Theodore Roosevelt (No. 26) – Oyster
Bay, Long Island, NY
May 13, 2017
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| 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)
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| The Rough Riders (source: Wikipedia) |
“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.
* * *
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| 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).
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Theodore Roosevelt and his family |
* * *
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
