Tv, all weekend, every weekend on cspan3. Up next on American History tv douglas wrinkly, author of the wilderness warrior recounts Theodore Roosevelts time in the west and how his experience there shaped his presidency. We also hear about roosevelts charge of San Juan Hill in the spanishamerican war and how his conservation efforts led to the protection of over 150 thousand acres 150 million acres of american land. This is about two hours. Doug good evening. It is an honor to be here at the New York Historical society and try to shed some light on one of my heroes, Theodore Roosevelt, and why hes considered a great leader. When the schwartzes wanted to make this series go, they really want us to focus on leadership qualities. And im telling you theres no president quite like t. R. To get to talk about that. I wanted to begin thinking about roosevelt being new york citys president. Being born here in 1858. Because in his household growing up in new york, he had a father who was a dutch knickerbocker here from new york, and a mother, the bullock family, she came from georgia. I told you 1858. You all know something about history. The civil war is upon us. And in the roosevelt family, you had a feud. A mother who loved robert e. Lee and a father who loved grant. Young t. R. Decided to love the t. R. Decided to love the west instead. And as ill talk about some of his formative years in the dakota territory, it will become clear what the west meant in building his leadership skills. But if i focus for a minute on 1858, one year after he was born, 1859, was darwins on the origins of species. And that book is a revolution and it really hit the roosevelt family very hard. Theodore roosevelts father was one of the founders of the institute next door, the American Museum of Natural History. But he had an uncle, Robert Barnwell roosevelt, who was audubon of the civil war era. And went on to write books like fishing on lake superior, a book on the water fowl of florida. Uncle rob, his fathers brother, was an ardent darwinian. In fact, he wrote seminal things about eels and frogs, ran for congress, uncle robert roosevelt, from new york to save the shad, because the shad were being outfished fished out of the hudson river and the east river. And so this darwinian infusion becomes very important because its one of the reasons Young Theodore roosevelt wants to be a naturalist, he ends up going to harvard, class of 1876 graduates really as wanting to be a biologist or a wildlife biologist. But the darwinism is a strand in t. R. s leadership. And it connects, i think, with learning about darwin when hes young. An exact quote of Theodore Roosevelt was, i sat at the feet of darwin and huxley growing up. And that revolution of what it meant by the evolution of man. Theres even one of the first leaving we have of t. R. That he wrote was showing like, im evolving from an ape and my brothers evolving from a stork, my cousins from a sparrow, whatever. So you see that breakdown. Even writes darwins theory of evolution in his boyhood hand on top, t. R. , so, you know, hes thinking about this a lot. And it coincides with him being sick. With him having asthma. Ive always identified. I had asthma as a boy so Theodore Roosevelts struggles with asthma has always been very meaningful to me. In new york, he could not breathe here in the city. The pollution was so thick. He was sick all the time. And he started finding some wellness the further up the river he got. When he got to the catskills and more specifically to the adirondacks, he felt then that nature had a curative quality to him. And it got him more and more interested in being a flora and fauna naturalist. Add to that mix his early penchant for hunting which develops into a life long obsession. And boy, whats colder in darwin terms than not just Species Survival but when you get shot and youre dead. And youd go to the carcass, all that life and then youre gone. From that hunting experience and he did a lot of great taxidermy, Theodore Roosevelt, when he was a boy, did his teacher was John James Audubons taxidermy specialist and learned how to do small animals with taxidermy and all. These combinations then of hunting and darwin and trying to conquer illness, in those days with asthma, they would prescribe smoking cigarettes believe it or not. And so, you know then his father, at a famous moment when he goes up to maine, he gets beat up by some boys, not badly, but being roughed up and mocked as an effete urban kid, his father said, youre going to develop into a manly person. You have young t. R. Having weights. His father gets him weights and he starts weightlifting. By the time you go to harvard you see photos of Theodore Roosevelt when hes at cambridge, no shirt on looking all buff because hes been making himself strong. Hes willing it. But willing it through physical exertion as well as intellectual exertion. And those combos are coming to him, you know. Those strains are kind of coming together by the time hes at harvard. Add to this, i consider myself a president ial historian. I would tell you i think Theodore Roosevelt had the best father. He was incredibly honest man pious. Big new york city socialite, philanthropist, religious. And t. R. , his greatest quality is honesty. You talk about what makes him a great leader, he always told the truth. He believed in a code of valor and honor, and in the belief that you had to do, belief in action, and being a doer. When he goes to harvard, his first book, its really a pamphlet, he publishes, its called the summer birds of the adirondacks. He then goes and wants to climb to the tallest mountain in maine because thoreau had climbed the mountain and is reading about thoreaus wanderings there. He wants to hunt a moose, but hes bragging that im as tough now he was with