Transcripts For CSPAN3 Lectures In History Theodore Roosevel

Well, good morning. Everybody. Good to see you. Weve been looking at aspects of gilded age and progressive era American Life for the last couple weeks. Weve looked at the west weve looked at the jim crow south. Weve looked at capital and labor and progressive reforms. Today were looking at how the life of one crucially important figure from this period helps the flesh out. And kind of concrete life some of those abstract ideas that weve been looking at so today were looking at the life and career Theodore Roosevelt. Not the last time that well come back to him in this class. But today kind of just specifically geared toward him. His life does fit the themes of the gilded age progressive era very well, and its also part of my area of research. So taylor is primarily teaching institution, but all of your faculty are doing research on their own is time permits. And for me, ive finished writing a book last year on the religious life of Theodore Roosevelt. So this is a time for me to get to actually talk about some things. Ive done some Specialized Research on so thats just some of the backgrounds of what were looking at here. Again start with stop with questions along the way as appropriate. Let me ask you one to start with which is simply i want to know any kind of Background Information you might know about Theodore Roosevelt. Hes not, you know, Rutherford B Hayes that maybe never heard of before. I think you least have heard of Theodore Roosevelt. So one or two pieces of information that kind of get our minds going on that direction. Yeah, delanie like the man the pants may eyeglasses. Yes. They look weird to us. It wouldnt look weird to his friends. But yes, okay pants the eyeglasses. Yeah, andy. A lot about because conservation like this. Yeah of the National Park. Yeah, well talk about that. So someone who really believed in conserving americas wildlife and beauty also hunted a lot as their contradiction there we can we can talk about that. Yeah. Anything else . Yeah, okay. President im starting with the Industrial Revolution and i was starting to keep her off. Oh, yeah at the same time. Weve been talking about with the carnegies and rockefellers the first decade of the 20th century at the time of trs presidency. Yeah, great. Okay, so we know a little bit about him. He is not his fifth cousin Franklin Roosevelt in the new deal World War Two. Thatll come in a few weeks. This is the first and the greater maybe roosevelt so well talk about him. A little bit of background here on where and when was he born his bringing up ears . The roosevelts born october of 1858 in new york city hes a kind of symbolically. Anyway, the kind of hardened center of American Life born to a very wealthy family. Well talk about that in a little bit. He is very much a child of the civil war who was only you know, five years old kind of when a lot of this was happening, but it impacted him greatly. Ill come back to the slide in a second. Here are two photographs. This is a photograph of president lincolns funeral procession in the spring of 1865 after he had been assassinated. His body came back from washington dc to springfield, illinois where he was going to be buried and as part of that procession for americans to pay their last respects to him came down broadway in new york city. And heres the photograph of the procession and you can see right here. Theres some people looking out of windows if we zoom in over here, you can see these two little boys looking out the window. We know that this was Theodore Roosevelts grandfathers house. And that this is tr in his little brother elliot who actually had kind of a front row to lincolns funeral procession. Lincoln would be a hero and a model for tr during his own presidency is very interesting that again hes kind of a frontrow witness to some of these events. So the civil war era. Even though he would eventually become known as kind of a mans man and advocate of the strenuous life. That was not always the case. He grew up weakened by various ailments as a young boy. Asthma was probably the greatest plague that he suffered from and he had asthma really badly. I wont ask for show of hands if anyone in here has asthma if you know someone who does but it was a very difficult time for him as a young boy. He also had poor eyesight and when he got his first pair of glasses as made me some of you can relate to really change this whole world what was possible. The way he over strive to overcome some of these physical problems was through workouts through bodybuilding weight lifting wrestling things of that nature and even though probably in hindsight. I really didnt do a lot for him. He thought that it did and he began to believe that the way to overcome hardship in life the way to overcome difficulties was to work harder to advocate for that strenuous life to build yourself up. And again psychologically, i think i had a lot of impact on him. Hes also a lover of the outdoors and andy alluded to this near common about conservation. He was a great bird lover as a young boy. This was his one of his have his passions was ornithology. Looking for birds writing down the kind of birds that he saw keeping track of that as well as rowing and hunting and pretty much anything you could do outdoors. Thats a little bit of what he was like as a young boy as a teenager. When he was 18, he went off to harvard. Where he studied for four years this was before there were majors anything like that. He just took classes that he wanted to basically took a lot in history took a lot in natural philosophy and in science. And he married a local girl from boston alice lee. Were to say about her in a second. So