What was Theodore Roosevelt known for

• NAME: Theodore Roosevelt
• NICKNAMES: T.R., Trustbuster
• BORN: October 27, 1858, in New York City, New York
• DIED: January 6, 1919, in Oyster Bay, New York
• TIME IN OFFICE: September 14, 1901, to March 3, 1909
• VICE PRESIDENT: Charles Warren Fairbanks
• POLITICAL PARTY: Republican

Theodore Roosevelt was born on October 27, 1858, to a wealthy New York family. During his childhood, Roosevelt had asthma and was often sick, so he went to school at home. Finally his father encouraged him to improve his health through physical exercise. By the time Roosevelt attended Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he was fit enough to compete in the college’s boxing program. Roosevelt graduated with honors, married, and became a member of New York’s state assembly. 

Then tragedy struck. Roosevelt’s mother and wife both died from illnesses on Valentine’s Day in 1884. Roosevelt moved to the western United States and worked as a cowboy and a rancher. That’s when he developed a love of the outdoors that would continue throughout his presidency.

FROM WAR HERO TO PRESIDENT

In the fall of 1886 Roosevelt returned to New York. He remarried, took up writing, and re-entered public service.

When the Spanish-American War broke out in 1898, Roosevelt formed a volunteer company of cowboys, college football players, New York City police officers, and Native Americans. These "Rough Riders" became famous for their charge near San Juan Hill in Cuba, where they fought to help the island gain independence from Spain.

Roosevelt’s popularity after the war helped get him elected governor of New York in 1899. In 1901, Roosevelt was elected to serve as vice president to President William McKinley after his vice president passed away. But barely six months into McKinley’s second term, the president was assassinated by an angry citizen at a fair.

TEDDY THE TRUSTBUSTER

Following McKinley’s assassination in 1901, Roosevelt became the 26th president of the United States. He immediately focused on monopolies, which is when several companies join together and become so powerful that the new company doesn’t have any competition. Also called trusts, these monopolies controlled the railroad, beef, oil, and other industries. Trusts had become so powerful that people were suffering from high prices, low wages, and poor working conditions. (For instance, if a company is the only company that sells beef, then that company can charge as much as they want and pay workers as little as they want.) Roosevelt became known as a "trustbuster" for breaking up these monopolies.

He also made conservation a top priority during his administration. He created the United States Forest Service and established 150 national forests, 51 federal bird reserves, four national game preserves, and five national parks during his time in office.

Roosevelt was a problem solver when other countries had disagreements. In fact in 1905, he became the first U.S. president and first American to win the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in negotiating an end to a war between Russia and Japan.

He also continued to oversee construction of the Panama Canal, a waterway connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans across Central America. He visited the construction site in 1906, but it wouldn’t officially open until five years after he left office, in 1914.

LASTING LEGACY

Roosevelt served a second term, then left the White House in 1909. He attempted to regain the presidency in 1912 by running as a third-party candidate for the Progressive, or Bull Moose, Party. During a campaign speech in Wisconsin, he was shot in the chest by a saloonkeeper who disagreed with his policies. Roosevelt refused to go to the hospital until he finished his speech, over an hour later. He survived the assassination attempt but lost the presidential race to Woodrow Wilson.

Roosevelt spent his retirement on safari in Africa and exploring the jungles of Brazil. But after the death of his youngest son, Quentin, in World War I, Roosevelt’s health became bad. He died the following year on January 6, 1919.

Roosevelt was the first "accidental" president to later win outright election to the office. During his presidency, he expanded the reach of the U.S. government into such areas as industry, labor, the environment, consumer rights, and foreign affairs. He’s been called by many historians the first modern president and is generally remembered fondly.

• The teddy bear was named after Roosevelt by a toymaker who heard how the president had saved the life of a bear cub.

• Roosevelt was the first president to fly in an airplane and dive in a submarine.

• Roosevelt went blind in his left eye when he was injured in a boxing match during his presidency.

From the Nat Geo Kids books Our Country's Presidents by Ann Bausum and Weird But True Know-It-All: U.S. Presidents by Brianna Dumont, revised for digital by Avery Hurt

NPS/Sagamore Hill Collection

Roosevelt began his studies at Harvard in 1876 while challenging himself physically by playing sports, hiking, and going on hunting trips during school breaks. During his sophomore year, Roosevelt was dealt his first major tragedy with the death of his beloved father from cancer at age 46. Roosevelt had said his father was the “best man he ever knew.” During his time at Harvard, Roosevelt began to court Alice Hathaway Lee, and the two married in 1880. As a newlywed, Roosevelt began purchasing acreage in Oyster Bay, New York, where generations of his family had vacationed, and planned to build a home that would eventually become Sagamore Hill, his main residence for the remainder of his life. Roosevelt’s political career also began during this period, as he was elected to serve his Manhattan district in the New York State Assembly.

