JOURNAL - Theodore Roosevelt Association

T heodore R oosevelt A ssociation
JOURNAL
V O L U M E
X X X I I ,
N U M B E R
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Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
Officers of the Theodore Roosevelt Association
Executive Committee
Tweed Roosevelt
President
RADM P. W. Parcells, USN (Ret.)
Vice President
Dr. William N. Tilchin
Vice President
Shawn R. Thomas
Treasurer
Elizabeth E. Roosevelt
Assistant Treasurer
Genna Rollins
Secretary
Mark A. Ames
Lowell E. Baier
Michele Bryant
Dr. Gary P. Kearney
James E. Pehta
Simon C. Roosevelt
LtCol Gregory A. Wynn, USMC
The Hon. Lee Yeakel
Trustees for Life
Barbara Berryman Brandt
Robert D. Dalziel
Norman Parsons
Oscar S. Straus II
Honorary Trustee
The Hon. George H. W. Bush
Trustees, Class of 2012
J. Randall Baird
RADM Stanley W. Bryant, USN (Ret.)
Rudolph J. Carmenaty
Robert B. Charles
Gary A. Clinton
Barbara J. Comstock
Walter Fish
Fritz Gordner
Randy C. Hatzenbuhler
Jonathan J. Hoffman
Stephen B. Jeffries
CDR Theodore Roosevelt Kramer, USN (Ret.)
Joseph W. Mikalic
RADM Richard J. O’Hanlon, USN
RADM P. W. Parcells, USN (Ret.)
Genna Rollins
Elizabeth E. Roosevelt
Tweed Roosevelt
William D. Schaub
Keith Simon
Owen Smith
Tefft Smith
James M. Strock
Dr. John E. Willson
Anne R. Yeakel
Trustees, Class of 2013
Mark A. Ames
Lowell E. Baier
Larry Bodine
CAPT Frank L. Boushee, USN (Ret.)
Michele Bryant
David A. Folz
Robert L. Friedman
Anna Carlson Gannett
Timothy P. Glas
Nicole E. Goldstein
Steven M. Greeley
Dr. Michael S. Harris
James E. Pehta
Kermit Roosevelt III
Shawn R. Thomas
Dr. David R. Webb, Jr.
Trustees, Class of 2014
VADM David Architzel, USN
Paula Pierce Beazley
CAPT David Ross Bryant, USN (Ret.)
Thomas A. Campbell
Rogina L. Jeffries
Dr. Gary P. Kearney
Arthur D. Koch
CAPT Theodore Roosevelt Kramer, Jr., USN (Ret.)
Amy Krueger
Cordelia D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt III
Simon C. Roosevelt
Winthrop Roosevelt
Dr. William N. Tilchin
Richard D. Williams
LtCol Gregory A. Wynn, USMC
The Hon. Lee Yeakel
Advisory Board, Class of 2012
Donald Arp. Jr.
Prof. H. W. Brands
Prof. David H. Burton
Wallace Finley Dailey
Carl F. Flemer, Jr.
Prof. Richard P. Harmond
Prof. Michael Kort
Edmund Morris
Sylvia Jukes Morris
Dr. David Rosenberg
Dr. John G. Staudt
Advisory Board, Class of 2013
Dominick F. Antonelli
John P. Avlon
The Hon. Senator Kent Conrad
Prof. John Milton Cooper, Jr.
Prof. Stacy A. Cordery
Prof. Douglas Eden
The Hon. Peter T. King
The Hon. Rick A. Lazio
Dr. James G. Lewis
Molly L. Quackenbush
Kermit Roosevelt, Jr.
