Theodore Roosevelt, 1858–1919

Theodore Roosevelt became the twenty-sixth president of the United States in September 1901 following the assassination of William McKinley. He won election in his own right in 1904 and served until March 1909. Roosevelt, or TR, exercised presidential authority along the lines practiced by Abraham Lincoln, the predecessor whom he admired the most. The chief executive, according to Roosevelt, was a steward of the people’s interest, and the demands of a rapidly urbanizing and industrializing nation required a larger role for government. Roosevelt’s activist philosophy advanced the conservation of natural resources, led to the breaking up of business trusts, brought greater federal regulation of industry, and sought a new relationship between government and labor. On the world stage, TR accelerated the emergence of the United States as a great power. The Spanish–American War of 1898 and the acquisition of overseas holdings had announced growing American influence. Roosevelt expanded the role of the United States in the Caribbean, most notably through a corollary to the Monroe Doctrine and his drive to build the Panama Canal. An increased international presence also led the United States to help settle disputes among other great powers. Roosevelt mediated an end to the Russo-Japanese War and assisted in resolving the first Moroccan crisis. He backed American diplomacy with the “big stick” of an enlarged navy, which he dispatched on a world cruise from 1907 to 1909. Following his presidency, Roosevelt’s political prominence continued at home and abroad. He went on a safari in East Africa, and then he toured Europe, grabbing headlines throughout his travels. Upon his return to the United States, he launched an unsuccessful bid to retake the White House in 1912 as the candidate of the Progressive Party. TR would remain an active political force during Woodrow Wilson’s administration, seizing opportunities to criticize the man who bested him in 1912 and pushing for American military preparedness after the outbreak of World War I. Although he dominated the American political landscape for two decades, Roosevelt’s reach and interests extended beyond politics. Many-sided, he was a rancher, a soldier, a naturalist, a police commissioner, a historian, an explorer, and a big-game hunter. When Roosevelt died in early 1919, he had honored a youthful promise that he would live his life to the fullest possible extent.