ardent outdoors people. And he wanted to be as tough as those men. And yet he also can operate in nonmasculine, more social society kind of culture, too. You see them both forming his character. And he also loved, early on, the navy. Im mentioning some about conservation and hunting and naturalists, but the navy was his great love. And he writes in 1882 that naval war of 1812, Amazing Stories hes writing about in those two books. It was taught at the Naval Academy forever and the naval war college, its still the classic. He was writing this as a young man, this big twovolume thing on the war of 1812. And if you really read that youll see how much he loves american the way america won up the british, the way Oliver Hazard Perry in erie pennsylvania, was able to build a fleet and take over the ohio islands against the british. And a kind of feeling of american exceptionalism is exuding him as a young man. He defines himself not just as a darwinian but also as a mohanian, named after Alfred Thayer mohan, who believed that great power countries in the world, real politik, countries that mattered, japan and britain in particular, knew how to take care of their shore lines, their Homeland Security in todays parlance. That meaning roosevelt gets from reading mohans influence of sea power, that weve got to have a navy on both coasts, hence you get to the panama canal when hes president and his focusing on building that shortcut that we can protect ourself ourselves. You dont have to have the navy go all the way down south america and up, we had that shortcut. Incidentally, now as i speak to you, the panama canals being doubled in size and has continued to be very important to americas navy, but also american shipping. But once he gets beyond being the scholar of the navy and hunting and all, of course he runs here in new york, becomes a legislator in albany. And he has that hairraising harrowing moment. Hes a reformer. He wants to go after because of his honesty he wants to go after corruption his whole life. Hes a prosecutor. His belief in leadership is being a prosecutor. The greatest thing to know about Theodore Roosevelt is he woke up every day wanting to get a bad guy. Its why he became a new york Police Commissioner. Its why when he was in dakota territory he became a sheriff. He met he was not a defense attorney type. And in the but hes in albany trying to become a reformer, going after corruption, and he famously, and im sure most of you know the story, gets called in by his brother because his mother is very sick with brights disease, her kidneys are failing. And his wife, alice, is in labor with his child who becomes aleth longworth roosevelt, great washington, d. C. Wit and philanthropist, and a very special daughter he had. But that same day, in february when he was just a young politician here in new york, on valentines day, his mother dies on one floor. And his wife dies on another in the same building. And one of the more moving documents ive seen is when he puts an x into his diary and says, the life has gone out of my life forever. He had a bout of huge amounts of depression. Depression was part of the roosevelt family. His brother was an alcoholic dealt with his depression by drinking and some forms of opiates. T. R. Was almost a teetotaller. He barely would touch any alcohol in his life. In fact, he sued once when somebody said he drank because he thought it was libel. But he drank about a gallon of coffee a day, so hes very caffeinated. But what happened was when he put that x in and left his baby daughter here in new york, his sister said to theodore, go out west. He always felt this western vector tug. The most further west hes gone and it is the real west, he went with his brother grouse hunting in the most western counties of iowa. And hed also been in the red river valley there on the border of north dakota and minnesota. But he didnt really get to see that wild west. And why is he so inflamed with the west . Well, if i said the civil war to you was in the 1860s, by the 1870s the boys magazines and science magazines were showing photographs of the hayden expedition of 1871 that had gone to yellowstone. All these photographs of, you know, of crater lake in oregon or the red rock sliprock canyons of utah, theyre starting to be photographed and seen. And you also had a Geological Survey charting and mapping the west because there were gold in them thar hills. Famously in dakota, south dakota dakota, the custer period, battle of little big horn, people coming to the hills for gold. T. R. Had an insight. Everybody about topography and geographical surveys of the west put there was no biological survey. T. R. s whole life, he wanted to know what grasses grow in every county, what kind of insects what sort of fish, what type of bear. And he got in very big darwinian debates over species. He was what they called a lumper. For example, he thought there were maybe five species of bear. And a man named dr. C. Hart dr. C. Hart miriam, a great mammalologist, said there are about 12 types of bear, by studying snout differences. They had a famous debate of the lumper versus the splitters. T. R. Did not like too many species because he wanted the public to know them all. He thought if you have too many, nobody will know, it becomes a specialist thing, so you have to reduce. It was a very interesting argument. Well, he slaughtered miriam, t. R. , he just killed Theodore Roosevelt at the cosmos club debate on this. Yet he lost the debate in the end because miriam went out to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State and low and behold found the biggest elk known to man, this giant elk that lived up there. New species, in miriams mind. And he wrote, dear theodore, i found a new elk and would like to name it after you but i know