Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
The Corpse at Every Funeral
Say a half year back, I put up a series on important figures: usually well known, but not always, from American history. I have a couple more for anyone interested: Teddy and Cal. Today, Teddy. I am far from an admirer of TR’s presidency, but, for the most part, that’s not the point of this series…
Who was Theodore Roosevelt? Think Winston Churchill. No, an evil cloud was not threatening to roll across the land and snuff out America’s very existence, but if it had been, you’d want someone like Roosevelt. Differing geopolitical circumstances aside, the beliefs and careers of the two men traced remarkably similar patterns.
Both were born aristocrats and natural patriots who believed in the necessity of regular warfare to forge both a nation’s spirit and the spirit of each individual person. Each went enthusiastically to war while young, quitting a position in the upper echelons of government to do so. Each tried again when they were too old. President Wilson refused Roosevelt’s demand he be allowed to lead a squad of volunteers during the Great War; Churchill was determined to join the first wave on D-Day as a regular grunt, relenting only because King George; with a full measure of courage of his own; threatened, then, that he would do the same. As Undersecretary of the Navy (de facto real secretary), Roosevelt, an expert on naval affairs with a global strategic vision, had modernized his country’s navy. Likewise, Churchill, an expert on naval affairs with a global strategic vision, had modernized his country’s navy as First Lord of the Admiralty. Each was an explicit imperialist, believing in racial hierarchies. Each supported eugenics and believed in a Darwinian struggle between nations and races for supremacy. Each was an amateur but expert historian writing best-selling books on military history as part of their prodigious literary output. Each, though remembered as a conservative, led their nations into the progressive new world. Roosevelt’s leadership is the story of this chapter. Churchill teamed with Lloyd-George in the 1910s and 20s to open the door on a Bismarckian welfare state for Great Britain.
The Corpse at Every Funeral
Short of stature, asthmatic, and sickly as a child; Teddy was possessed of a will of steel, the heart of a lion, and an inexhaustible fountain of energy. These gave him the wherewithal to overcome impediments on his way to the great accomplishments he knew were his destiny. If his physical weakness stood in his way, he would simply have to overcome. He first faced up to it, and then faced it down through a rigorous lifelong program of training which included boxing, wrestling, walking, riding, rowing, and shooting. And he faced it down through tough and manly living.
Tough and manly living was an ideal for many wealthy aristocrats of the age, but it was hardly a given, raised as they were on vast, manicured estates and in city mansions. So if you wanted it, you had to pursue it.
In the pursuit, Theodore Roosevelt could cut a comical figure. When he purchased a ranch in the Badlands of the Dakotas, and then went off to run it, he stepped off the train dressed in the finest and frilliest example of “western” apparel that upscale shops of Manhattan (the only kind he knew) could provide. Ridicule, we can well imagine, lasted only as long as it took for the first ridiculer to be laid out flat. In the Badlands, Roosevelt moved straight into the only place he knew on hierarchies of authority: the top. Certainly, his place at the top was facilitated by the fact that he could buy whatever he needed, like the ranch and the employees to run it. But his place was secured by his leadership style. He was a tough boss but required no more of his men than he required of himself. He mended fences, herded cattle, chased down rustlers, and faced their bullets even when it meant long nights on cold, hard ground and campfire meals of the meanest kind. A man like this garnered fierce loyalty, a loyalty he reciprocated.
The manliest of the eastern elite of the time would partake of the tough and manly life in more organized, limited, and appropriate segments than actually living in the Badlands and running a ranch. Still, their extended trips of big game hunting in jungles, mountains, and frozen tundra, without easy access, means of communication, or modern amenities, were impressive enough. But Roosevelt outdid them in this, too. And then he outdid himself.
To recover from the disappointment of losing a third-party bid for the presidency in 1912, he turned a planned Amazon cruise into an actual voyage of exploration and discovery. Brazil’s most famous explorer, Candido Rondon, had recently found the headwaters of the Rio da Duvida (River of Doubt) and planned to explore and chart it from the Andes all the way to the Amazon. He invited Roosevelt to accompany him on what would become a journey of more than a year. With insufficient provisions, and canoes unsuited to the many treacherous rapids they unexpectedly encountered, the entire nineteen-man expedition suffered from malnutrition, accidents, and disease. Roosevelt himself opened a gash in his leg after leaping into the river to save two canoes from smashing into the rocks. The wound became infected and turned into something called tropical fever, a disease which almost killed him while still on the river. The subsequent regular flare-ups, exacerbated by complications from an unextractable bullet still in his chest from an earlier assassination attempt, probably did kill him a few years later, preventing one more try at the presidency in 1920. Roosevelt had judged the bullet nonlethal since he wasn’t coughing up blood, so he continued his climb to the lectern and delivered his scheduled 90-minute speech despite his reddening shirt.
