American History Hit - President Theodore Roosevelt

Episode Date: August 12, 2024

What kind of a nickname is Bull Moose? How progressive was Theodore Roosevelt's presidency? And how does his legacy live on?Don is joined once again by Michael Patrick Cullinane, historian of American politics, an award-winning author, and the Lowman Walton Chair of Theodore Roosevelt Studies at Dickinson State University.Michael's books on Roosevelt are 'Remembering Theodore Roosevelt' and 'Theodore Roosevelt's Ghost'.Produced by Freddy Chick and Sophie Gee. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign here for up to 50% for 3 months using code AMERICANHISTORYYou can take part in our listener survey here.American History Hit is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. The Roosevelt home, Sagamore Hill, is quiet. The door from the bedroom to the porch rattles in the northwestern breeze from Oyster Bay,

and Theodore, known as TR, sleeps in his bed. He fell ill late last night with the shortness of breath that reminded him of the asthma attacks he'd experienced in his childhood. But now it seems to have cleared. At 2 a.m., his wife Edith checks in on him. He appears to be breathing normally, so she leaves him, knowing that James Amos, one of Roosevelt's most trusted staff members, is keeping watch from the adjoining room. Amos started working for the Roosevelt's in 1901 when he was 22.

Initially, he was a guard for the children. Gradually he became a valet, bodyguard, confidant, and often a secretary to the president himself. Amos has accompanied Roosevelt on trips, overseeing dining and entertaining in the household, and nursed him back from the impact of an assassin's bullet. He has conveyed orders from Mrs. Roosevelt while traveling. It's time to go to bed. That was enough food. Time for a rest now.

In return, Mr. Roosevelt has brought flowers to the cottage garden for Amos' wife and personally chopped down a tree that she felt was in the way. Now, after a brief stint in the intelligence service, Amos is back at Sagamore. Around 4 a.m. on January 6, 1919, Amos rises from his rest in the room adjoining the former presidents, and walks quietly through. Upon entering, he immediately senses something is wrong. Amos knows the sounds of this house, and he knows his boss. The breaths he hears are hollow, shallow.

Amos turns on his heel and rushes to fetch the doctor. He hopes to save the life of this man with whom he has spent his entire adult life. A man who, though once a sickly child, became a soldier, an explorer, and a president. Welcome back to American History Hit. Don Wildman here. For our new listeners, welcome. You have found us in the midst of the life and presidency of Theodore Roosevelt. In our previous episode, we covered the legend, the myth, the man, his biographical and political origins. Today, we cover his presidency, 1901 to 1908. The thing is, where TR is concerned, it's all of a peace. His passion, his pursuit of happiness becomes his pursuit of a greater role for the United States. He was a remarkable figure in so many ways, avid outdoorsman as much as he was a prodigious reader and writer. He hunted wild beasts and enjoyed the rough life despite his high-born origins in New York City. But it was his energy that above all else defined the man, and that was reflected in his exploits in the wilderness and out west, as much as the offices, elected or otherwise, that he occupied.

He seemed limitless in his vision while he faced personal disaster and tragedy that would daunt any ordinary person. Roosevelt was the kind of man who surmounted the insurmountable, and, as a consequence, ended up carved into a mountain with Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln. Not bad company to keep presidentially, despite how you might feel about dynamiting sacred cliffsides. His presidential tale put the P in Progressive, and the reforms he pushed through are much of the story we will tell today, in the company of Michael Patrick Cullinane, author of TR, remembering Theodore Roosevelt, and of Theodore Roosevelt's Ghost, two books I recommend,

Also the host of an engaging podcast series called The Gilded Age and Progressive Era and is central to creating the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library at Dickinson State University in North Dakota. Hello, Michael. Welcome back. Great to be back. Thanks, Don. We are talking about the later half of Theodore Roosevelt's life, and we need to explain how he becomes president. We actually cover this a lot in another episode, which I want to highlight for people. There's a McKinley assassination episode that you can listen to. to that covers a lot of this. But one side of the story we don't cover so much is how frantic a

trip Theodore Roosevelt had to make back from the, I guess, the cat skills to take the Oath of Office in Buffalo. So let's talk about that. The Pan American Exposition, September of 1901, McKinley is shot by the anarchist, Chogosh, and thus begins the assumption of the office by Theodore Roosevelt, but it's not that smooth. I mean, he is in the company of the president when he's supposedly convalescing. And it looks like the president's going to be. The McKinley's going to get better. So rather than seem like he's hovering,