On Valentine’s Day in 1884, Roosevelt suffered the double loss of his mother and his wife, who had given birth to his first child, Alice, two days earlier. Leaving his daughter in the care of his sister Anna, Roosevelt traveled to the badlands of the Dakota Territory to live and work as a rancher, believing the hard work would keep him from depression. He had acquired the Maltese Cross and Elkhorn Ranches outside the small town of Medora where he rounded up cattle while working alongside his hired help. Residents were initially wary of the Harvard-educated easterner, but Roosevelt endeared himself to the people by keeping up with the tiring labor of ranching. For the first time in his life, the elite Roosevelt mixed regularly with common folk and the experience humbled him. “Had it not been for the years spent in North Dakota and what I learned there,” Roosevelt later told a crowd during a speech in Fargo, North Dakota, “I would not have been President of the United States.” While in the west, Roosevelt began to publish a trilogy of popular books about his experiences including Hunting Trips of a Ranchman (1885), Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail (1888), and The Wilderness Hunter (1893), which cemented his reputation as an author. In all, he wrote about 30 books over the course of his life. Roosevelt’s life as a western rancher ended due to devastating blizzards that would cost him the majority of his cattle herd and forced him back to New York year-round.

During a trip home from the Dakota Territory, Roosevelt had a chance meeting with family friend and childhood sweetheart, Edith Kermit Carow, and the two rekindled their relationship, marrying in London in 1886. After their honeymoon, the pair took up residence at Sagamore Hill in Oyster Bay and between 1887 to 1897, Edith gave birth to five children: Theodore Roosevelt Jr., Kermit, Ethel, Archie, and Quentin. During this period, Roosevelt held several public offices, including US Civil Service Commissioner, New York City Police Commissioner, and Assistant Secretary of the Navy, while delighting in his role as a father.

When war with Spain was declared in 1898, Roosevelt resigned his position in the Navy Department to raise a division of volunteers to fight in Cuba. Roosevelt was appointed lieutenant colonel of the First US Volunteer Calvary Regiment, who came to be known as the Rough Riders, and experienced what he called his “crowded hour” when he led a charge up Kettle Hill during the Battle for San Juan Heights on July 1, 1898. Roosevelt returned home a popular war hero and was elected governor of New York the same year. After nearly two years of instituting reform policies and challenging state Republican party bosses as governor, Roosevelt was suggested as vice-presidential running mate to President William McKinley in the election of 1900 and the pair won over democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan.

President McKinley was shot while attending the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, New York and died from his wounds two weeks later. Roosevelt would be sworn in as the 26th President of the United States on September 14, 1901 at the home of his friend, Buffalo lawyer Ansley Wilcox. The home is preserved today as the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site.

Roosevelt served as president from 1901 to 1909, winning an election in his own right in 1904. His time in office was characterized by modernizing the presidency, viewing the role of president as the chief steward of the country who could take any action not explicitly forbidden by the Constitution. Roosevelt is best remembered for expanding the role of the United States in world affairs, taking on large businesses known as trusts, conserving natural resources, and preserving unique landscapes of national significance. In foreign affairs, Roosevelt would oversee the building of the Panama Canal, expand American naval might, and help negotiate an end to the devastating Russo-Japanese War, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906. At home, Roosevelt worked towards securing what he called a “square deal” for all Americans by inserting himself into business affairs that affected nearly all Americans. He took action to break up J.P. Morgan’s Northern Securities railroad trust, placed regulations on producers of food and drugs, and brought feuding parties together to solve the potentially disastrous Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902. Roosevelt’s presidency is perhaps best known through his conservation legacy, as he created the United States Forest Service and 150 national forests, the first federal bird reserve at Pelican Island, which would lead to the National Wildlife Refuge system, and using the power of the Antiquities Act would name 18 national monuments, including Devil’s Tower, El Morro, Muir Woods, Petrified Forest, and the Grand Canyon. Additionally, the Roosevelt administration would add five national parks, including an expansion of Yosemite National Park, totaling in a preservation of approximately 230 million acres of land for what Roosevelt remarked was for “the benefit and enjoyment of the people.”

Roosevelt chose not to run again in 1908 and instead supported the candidacy of his Secretary of War and close friend William Howard Taft for president. Soon after Taft’s inauguration, Roosevelt departed on a year-long trip to Africa and Europe, during which he hunted and collected specimens for the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, lectured at the Sorbonne in France, and represented the United States at the funeral of King Edward VII of Britain. He returned to a parade welcoming him home in New York City.

At the outset of the first World War, Roosevelt publicly voiced his criticism of President Wilson’s policy of neutrality, believing that the United States was ill-prepared to enter the fighting in Europe. When the United States did enter the war in 1917, Roosevelt’s four sons joined the military. Roosevelt himself offered to raise a regiment, but was denied by Wilson and instead aided the war effort by speaking on behalf of Liberty Loan drives on the homefront. In July 1918, Roosevelt suffered the loss of his youngest son, Quentin, who was killed in action during a flying mission in France.

After Quentin’s death, Roosevelt’s health greatly deteriorated. He died of a pulmonary embolism at Sagamore Hill on January 6, 1919 at the age of 60. In the days after his death, a funeral service was held at Christ Church in Oyster Bay and Roosevelt was buried at the nearby Young’s Memorial Cemetery.

There are several sites dedicated to Theodore Roosevelt that the public can visit today including Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site, Sagamore Hill National Historic Site, Theodore Roosevelt National Park, Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site, Theodore Roosevelt Island, and Mount Rushmore National Memorial.