Theodore Roosevelt played a very important role in society in which he achieved many goals and helped our country become a better nation for the rights of the people. For a young man that started out quite sickly due to asthma and an extremely weak heart, he was such a determined individual that didn’t allow his weaknesses to interfere with reaching his goals and acquiring such great achievements for one man. Although Theodore Roosevelt grew up in a wealthy environment, he was able to associate with not only the rich but he somehow managed to befriend and gain the utmost confidence even from those that were not so privileged. That is one of many reasons why he would be admired even today due to not only his strength in character but also how he didn’t allow wealth to define him as a person. He was an extremely hard working individual and even with a man that had such disadvantages as far as his health, he managed to become one of the most influential and triumphant men of our country.
Theodore Roosevelt was born on October 27th, 1858 into a wealthy Dutch New York City family. There were four children in all, Anna, Theodore, Elliot and Corinne Roosevelt. Although he had a very wealthy childhood upbringing, he also had a series of health issues including being diagnosed at a young age with asthma and poor eyesight, but he did not let those things stop him from achieving his goals. He was a very hardworking man who believed he could do anything he set his mind to because he was a driven and highly motivated person. As a boy he developed the nickname Teddy, which had helped create what is now known as a teddy bear after a cartoonist had drawn a portrait of him with a bear cub. Teddy was also a writer who had written about a dozen different books between 1880 and 1900. One of his best pieces was the book called “The Winning of the West”. Over time, Teddy began to get an interest in politics. His first taste in politics came when he was elected into the New York State Assembly in 1882. Between 1876 and 1880, Theodore had attended Harvard College and then soon after attended a law school. The same year that he had graduated from Harvard Teddy met and married Miss Alice Hathaway Lee and, in fact, they got married on his 22nd birthday. He had also joined the Republican Party that same year. After two years of law school, he quit without getting his degree. In 1882, he had been elected to serve in the New York State Assembly and joined the National Guard. He was commissioned to Second Lieutenant in B Company of New York’s 8th Regiment and was promoted to Captain the following year. He was then reelected by the widest margin of any legislator in New York and became a Minority Leader. He was taken on a tour of New York City where he had discovered that the working conditions were terrible and needed to be changed to help the health of the workers and the public people. He wanted everyone to be safe and protected from harmful diseases. On February 12th of 1884, his beautiful daughter was born at his home and was named after her mother, Alice Lee Roosevelt; however, not without sorrow as he lost his wife during the childbirth of his daughter and within two hours of her birth and the death of his wife, his own mother passed away. His mother had what was called typhoid fever and Alice had a disease called chronic kidney infection which was caused from the pregnancy. He was then left alone with his new born daughter, Alice Lee. That same year, he signed a contract with the firm of Joseph Wood & Sons of Lawrence, Long Island, to build a home in Oyster Bay at the insistence of his sister Anna, who convinced him his daughter would need a home. He had originally planned the home with his wife Alice, and was planning to name it Leeholm in honor of her family name. The house was completed in 1885, and was named Sagamore Hill in honor of Sagamore Mohannis, the Indian Chief who used the hill as a meeting place and signed his people's rights to the land over to the settlers in the 1660s. In 1885, he published another book called the “Hunting Trips of a Ranchman”. On November 2, 1886, Abram S. Hewitt defeated Theodore Roosevelt as a Republican candidate for Mayor of New York City. Even after the unsuccessful campaign for Mayor he was finally appointed United States Civil Service Commissioner. He served as New York City’s Police Commissioner where he met and ended up marrying Edith Carow. One year later, he published another book called “Life of Thomas Hart Benton”. In 1887, Theodore Roosevelt and his wife Edith took residence at Sagamore Hill. They eventually had five children, Theodore (1887), Kermit (1889), Ethel Carow (1891), Archibald Bulloch (1894), and Quentin (1897). In 1888, Theodore published three books, “The Life of Gouverneur Morris”, “Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail”, and “Essays in Practical Politics”. He also published the first two volumes of “The Winning of the West” and two more volumes of his four-volume History of the Frontier would follow in 1894 and 1896. He became United States Service Commissioner in Washington in 1889 and published “History of New York” in 1891. Two years later, he published another book called “The Wilderness Hunter” and “Hero Tales from American History” four years later. That same year, 1895, he resigned from the United States Civil Service Commission and became Police Commissioner of New York City. He then received national press attention for his reforms, including ‘midnight rambles” in search of policemen not at their posts. He ordered that all police officers must report for target practice, thus establishing the foundation of the police academy, one of the first in the country. He published another book called “American Ideals” in 1897. That same year, he was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy by President William McKinley. A little more than a year later he resigned as Assistant Secretary of the Navy to become Lieutenant-Colonel of the 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry Regiment (the “Rough Riders”). He