Couple of weeks. We have looked at the west, we have looked at the jim crow south, weve looked at capital labor and progressive reforms. Today were looking at how the life of one crucially important figure in this period helps to flush out in concrete creek life some of this abstract ideas weve been looking at. So today we are looking at the life and career of theater roosevelt. Not the last time will come back to this in this class but a day that specifically veered toward him. His life its the theme of the village progressive era very well and its also part of my area of research. So, tailors primarily teaching this but faculty are doing research as time permits. And for me, i have finished writing a book last year on the religious life of Theodore Roosevelt. So this is time for me to talk about some things ive done Specialized Research on so this is the background of what we are looking at here. Again, start with questions along the way, as appropriate. Let me ask you want to start with. This is simply, i want to know any Background Information you might know about Theodore Roosevelt. He is not rather furred behaves, he may not have heard of before. I think you have heard of roosevelt. One or two pieces of information to get our minds going in that direction. Yeah, go ahead. [inaudible] the pant in a eyeglasses. It didnt look weird to his friends, but yes. [inaudible] yet, we will talk about that. He really believed in conserving american wildlife. He is there a contradiction there . We can talk about that. Anything else . Yeah. [inaudible] same time weve been talking about. The carnegies, the rockefellers, the first decade of the 20th century as the time of tiaras presidency. We know a little bit about him. He is not his fifth cousin, Franklin Roosevelt and the new deal. That will come in a few weeks. This is the first, and the greater, maybe, roosevelt. We will talk about him. A little bit of background here on where and when he was born. His bringing up years. Roosevelt was born october of 1858 in new york city. Hes a kind of symbolic the hardened center of american life, born into a very wealthy family, we will talk about that in a bit. He is very much the child of the civil war. He was only five years old when a lot of this was happening. It impacted him greatly. I will 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 to springfield illinois where he was going to be buried. Thats for americans to pay their last respects for him. He came down broadway, in new york city. Heres the photograph of the procession. You could see, right here, 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 a roosevelts grandfathers house. This is tr and his little brother elliott, who had a front row seat to lincolns funeral procession. Lincoln was a hero and model for tr during his own presidency. Its interesting that he was a front row witness to these events of the civil war era. Even though he would eventually become known as a mans man, and advocate of strenuous life, that was not always the case. He grew up weekend by various illnesses, as a little boy. As my was probably the greatest played he suffered from. He had asthma really badly. A show of hands if anybody who has asthma, if you know anybody who does it. Was a very difficult time for him as a young boy. He also had poor eyesight. When he got his first bear glasses, maybe something you can relate to, it changed his whole world. All was possible. The way he strive to overcome some these physical problems was through workouts. Bodybuilding, weightlifting, wrestling. Things of that nature. Even though in hindsight it didnt do a lot for him, he thought that it did. 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. Again, psychologically i think it had a lot of impact on him. Hes also a lover of the outdoors. Conservation he was a great birdwatcher. As a young, boy this was one of his hobbies, his passion was or ornithology. Looking for boards birds, keeping track of the birds he saw, as well as rolling, hunting, pretty much anything he could do outdoors. Just 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 the were majors and things like that. He just took the classes he wanted to, basically. Took a lot of history, a lot in natural philosophy, and then science. And he married a local girl from boston, more about her in a second. Its a little bit of a background who he would become as an adult. Then take a few minutes to explain how roosevelt came to providence before he became president. His first kind of career was as a new York Assembly but 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 1890, six trying to understand the world of the gilded age and progressive area henry, maxwell the president of lincoln college, in that novel. How they were very averse to politics, how they thought of it as low and dirty. It was a great struggle for them to get involved. Thats the kind of attitude that roosevelt family has about politics, in the early 18 80s. He comes from a wealthy, upper class, elite family who sees politics as run by immigrants, who they are prejudiced against. By new york democrats, who they are definitely against. Roosevelt but the trend and astoundingly by deciding that Maxwell Lincoln college in the novel, to