Dr. Cornelis A. van Minnen
Prof. Robert Wexelblatt
Advisory Board, Class of 2014
Dr. Douglas G. Brinkley
Bernadette Castro
Dr. Kathleen M. Dalton
Perry Dean Floyd
Mrs. Oliver R. Grace
Prof. Joshua D. Hawley
David McCullough
Prof. Char Miller
Prof. Charles E. Neu
Prof. Serge Ricard
Sheila Schafer
Lawrence D. Seymour
Prof. Mark R. Shulman
Prof. Samuel J. Thomas
The Hon. William J. vanden Heuvel
Front cover illustration:
A magazine cover from November 1916
featuring a TR photo-cartoon (from Rick
Marschall, Bully! The Life and Times of
Theodore Roosevelt, p. 370)
Back cover illustration:
“The Long, Long Trail” by “Ding” Darling,
sketched shortly after TR’s death, “one of the
most famous editorial cartoons in history”
(from Marschall, Bully!, p. 395)
Volume XXXII, Number 4, Fall 2011
TRA Journal
Annual Fund
Please see page 4 regarding the establishment of an annual
fund to support the publication and distribution of the Theodore
Roosevelt Association Journal.
3
The Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
is published quarterly by the
THEODORE ROOSEVELT ASSOCIATION
www.theodoreroosevelt.org
P.O. Box 719
Oyster Bay, NY 11771
Tweed Roosevelt
President
Terrence C. Brown
Executive Director
Hermann Hagedorn (1919-1957)
Director Emeritus
New TRA Officers
Congratulations to all new members of the Executive
Committee, the Board of Trustees, and the Advisory Board of
the Theodore Roosevelt Association, as well as to all who are
continuing to serve and to all whose terms of service have
recently concluded. The listing on page 2 incorporates the slate
(the entire Executive Committee and the Classes of 2014 for
the Board of Trustees and the Advisory Board) approved by the
Board of Trustees in Dickinson, North Dakota, on October 28,
2011.
Dr. John A. Gable (1974-2005)
Director Emeritus
Dr. William N. Tilchin
Editor of the Journal
Wallace Finley Dailey
Journal Photographic Consultant
James Stroud
Journal Designer
Print & Bind
Nittany Valley Offset
Guidelines for unsolicited submissions: Send three double-spaced
printed copies to Professor William Tilchin, Editor, Theodore Roosevelt
Association Journal, College of General Studies, Boston University, 871
Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215. Also provide an electronic
copy as an e-mail attachment addressed to [email protected]. Notes should
be rendered as endnotes structured in accordance with the specifications
of The Chicago Manual of Style. Submissions accepted for publication
may be edited for style and length.
The Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal, established in 1975 by Dr.
John Allen Gable and edited by him through 2004, is a peer-reviewed
periodical.
Save These Dates
The Ninety-third Annual Meeting of the Theodore Roosevelt
Association will take place in Chicago, Illinois, from Thursday,
October 25 to Sunday, October 28, 2012. Centered at the Union
League Club, this year’s Annual Meeting will have as its focus a
centennial celebration of the 1912 Progressive Party convention.
More details can be found at www.traannualmeeting2012.org.
Registration materials will be mailed to all TRA members well
in advance of this exciting event.
The Theodore Roosevelt Association is a national historical society and
public service organization founded in 1919 and chartered by a special act
of Congress in 1920. We are a not-for-profit corporation of the District of
Columbia, with offices in New York State. A copy of the last audited financial
report of the Theodore Roosevelt Association, filed with the Department of
State of the State of New York, may be obtained by writing either the New
York State Department of State, Office of Charities Registration, Albany,
NY 11231, or the Theodore Roosevelt Association, P.O. Box 719, Oyster Bay,
NY 11771.
The fiscal year of the Association is July 1 – June 30.
The Theodore Roosevelt Association has members in all fifty states and
many foreign countries, and membership is open to all.
The annual meeting of the Board of Trustees is held on or near
Theodore Roosevelt’s birthday, October 27. The day-to-day affairs of
the Association are administered by the Executive Committee, elected
annually by the Board of Trustees. The members of the Board of Trustees
are elected in three classes, each class with a term of three years.
4
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
Notes from the Editor
photo by Marcia Tilchin
The Editor’s Satisfactions
William Tilchin.
This Issue
This issue of the Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
features Bruce Shields’s and Louis Priebe’s lead article—both
medical and historical in nature­­­­—on TR’s vision. Then Rick
Marschall’s new book filled with TR cartoons (a couple of which
are on this edition’s front and back covers) is reviewed by Robert
Wexelblatt. The fifth installment of Gregory A. Wynn’s column
in essence introduces a reprinted article (unusual for the TRA
Journal, but deemed worthy of republication on account of
its fascinating content and literary quality). Next comes the
twelfth installment of Tweed Roosevelt’s column, followed by
Presidential Snapshots and TR-Era Images. Last there is an
article by the editor pertaining to a recent TR-centered event at
Boston University.
