Theodore Roosevelt

The Gilded Age was an age of prosperity, an age with good things and bad things. America was becoming an industrial power; the population was increasing, both due to higher native birth rates and new immigration from Ireland, Germany, Scandinavia, Southern Europe, and Eastern Europe; rail lines were causing the country to become more interconnected; the Navy was rebuilt and expanded; the US got new colonial lands; quality of life peaked; there were lots of new cities; society was becoming more efficient; there were so many new technologies; and so much more. But there was a cost. America did not just go along a clear path laid out for them. It had to fight itself to get here. The Civil War and the North’s repression of the South during Reconstruction ended the decades-long debate; the industrial North had won, and it would plot its own vision for the country.

Since the North and South were colonies, they had been rivals, and when they became countries, there was a debate: should America be centralized or decentralized? Isolationist or interventionist? Meritocratic or democratic? Protectionist or free-trader? Industrial or agrarian?

The Civil War and Reconstruction had pretty much ended all Southern power over the country, as only people who liked the North were allowed to lead the South, until the presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes, where the South was left to do effectively whatever they wanted. Thus, the direction for the country’s future was clear. The country was set to be a centralized, isolationist, meritocratic, protectionist, industrial federation. But things didn’t go exactly to the North’s plan.

Lincoln was a solid, experienced, and smart leader. But when he died, the worst aspects of the Republican party took root, especially during the administration of Ulysses S. Grant, an inexperienced military man who appointed his own family members and friends to political positions. The presidents after Grant were left to clean up his mess, but the power of business continued to increase, to the point that it was said that every industrialist had a couple of politicians in his pocket, only there to do his bidding for them. And, plus, as a bonus, these businessmen didn’t have an adequate policy. They just went with whatever the popular tide was. The only thing they wanted was to stay onto power.

The presidents after Grant cleaned up most of the corruption, but they weren’t able to clean up business. The argument was, yes, there could be some corruption, but it’s for the greater good of the country, and this was a fair argument, as clearly these businessmen were modernizing the country. But, it soon became apparent to the public that the cost was too high, and they demanded change.

The balance between business and government stayed the same until a man named Theodore Roosevelt came to the office of the presidency.

Theodore Roosevelt Biography

Theodore Roosevelt was born in Manhattan, New York. Roosevelt had asthma, which had no cure. He learned to exercise significantly to minimize it; eventually, he found a boxing coach to train him.

Roosevelt really loved his father, and he really took his father’s advice, that, “take care of your morals first, your health next, and finally your studies.” This mindset propelled Roosevelt from homeschooling to Harvard University. Just two years later, Roosevelt’s father, his idol of the same name, passed away.

Roosevelt loved science, specifically biology. When he was 7 years old, he saw a dead seal at the market. He and his cousins got the head, and then they founded the Roosevelt Museum of National History, a makeshift museum he filled with animals that he caught himself. He even wrote a paper at 9 years old about it. Of course, he wanted to be a scientist when he grew up, but he kinda wanted to imitate his dad, who was a philanthropist. He wanted to help the public, so he got into law. 

However, he didn’t really like it, so, instead, he dropped out, and ran for public office to be an assemblyman. At age 23, he won, defeating a corrupt member of the political establishment with ties to Roscoe Conkling, Jake Hess. He focused on combating corruption in New York. However, tragedy struck again for Roosevelt. Two days after the birth of his baby daughter, his mother and wife die on the same day. That day, Roosevelt marked a giant X in his journal and declared, “the light has gone out of my life.” He retired from politics soon after and moved to a ranch in North Dakota.

He loved frontier life. A cowboy, he said, possesses, “few of the emasculated, milk-and-water moralities admired by the pseudo-philanthropists; but he does possess, to a very high degree, the stern, manly qualities that are invaluable to a nation. “ In North Dakota, he took prominent leadership roles. He created the Boone and Crockett Club, which wanted to conserve large game animals. He even became deputy sheriff of Billings County. However, after a bad winter that destroyed about half of his investment, he decided to return to New York. He also married a second wife.

In 1866, Roosevelt ran as the Republican candidate in the mayoral race in New York City. He won third place, against the Democrat and United Labor Party candidate. Fearing his political career was over, he turned to writing the popular book The Winning of the West, about America’s westward expansion.

When Republican Benjamin Harrison won the presidency, he appointed Roosevelt to the United States Civil Service Commission. He did such a good job fighting the spoils system that the next president, a Democrat, reappointed him. After Republican William Laffayette Strong won the mayoral race in 1894 in New York City, he became the New York City Police Commissioner, where he successfully restored law and order in the city. Republican President William McKinley appointed Roosevelt as Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1897, where he continued the decades-long buildup of naval strength, mainly focusing on battleships. He then resigned in 1898 to fight for his country in the Spanish-American War, forming the First Volunteer Cavalry Regiment, also known as the “Rough Riders,” and it became famous nationwide for its’ charges up Kettle Hill and San Juan Hill. Roosevelt returned home as a war hero, and soon ran for and became Governor of New York, where he saw and learned a lot about the sheer corruption occurring at the state and national level. This led him to develop an increasingly negative role of big business. Two years later, he resigned to become Vice President, (as McKinley’s previous VP had died, and he wanted a war hero on the ticket to boost his re-election chances.) Then, McKinley was assassinated, and Roosevelt was now President. 