Our team of exploration on the River of Doubt was surreptitiously followed most of the way by the Cinta Larga tribe, who had never seen a white man before, and afterward had virtually no contact with outsiders until 1970. Their oral traditions preserved over the generations tell us they stayed with the Rondon-Roosevelt party, hidden in the foliage, but couldn’t reach a consensus on whether to kill the strange intruders. No such luck for later explorers in the 1920s, who never returned. The river was renamed and remains Rio Roosevelt, or more colloquially, Rio Teodoro.
If disappointment impelled Roosevelt’s Amazon adventure, a much deeper tragedy had sent him to the Badlands. God gives with one hand, but takes away with the other; a tragic irony which visited Theodore Roosevelt on a single pitiless day: February 14, 1884, in a home that would forever be tinged in darkness. The only two women Roosevelt worshipped were taken from him soon after a third destined to be adored by the nation was given to him. His mother died of Typhoid Fever early that morning. A few hours later, his young wife, Alice Hathaway Lee, died of kidney disease, two days after the birth of their daughter. The disease had been masked by pregnancy; impending death masked by impending life. For all his courage, Roosevelt could never muster the will to write or speak again of Alice, except for one anguished cry to this diary. “And when my heart’s dearest died, the light went from my life forever.”
The now motherless daughter, Alice Lee Roosevelt, would grow to be a renowned beauty, a sharp-tongued cynic sought after for the wonderful barbs of her wit, and one of the nation’s most famous women during the first half of the twentieth century, as she veered against the times towards paleo-conservative libertarianism. One reason for her often prickly relationship with her father was that he could never break through his heartbreak to speak to her of her mother.
Alice Lee Roosevelt later remembered Theodore with one the most famous epitaphs ever penned of a president:
My father always wanted to be the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding and the baby at every christening.
Fresh out of Harvard, Roosevelt studied law at Columbia Law School, but his heart was no longer in it once he realized this was not a profession for crusaders. He learned later that in fact it was a profession already transforming itself into just that. For this young crusader, though, missing the boat of societal transformation through the judiciary was no loss. He would make himself into something much more suited to his temperament and style: a crusading politician.
As a law student, he attended lectures and studied dry texts in the morning, and spent afternoons and evenings in New York’s libraries researching and writing his monumental, bestselling, and still relevant study of naval warfare during the War of 1812. Wasting no time after quitting law school and publishing his book, he went straight into to the rough-and-tumble, eminently ungentlemanly world of Tammany Hall politics – and loved it. He loved entering for the first time, but not the last, a world completely different than that of his homeschooled, upper-class background. It turned out he was suited to knocking heads with the tavern owners, butchers, pimps, prostitutes, ward healers, and cops of the slums of New York, but his eyes always remained focused on purification of a degenerate and disordered world. And what world could be more degenerate and disordered than this one; love it though he did?
Still in his early twenties, he won election to the State Assembly of New York, where he fought against corruption and in favor of civil service reform, fearlessly standing up to both political and corporate leaders. His courageous stands fed a growing popularity, which propelled him into second and third one-year terms. Over those three years, he mastered the intricacies of politics including, however much it belies his image, the need for compromise and careful speech, and established himself as a potential leader of national stature. He would finish the third term in a frenzy of reformist activity after that darkest day of his life, but then withdrew from the civilized world into the vigorous monasticism of his ranch in the Badlands.
Roosevelt quite possibly could have spent much of his life in the Dakotas. Within a year, he was already well on his way to becoming a leading politician there, too. But the worst winter in anyone’s memory betrayed the dreams of the rugged ranchers and farmers. They had been drawn to the northern prairies by false promises made by railroads desperate to recoup losses from their ridiculous government-financed overbuilding. Now, they were sent back east, or scattered to slightly more amenable places, by the harsh god of nature, who might offer up beneficent teases for a time but, in the end, never lies. This year, she delivered a winter which brought down death and famine on whites and Indians alike; a real famine, maybe the only one among anglos in the history of the United States. It was this and several subsequent winters which fed the desperation that culminated in the Wounded Knee Massacre. Those hard times also sent back to Minnesota a family whose daughter would grow up to be one of the “Founding Mothers of Libertarianism,” a pivotal though forgotten figure in American history which the next volume of this series will make every effort to resuscitate, a daughter – little Rose – whose mother would leave for us the series Little House on the Prairie, based on the more livable prairie of their new home.
