Santiago, and shortly thereafter was appointed to administer to the affairs
of the entire island.
John Singer Sargent painted this portrait of Wood in 1903, when he went to
Washington to do the official portrait of President Roosevelt. Sargent
recalled then that the two veteran Rough Riders enjoyed competing against
each other with fencing foils.
After his return from the war in Cuba, Colonel Roosevelt posed for this
photograph at Montauk, Long Island, shortly before his First Volunteer
Cavalry Regiment was mustered out of service in September 1898. Later, in a
letter to sculptor James E. Kelly—who like Frederick MacMonnies sculpted a
statuette of the Rough Rider upon a horse—Roosevelt described in detail how
he looked and dressed in the war. Unlike his image here, he said, "In Cuba
I did not have the side of my hat turned up."
Theodore Roosevelt emerged from the Spanish-American War a national hero.
His military fame now enhanced his reputation as a reform politician in his
home state of New York, where he was nominated to run for the governorship
that fall of 1898.
This cartoon appeared in Judge, October 29, 1898, just prior to Roosevelt's
successful election, and predicted his ultimate political destiny, the
White House.
President William McKinley represented the status quo for most Americans
at the turn of the century. By and large, they were comfortable with him in
the White House. As the standard bearer of the Republican Party, he was an
unassuming bulwark of conservatism. He stood for the gold standard, for
protective tariffs, and of course for a strong national defense during the
Spanish-American War. McKinley's personal attributes were affability and
constancy, not dynamism and originality. Politically he was a follower and
not a reformer, like Roosevelt. If the idea of having TR on the ticket as
Vice President seemed at odds with the President's relaxed style, it was
perfectly like Mckinley to go along with what the party and the people
wanted. He never admitted to sharing the fears of his good friend and
political advisor, Ohio Senator Marcus Hanna, who was also chairman of the
national Republican committee. For Hanna, Roosevelt was too young, too
inexperienced and too much of a maverick. He could not help but think: What
if McKinley should die in office?
Rough Rider in the White House , 1901 - 1909
No event had a more profound effect on Theodore Roosevelt's political
career than the assassination of President William McKinley in September
1901. At the age of forty-two, Vice President Theodore Roosevelt took the
oath of office, becoming the youngest President of the United States before
or since. From the start, Roosevelt was committed to making the government
work for the people, and in many respects, the people never needed
government more. The post-Civil War industrial revolution had generated
enormous wealth and power for the men who controlled the levers of business
and capital. Regulating the great business trusts to foster fair
competition without socializing the free enterprise system would be one of
Roosevelt's primary concerns. The railroads, labor, and the processed food
industry all came under his scrutiny. Although the regulations he
implemented were modest by today's standards, collectively they were a
significant first step in an age before warning labels and consumer
lawsuits.
Internationally, America was on the threshold of world leadership.
Acquisition of the Philippines and Guam after the recent war with Spain
expanded the nation's territorial borders almost to Asia. The Panama Canal
would only increase American trade and defense interests in the Far East,
as well as in Central and South America. In an age that saw the rise of
oceanic steamship travel, the country's sense of isolation was on the verge
of suddenly becoming as antiquated as yardarms and sails.
A conservative by nature, Roosevelt was progressive in the way he addressed
the nation's problems and modern in his view of the presidency. If the
people were to be served, according to him, then it was incumbent upon the
President to orchestrate the initiatives that would be to their benefit and
the nation's welfare. Not since Abraham Lincoln, and Andrew Jackson before
him, had a President exercised his executive powers as an equal branch of
government. If the Constitution did not specifically deny the President the
exercise of power, Roosevelt felt at liberty to do so. "Is there any law
that will prevent me from declaring Pelican Island a Federal Bird
Reservation? . . .Very well, then I so declare it!" By executive order in
March 1903, he established the first of fifty-one national bird
sanctuaries. These and the national parks and monuments he created are a
part of his great legacy.
