Sunday, July 16, 2017



Theodore Roosevelt (No. 26) – Oyster Bay, Long Island, NY
May 13, 2017


Theodore Roosevelt
Of all the monuments and statues dedicated to Theodore Roosevelt, Mount Rushmore may be the most fitting tribute. Mount Rushmore, as you know, is a mountain in the Black Hills of South Dakota where four presidents’ busts have been carved into the mountain: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. Sculptor John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum chose the four as the most important presidents at that time, saying he chose Roosevelt specifically because of the economic development he oversaw during his tenure.

However, Roosevelt nowadays — and maybe it’s just the current political climate and the National Park Service’s 100th anniversary last year — is remembered as perhaps the nation’s greatest conservationist. And that’s where the tribute — and the irony — comes in. While he has been immortalized in nature, in an area of the country that was important to him, the mountain where his bust sits had to be damaged for the carving to be made. During his life, Roosevelt killed hundreds, if not thousands, of animals while on the other hand setting aside millions of acres for conservation and for what would later become the National Park Service.

Take, for instance, the white rhino. While on safari in Africa, Roosevelt understood the white rhino to be threatened as a species. However, he wanted to collect a museum specimen — or two.  So he ended up shooting five white rhinos. His son, Kermit, shot four more (Lunde, 2016).

Roosevelt started his love affair with natural history — and hunting — when he was seven years old.  He spied a dead seal in a store window and convinced the owner to give him the head. He studied the head and began to look for other specimens. He started with small animals such as mice, bats and turtles. And he taught himself to stuff them.

His father, who was concerned with Teddy’s poor health, encouraged him to hunt and trap and collect more specimens. This was the start of the “Roosevelt Museum of Natural History” that Teddy set up on the top floor of family’s large brownstone in New York City.

Teddy added to his museum during hunting trips in the Adirondacks and even on a family vacation in Egypt. By the time they went to Egypt, Teddy was 14, in good health and skilled at preserving his specimens. Because his family was rich — his father was a philanthropist — he could have his specimens shipped directly to New York to await his return.

Roosevelt didn’t just shoot and preserve animals; he also studied their life histories. As he became older and more experienced, he became well known in the naturalist community. And in the last decades of the 19th century, it was common for naturalists to shoot animals and study the remains.

Roosevelt seemed to really like the hunting part. He also enjoyed testing himself against animals.  When hunting big game, he preferred to face the animals he wanted to kill and tried to entice them into charging him. He got a thrill from killing an animal just as it was about to reach him. And once he had killed an animal, he would sometimes perform victory dances, including on Western trips when he shot bison and pronghorn antelopes (Lunde, 2016).  Roosevelt also documented the last moments in his trophies’ lives in his many books and letters. He described a rhino calf he shot “when dying uttered a screaming whistle, almost like that of a small steam-engine.” (Lunde, 2016)

But he did once spare a young black bear cornered by hounds on a 1902 Mississippi hunting trip.  And that gave rise to the popular “teddy bear.” 

But he never pursued a career as a naturalist because the study of animals was becoming more laboratory-based and he wanted to study animals in the wild (Millard, 2005).

Instead, he turned to public service. He won his first office as a New York state assemblyman in 1881 when he was a mere 23 years old. He became known for fighting for the little guy, including black Americans who were restricted on their right to vote in New York. 

In 1889, he became one of three U.S. civil service commissioners appointed by President Benjamin Harrison. He fought corruption to make the civil service system fairer. He was soon appointed New York City police commissioner and continued to fight corruption. Roosevelt would walk the city at night looking for crime, nabbing police officers not properly performing their jobs.