Despite the heavy demands on my time and the unglamorous
detail work that is central to the production of each issue, there
are several reasons why I greatly enjoy fulfilling the role of
editor of the Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal. First
and foremost, being the editor of the world’s leading periodical
focused on Theodore Roosevelt and his era affords me the
opportunity to be at the center of U.S. and international TR
scholarship and to interact frequently with numerous prominent
TR authorities. Second, I find it stimulating to oversee the
production of a peer-reviewed journal with very high standards
for historical accuracy, literary expression, accessibility for
readers, and illustration and design. Third, this responsibility
enables me to apply some of my professional strengths to an
important task in the service of a venerable organization of
which I have been an enthusiastic member for over thirty years,
and in the process to honor and carry forward the legacy of my
late friend and mentor, Dr. John A. Gable. Fourth and finally,
I am pleased and energized whenever I am fortunate enough to
be the recipient of a thoughtful complimentary message from a
reader of the Journal.
Establishing an Annual Fund for the TRA Journal
TRA President Tweed Roosevelt has made the membership
aware of the formidable (but far from insurmountable)
challenges currently confronting the TRA. One of the significant
expenses in the TRA’s annual budget is the production and
distribution of the TRA Journal. During the TRA’s Ninetysecond Annual Meeting in North Dakota in October, the
Executive Committee endorsed a proposal to establish an
annual fund for the Journal. All contributions to this fund
will be designated for a single purpose: supporting the TRA
Journal. Anyone who might be interested in participating in
a TRA Journal annual fund is encouraged to contact Tweed
Roosevelt ([email protected]) or Executive Director Terry
Brown ([email protected]; P.O. Box 719, Oyster
Bay, NY 11771).
William Tilchin
Volume XXXII, Number 4, Fall 2011
5
Grass Roots
Notes from the Executive Director
If you are like me, you can’t help but think of the parallels
between the current political campaign and that of a century ago.
CNN is like the cover of Life Magazine. A tweet is a street corner
sign. And social media take the place of speeches delivered from
the back end of a Pullman.
The year 2012 is an important centennial for TR, and the
TRA is all over it. Certainly the major event will be the Ninetythird Annual Meeting at the Union League Club in Chicago
during October 25-28. Highlights will include the Windy City’s
architecture by boat, a gala reception at the Field Museum, and,
for the brave, a tour of Wrigley Field.
Another important look at the Progressive Party will take
place from mid-June through election day in the New York area.
An exhibition and symposium entitled “TR in ‘12” will be staged
at the TR Birthplace National Historic Site on East 20th Street
in New York (June 15 - Sept. 9) and will then travel to the Oyster
Bay Historical Society on Long Island. Posters, cartoons, letters,
political buttons, and artifacts will tell the story, including the
assassination attempt in Milwaukee on October 14, 1912. This is
the first project in a new initiative to give the TRA a larger role
at the TR Birthplace NHS by creating such temporary displays.
A catalog and online symposium will accompany the exhibit. If
you have museum experience, please step up to be part of future
planning.
Interior decorating is not among the punch list items in the
TRA’s Vision Statement. Nonetheless, that important skill can
aid in “perpetuating the memory and ideals of TR.” In 2012 the
TRA will be helping the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) to
recreate the museum and the in-port cabin on board. These two
spaces present the TR story to the crew, visitors, and VIPs. They
are important locations on the ship.
The NCAA has expanded its headquarters in Indianapolis.
The new building has six conference rooms, and one is named
for TR. The TRA is lending important items to tell the TR story
there.
As a case in point that the TRA is moving forward, the
“Strenuous Life 2012 - Cuba” trip filled up quickly. Plans are
in the works for a centennial Panama voyage in 2014, as well
as for other domestic and overseas opportunities. These are a
Terry Brown, young Civil War enthusiast.
benefit of your membership. If you have friends who may wish
to travel with TRA members, including a visit to the USS TR
aircraft carrier in 2013, encourage them to join now!
