes having a mint julep after a tennis match or sipping from a wine glass, but not finishing it. He presented witnesses to his sobriety and the newspaper editor had to admit he was wrong. Roosevelt didn’t sue him for the money, just the principle of the thing, and only asked for six cents in damages.

In 1914, Teddy explored the jungles of South America. While traveling the River of Doubt, he hurt his leg against a rock. An abscess developed and he got jungle fever. He told his son Kermit to leave him to die, but the members of the expedition wouldn’t hear of it. They managed to bring him down the river to safety.

He got involved in politics again when he returned to the states. He accused a Republican leader of being corrupt and was sued for libel. The court ruled that Roosevelt’s criticism of Barnes was truthful.

When World War I broke out, Roosevelt issued contradictory statements. He apparently didn’t know whether he sided with Germany or the Allies. He went back and forth on whether the US should remain neutral or not, changing his mind to align with public opinion.

Roosevelt was once friends with President Woodrow Wilson, but began to hate him when Wilson apologized to Colombia for the role of the US in Panamanian independence, Roosevelt’s proudest accomplishment. Wilson’s legislation was in line with what Roosevelt had been calling for, but Roosevelt railed against his policies anyway. When Roosevelt changed his mind about US neutrality in the first World War, he accused Wilson for being a coward for not joining the fight.

He campaigned against Wilson in 1916. When Wilson was reelected and prepared to join the war, Roosevelt asked if he could lead a division in France. Theodore Roosevelt’s nephew-in-law Franklin D. Roosevelt was Assistant Secretary of the Navy at the time and arranged a meeting between Teddy and the Secretary of War.

Wilson declined giving Teddy a division, thinking him too unbalanced. Roosevelt was also not physically fit enough for military service, lacked military experience (despite leading a volunteer regiment in Cuba), and lacked military discipline. Roosevelt would never be willing to be subordinate to anybody and would not have followed the chain of command.

Angry at being rejected, Roosevelt published his correspondence with the Secretary of War and claimed the reason he didn’t get a division was political. He toured the country, encouraging a more aggressive waging of war. His four sons all fought in the first World War. His son Quentin was killed in an aerial battle.

Roosevelt dictated an editorial for the Kansas City Star on January 5, 1919. He went to bed early. His last words to his Black servant James Amos were “Please put out the light.” He died the next morning from a blood clot in the coronary artery. His death came as a surprise since few knew he was seriously ill. He was only 61.

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As I’ve been reading presidential biographies, I’ve been focusing on their body count versus lives saved. Although a hothead who often called for war, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. actually saved many lives through negotiation. He negotiated an end to the Russo-Japanese War, averted war between France and Germany during the First Moroccan Crisis, and got England and Germany to agree to arbitration after they’d fired upon Venezuela.

He protected 230 million acres of land by establishing National Parks, National Monuments, and National Forests. He resolved the Coal Strike of 1902, which may have saved lives. The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, the first federal law regulating food and drugs, created the precursor to the present-day FDA and has saved an untold number of lives by banning impure and falsely-labeled food and drugs.

On the other hand, the Philippine-American War continued under President Roosevelt. He also supported a separatist movement in Panama, including sending a warship, risking war in order to build the Panama Canal. Only one person died when Colombia fired shells upon Panama City, but many more could have died.

American troops occupied Cuba between 1906-1909 following a disputed election, however it was apparently a peaceful occupation. Roosevelt dishonorably discharged 160 black soldiers at Fort Brown after a false accusation was made against them, leaving many of them destitute.

Overall, I think Teddy Roosevelt did more good than harm while president. He very well might be one of the best presidents the United States has had.