Theodore Roosevelt's dynamic view of the presidency infused vigor into a
branch of government that traditionally had been ceremonial and sedate. His
famous "Tennis Cabinet" was indicative of how he liked to work. Riding and
hiking were daily pastimes; one senator jested that anyone wishing to have
influence with the President would have to buy a horse. When the press
could keep pace with him, it reveled in his activities, making him the
first celebrity of the twentieth century. His spectacled image adorned
countless magazine covers before beauty, sex, and scandal became chic. This
image of Roosevelt by Peter Juley appeared on the cover of Harper's Weekly,
July 2, 1904.
[pic]
(Left to right):
Quentin (1897-1918), Theodore (1858-1919), Theodore Jr. (1887-1944),
Archibald (1894-1979),Alice Lee (1884-1980), Kermit (1889-1943), Edith
Kermit (1861-1948),
and Ethel Carow (1891-1977)
Like Roosevelt himself, the first family was young, energetic, and a
novelty in the White House. Public interest in them was spontaneous, as
pictures of Theodore, Edith, and their six children began appearing in
newspapers and magazines. For once in history, the executive mansion
acquired aspects of a normal American home, complete, with roller skates,
bicycles, and tennis racquets.
Theodore Roosevelt's eldest child, Alice Lee, was an impressionable
teenager when the family moved into the White House in 1901. High-spirited
and defiant by nature, she enjoyed pushing the limits of decorum, while
competing for her father's attention. Naturally she was a favorite of the
press, which called her Princess Alice. Stories about her antics, her
favorite color, a blue-gray dubbed "Alice blue," and her cast of
acquaintances filled the newspapers. She smoked in public, bet at the
racetrack, and was caught speeding in her red runabout by the Washington
police. Photographs of her connote the classic Gibson Girl and suggest an
air of youthful haughtiness. In 1906, she married Nicholas Longworth, a
Republican congressman from Ohio. He was fifteen years her senior, short
and bald, and something of a bon vivant. Their White House wedding was the
most talked-about social event of the Roosevelt years.
At the invitation of the first family, John Singer Sargent was a White
House guest for a week in the middle of February 1903, while he painted a
portrait of the President. For Sargent, the foremost Anglo-American
portraitist of his era, the experience was vexing in many respects.
Particularly, Sargent found the President's strong will daunting from the
start. The choice of a suitable place to paint, where the lighting was
good, tried Roosevelt's patience. No room on the first floor agreed with
the artist. When they began climbing the staircase, Roosevelt told Sargent
he did not think the artist knew what he wanted. Sargent replied that he
did not think Roosevelt knew what was involved in posing for a portrait.
Roosevelt, who had just reached the landing, swung around, placing his hand
on the newel and said, "Don't I!" Sargent saw his opportunity and told the
President not to move; this would be the pose and the location for the
sittings. Still, over the next few days Sargent was frustrated by the
President's busy schedule, which limited their sessions to a half-hour
after lunch. Sargent would have liked to have had more time. Nevertheless,
Roosevelt considered the portrait a complete success. He liked it
immensely, and continued to favor it for the rest of his life. Commissioned
by the federal government, Sargent's Roosevelt is the official White House
portrait of the twenty-sixth President.
On an extended visit to the West in the spring of 1903, President Roosevelt
sought the company of naturalists John Burroughs and John Muir. With
Burroughs, Roosevelt camped in Yellowstone Park for two weeks, and with
Muir he explored the wonders of the Yosemite Valley and had his picture
taken in front of a giant sequoia tree in the Mariposa Grove. Roosevelt's
visit was an opportunity for Muir to be able to impress upon the President
the need for immediate preservation measures, especially for the giant
forests. In 1908, Roosevelt paid tribute to Muir by designating Muir Woods,
a redwood forest north of San Francisco, a national monument.
A hunting trip President Roosevelt made into the swamps of Mississippi in
1902 became legendary when he refused to shoot an exhausted black bear,
which had been run down by a pack of hounds and roped to a tree. Although
the incident was reported in the local press, Clifford K. Berryman, a staff