Back in New York, the rocket of Roosevelt’s political trajectory soon had him in the rather nondescript offices of first the US Civil Service Commission and then the Police Commission of New York City. With his boundless energy and irrepressible style, he fought corruption; transforming these offices in the process into something much bigger than they were when others occupied them. He would similarly transform every office he ever occupied.
In 1890, Navy Captain Alfred Mahan established himself not only in America but in Europe and Japan as the world’s most influential global strategist with the publication of The Influence of Sea Power on History. Roosevelt, teaming up with kindred spirits Mahan and Henry Cabot Lodge, transformed his next job, Undersecretary of the Navy, into de facto full Secretary of the Navy. Or even de facto Secretary of State. Or even de facto President. Roosevelt adroitly used the heretofore minor office to turn a rather local war with Spain over Cuba into a war for conquest in the Pacific. They worked to pursue the Roosevelt-Mahan-Lodge strategic vision of a world-encircling navy, a canal across the isthmus of Panama to bind the oceans, and a Pacific empire. That’s the kind of thing that really only a president can normally do. One might ask how an assistant secretary, at a time when assistant secretaries had little official power or authority, could get away with it.
Well, Roosevelt famously quit his job as undersecretary to recruit and lead the Roughriders to legitimate glory against Spain in Cuba. He returned such a hero that no one, including Secretary of the Navy Long or President McKinley, dared question the means by which he had gone beyond their directives and desires to facilitate the acquisition of the Philippines, Guam, American Samoa, and – as an inevitable side effect – Hawaii. In any case, America now had a Pacific empire that would lead it into one world war and several smaller wars, and redefine America’s place in the world for subsequent centuries.
Back from Cuba, the nation’s greatest hero easily captured the governorship of New York. There, he further honed his political skills fighting corruption (of course) as well as the power of large corporations, which had come within the range of his reformist temperament, thanks to his experiences with them as New York State Assemblyman. However, his inability to serve diligently in anyone’s shadow or loyally on the lower rungs of any chain of command brought him into direct conflict with New York’s preeminent political power, Thomas Platt. Vice President Garret Hobart’s death from heart failure served up the solution to Platt’s dilemma: slide Roosevelt into the innocuous office of Vice President, where he would be out of the way and able to do little harm. Roosevelt was not enthralled with the idea, but it theoretically might eventually lead him to the presidency. Besides, he was the expert at turning powerless offices into centers of power. Though President McKinley certainly didn’t want this loose cannon as his running mate, party boss Platt ultimately prevailed over the President and the McKinley-Roosevelt ticket swept to victory in November of 1900.
On September 6, 1901, President William McKinley was shot by an anarchist. Eight days later, he died and Theodore Roosevelt was President. It was inevitable that he would transform this office, too, into something much more than it had been before.
Published in History
For those interested in more, previous bios can be found on Ricochet.
Story One, Herbert and Lou Hoover:
http://ricochet.com/412714/herbert-and-lou-henry-hoover/
Story Two, Sam Houston:
http://ricochet.com/422063/sam-houston/
Story Three, John Quincy Adams:
http://ricochet.com/422509/john-quincy-adams/
Story Three, Part Two:
http://ricochet.com/422635/john-quincy-adams-part-two/
Story Four, Martin Van Buren:
http://ricochet.com/423254/martin-van-buren/
Story Five, Free Frank McWhorter:
http://ricochet.com/423837/free-frank-mcwhorter/
Story Six: John Calhoun:
http://ricochet.com/423770/john-calhoun/
Story Seven: James Polk:
http://ricochet.com/424397/james-polk/
Story Eight: Booker T. Washington
http://ricochet.com/424582/booker-t-washington/
Story Nine: Thomas Jefferson
http://ricochet.com/425164/thomas-jefferson/
Story Ten: Alexander and Rachel Hamilton
http://ricochet.com/425166/rachel-hamilton-and-her-son-alexander/
Story Eleven: Tecumseh, Part One
http://ricochet.com/427403/tecumseh-part-one/
Story Eleven: Tecumseh, Part Two
http://ricochet.com/427726/tecumseh-part-two/
Story Twelve: The Founding Mothers of Libertarianism
http://ricochet.com/archives/the-founding-mothers-of-libertarianism/
Sounds like Ronald Reagan.
Some lulz
Can you imagine if someone else had been McKinley’s vice-president? I don’t think it would have been “The American Century” without Teddy Roosevelt.
Awesome series, @mattyvan! So delighted for its return…However briefly.
Hey Guru, I play (String) Bass, but don’t call me Teddy!
I have a considerable fondness for TR. This may have something to do with my refusal to ever be a libertarian. TR was a man driven to do great deeds and wanting to be a legend. He was an elite back when that actually meant something.