Roosevelt leaves and goes east to the Adirondacks. It's only when he gets a telegram that says things have gotten worse. He has to then head back to Buffalo. And it's this crazy record-setting trip across the state of New York. So incidentally, last month, I just recreated that trip with a group of people from the Theodore Roosevelt, Association, it is a wild ride that he takes. I mean, it's later called the Midnight Ride because he gets this telegram on top of Mount Marcy, and, you know, everyone might know that Mount Marcy is the

largest mountain in New York, but it is absolutely towering, and you can't get to it by road. You got to walk up it. So he gets the telegram, a messenger gets up to the top of the mountain and gives him the message that he needs to come to North Creek train station, which is about 20 miles away. And he makes his way down to the lodge where his family is staying and he has a conversation with them about leaving and when he should leave. And again, this whole point about he doesn't want to look too eager is important. You know, I mean, if he, he could look like he's seeking the office and he doesn't want to come across as being that sort of gratuitous. So anyway, so he takes his time, actually. And then finally, the word comes to him that no, no, is quite serious. He really does

need to get to Buffalo. And as a result, he leaves the mountainside and he takes this 20-mile that is through muck and corduroy roads. Quarteroy roads are like roads that have logs stuck in them. And the muck is so thick that the logs have been dislodged. And he's only, it takes him six hours to travel that distance. And it's through the darkness of night. He's carrying a lantern in the front of the coach. In fact, it's three coaches because the horses get so tired on the journey

that they have to swap horses and drivers three times. So it's a kind of a treacherous ride as well. I mean, he very easily could have gotten into an accident in much the same way a car would on any dark road at night. And so it's a wild ride. He finally gets over to North Creek train station and then takes the train over to Buffalo and then at that stage learns that McKinley had died.

In fact, he learned that McKinley had died before he got on the train. And the real question is, is at what point did he become president? You know, and there's actually a marker at the side of the road in Newcomb where they think he was. at the point when McKinley died.

But he takes the oath of office then in Buffalo, in the Ainsley Wilcox Mansion. And at that stage, he becomes president quite accidentally, and not to his delight. I mean, you know, becoming president to the death of another man is not something that he wanted. How old is he when he gets to be president? He is 41 years old.

Youngest ever. This was never intended. I mean, he had been really shunted to the side, both by the New York politicians, the political machinery of New York, who wanted him to get out of the governorship. And then when you become vice president at this time, there's obviously a chance you'll become president, but that's the idea is that you're gone. Fate plays its hand in so many points in TR's life, and this is certainly one of them. How much is he ready for this role when he takes it? Does he have any kind of agenda or is it basically taking over McKinley's?

It's a good question. So he's taking over McKinley's administration. He's inherited a lot of lot of policies. He's inherited the leadership of a Republican Party that has really clear views on some things like, say, for example, tariffs and international commerce, empire and colonization, and then also on big business. I mean, you know, the Republican Party is the party of big business at this stage. And TR is going to have to grapple with some of that because some of the worst ills of industrialization are finally coming home to roost by 1901. I mean, the fights between capital and labor are becoming real. The oversized growth of trust and monopolies is becoming unbearable for the nation. And there's real questions about the future of American

democracy that Roosevelt's going to have to grapple with. And the reallocation of wealth. I mean, so these are things that McKinley probably would have done very differently. And Roosevelt is going to put the United States on an entirely different track than McKinley would have and entirely accidentally. So he keeps a lot of the same people that are in the cabinet. In fact, he retains the entire cabinet for the first term. You know, there are a few resignations that he replaces, but he tries to show consistency where he can. But the context and his natural instinct to lead means that big changes are going to come. He has what's called the square deal in mind. What was that? And I want to remind people, there's so many interesting

resonances through between TR, Theta Roosevelt, and Franklin Roosevelt, his fifth cousin, who comes decades later with the new deal. There's echoes through both of these guys, but the square deal was Teddy's. What did this entail? I think the square deal was just a reckoning with the fact that America finally had a middle class for the first time and what the middle class

deserved. And his idea about a square deal was simply that, you know, if you work hard and you raise a family and you contribute to the nation that you're entitled to the same level playing field. That was the square deal in its simplest form. I think how that played out more basically was that workers deserved some sort of compensation if they got disabled on the job. They shouldn't be forced to work ungodly hours, you know, for small pay. They should share in the spoils of the nation as a whole. I mean, America was so darn prosperous by the early 20th century that Roosevelt believed that well should be shared more equally, not entirely.