Congratulations to the Capital Area Chapter for a successful
Police Award. Also noted are successful fundraisers for Teddy
Bears in New York City and Dallas.
All of the above are happening because member volunteers,
with support from the headquarters in Oyster Bay and New York
City, put in the energy, time, and thought to start them up and
see them through. Your participation is invited. Bring forth
your ideas. Tweed and I and the Executive Committee are more
than happy to listen and to help you explore the possibilities.
As was 1912, 2012 promises to be an interesting and exciting
year. If you are like me, you may be thinking that the more
things change, the more they stay the same. TR made things
change. What changes will November 2012 bring?
In the spirit of TR . . .
Terry Brown
6
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
THEODORE ROOSEVELT ASSOCIATION JOURNAL
Volume XXXII, Number 4, Fall 2011
CONTENTS
Theodore Roosevelt’s Vision
by Milton Bruce Shields and Louis Victor Priebe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . pages 7-13
Review of Rick Marschall, BULLY! The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt
by Robert Wexelblatt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . pages 14-15
A Monumental Memorial
The Material Culture of Theodore Roosevelt #5 by Gregory A. Wynn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . pages 16-17
Presidential Images, History, and Homage: Memorializing Theodore Roosevelt, 1919-1967
by Alan Havig . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . pages 18-28
An Essential TR Library: Fifty Indispensable Books
Forgotten Fragments #12 by Tweed Roosevelt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . pages 29-32
Presidential Snapshot #17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 33
TR-Era Images
by Art Koch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 34
Theodore Roosevelt Celebrated at Boston University
by William N. Tilchin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . pages 35-39
Volume XXXII, Number 4, Fall 2011
7
Theodore Roosevelt’s Vision
by Milton Bruce Shields and Louis Victor Priebe
Introduction
As an exceptionally frail child growing up in the New York
City of the 1860s, “Teedie” Roosevelt was confronted with two
significant health problems: bronchial asthma and myopia. How
this determined lad overcame both
medical challenges to become one
of our nation’s most robust and
progressive Presidents is indeed
an inspirational saga.
Roosevelt’s life, previously unpublished medical information,
interviews with knowledgeable people, and visits to places of
importance in TR’s life: his New York City birthplace at 28 East
20th Street, his Sagamore Hill home in Oyster Bay, and the
Theodore Roosevelt Collection at Harvard University.
Myopia
Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Harvard College Library
The physical nature of
Roosevelt’s eyes can best be
Much has been written
understood by considering the
about the influence of TR’s lifecustomary analogy of the eye to a
threatening asthma during his
camera. Both may be thought of
early years, most notably by the
as a black box with a lens at one
distinguished historian David
end and film at the other (at least
McCullough in Mornings on
in the pre-digital age of cameras).
Horseback, which chronicles
In our eyes, the film is called the
the first twenty-seven years of
retina. Diverging rays of light
our twenty-sixth President’s life.
enter the eye or camera and pass
McCullough describes the agony
through the lens, which must focus
of young Roosevelt’s asthmatic
the rays precisely on the retina
condition, referred to as “a
or film to create a sharp image.
disease of the direst suffering,”
In the normal eye, the focusing
but suggests that it may have
power of the lens and the distance
contributed to his robust nature in
between lens and retina are such
later life by providing the impetus
that a clear image is created.
to develop his strength.1 Less has
In many people, however, the
rays come to a focus behind the
been written about his significant–
retina, either because their eye is
but more subtle–myopia, or
shorter than normal or because
nearsightedness. Most references
the focusing power of their lens is
on this aspect of TR’s health are
too weak. This is called hyperopia
oblique, leaving readers with
or farsightedness, since such
the impression that it may have
individuals can see at a distance,
had less influence on him than
Theodore Roosevelt carried twelve pairs of steel-rimmed
but have difficulty reading
his asthma. While the relative
glasses in the clothing and hat that he wore in Cuba.