its a little bit of the background to who he would become later on as an adult. Then take a few minutes to explain how roosevelt came to prominence before he became president. His first kind of career was as a new York Assembly man. So think of the state house of representatives. Thats what were talking about for, new york. Weve been reading the novel in his steps written in 1896 and trying to understand the word of the gilded age and progressive era through it. Remember the characters of pastor Henry Maxwell and of the president of Lincoln College in that novel and how they were very aversed to politics how they thought of politics is low and dirty and was a great struggle for them to get involved. Thats the kind of attitude that roosevelts family has about politics in the early 1880s. He comes from a wealthy upper crust elite family who sees politics as run by saloon keepers as run by immigrants who theyre kind of prejudice against is run by new york democrats who theyre definitely against roosevelt bucked the trend in his family by deciding like maxwell or like president marsh of Lincoln College and the novel two plunge into politics and he got himself elected. In 1881 from what they called the Silk Stocking district of new york the kind of wealthiest of the wealthy and manhattan. And he served as an assemblyman for several years. He knew Samuel Gompers the afl leader. We read a document from Samuel Gompers a few weeks ago and he began at this stage to get involved with some of those kinds of progressive reforms. So its assemblyman for several years but in february of 1884 roosevelt experience the tragedy that will come to mark the rest of his life. So picture this his wife alice is pregnant and in new york city. Hes living in albany in the State Capitol during the weekdays doing his legislative stuff and coming home on weekends. February 1884 roosevelt got a telegram that his wife had given birth and its all very exciting. He gets. Congratulations. Then he gets a second telegram urging him to come home right away that theres something seriously wrong. He boards the train in albany. Its a kind of dark foggy night. It takes him five hours to get back to new york city by train from albany. And when he gets home his brother elliot has remarked. Theres a curse on this house mother is dying. And alice is dying, too. February 14th 1884 his mother died of typhoid fever and then a few hours apart his wife. Pictured here Alice Roosevelt passed away from brights disease. That was probably just not detected during her presidency. So the two deaths werent related to there wasnt a plague or whatever. But they both passed away within a few hours of each other. At this point in his life roosevelt wasnt writing as consistently in his diary as he had as a younger man, but he took up his pen. To record the document you see here. A big black x and then that one kind of haunting sentence. The light has gone out of my life. And hes 25 when this happens. Okay, so you just have to use your imagination your historical empathy to think about what it would be like at 25 years old to be a brand new father as alice a given birth to a daughter also named alice. But then to lose your wife and your mother in the same house on the same day. This is a defining tragedy for roosevelt and one he had to cope with in the immediate aftermath. His way of dealing with this was to go out west. Pause there for questions before i get in anything else. So several years before roosevelt had purchased two ranches and the dakota territory not yet a states of north and south dakota is just the dakota territory. He purchased two ranches there and in the aftermath of this tragedy he decides hes going to go out west and hes going to start ranching. He did not think of himself as a cowboy cowboys worked for him. He was the boss. He owned the land. He was the rancher, but that didnt prevent him from purchasing this kind of outfit from being photographed. Okay, and some of the stuff is like tiffany knives and so forth. I mean he gets the best of the best for this, okay. And he goes and becomes a rancher. He never lives in the dakota terry full territory fulltime. He commutes back and forth as it were between new york and the the dakotas for several years. But during this time he becomes acquainted with a different type of american. More of that hard bitten blue collar type of american the people who were settling in the west and dispossessing native americans as we talked about the second week of the class, but it sheds some of his elitism for him. He comes to realize that there are a lot of people who didnt grow up in the kind of wealthy atmosphere that he did and then he really likes spending time with these blue collar cowboy types. As a historian he also takes an interest in the conquering and settlement of western territories for him. This is more like kentucky and indiana the things that were the west, you know, the early days of the republic but he has kind of now personal connection with this. So often on until 1887 is living in the west. At that time he remarries his second wife edith. They would have a very happy marriage lasting until roosevelts death in 1919. But the west shaped him here the romance of my life began he would recall later on when he is visiting in that area. System connections are things we talked about with the west. Then he gets appointed to a political position by president benjamin harrison, indianas own in 1889 as Civil Service commissioner. The Civil Service is another one of these progressive reforms thats happening in this time before the Civil Service Commission People were appointed to bureaucratic positions just basically by being friends with the president okay, so