equally. I mean, he was still a capitalist, and he still believed that, you know, if you earn, you know, money by taking risks and by investing, you know, that you're entitled to those riches. But what he did think is, is that if the state and the community is helping you to achieve those riches, then it's only fair to share the wealth a little bit more equitably. This is really where his progressive roots begin to start shining through is in this idea of a square deal. You know, when you analyze New York City, I know, I read Russell Shorto's book on the island at the center of the world. It's the Dutch roots of New York City that really distinguish the place and give it that more progressive quality to it. Dutch roots are right

smack in Theater Roosevelt's past. I mean, it's the same kind of odd. You don't quite know why this person is the way he is, but that's one aspect of it, isn't it? Yeah, and actually, I think that point about New York City being the center of the world, I mean, this is where him being a New Yorker really has some importance, because a lot of the people that he's going to take on, are New York interests that have spread out like the octopus, so-called octopus, you know, throughout the rest of the nation. So J.P. Morgan is a really early example. I mean, J.P. Morgan, the financier, the big banker, you know, would have financed everything

to do with the railroads in the late 19th century. And one of TR's first major acts as president is to encourage the breakup, to file a lawsuit, basically, to break up a major railroad network in the Pacific Northwest. And that was the Northern Securities Company. And he charges his attorney general to go after the Northern Securities Company because it is becoming a monopoly and is suppressing competition for railroads in that area. Now, that was unheard of. I mean, there's a law on the book since 1890 called the Sherman Antitrust Act, which allowed the president and allowed, you know, legislators to push back against monopolies. But no president had done so before.

McKinley certainly wasn't going to do this. And Roosevelt does it. eventually does lead within a couple of years to the breakup, the first breakup of a monopoly in American history. And that transforms the way the TR is going to approach J.P. Morgan on other instances as well. Like only a year later, there's going to be a major coal strike in Pennsylvania. J.P. Morgan is the one that's going to push the coal owners to come to the negotiating table with Roosevelt because he realizes that Roosevelt is so committed to this Square Deal policy that he might just take over the minds with the army, and that would be disastrous for the owners. So, I mean,

Roosevelt lays out his stake in this square deal and says that he's committed to making sure that this happens and using the powers of the federal government to do that. No president had done anything like that before. He gets the nickname, the Trustbuster. That's one of his main Wikipedia nicknames that you see. Was the awareness of the danger of monopoly something that came to pass because of the rise of workers' unions? Was it through the labor movements that Americans became aware of this? Or was it just common sense?

I think it's both of those things. I mean, I think a lot of monopolies had been treating their labor forces quite poorly. I mean, the best examples of this is like the Pullman strike in the 1893, when the workers all go on strike,

I mean, hundreds of thousands of workers go on strike and really cripple the transport network in America. But actually, there's other examples like Standard Oil and the growth of Standard Oil that really has nothing to do with labor, but has everything to do with a company that was manipulating the market and basically forcing the railroads to transport its oil at a cheaper rate than its competitors.

And so it was business on business warfare as much as it was capital versus labor. And so Roosevelt really wanted to get in between all of that and make sure that the government could act as a mediator, as an arbitrator, to these conflicts. What interests me is how much was he at the head of the pack or following? Was he doing this for political purposes or was he a cutting-edge thinker? I think he was a cutting-edge thinker for certain. I think there's also political pay to be made from these decisions too. I think the other thing about all this is that we often forget about the other people that are in the dark, smoke-filled rooms that are figuring out how to accomplish this.