A few signal differences between TR and Churchill, if I may:
I feel like I just read an entire biography. That was riveting – thank you!
“Each supported eugenics” ?
Really? I don’t know anything about Churchill. What is the evidence that he supported eugenics ?
Also, thank you for the links to previous bios. It’s much easier to learn about the history of a country by learning about its outstanding individuals, and I want to learn more about the history of this country. Your links will make a great evening for me today.
I’ll be the first to say that I admired TR as a person, but that he left the presidency more powerful, yes, but at the expense of the country as a whole. He’s one of the reasons we now have an imperial presidency.
And that led to the abuses of Woodrow Wilson and later on Franklin Roosevelt.
As far as I’m concerned, he’s the poster child for raising the minimum age for president from 35 years old to at least fifty-five.
One big difference between Roosevelt and Churchill is that they got their country’s top jobs at ages 43 and 66 respectively.
I think that what makes American great is Americans, not presidents. We would have done fine without TR as president.
I’d like to make another comparison, Theodore Roosevelt and Donald Trump.
What do they have in common? Nothing really.
When it comes to character, very few people could out do TR, whether it was his grit, or the way he treated his two wives (his first wife died young). Trump? What character? He has no grit, at least not physically, never served in the military, and we all know how he’s treated his wives.
But I vote based on policies, with character a small consideration. I’d vote for Trump over TR, while still admiring TR, because it means less harm from the government, less risk of harm to me.
Oh, sure, we’d have “done fine” with some other milquetoast politician in TR’s stead, but TR’s dynamism helped usher in a century of unquestioned American superiority. Europeans might settle for “doing fine,” but we’re Americans and “‘good enough’ is not good enough!” TR set the tone.
@Ansonia . Churchill was the English government’s representative at The First International Congress of Eugenics (actually organized by Germans in Germany as what turned out to be a step towards Nazi ideology) in 1912. He was hardly alone, though. It was chaired by Leonard Darwin (son of Charles); honorary Vice Presidents included the presidents of Harvard and Stanford and Alexander Graham Bell. Further evidence is a quote from Arthur Herman’s Gandhi and Churchill: The Epic Rivalry that Destoryed an Empire and Forged Our Age which addresses not only Churchill’s support of eugenics but his foundational role in the welfare state:
”In 1909 … [t]ogether with David Lloyd George, he crafted two of the most socially progressive measures Parliament had ever passed, the Old Age Pensions Act and the National Insurance Act of 1911. In so doing, Churchill laid the foundations. For the British welfare state.”
The quote continues:
”But there was another darker side to this new progressive Winston Churchill: his growing interest in eugenics and racial science. Eugenics was hardly a reactionary field in 1909. Virtually every progressive social reformer was keen on it including Havelock Ellis and the Webbs. In South Africa Gandhi himself endorsed the idea of “the purity of the [racial] type.” An interest in race science was the mark of an “advanced” intellectual.”
Enjoy! I always try to emphasize the importance of the individuals on the flow of history.
[…the importance of the individuals on the flow of history] but I’m actually writing full histories so I’m forced to try to capture the essences of the characters in super succinct bits. Glad it seems to be working for you!
The key word in your reply is “helped”, and the question is how much he really did help. If William McKinley had lived out his second term he would have “helped” as well. Actually he already had, though that period was marked by rapid economic growth, and all presidents have to do during periods like that is stay out of the way.
Roosevelt inherited that good economy, and if you’re going to give a president credit for it, the credit belongs to McKinley.
I’ll go further, and argue that McKinley’s presidency was overshadowed by Roosevelt’s in large part because Roosevelt was a self promoter, a braggart really, where McKinley did his work with more humility. If that makes him a milquetoast, I’ll take milquetoast.
By the way, something else TR and Churchill had in common.
In this case I don’t have notes to fall back on but Mark Twain had more than a few great (contemporaneous) rants about TR in his autobiography. Great stuff.
I sure hope you have one on another very important person of avatarian note to share…come on man.
I’ll challenge that. Trump is mentally tough, and is renowned for confronting political opponents. He definitely fits TRs Man in the Arena speech.
There’s not a really solid analogue to TR today, since modern elites subscribe to a transnationalist monoculture. The idea of actually risking your life for America is so declasse. The closest people to TR would be some combination of Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz, though the agenda of TR is completely dead outside of a few New American Century types that lean left on the economy.
Policies are great, but without the force of personality to make them happen, they are useless except as virtue signalling
@philo. Hey Phi, I thought I put the Avatarian up already but apparently not. Look for it soon.