was then commissioned Lieutenant Colonel, but later promoted to Colonel of the Regiment before the Battle of San Juan Heights. On September 27, 1898, Theodore was nominated by the Republican Party for Governor of New York State and two months later was elected Governor of New York State (661,715 votes) with a plurality of 17,786 votes. His opponent was Democrat Augustus Van Wyck of Brooklyn (643,921 votes). In 1899, he published a book called ‘The Rough Riders”. On November 6, 1900, he was elected for Vice President and, in the year 1901, he became the Vice President of the United States. That same year McKinley was shot and killed while attending the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, NY. Theodore Roosevelt, on a hiking trip with his family, was summoned back from Mount Tahawus in the Adirondacks to Buffalo. At the age of 42, Theodore Roosevelt became the Twenty-Sixth President of the United States. Roosevelt was the youngest man ever to become President and, in the year of 1902, only a year later after he had become President, he ordered an antitrust suit under Sherman Act to dissolve Northern Securities Company in the first of 45 antitrust suits. Between the years 1902 and 1903, Roosevelt was able to settle the Venezuelan Affair, establish the Department of Commerce and Labor, get the Elkins Anti-Rebate Act for Railroads signed, settled the Alaskan Boundary dispute, get the treaty signed with Panama for building of Panama Canal, which was completed in 1914, and created the Reciprocity Treaty with Cuba. In1904, he was reelected as President over Democrat Alton B. Parker. The following year, he issued “Roosevelt Corollary” to Monroe Doctrine in annual message to Congress. In 1905, Portsmouth Treaty was signed ending the Russo-Japanese War after meditation by Theodore Roosevelt and published another book called “Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter”. Algeciras Conference opened as President Roosevelt mediated between France and Germany over Morocco, preserving Moroccan independence and the European balance of power, thus for a time saving the peace in North Africa and Europe. In 1906, Antiquities or National Monuments Act was signed, by which Theodore Roosevelt, and was established the first 18 ‘National Monuments” including: Devils Tower (1906), Muir Woods (1908) Grand Canyon (1908) and Mount Olympus (1909). Also, in 1906, the Forest Homestead Act and the Hepburn Act were both created and signed giving interstate Commerce Commission power to regulate railroad rates. Then soon the Pure Food and Drug Act and Federal Meat inspection law was passed. On December 10, 1906, Theodore Roosevelt was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for ending the Russo-Japanese war in 1905; first American to win Nobel Prize in any six categories. In 1910, Theodore published a book called ‘African Game Trails” and “Realizable Ideals” in 1912. On October 14, 1912, Theodore Roosevelt was shot in the chest while entering an automobile outside the Hotel Gilpatrick in Milwaukee, WI by would-be assassin, John Nepomuk Schrank at about 8:00 p.m. Campaigning on the "Bull Moose" ticket, Teddy delivered a 90-minute speech at the Auditorium in Milwaukee before seeking medical attention. The bullet would never be removed. Schrank was declared insane on November 13, 1912 and committed to the Northern State Hospital for the Insane at Oshkosh, WI and died at the Central State Hospital in Waupun, WI on September 15, 1943. Democrat Woodrow Wilson was elected President over Theodore Roosevelt, who came in second, and the Republican Taft. Roosevelt received the largest percentage of votes of any third party candidate. Wilson won the election with 6,293,454 popular votes, 435 electoral votes within forty states, Teddy Roosevelt came in second with 4,119,538 votes, 88 Electoral votes within six states (27.4% of the popular vote), and Taft came in third with 3,484,980 votes, 8 Electoral votes within two states. In 1917, Theodore Roosevelt’s family helped support the war. His four sons enlisted and his daughter, Ethel, served as a Red Cross Nurse at the American Ambulance Hospital in Paris, accompanying her husband, a surgeon named Dr. Richard Derby. Quentin Roosevelt, Theodore’s youngest son, was killed while serving as a fighter pilot in France. In July of 1918, Teddy Roosevelt refused Republican nomination for Governor of New York. Between 1913 and 1918, he managed to publish nine more books, “Theodore Roosevelt-Autobiography”, “History as Literature and Other Essays”, “Through the Brazilian Wilderness”, “Life Histories of African Game Animals”, “American and the World War”, “Booklover’s Holidays in the Open”, “Fear God and Take Your Own Part”, “Foes of Our Own Household”, and “Great Adventure”. A year after he had published “Great Adventure,” Theodore died in his sleep at Sagamore Hill of coronary embolism (arterial blood clot) at the age of 60. For someone that was destined to be stricken with severe illness and not live for long, he managed to outweigh the odds by sheer determination was able to live to be a respectable age of 60 which in those days was a long life.
Theodore Roosevelt, the man also known as Teddy, was an inspirational figure to say the least. He was not only a well-renowned author but a president that can be not only remembered but highly respected for making such a mark on history for all the attributions he implemented within our society. One can certainly gain the respect and admiration from such an accomplished individual even in today’s culture. Theodore Roosevelt was able to manage even with the severe health conditions but never allowed those limitations to get in his way. As a matter of fact, they were never limitations in his eyes only made him fight for what he wanted in life and made him a stronger individual because of it. Not only his name will be remembered for all the accomplishments he had made during his tenure of life but his face will never be forgotten as for in honor of him and three other great men will be forever preserved on Mount Rushmore.