So Roosevelt is someone that sucked all the air out of the room. I mean, he was a celebrity and he is the president, and so he gets a lot of the credit. but his attorney general, Philander Knox, is really central to filing that lawsuit against J.P. Morgan and the Northern Securities Trust. He's got a lot of friends in the Bureau of Corporations, which is a brand new government agency. It would later become the Federal Trade Commission, which is so important in prosecuting companies like Google nowadays, that all started with TR. I mean, the people behind the scenes, the agents of change, were as important to the ideas that were festering and growing into these actions, as well as the president who gets a lot of

the accolades for the achievements, but really was just saying, yes, this is a good idea we should follow through on. This is this period, which fascinates me so much because these days, there's so many people cast aspersions at the large federal government for many good reasons. But in those days, you really have a need for expertise. Everyone's suddenly realizing that we've got a continent to manage. We've got huge businesses to manage. Everything is getting so big in America that the federal government is trying to come to terms with that.

And TR is one of those first presidents who's really understanding that a modern America is going to require a bureaucracy, isn't it? Yeah. And I think the thing is he had the wind behind his sales at this time, too, because I think the American people had realized that a progressive country was going to be one in which the government got more involved in the welfare of the people. At that time, things had become so bad. I mean, a really good example is the Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. Businesses that had made food and drink and drugs for Americans to consume had adulterated that food and drink and drugs for so long with such dodgy products that, you know, the only power that was really going to intervene was the federal government.

And they did so. I mean, really, after the investigative journalism of Upton Sinclair into the Chicago meatpacking houses and to what life was like for an immigrant working in an abattoir in Chicago, Chicago, those stories translated into real disgust in the American public, which then translated into action in the federal government. So it's a collective effort. Roosevelt is definitely spearheading this in a lot of ways, but without the public support, which he both cultivated and listened to, without that, I don't think we would have seen the momentum of the progressive era. Sure. There's consumer protection. There's workers' rights, industrial relations.

There's also conservation. He's famous for creating the first, National Park, that's a direct result of his time out west, isn't it? I think it is. I think it's also, I mean, believe it or not, I think you mentioned the Adirondex. I think the Adirondex had a huge impact on him. His time is governor. He created the Palisades Park. You know, he was responsible for a complete rethink of the Fish and Game Commission in New York City. So he had this all the time brewing. A major ally in all of this is a guy called Gifford Pinchot, who is a Pennsylvania, who is a big friend of Roosevelt, really from middle age onwards, he would become the chief forester, and he really lays the plan for how the federal government would take control

of natural resources. And he's not, like Roosevelt, he's more pragmatist than an idealist. He doesn't believe that everything needs to be preserved, instead he thinks they need to be conserved. And what I mean by that is that he thought that it was great that businesses were using natural resources. He just wanted businesses to be able to use them for all time. And so in order to protect and make sure that they were sustainable, he created the national forests or he preserved a lot of the national forest, not all of them, obviously, national monuments like the Grand Canyon, Devil's Tower, bird sanctuaries all over the west and in Florida. Oh, Gifford Pinchot and Theodore Roosevelt, their thanks. And in addition to all of this, what I would say is that it instituted a step

change in how we think about the environment, how humanity thinks about its interactions with the environment, not just as something that is good for business, but that's good for our soul, that actually the outdoors is something that's not only just to be preserved for the sake of it, but something that's going to give us a place to escape to, whether it's, you know, after your mother and wife die, somewhere to escape in the great outdoors, but, you know, something that really strikes at the heart of humanity, that our engagement with the environment around us. One event that doesn't get much attention was a single evening in which he invited Booker T. Washington for dinner.

Why was this event such a big deal? What were his views on race and civil rights? It's a really good question. And it's a really good incident, an episode to sort of open up broader thoughts that TR had because inviting an African American to dinner at the White House was seen as, seen to be in support of social justice. I mean, there's obviously the sort of constitutional rights and civil rights, and Roosevelt was a big proponent of the Reconstruction Constitution.

He believed steadfastly in the idea that the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution granted civil equality to African Americans, and he stood by that as president. And I suppose the best example I can give you how he stood by that was in the civil service side of things, the federal bureaucracy. Roosevelt stood up for African Americans. in communities where white supremacists try to evict them from their jobs. So there's a famous case in Mississippi where a postmistress, Minnie Cox, is being pressured by the white community to leave her post as postmaster.