Later, Roosevelt became President William McKinley’s assistant secretary of the Navy. (At the age of 24 he had written a book about the Navy called “The Naval War of 1812” that was required reading at the Naval Academy.)  Teddy pushed McKinley to expand the Navy — and to use it. He especially encouraged McKinley to push back against Spanish imperialism in Cuba.  Roosevelt wrote to a friend: “I should welcome almost any war, for this country needs one.”  (Donnelly, 2003)

The Rough Riders (source:  Wikipedia)
When the war with Spain became a reality in 1898, Roosevelt formed a regiment of volunteers called the “Rough Riders” and served as second in command. The now-famed Rough Riders trained for a short time and then were deployed to Cuba.  In 1898, they fought bravely at the Battle of San Juan Hill where Roosevelt was noted for his bravery:

“Lieutenant Colonel Roosevelt, in total disregard for his personal safety, and accompanied by only four or five men, led a desperate and gallant charge up San Juan Hill, encouraging his troops to continue the assault through withering enemy fire over open countryside. Facing the enemy's heavy fire, he displayed extraordinary bravery throughout the charge, and was the first to reach the enemy trenches, where he quickly killed one of the enemy with his pistol, allowing his men to continue the assault” (Congressional Medal of Honor website). 

Nearly a hundred years later, Roosevelt was posthumously awarded a Medal of Honor by President Bill Clinton.

After the war, Roosevelt ran for and won the New York governorship despite not having lived in New York for five years before the election. During his tenure, he banned racial segregation in schools and supported workers over businesses.

And then he was McKinley’s vice president. But he found the job dull. True to form, he was out hunting at the Vermont Fish & Game Club when McKinley was shot on Sept. 6, 1901.  Roosevelt deliberately stayed away from Washington, DC because he did not want to be seen coveting the presidency. He was out hiking in the Adirondacks when he received word that McKinley was near death. Although he tried, Roosevelt did not make it back to Washington before the president died.

And at 42 years old, Teddy Roosevelt became the nation’s youngest president.

* * *


Walking toward Sagamore Hills
in the rain.
In May 2017, we embarked on a trip to Teddy Roosevelt’s homestead in Oyster Bay, N.Y., on Long Island. Unfortunately, we had bought tickets for what ended up being probably the rainiest day of the spring there: May 13. A nor’easter followed us up I-95, and it poured for almost all of our 14-hour adventure. We bought the tickets a month in advance: We originally planned to go in April, but when Tom (fortunately) called the day before to check about tours, he learned the house was booked. What we didn’t realize is that it was National Park Week, meaning free visits to all National Park Service properties — and sold-out tours. 

Of all the presidential houses we have visited, Sagamore Hill has the most character and the most “feel” of a president by far. In just about every room, visitors can feel the presence of the 26th president. They also can feel the presence of some of the animals he killed, as their remains — hides, tusks, mounted heads, etc. — are in just about every room (if you’re strongly opposed to hunting, you might want to skip Sagamore Hill). 

The front door.
Visitors are greeted by heads of a buffalo and deer mounted on the walls of the hall as soon as they enter the dark, wood-beamed house, which feels like a traditional “old boys” hunting lodge, complete with fireplaces, leather-backed chairs and books. But while gaping at the animal heads, visitors might miss the lovely stained glass in the windows above the front door. That stained glass — found throughout the house — comes from Roosevelt’s parents’ stained glass business, which earned the family a fortune. Before entering the house, visitors should notice the Latin phrase carved into the wood above the front door: “Qui plantavit curabit,” which means “He who planted will preserve,” the Roosevelt family motto.

Three rooms in the architecturally beautiful house — the first Summer White House — stand out: Roosevelt’s office/library, immediately on the right as you enter the house, the reception room directly in front, and the “Gun Room” upstairs. Check out images on the Internet, because we can’t do the decor justice.

Roosevelt built the house in Oyster Bay, a community where his family visited in summer when they fled the heat and humidity of New York City, similar to the Vanderbilts building their famous “cottages” in Newport, R.I., during the Gilded Age. He lived at Sagamore Hill, named for the American Indian tribe who had lived there, from 1885 until he died in 1919.

Roosevelt ran “everything” from his home office in Sagamore, according to our tour guide, Richard Cashman, a 20-year National Park Service volunteer who seemingly knows everything about Roosevelt and his family. Lining the walls above the packed bookcases are portraits of his heroes, including George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and his father. The room also features several animal hides used as rugs, including a pathetic-looking zebra. Others are draped on chairs. Roosevelt had a telephone on his desk to keep connected with the government.