you dont like all these subspecies categories. He said, on this case youre right, that is a new one. Hence you have the Roosevelt Elk today. When we talk about Theodore Roosevelts western vector, why when that train happened on valentines day the Northern Pacific railroad here in new york, you could take the train across the plains. You actually get to minnesota, then youd cut across whats north dakota, montana. So a link to puget sound and to duluth and the great lakes and then to new york. He got off in madora, north dakota, and began what he called his years in the wilderness. Theres a biblical connotation in that, years in the wilderness, wandering the desert or something. But he really did kind of Wander Around the dakota territory in montana. Yes, he wrote articles about big hunting for grizzly and the big horns of wyoming. And yes, he wrote about killing a buffalo and eating its hump and tongue and having the head as a trophy. From killing that bison, he went on to create the American Bison society to save them. And he went on to, as president , rip out fixtures in the white house that were of african species, lions and the like, and instead had bison put on them. Also commissioned the buffalo nickel you hear about. So he fell very in love with that what used to be 60 million bison on the great plains. But these years in the dakota, hes a cowboy rancher, hes got two brands, the maltese cross and the elk horn. And he says, i never could have been president , never could have been a leader, without my time in north dakota. Well, they milk that for everything its worth in north dakota today. Youll see it, if you go up to Theodore RooseveltNational Park in the badlands where the whole town has been saved. But what he meant was, i was raised well here in new york. I had money. But when i went out to dakota, i i got to live with hardscrabble, rough and ready people, what he considered the american archtype. Archetype. And he liked what he saw, men of selfreliance. People that a blizzard would occur and everybody would pull together in the community. But he liked the type of men that our western states were developing, because i dont want to say he mythologized the cowboy because he was much more sophisticated than that. He became an ethnographer for cowboy culture. The president got john lomax funding from france to do studies at the university of texas on cowboy culture because he thought cowboys were knights of king arthur. So that their ballads and songs and doggerel and all had cultural importance to us in the United States. But that ability that he could hang in there with those men. They called him four eyes at first, but he can hang in there. They all became impressed with his leadership because he never quit. There was no quit in t. R. He would go on looking for that buffalo going day after day, rain, he just wouldnt stop. Yet he was not a good hunter. He was a terrible shot. He later got blind in one eye from getting hit in the eye in a boxing match. He had awful eyesight but that indomitable, noquit spirit that he had melding there in north dakota. He comes back later, he gets married to edith, they have a wonderful marriage. There are no affairs in Theodore Roosevelts life. They are very, very loyal. An affair would be lying, and i honestly tell you, Theodore Roosevelt doesnt lie. Thats his big thing in life to admire. But he comes here as Police Commissioner and does all sorts of things in new york as a leader, of getting rid of crime. He gets telephones set up for the first time in police stations so people could coordinate. He modernizes it a lot. He would walk the beat to go see things, talk to hustlers or prostitutes, gamblers, swindlers, actually bust in the houses to arrest people. Hes showing this fearlessness. And the fearlessness comes because of that darwinian side the sense of hunting, the deaths he just had. And he overcomes his depression with whats called exuberance. It is a form of manic depression, exuberance. I didnt quite understand this before i studied t. R. , but i talked to dr. Kay jamison whos at Johns Hopkins in psychiatry. And t. R. s model for the form of manic depression is called exuberance. Which is, instead of drinking or getting you take your depression and everything becomes positive. Its beyond its like the power of positive thinking of of Norman Vincent peale on steroids. If t. R. Were here with you tonight, his whole thing would be, bully, what a great its wonderful to be here, this is fantastic, you look great on and on and on. If you look at him hes doing it all the time. You would think its just a political act. And it may have what it is, a coping, its the way he coped with life. He could not turn himself off. The problem with that kind of exuberance, he was a chronic insomniac. And could never shut himself off. That gallon of coffee didnt help either. But he would do a lot of arduous hiking and things to kind of wear himself down mentally and physically. Because he couldnt turn himself off. So the exuberance allowed him to write 35 books. The exuberance allowed him to do 150,000 letters. The exuberance allowed him to be a Police Commissioner and cowboy and write on the war of 1812 and write three hunting books about the dakota, one illustrated by frederick remington. He could be a great birder and be a great he did all of that. And the most crowded life imaginable. He only lived to be 60 because of that exuberance. But the problem with exuberance is heart attacks, heart disease, short life. Today, a doctor would give you tell you to take ambien every night and go to the caribbean for rest. Thats seriously you need to relax and he couldnt. But he brought those qualities more and more into the public sphere. And after being in the new york Police Commissioners, you all know he famously became a