And Roosevelt stands by her. He actually closes the post office until she's given that position. And there's other examples of this as well. But the point is that he believed that African Americans were entitled to the same jobs as white Americans were in the civil service, in the federal bureaucracy. And Booker T. Washington was as much a proponent of that idea as he was of many others about equal education. Roosevelt and him were extremely close. They were, in fact, Booker T. Washington

was one of his closest correspondence. But the dinner caused such a stir in the South, because it looked like Roosevelt was advocating for a complete social justice by inviting an African-American to dinner, that he never invited Booker T. Washington again. Politically, it was so problematic. He lost half of the country, mainly the solid South, as it was called back then, and still is in a lot of ways. Politically, he lost the South, not that the South voted for Republicans anyway, but what he realized is that he couldn't really stand up to white supremacists in the way, in the way that later generations would, which actually is a shortcoming of his in some regards, too, that, you know, he was heroic in so many ways. He really could have been

immortal if he had done more for African Americans. I mean that, particularly in the, in light of lynching. Linching was such a problem in the U.S. And he did little to support a national anti-lynching law. He did do things where he could, but it's certainly not enough to say that he was heroic, for sure. In some ways, it's similar to Lincoln, isn't it? You know, Lincoln had some of the similar views of race where he never intended the black Americans to have the vote. That came later. I'm talking about the 1850s and so forth. There are some similarities there. Let's talk about his foreign policy. Very interesting at this point, and we've touched on it with the Navy. It really was an expansion beyond California at this point. The Pacific was very interesting to Americans,

and we had taken possession of the Philippines, Hawaii was in the crosshairs and all that, and everything was on its way to us sort of commanding this other ocean at this point. There's going to be two factors involved in this. The Russo-Japanese War, which Roosevelt takes a big hand in settling, and also the need for a canal, which had been in the air for a long time, Nicaragua, Panama. Roosevelt's going to play a big part in creating that canal. Yeah, both of those are probably his two most famous foreign policy achievements. The arbitration of the Russo-Japanese War is remarkable because that war is a major geopolitical event that really could have disrupted the balance of power throughout the world.

Roosevelt ends the war on terms that are favorable to every major world power. really, except for Japan and Russia, which is kind of how good settlements go, that no one gets exactly what they want. And Russia and Japan, neither of them get exactly what they want. Japan was calling for a major indemnity. They don't get that. They do get some concessions of territory. And the Russians don't get much of what they want. Of course, they're outraged by the war. And there'll be continual fighting. I mean, the real prize, I suppose, to most nations was China. They wanted to do business with the millions of inhabitants of China, and they had been really suppressing the Chinese for years. Japan and Russia do that.

And the settlement of the Russo-Japanese War continues the oppression of China for years to come. The Panama Canal had long been something that Roosevelt had advocated for, whether it was going to be through Nicaragua, as was originally suggested, or as eventually what does happen through Panama. But the story there is quite simple in the sense that Roselago. Roosevelt and the administration foments a revolution. The Panamanians try and break away from Colombia, which Panama was a province of Colombia at the time. And Roosevelt sends a warship down there to support the Panamanian revolution. The Colombians do not get involved as a result. Panama declares its independence and almost immediately sign a treaty with the United States to give the country control of a 10-mile strip of land that they build the Panama Canal on.

It's finished in 1911 after TR has left the White House, but it is undoubtedly. outedly one of his biggest achievements. It helps securitize the Western Hemisphere. It helps create a new trade route between the Atlantic and the Pacific. And it continues to show how the United States is a major world power, not just in terms of military strength, but also this engineering prowess that the canal represents. I'll be back with more American history after this short break. We shouldn't forget that he wins the Nobel Peace Prize for that arbitration of the war between Russia and Japan. It's a major, and yet another major event in this man's very eventful life.