without glasses that help to focus
importance of the two conditions
the light rays. Conversely, a
on the formation of Roosevelt’s
character is most prudently left
person such as TR with myopia
to conjecture, an undeniable fact is that his severely restricted
or nearsightedness may be able to read without glasses but
eyesight was indeed a major factor throughout his life.
sees poorly at a distance. This impairment is usually present
because his or her eyes are longer than normal, and light rays
In this essay, we attempt to fill an important gap in
come to a focus before reaching the retina. The larger eyes of
chronicling Theodore Roosevelt’s life, as seen through the prism
the myope also have thinner retinas, which increase the risk of
of his visual impairment and how it influenced him over his sixty
retinal detachment, especially with trauma–a point of interest
years. Our research is based on available literature on President
in Roosevelt’s ocular history.
8
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
Museum at Sagamore Hill, Oyster Bay, New York
Today, thanks in no small measure to Roosevelt’s observations
and concerns, vision testing is a routine part of school health
programs.
A Theodore Roosevelt 1904 campaign button in the shape of his
trademark pince-nez glasses.
The influence of TR’s myopia and its eventual correction
with glasses is expressed most poignantly by the renowned
Roosevelt biographer Edmund Morris in The Rise of Theodore
Roosevelt:
It is impossible to overestimate the importance of this event
on the boy’s maturing sensibilities. Through the miraculous
little windows that now gripped his nose, the world leaped
into pristine focus, disclosing an infinity of detail, of color,
of nuance, and of movement just when the screen of his
mind was at its most receptive. One of the best features
of his adult descriptive writing—an unsurpassed joy in
things seen—dates back to this moment; while another—his
abnormal sensitivity to sound—is surely the legacy of the
myopic years that came before.3
TR’s Recorded Ocular History
It is difficult to envision TR without those iconic pincenez glasses. They were as much a part of him as his trademark
mustache and toothy smile, and his spectacles played many
varied roles over the course of his life, from evoking derision to
possibly saving his life. Yet the most significant influence of his
myopia may have been during those first thirteen years when
he was without glasses. Only a person with significant myopia
can appreciate what it must have been like to hear the song of a
bird but not see its source or to see trees as amorphous shapes
of green and not realize that they were composed of delicate
branches and individual leaves. This hardship is conveyed best
in TR’s own words, as he reflects in his autobiography on his
thirteenth year:
It was this summer that I got my first gun, and it puzzled me
to find that my companions seemed to see things to shoot
at which I could not see at all. One day they read aloud an
advertisement in huge letters on a distant billboard, and I
then realized that something was the matter, for not only
was I unable to read the sign but I could not even see the
letters. I spoke of this to my father, and soon afterwards got
my first pair of spectacles, which literally opened an entirely
new world to me. I had no idea how beautiful the world
was until I got those spectacles. I had been a clumsy and
awkward little boy, and while much of my clumsiness and
awkwardness was doubtless due to general characteristics, a
good deal of it was due to the fact that I could not see and yet
was wholly ignorant that I was not seeing. The recollection
of this experience gives me a keen sympathy with those who
are trying in our public schools and elsewhere to remove
the physical causes of deficiency in children, who are often
unjustly blamed for being obstinate or unambitious or
mentally stupid.2
Indeed, as Morris notes, one outcome of TR’s deprivation of
corrective spectacles in his formative years was the enhancement
of his auditory sense. Throughout his life, he took pride and
pleasure in an almost encyclopedic ability to identify bird calls.
In his first printed work, The Summer Birds of the Adirondacks,
he devoted more attention to the sounds of the birds than to their
colors or any other aspect.4 His highly developed sense of hearing
may have also served him well on his many hunting forays (which
were additionally aided by a custom-made Winchester rifle that
was said to have had a crescent cheek-piece, which apparently
helped alleviate the influence of his myopia5).
While his glasses opened up a whole new world to TR,
they were not without their detriments. In the late nineteenth
century, glasses were still viewed by some as a sign of weakness.