plunge into politics. He got himself elected in 1881 for what they call the silk stocking, the district of new york. The wealthiest of the wealthy in manhattan. He served an assemblyman for several years. He knew samuel gomperts, the a fail leaders a few weeks ago. He began, at this stage, to get involved with some of those kind of progressive reforms. Hes an assemblyman for several years. In february of 1884, roosevelt experienced a tragedy that would come to mark the rest of his life. Picture this his wife, alice, it is pregnant. In new york city, he is living in albany, in the state capital, during the weekdays, doing his legislative stuff, coming home on weekends. February 1884, roosevelt got a telegram that his wife had given birth. Its all very exciting, he gets congratulations. Then he gets a second telegram, urging him to come home right away, that there is something seriously wrong. He boards the train in albany. Its a dark, foggy night. It takes him five hours to get back to new york city by train from albany. When he gets home, his brother, elliott, had remarked there is a curse on this house. Mother is dying. Alice is dying too. February 14th, 1884. His mother died of typhoid fever. And in a few hours apart, his wife, pictured here, alice roosevelt, passed away from brechts disease. The two deaths werent related, there wasnt a plague, or whatever. They both guessed away within a few hours. At this point in his life, roosevelt wasnt writing as consistently in his diary as he had as a younger man. He took up his pen to record the document you see here. A big black x and that haunting sentence. The life has gone out of my life. He is 25 when this happens. You just have to use your imagination, your historical empathy, to think about what it would be like a 25 years old to be a brand new father, as alice had 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 when he had to cope with in the immediate by aftermath. His way of dealing with this was to go out west. Pause here for questions before i anything else . So several years before, roosevelt had purchased two ranches in the dakota territory. Not in the state, so not in south dakota is the dakota territory. He purchased two ranches there, and the aftermath of this tragedy he decides hes going to go out west and hes going to start crunching. He did not think of himself as a cowboy. Cowboys work for him. He was the boss. He owns the land. He was the rancher. But that didnt prevent him from purchasing this kind of outfit from, being photographed [inaudible] some of the stuff was like different absence of what and he gets the best of the best for this, okay. And he goes and becomes a rancher. He never lived into dakota territory fulltime he. Commutes back and forth as it were between new york and the dakotas for several years. But during this time, he becomes acquainted with a different type of america. More of that hard bitten bluecollar type of american, the people who were settling in the west and dispossessing native americans. 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 what the atmosphere that he did, and that he really like spending time with the blue collar cowboy tax. As a historian he also takes an interest in the conquering on settlement of western territories. For him this is more like kentucky, indiana, the things that were the west of the early days of the republic. But he has kind of, now, a personal connection with this. So often until 1887, hes living in the west. At that time he remarries. His second wife edith, they would have a very happy marriage that was lasting until roosevelts death in 1919. But the west shaped him. Here the romance of my life began he, would call, later on, when he was visiting that area. So some connections with things we talked about with the west. Then he gets the appointed into the political position by president Benjamin Harrison in 1889, the Civil Service commissioner. Theres a false surface is another one of these progressive reforms. Its 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 a plant, i could appoint my friends to positions like street cleaning commissioner. So isaac, or you know, somebody who has campaigned for me, hes knocked on doors. Id be very glad to make him strictly commissioner whether or not you know anything about it, okay, it was kind of a reward. And hayden contributed to my campaign so he would be deputy post master. This was your patronage system. By the 18 80s people are concerned that this was not actually putting the best people in bureaucratic positions. And maybe that 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 is part of the Civil ServiceCommissioner 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 happened 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 his six years in the late 80s and early 1890s. Then, in 1895, he was kind of called back to new york city and appointed as a Police Commissioner for the nypd. Now this despite the fact that he had no experience in the police department, it may be a little ironic, right, for a Civil Service commissioner to be appointed to something he didnt have all that many qualifications for. But he went on to serve for several years as one of four Police Commissioners in new york. Some