I think it's interesting to talk about his, it's not an official law at this point that comes after his cousin later on, but it's already understood that presidents will not serve more than two terms at this point. And so having taken over from McKinley after his death, you know, three years worth of his term, by the time Roosevelt ends his second term, he really has virtually done two terms. terms. So he doesn't want to rerun again, does he? He actually says at the outset of his second term is, you know, his only successful election in 1904, he says he's not going to run again, which is politically such a bad idea. I mean, it makes

him a lame duck immediately. We've seen this before that other politicians. I'll never forget Tony Blair saying that he wasn't going to run again. And it was like, well, that's the end of your power, your political capital. And that hurt TR a little bit, but he sticks with it. He doesn't run again for another term, he decides to pass the torch and he picks a successor. He wanted to pick Elehue Root, who is his secretary of state, to be a successor because he thought that Root symbolized and represented all of the best of his administration's ideas, but he said that Roosevelt couldn't be elected dog catcher. And so he passes instead to William Howard Taft, who is going to win the election in 1908 by a smaller margin than Tee.

did, which I kind of suspect would have made TR happy because you don't want to pick a successor that's going to overshadow you, although I think Taft by his size alone would have overshadowed T.R. He doesn't, in the end, politically or personality-wise, overshadow TR. And I think that's part of the reason for the choice. But he does, T.R. believes that Taft is going to follow through on all of the progressive policies that Roosevelt had advocated for the last seven years. So now that he's been to the top of the mountain, politically speaking anyway. What do you do now? He's 50 years old. What's the next chapter of his life? He wants to get out from underfoot of Taft. He doesn't want to be the president who, or the ex-president, the former president, who then dictates what Taft does.

And he wanted a break. He wanted a vacation. Seven years in the top job, you know, he wants to get away. And TR's idea of getting away is going hunting and on a safari. And that's what he does. He He takes nine months of a safari in East Africa, and the safari itself is funded by the Smithsonian and by Andrew Carnegie, in fact, as well. And a lot of what is happening on that safari is collections that are going to go into places like the American Museum of Natural History. So the trip itself is incredible. I mean, not just the travels, but, I mean, the sheer number of animals that they slaughter,

it is into the tune of around 11,000 animals over the course of nine months. Wow, fascinating. People might wonder now, how could someone kill 11,000 animals in that period of time and not have a bloodlust? But actually, this is such a scientific expedition. Those animals are still in the dioramas that we look at today. I mean, you know, the elephants that are there are the elephants that TR captured. So this is a real scientific expedition.

Well, this is not the time when people just like we are today. We're jaded. We understand. We see it on TV all the time. This is a huge world to New Yorkers. And I go to the Naturalist Museum and look at those diaramas. And they're so beautiful. The painting that was done. You know, it's more than just the animal that was stuffed very expertly. It's the whole presentation of this slice of life of the natural world, which really in those days just knocked people's socks off. It's still beautiful. to go through them. And then it was imitated all across the country in other places. In Los Angeles, you can go through the same kind of gallery. And that's because it was such a, you know, people just ate it up. And Roosevelt fed into that whole thing. Look at the world we're living in. Understand, this is going side by side by the advent of science. This is the beginning of everything that becomes the 20th century. And just yet another hand that TR is playing in this whole evolution of America. And there's such a legacy to it as well done that I suspect people more. might not think about, but the animals that he captured are still informing us today about

the evolving habitats of Africa and elsewhere, I mean, because he collected specimens from his youth all the way to his adulthood. So, for example, you know, there's scholars right now, a guy called Darren Lund, who works at the Smithsonian, who is looking at the specimens that TR captured and comparing them to what's available in Africa right now. And we can track the story of degradation of wildlife habitats. We're telling the story of climate change right now through the specimens that TR caught over 100 years ago. So like there is a lot going on here. It's not just shooting and killing. It's real science going on. The hunter becomes the hunted. 1912, though. He is a victim of an attempted assassination. It's an incredible moment. I mean, he's making a speech. Who's he making

the speech for? What's happening at this point? So that is the bull moose campaign. So this is actually late stage in the Bull Moose campaign. He runs as a progressive. He's unsatisfied with Taft effectively, and he starts hearing wind of this on his trip to Africa and then later his trip to Europe. He starts hearing when the Taft is not really measuring up to the character he expected to be. By about 1910, he makes a famous speech in Kansas called the New Nationalism speech, where he's arguing for a more progressive vision for American politics. He wants to run as a Republican again in 1912, so he puts his proverbial hat in the ring, and he wins like nine out of 13 primaries in 1912, which are the first primaries ever in American Republican Party history.