example i would use here in upland, indiana if i was elected mayor of upland i could appoint my friends to positions like street cleaning commissioner. So isaac or who knows somebody is campaigned for me. Hes knocked on doors. Id be very glad to make him street cleaning commissioner whether or not he knows anything about it. Okay as kind of a reward and kayden contributed to my campaign so he will be deputy postmaster. Okay. That was the old patronage system. By the 1880s people were concerned that this was not actually putting the best people bureaucratic positions and that maybe there should be some kind of merit test a Civil Service exam you had to pass before you could be appointed to one of these positions. We still have these Civil Service exams today. This is part of the legacy of the progressive era. So roosevelt as part of the Civil Service Commissioner Office was charged with making sure that the right people or people who qualified passed exams were appointed these kinds of positions and not just the friends of those who happen to be elected. Its not the most exciting time in his life. So well pass over it rather quickly, but this is what he was doing for these six years in late 80s and early 1890s. Then in 1895 he was kind of called back to new york city and appointed as the as a Police Commissioner for the ny pd. Now this despite the fact that he had no experience in the Police Department and maybe a little bit ironic right for a Civil Service commissioner to me a point of something. He didnt really have all that many qualifications for but he went on the surf for several years as one of four Police Commissioners in new york. Some of you perhaps have seen the tv show blue bloods. Okay, if you recognition maybe watch it to your parents watch it. Tom sellecks character in blue bloods is very loosely based in some instances on Theodore Roosevelts time as Police Commissioner and you see the portrait of tr thats featured in the show and his office and there are a few episodes where again things loosely the plot is loosely based on things that happened during trs time as Police Commissioner. One of the things that tr did is Police Commissioner was he tried to enforce a law that prevented the selling of alcohol on sundays. So weve talked about prohibition a good bit already in his steps and kind of the progressive push towards regulating alcohol consumption. Tr himself really didnt believe in prohibition. He wasnt an advocate of prohibition, but he believed that the new york law said you cant sell alcohol on sundays. Well, then that had to be enforced. And the only reason it wasnt being a forced was the political machines were cooperating with the big saloons who could pay the who could pay off the Police Departments. Basically not to enforce that law. So again think about themes of political corruption and things like that. Roosevelt believe that was unethical and he tried to close all the saloons in new york. Well, this was an impossible task, but he succeeded pretty well during the summer of 1895 but really alienated a lot of new yorkers who didnt see anything wrong with drinking on sundays who resented this busy body commissioner overturning the old ways and by 1897. He had kind of made himself an annoyance to most of new york and he was able to get out and do Something Else we could be more effective. I know theres a lot of positions here, but he just held a lot of positions during his his time as a Public Servant next thing he did was president William Mckinley appointed him as assistant secretary of the navy. And he was only there for a short time before the spanishamerican war broke out. This is one of the more celebrated episodes of roosevelts career. Where at the age of i think 39 it was he resigned his position as secretary of the navy. And volunteered to fight in the spanishamerican war and developed this rough riders regiment that well look at more on wednesday. So wednesday well be looking the spanishamerican more you have a document from mckinley to read for that. So the context will be a little more clear then but roosevelt believed that the spanish were mistreating cubans and cuba who wanted to be free from spanish empire he also believed the spanish had blown up the uss maine the battleship and nevada harbor. They probably hadnt but he chose to believe that. And he believed that this was a righteous war the he personally needed to fight him. So he resigned his position. He cobbled together this rough riders regiment. He got himself appointed Lieutenant Colonel again. No real military experience, but he knew the right people. Okay, and there was a real colonel who was above him and this rough riders regiment really did fight in battles and that they really did consist of kind of a crosssection of American Life of cowboys from the west of some outlaws who were kind of on the run from the police in the west of harvard graduates and the best polo player in america. Roosevelts idea was we will bring all these people together and they will effectively fight theyll show what how americans can cooperate a kind of across these class lines. The most famous episode of this was the battle of San Juan Hill in july of 1898 where roosevelt and his rough riders charged up San Juan Hill or really, kettle hill. And capture the stronghold roosevelt shot and killed a spanish soldier who was in his line of fire and they helped take that position which eventually helped them capture cuba. The war itself was only four months long and its the kind of this great moment for as a military triumph. He comes back then when the war is over and the republicans are in need of a candidate for the governorship of new york because the Current Governor is kind of