Interior Room
At the back of the main level, directly in front of you as you walk in, is the Interior Room, best described as a “great room.” Here are more treasures from Roosevelt’s presidency and hunting expeditions. Huge deer bucks with impressive racks of antlers stare directly at bison heads across the room. Perched on the antlers are Roosevelt’s Rough Rider hat and sword. Hundreds of books line bookcases, oil canvases adorn the walls. Several sets of tables and chairs are scattered around the room for informal conversation. The high, arched ceiling gives the room an inviting, airy feel.

Gun Room
Upstairs on the bedroom level, visitors find the Gun Room, Roosevelt’s second favorite room after his office, although surprisingly, the guns are tucked away in a case, not hanging on the walls or showcased in any way. Roosevelt had a chair made of ivory tusks, a rhino foot doubling as an inkwell, a thick bear hide lining the floor. The built-in bookcase, surrounding a couch, along the far wall is a wonder. Roosevelt was an avid reader. “Books are the ammunition of life,” he once said, so it’s not surprising to find that he owned hundreds of them.

Unfortunately for visitors, the closest you can get to the rooms is the hallway. In other presidential houses, you are allowed inside some of the rooms, behind the rope, of course. But here, you are relegated to the hallway and must look from afar, so it’s difficult to see tiny embellishments and knick-knacks.

The front porch
All that rain meant that we didn’t have any extra time to wander around the Oyster Bay downtown, which features a statue of Roosevelt as you enter town. A sad note is that the longtime drug store downtown where the Roosevelts picked up drugs for Theodore’s ailments has only recently closed. We also didn’t get to wander around the Sagamore Hill grounds too much as the cold rain soaked us as the wind blew it under our umbrellas. However, we were able to stay out of the rain as we waited to enter the mansion with 15 other people on the wide, covered porch. We enjoyed the view, although nowadays there is no real view of the Long Island Sound, as trees have grown and blocked the view that used to be there. Maybe in the winter, though.

*  *  *

President Roosevelt brought what he called “progressive liberalism” to the White House. He praised labor unions and supported regulations on business and banking. He fought against bad labor conditions. For example, he intervened in a coal strike and threatened to nationalize the coalmines if the strike was not resolved fairly to the workers. In the end, a settlement was reached that improved the lot of workers. And when Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle exposed horrendous working conditions in the meat industry, Congress passed the Meat Inspection Act. This law protected the public from unsanitary meat. Congress also passed the Pure Food & Drug Act to protect people from food and drugs that were unsafe. 

Roosevelt thought corporations held too much power in the U.S. at the expense of the public, with trusts making up two-thirds of the economy at the time (Donnelly, 2003). He believed that people, not corporations, should control the U.S. economy. So he went after the trusts. Target number one was JP Morgan’s Northern Securities Co., which owned three large railroads.  The government sued the company on charges that it was a monopoly and violated the Sherman Antitrust Act. He won. Roosevelt, now known as a “trust buster,” broke up many more trusts.

Roosevelt tried to improve conditions for blacks, although he faced fierce resistance. He appointed William Crum, an African American, as collector of customs at the Port of Charleston in South Carolina. However, Congress refused to act on his nomination, and he had to keep reappointing him when Congress was in recess.

Not all of his views were completely progressive. He said of black Americans, “…inasmuch as he is here and can neither be killed nor driven away, the only wise and honorable and Christian thing to do is to treat each black man and each white man strictly on his merits as a man, giving him no more and no less than he shows himself worth to have.” (Rauchway, 2003)  In 1901, Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington for dinner at the White House. That enraged Southerners, and they made sure Roosevelt knew it.  Roosevelt never invited another black to the White House.

Roosevelt won a presidential term in his own right in 1904, beating William Jennings Bryan in what was the greatest popular win to date. He finally had the mandate he had been seeking.

Roosevelt projected strength in his approach to the world. He built up the U.S. Navy to check Germany in the Atlantic and Japan in the Pacific (Donnelly, 2003). He had the Navy paint 60 warships pure white and sent the “Great White Fleet” to circle the globe. 

He also proclaimed to the world that the United States was in charge of the Western Hemisphere. His mantra was a West African proverb: “Speak softly and carry a big stick, you will go far.” 

But he was also a peacemaker. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906, the first American to do so, for ending the Russo Japanese War.