In fact, a few ranchers in the Dakota Badlands regarded his
spectacles as a sign of defective moral character and derisively
referred to the young TR as “that four-eyed maverick.”6 There
was even disappointment among some of his recruits to the
Rough Riders when they discovered that their leader wore
glasses.7 But Roosevelt became accustomed to these reactions
and would defiantly gaze back through the same offending
lenses with such confidence and intensity as to assuage any
question about his character. With time, his glasses became part
of his recognizable persona or “image.” The rimless pince-nez
squeezed his thick nose, producing a perpetual furrow between
his eyebrows, and their changing reflection from the constant
movement of his head made the expression of his pale blue eyes
hard to gauge. When he returned home to a hero’s welcome
after the Cuban campaign, it was the reflected light from his
spectacle lenses that allowed those on shore to pick out TR from
all the other soldiers on the bridge of their ship.8
The Cuban campaign of the Spanish-American War was
one of those points in Roosevelt’s odyssey when glasses may
Volume XXXII, Number 4, Fall 2011
Another close call occurred many years later. When TR
was campaigning for the presidency against William H. Taft and
Woodrow Wilson in 1912, he was shot by a would-be assassin,
and the wound might well have been mortal had the bullet not
entered through his inner coat pocket where he had placed a
thick folded speech and the empty case for his spectacles.11
It is well documented that Roosevelt remained exceptionally
vigorous during his presidency, setting aside regular times for
wrestling, boxing, jujitsu, tennis, horseback riding, and long
walks. During a boxing bout with an army officer in 1904, TR
sustained an injury to his left eye, eventually leading to blindness
in that eye. But, as a consummate gentleman who was sensitive
to others’ feelings, he never revealed the identity of the officer,
as he did not want the person to “feel badly.” Roosevelt also
seemed reluctant to have the public know of his infirmity, since
it would be another thirteen years before he revealed “for the
first time the fact that the sight of one of his eyes was destroyed
at the White House, when he was President, during a boxing
exercise with a young captain of artillery who was on his staff
there.”12 Shortly thereafter, the New York Times published an
article in which Colonel Dan T. Moore indicated that he must
have been the person who “put out Roosevelt’s eye,” since he
was the only one who fit the description, and yet he never knew
the seriousness of the injury until he read the recent newspaper
accounts. “But could you ask for any better proof of the man’s
sportsmanship,” he was quoted, “than the fact that he never told
me what I had done to him, never told anybody else that I know
of?”13
Medical Information Regarding TR’s Ocular Status
In our quest to learn more about the medical facts of
Roosevelt’s ocular history, we had hoped to examine a pair of
his glasses in order to document their precise power (referred to
as “refractive error”). We were perplexed to discover, however,
that apparently not a single pair is known to exist–not in his
boyhood home, now a museum, in New York City, not in the
Theodore Roosevelt Collection at Harvard University, and not
even in his home at Sagamore Hill or the adjacent museum.
Furthermore, neither today’s leading authorities on Roosevelt
nor members of his family appear to know of the existence of a
single pair of his glasses.16
From his thirteenth year to his final day, it is unlikely that
Roosevelt was ever far from his glasses. So dependent was he on
them that they were undoubtedly the last thing he relinquished
when he turned the lights out at night and the first thing he
reached for in the morning. We know that he also continually
kept several backup pairs available (although probably never as
many as when he charged up San Juan Hill!). With so many
pairs of glasses over his lifetime, it is mystifying to discover that
none is presently known to have survived for posterity. (Authors’
note: Information about the location of any of TR’s spectacles
will be greatly appreciated.) Whatever the reason may be, it is
likely that Roosevelt would not object to their disappearance,
since he always tried to downplay his physical infirmities. Had
he been born in more recent times, it is reasonable to speculate
that he would have embraced the opportunity to trade in his
thick spectacles for contact lenses or even the laser surgery
called LASIK. But, alas for TR, he was born into a world that
was neither fully prepared for his progressive political vision nor
medically equipped to better correct his personal vision.