He wins nine out of 13, but the party still gets behind Taft, and as a result, T.R. walks across the street in Chicago, starts a new party called the Progressive Party, better known as the Bull Moose Party, and he has a completely different platform, a much more progressive platform, calling for the direct election of senators, calling for national health care, inheritance tax, the suffrage of women. I mean, this is really on the left of the dial for most Americans at the time. And actually, he pulls the Democratic Party left. The Democratic Party is going to nominate Woodrow Wilson, who is not a conservative Democrat.

And the whole election really gets pulled to the left as a result of TR's run. In October of 1912, while he's in Milwaukee, which incidentally is where the Republicans in 2024 had their election convention on. Not far from where that convention was held, Theodore Roosevelt was emerging from the Gilpatrick Hotel, went a madman, a guy called John Shrank, shot him at relatively close range. And that bullet entered T.R.'s, well, passed through his shirt, then a case, a metal case where he kept his glasses, and then a speech that was folded in half. It was a 20-odd-page speech that was folded in half, and then entered T.R.'s body.

Tehr had the presence of mind at that time to know that there wasn't any blood in his mouth. So he knew that the bullet hadn't passed into his lung, which he thought was a good thing. And it was. It meant that he wasn't mortally wounded. And so he decided to give the speech. He went on to the location where the speech was going to be given, and he spoke for 90 minutes with a bullet lodged in his chest, famously saying, it takes more than that to kill a bull moose. I mean, it's kind of the heroics are not dissimilar to what Donald Trump did when He was wounded by a bullet and said, hang on, pumped his fist in the air and, you know, got the crowd on side.

I mean, that is, it's a remarkable thing. Honestly, if it was me, I would be running to the nearest hospital, but Roosevelt was made of stronger stuff. But the speech, I mean, making a speech after that, that's another level altogether. I mean, that really speaks to the guy. He loses that election, as you've said. I guess he's the first third party candidate to really influence an election, isn't he? In the 20th century, he is the most important third party candidate. We would see third party. candidates in the 19th century, but usually, you know, there's nothing like that in the 20th century other than Ross Perot maybe in 1992. But even TR had a larger vote share. He actually wins electoral college votes and he pushes the president into third place. And he does what third party candidates really do, which is influence the ideology of the election. Wilson does follow through on a lot

of these progressive policies that Roosevelt was calling for. He's an emotional man. And his son sees his reaction to this lost election and this last chance of political rebirth and decides that the best method to help his father out is to take it down the trip, which he's so good at doing. It's always been trusted in the past, so they go south. In those days, the wilderness of the Amazon was being opened up by the Brazilians. There's a place that eventually becomes known as the River of Doubt, at least in our language. And this is the area that they're going to track through. It's a humongous story that's almost impossible to believe how big. big a trip this is. Take us through a few of these notes about what happened to this

troop of people who march off into the depths of the Amazon. Well, it's one of these unexpected things that happens to him as well. I mean, you mentioned fate a lot. I think you're right to do so. Roosevelt did expect to go on a trip to the Amazon. I don't think he expected it to be a trip like this, one that was a genuine expedition to map a river, a tributary of the Amazon river, and one that hadn't been mapped before. I mean, this is a genuine, you know, know, at this time, we're talking about explorers going to the Arctic and to the Antarctic. I mean, the Amazon was as remote and as dangerous as those trips were. And Roosevelt is an explorer, I would say, like the likes of Robert Peary and others who were going like Shackleton to the Antarctic.

So this trip starts out as his last chance to be a boy, time to hang out with his son Kermit, who is also an adventurer and happens to be in South America at the time. it turns into this expedition to map the Rio Roosevelt, as it would later be called the River of Doubt initially. It's treacherous. It winds up being a complete disaster that no one is ready for. The boats that they use, the canoes are, they have to be carried a lot of the time because the waterways are, they're frothing with rocks and white water rapids. The madness that sort of overtakes some of the group on this trip, even just little things like the jungle, I mean, obviously there's the diseases of the jungle. I think Roosevelt gets malaria again from mosquitoes in the Amazon.