Roosevelt considered the construction of the Panama Canal his greatest accomplishment.  Although not opened until 1914, most of the construction occurred during his administration. The new canal allowed Navy ships to quickly transit from one ocean to the other (Donnelly, 2003). 

The project included political intrigue as the country of Colombia didn’t want to sell land located in the state of Panama to the United States. So Roosevelt worked behind the scenes and fomented a revolution in the canal region. The breakaway area became the country of Panama. And Panama supported the canal.  It was an egregious form of American power but Roosevelt never second-guessed his actions.  Years later he said, “I took the action I did in Panama because to have acted otherwise would have been both weak and wicked” (Millard, 2005).

The canal is still an engineering marvel. It is 50 miles long, with 232 million cubic yards of soil removed to build it. As the U.S. currently mulls upgrading U.S. infrastructure with private-sector participation, it is worth noting that the Panama Canal was begun by a French corporation and was funded privately. Millions of francs and thousands of deaths later, the company went bankrupt. When the United States built the canal, it was totally paid for by U.S. taxpayers. 

As we’ve noted, Roosevelt was a supporter of the natural areas to protect wildlife. He set up the first wildlife refuge at Pelican Island in Florida to protect birds from plume hunters. (Plumes were popular adornments on women’s hats.) Roosevelt said, “When I hear of the destruction of species, I feel just as if the works of a great writer had perished.” (Lunde, 2016)

By the end of his term, he had added five national parks to the five existing, added 148 million acres of national forests, set up 50 bird reserves, and signed the National Monument Act, which added 18 national monuments (Donnelly, 2003).

When the next election rolled around in 1908, Roosevelt promised not to run again. His work was done — or so he thought. He handpicked his secretary of war, William Howard Taft, as his successor. And Taft won. 

But Taft did not follow in Roosevelt’s footsteps. He moved away from Roosevelt’s progressive agenda. And Roosevelt felt betrayed. So much so, that in 1912 he decided to run again. He sought the Republican nomination but his party had moved on and Taft was re-nominated. 

So Roosevelt decided to run outside the GOP. He created a progressive party that became known as the Bull Moose Party. It supported government oversight, higher wages, women’s right to vote, better education and income taxes (Donnelly, 2003).

During one of his campaign stops, Roosevelt again demonstrated his toughness. As he entered the Hotel Gilpatrick in Milwaukee on Oct. 14, 1912, a man walked up to him, pointed a gun at his chest, and pulled the trigger. Although the bullet was deflected by the folded-up speech and a metal glasses case in his breast coat pocket, the bullet lodged in his chest and broke a rib. Roosevelt kept moving. Despite pleas for him to get immediate medical attention, he walked onto the stage, opened his coat and showed the crowd his wound. Then he gave his speech — all 80 minutes of it.  And only then did he go to the hospital. “It takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose,” he declared. (Politico.com, 2015)

But Roosevelt only served to split the Republican vote, and Democrat Woodrow Wilson was elected president. 

* * *

Roosevelt had a complicated marital life. When he was in college at Harvard, he fought hard to gain the hand of Alice Lee, a classmate’s cousin. But once married, Roosevelt didn’t pay as much attention to the marriage as he should have. He was often out West on hunting expeditions.  When his daughter, Alice, was born, on Feb. 12, 1884, he was working in Albany. By the time he arrived home on Valentine’s Day, his wife was near death from a previously undetected kidney ailment. And his mother, who also lived in the house, was also dying. By the end of the day, both Alice Lee and Roosevelt’s mother were dead. Roosevelt put an “X” in his journal that night and wrote, “The light has gone out of my life.” He didn’t try to raise his baby daughter but handed her off to one of his sisters to raise while he fled out west to South and North Dakota. 

Theodore Roosevelt and
his family
Although he wrote that he didn’t believe in second marriages, in 1885 Roosevelt secretly married his childhood friend, Edith Carow. They had a large family together that eventually re-included daughter Alice. Roosevelt rarely mentioned his first wife and couldn’t bring himself to talk to Alice about her mother. Alice grew up to be a strong-willed young woman and was known as “Princess Alice” in the White House. Exasperated one day, Roosevelt reportedly said, "I can either run the country or I can attend to Alice, but I cannot possibly do both." 