Theodore Roosevelt Administration

Roosevelt was a manifestation of the growing movement of reform and efficiency, which was now taken from the local to the national scale, a movement determined to take America into an age of progress. Roosevelt knew what the beliefs of the day were. After all, they had shaped into himself and his own beliefs. America had several problems, and unlike his predecessors, Roosevelt was actually going to use the authority of the office of the President to actually try to solve them. Roosevelt wanted to create what he called a “Square Deal”, to make life as efficient as possible so that every citizen had the same opportunity. Roosevelt did not believe the “tyranny of the masses” theory, instead believing that if every citizen had the proper education and opportunity, they could rise above that and create a proper and efficient society. Of course, there were some other factors that could compromise this: criminals, the mentally insane, and unintegrated immigrants, the ones who were hyphenated, whom Roosevelt believed held loyalty to both America and their country of origin. Roosevelt and other Progressives believed that if you didn’t fully assimilate into American society, you wouldn’t be fully American, and you’d still do what’s best for your home country and culture. There were significant ways in which this was shown, including the rise of the Second Klu Klux Klan, anarchist terrorist attacks committed by Eastern and Southern European immigrants, persecution of German Americans during World War I, and the heightening of racial tensions.

Roosevelt, as said earlier, sought to use the President’s power to fix the problems of the day, and so he did. He issued an unprecedented 1,081 executive orders during his presidency.

First, Roosevelt wanted to crackdown on trusts, or economic monopolies, as in 1902, 100 companies held 40% of America’s industrial capital. In 1902, the Justice Department filed two antitrust lawsuits – against both the Northern Securities Company and the unpopular “Beef Trust.” Roosevelt created the Bureau of Corporations to find and report on trusts, which would later be succeeded by the Federal Trade Commission, or FTC. In 1905, the Supreme Court handed the Roosevelt administration a victory when they allowed for the breaking up of the Beef Trust.

Roosevelt won a second term in a landslide, winning the highest share of the popular 

vote since Andrew Jackson in the 1820s, and now sought to implement a bold legislative agenda. One of Roosevelt’s biggest priorities was to expand the power of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), which was created to regulate railroads; Roosevelt signed the Hepburn Act in 1906, which did just that. After Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle exposed the unsafe conditions that the meatpacking industry operated in, Roosevelt pushed through and signed the Meat Inspection Act of 1906 and the Pure Food and Drug Act, which called for the labeling of foods and drugs and inspection of livestock. Roosevelt’s other major legislative proposals failed, so he turned to the courts, with his Department of Justice issuing a record 44 antitrust suits in his term.

Roosevelt was also a prominent conservationist, believing that it was necessary to protect wildlife for the future generation to enjoy, conserving around 230 million acres, more than all of his predecessors combined. Although most of this was by executive action, legislatively, he signed the Newlands Reclamations Act of 1902 and the Antiquities Act, which allowed for the establishment of national parks. There was some significant backlash to these radical policies, however, which would lead to it slowing down towards the end of his term.

With regards to labor, Roosevelt helped negotiate an end to a labor strike in 1902 by hosting both sides of the strike at the White House and getting them to agree to a compromise. On race relations, following a contentious dinner between Roosevelt and Booker T. Washington, Roosevelt caved to the anti-Black “lily-white” movement within his party, reducing the number of Blacks holding federal jobs and discharging African-American soldiers in Brownsville after they were accused of killing a white bartender without evidence. Roosevelt would not take any action to reduce McKinley’s tariffs to avoid a civil war within the Republican Party. In 1907, the economy crashed, and Roosevelt blamed the big businessmen of America, calling them “malefactors of great wealth.” Roosevelt would succeed in passing a Federal Employers Liability Act and a law that ended child labor in D.C.

Roosevelt’s Foreign Policy

Roosevelt’s foreign policy was almost as successful, if not more successful than, his domestic policy. His slogan for foreign policy was, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” To get a “big stick,” Roosevelt would develop a world-class American navy, and “speak softly” meant to act justly toward other nations.

Perhaps the biggest accomplishment of Roosevelt’s presidency was the construction of the Panama Canal. Congress gave the President $170 million to build the canal, and Roosevelt signed a treaty with the Columbian government, who controlled Panama at the time, to build the canal: this is the “speak softly” part. However, when the Colombian Senate refused to ratify the treaty, Roosevelt encouraged Panama to break away. When they did, Roosevelt immediately recognized them and sent the USS Nashville to go to Columbia and intimidate them: this is the “big stick” part. With the threat of U.S. invasion, Colombia agreed to recognize Panama’s independence. Panama then agreed to let America build the canal. Roosevelt also helped end the peace between Russia and Japan, winning the Nobel Peace Prize, and he also helped stabilize the situation in Latin America, earning America global reputation.