But pine nuts, as they're dropping from the trees from such heights are like projectile missiles coming down on your head. No one has helmets, but I mean, they needed them because one of the pine nuts will actually, you know, would kill a human being. And in fact, someone does die on the trip. There's rations that are being stolen and someone is murdered as a result of that. the murderer then flees off into the jungle never to be seen again. And Theodore Roosevelt then impacts his leg on a rock in the middle of the river at one stage. And it's such a bad cut and infection that he begins to lose sort of his consciousness and begins to lose his bearing.

And he even tells his son to leave him for dead in the Amazon. You don't do that. You don't leave the president for dead in the Amazon. That's not what happens. Not the end of the story. But he comes back. much weakened man, I think about 60 pounds lighter. And yes, obviously, you know, the expedition is a success in the sense that they map the river. But its toll on his body is just incredible.

When later he gets ill, it's probably the weakness that he has never gotten over, both from the bullet in his chest, but also this disease, which has really taken its toll on his whole disposition. He dies in 1919 in the home that you can still visit in Oyster Bay, which I really recommend people do. It's a very moving experience. You get a whole feeling for the man in that place, both the stuffed animals, which are all over the place and the horns and tusks and so forth, but also for this very simple life that was really remarkably Spartan in that house and speaks a lot about what kind of guy this was. I hope we have painted this picture well enough because I always feel you come up short in trying to communicate who this man really was,

because I think that the spirit of Theodore Roosevelt really still imbues this nation. It's in the background sometimes, but when you get down to it, what America is all about has a lot to do with Theodore Roosevelt to this day. Don't you agree? I do agree. And I think his idea of American democracy and citizenship and what we owe to the country is echoed in later years, whether you mentioned Franklin Roosevelt, who's a major proponent, the New Deal being part of the Square Deal.

I think JFK is inaugural address where he says, ask not what your country can do for you, is very much the same vibe of TR saying that there's responsibilities of the citizenship and that we have to take care of our democracy. We have to look after it and beware those that would pit us against each other. That was another big part of TR's philosophy, is that he was telling Americans to beware of those demagogues that try and say that other Americans are not worthy.

He really wanted to convey the idea, and the sense of unity in the United States. And so his idea of citizenship is still critical and still important to how we think about democracy today. Thanks so much, Michael. You are the author of many books, but two of them pertaining to Theodore Roosevelt, T.R., remembering Theodore Roosevelt from 2021

and Theodore Roosevelt's Ghost, 2017. Mike, tell us about your podcast, The Guilded Age and the Progressive Era. Where can people find it? Any good podcasting outlets, I guess, Apple and Spotify and all those places, it's largely about the late 19th and early 20th century, America and its place in the world. And we look at everything from the politics to the culture and society, economics, and foreign

policies. It's designed to really help us understand how that period was so important for our present, really. I mean, a lot of the conversations we're having about today are reverberations of that period. And yet, somehow it's squashed in between the Civil War and World War II, and we often forget about the important people and episodes. that were happening. And I'd also ask listeners to check out the Theodore Roosevelt Association, which is a congressionally chartered group of people that are dedicated to the perpetuation of Roosevelt's legacy. And I'm a firm believer that we are agents of TR's legacy. So we make him what he is. He's dead and gone. And we're just, well, we're using and abusing him, I guess, for our

purposes. When does that library open up, presidential library? The TR presidential library is opening in July 4th, 2026, it is quite possibly the most exciting project. And the people that are working on that, including its CEO at O'Keefe, are just remarkable. It is going to be the thing that draws anyone who's got an interest in TR over the next few years just into its orbit because it's going to be about 90,000 square feet. It is a multi-million dollar undertaking. And it is going to be the biggest thing since the National Monument was created in the 60s. How has there not been a theater at Roosevelt presidential library to this day. Yeah, I mean, it's good question.

The federal libraries were only started by FDR in 1945, so it just wasn't done at the time, and we're sort of making up for lost time. I think he deserves one, and I think everyone who's contributed to the library would agree with that. Michael Colleen, thank you very much for taking us through a very big story. Appreciate it. Thanks, Tom. I hope you enjoyed this episode of American History Hit.

Please remember to like, review, and subscribe. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts. And I'll see you next time.