* * *

Following his presidency, Roosevelt continued to travel. First was his hunting and collection trip to Africa just after he left office. In 1914 he traveled to Paraguay and Brazil to explore the wilderness. He led an expedition that intended to map a Brazilian headwater to its source. The headwater was called the Rio da Duvida (River of Doubt) because nobody knew where it ended.  Back in those days, all mapping was done by traveling the land and noting coordinates from the sun and the stars. An aneroid measured the elevation. To map the Rio da Duvida, Roosevelt and 18 other men built seven dugout canoes, then plopped them into the river’s headwaters in the Brazilian highlands to see where they came out.

They did not know where or how long the journey would take. And once they embarked, there was no turning back and no phoning for help. When they were more than 100 kilometers, or 60 miles, into the journey, Roosevelt noted that they had consumed more than a third of their provisions and had lost a canoe. The many rapids they encountered had to be avoided.  They were forced to portage all their canoes and gear, hacking their way through the jungle abutting the river. Since each dugout canoe weighed about 2,500 pounds, this could take a day or more. When they lost a canoe, they had to stop for several days, chop down a large tree and hand-carve a new canoe. During one particularly bad stretch of rapids, one of the canoes became caught in the rapids and capsized. One man was dashed to death against the rocks and his body was never found. The canoe was destroyed and provisions were lost.

Biting flies, wasps, mosquitoes and ants continually harassed the party. Armies of termites and carregadores ants would flow through their camps, eating the explorers’ clothing and shoes. Three of the camaradas (porters) became so bitten on the feet — most of them didn’t wear shoes — that they could no longer walk. 

And they were always wet.  Even when sunny, their clothes rarely got completely dry in the hot, soupy air. 

On a particularly dark day, one of the camaradas, a man who had been shirking his duties and stealing food, grabbed a rifle and stormed after the sergeant of the camaradas who had recently reprimanded him. The lazy camarada shot the other through the chest, killing him instantly. Then he dropped the rifle and bolted into the jungle. Roosevelt and his group left the man behind, but not without discussing the impossibility of capturing and guarding him until they could reach civilization. A few days later, while paddling down the river, they heard him call out from the jungle that he was ready to surrender. They ignored him. That night, they had a change of heart and sent a party in search of the murderer. They never found him.

Each day, Roosevelt would sit at a small camp table and write the day’s notes, a job made difficult because of the net covering his face and the gloves covering his hands. 

Roosevelt’s weakened party eventually came upon “rubber men,” their camps, and eventually a small town. They had discovered an unmapped major tributary to the Rio Madeira in the Amazon River Basin.

Roosevelt contracted malaria on the trip and it badly affected his health. He would die in his sleep at Sagamore less than five years later when he was only 60 years old. 

Directions

Sagamore Hill is located at 20 Sagamore Hill Road in Oyster Bay, NY on Long Island.  The house is lonely accessible by guided tour for $10 per ticket.  Reservations are a good idea.

References

Donnelly, Matt.  2003.  Theodore Roosevelt:  Larger than Life.  Linnet Books.  North Haven, CT.

Lunde, Darrin.  2016.  The Naturalist:  Theodore Roosevelt, a Lifetime of Exploration, and the Triumph of American Natural History.  Crown Publishers.  New York, NY. 

Millard, Candice.  2005.  The River of Doubt:  Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey.  Broadway Books.  New York, NY. 

Rauchway, Eric.  2003.  Murdering McKinley:  The Making of Theodore Roosevelt’s America.  Hill and Want, New York, NY.

Videos

History Channel.  2005.  The Presidents:  The Lives and Legacies of the 43 Leaders of the United States.

Websites


https://teddyrooseveltlive.com/tag/seal-head/

https://www.nps.gov/sahi/index.htm

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/everything-you-need-to-know-about-tuesdays-republican-debate-215611#ixzz3r0pwYCB1


https://www.opm.gov/about-us/our-mission-role-history/theodore-roosevelt/

http://www.cmohs.org/recipient-detail/2178/roosevelt-theodore.php