of you perhaps have seen the tv show, blue bloods. I see a little recognition. Maybe you watch it, or your parents watch it. Tom sellecks character in blue bloods is very loosely based, in some instances, on Theodore Roosevelts time as Police Commissioner. You see a portrait of tr thats featured in the show in his office, and there are a few episodes where, again, the plot is loosely based on things that happened during trs time as Police Commissioner. One of the things that tr does as Police Commissioner was he tried to enforce a law that prevented the selling of alcohol on sundays. So we talked about prohibition a good point already and his stepson 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 is the new york state you couldnt sell alcohol on sundays than that had to be enforced. And the only reason it wasnt being enforced was the political machines were cooperating with the big salons who could pay who, could play off to police departments, basically, to not enforce that law. So you can think about things of political corruption and things like that. Roosevelt believed 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 we didnt see anything wrong with drinking on sundays, who resented this belief of the 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 where he could be more effective. I know theres a lot of positions he where he just held a lot of positions during 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 spanish american 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 assistant secretary of the navy, and volunteered to fight in the spanish american war and developed this rough riders regiment that well look at more on wednesday. So, wednesday will be looking at the spanish american war. You have a document on mckinley to read for that. So the context will be a little more clear than. But roosevelt believed that the spanish were mistreating cubans in cuba. They wanted to be free from spanish empire. He also believed the spanish had blown up the uss main, the battleship, in havana harbour. They probably hadnt but he chose to believe that. And he believed that this was a righteous war that he, personally, needed to fight it. 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 is above him. And this rough riders regiment really did fight in battles. And it really did consist of kind of a Cross Section of american life, of cowboys from the west, of some outlaws from who were apparently on the run from police in the west, of harvard graduates and the best polo player in america. Roosevelts idea was we will bring all this people together and they will effectively fight, theyll show how americans can cooperate, across these class lines. And the most famous episode of this was the battle of San Juan Hill in july of 1898, where roosevelt and his a rough riders charged up San Juan Hill, or really kettle hill, and captured the strong hold. Roosevelt shot and killed a spanish soldier who was in his line and fire and they helped take that position which eventually helped them capture cuba. The war itself was only four months long and so it was kind of this great moment for him 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, mired in a scandal. And so roosevelt is a war hero, is a natural choice. He hasnt always worked very well with the political bosses. He has an independent streak and reform streak they dont really appreciate. But he gets himself elected governor of new york in 1898 and served for one two your term. Then he and the bosses are really at loggerheads, they cant get along really well and they are looking for a way to get rid of him so they had this idea that, well, we should make roosevelt vice president. Vice president s are typically not been attracted to the stage, well say, in american life. They tend to be figureheads rather than, kind of, impressive, you know, substantive shapers of policy. And so they thought, well make roosevelt mckinleys vice president. Hell have to hide away in an office in washington, d. C. , youll be out of our hair and we wont hear from him again. Roosevelt was not really enthusiastic about taking on the job of the vice president. So he didnt want to be a mere figurehead, he wanted to be someone who was actually shaping policy, but he believed that duty had called, and therefore he must go. Well that worked fine until president William Mckinley was assassinated in september of 1901. Shot to death, and therefore, all of a sudden, theodore was vote was now president of the United States. Not exactly what the bosses had predicted or really wanted when they tried to get rid of him and make him vice president. So we can pause there for very clarifications, questions . Yeah, delaughty . I cant remember. Was it fdr or Theodore Roosevelt that had a really long term . Yeah. So, Franklin Roosevelt, the fifth cousin, will be elected four times. The only president to be elected four times and serve those years roosevelt, though, Theodore Roosevelt. Youre not entirely wrong to associate that with him because well talk a few minutes about how he had almost two full terms and tried for a third term, unsuccessfully, in 1912. Yeah, audrey . Do you think the multiple roles that he had made him more successful as a president . Thats