The artifacts we found that were most closely related to
Roosevelt’s eyewear were two campaign buttons from the 1904
election, one of which can be viewed in the museum behind the
family home of Sagamore Hill and the other in the museum
located in his boyhood home in New York City. Both buttons
Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site,
New York City
have played a role in preserving his life. As he stepped off the
ship onto the sandy beaches of Cuba, there was one essential
item that he had made sure to have with him: a dozen pairs of
steel-rimmed glasses strategically placed within his clothing and
even sewn into his Rough Rider hat.9 He clearly did not want to
find himself in the heat of battle without being able to see the
enemy. (As it turned out, however, during the charge up San
Juan Hill, his sweat-fogged glasses reduced awareness of his
surroundings largely to sounds identified by his exceptionally
keen sense of hearing.10)
9
When playing tennis, TR chose to stay close to the net
because of his myopia, despite the fact that he apparently wore
his glasses when he played.14 In 1908, during the last year of
his presidency, he is reported to have been struck in the left eye
by a tennis ball with sufficient force to shatter his glasses and
lacerate the skin around the eye. It is not clear whether this
also contributed to his loss of vision, but it is well established–
even though he tried to play it down at the time–that Theodore
Roosevelt was blind in one eye when he left the White House
and embarked on an extended African hunting safari (all the
more remarkable when considering that he personally killed
296 animals).15
Two Theodore Roosevelt 1904 campaign buttons, one in the shape of
pince-nez glasses.
10
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
are in the form of pince-nez glasses, with Roosevelt in the right
frame and his running mate, Charles W. Fairbanks, in the left.
The only other ocular-related artifact we found is the glasses
case that may have saved his life during the 1912 campaign­­­­–also
on view in the New York City museum.
asked if he might send them to Snyder.21 In her letter, she also
noted that “I only heard Doctor tell of his pleasant associations
with the President, Mrs. Roosevelt and the children, and of
course he was especially interested in providing the glasses (9
pairs I believe) for his African hunting trip.”22
A “breakthrough” came, however, when we were introduced
(courtesy of Edmund Morris) to Wallace Finley Dailey, curator
of the Theodore Roosevelt Collection at Harvard College Library.
Dailey recalled the text of a lecture, titled “T.R.,” that had been
delivered in 1959 to the New England Ophthalmological Society
by Charles Snyder, who was then librarian of the Lucien Howe
Library at the Massachusetts Eye & Ear Infirmary, just across
the Charles River from Harvard. The information that follows
is from Snyder’s printed lecture and related materials, kindly
provided by Dailey.
Dr. Grow undoubtedly knew the details of Roosevelt’s
uniocular blindness, but he was discreet in his faithfulness
to doctor-patient confidentialities in not publicly disclosing
them, since he also knew, as we have seen, that TR was very
sensitive about the defect and for many years made every effort
to conceal it not only from political associates and opponents
but also from his family and friends. Not only was this one of
Roosevelt’s best-kept secrets until late in his life, but the actual
nature of the blinding defect has also remained unclear. Most
biographers have concluded that the blindness in TR’s left eye
was the result of a retinal detachment. This is reasonable, since
the thin retina of the myope, as previously discussed, is more
susceptible to tearing and detachment, especially in response to
trauma. However, that theory may not be entirely correct.
Snyder related that he had received “some weeks ago” from
Dr. Hanford L. Auten of Hanover, New Hampshire, a small
box containing two lenses without the frames. On the outside
of the box was inscribed, “The lenses were worn by Theodore
Roosevelt during his entire presidency. He always had several
pair available–as he was 8 D myopic (D refers to diopter, the
unit of measure for lens power) and could see but little without
them. New glasses were prescribed for him by Dr. E. J. Grow,
U.S. Navy, at the time he left Washington to go to Africa.”
The lenses were examined at Mass Eye & Ear Infirmary and
found to be identical to each other in all respects. However,
their power was measured at -7 D, not -8 D (the minus prefix
denotes myopia, while a positive sign indicates hyperopia). But
either power represents a high degree of myopia, with -5 D being
the approximate cutoff between “medium and high” refractive
error. The lenses were eventually given to the Theodore
Roosevelt Collection, but this donation occurred before Dailey
became curator, and despite his extensive search, they have
not been found. Nevertheless, the Snyder paper provides some
interesting glimpses into TR’s ocular history.17
To learn more about the ophthalmologist who refracted
Roosevelt (meaning measured his lens power), Snyder wrote
to the widow of Dr. Grow and received a letter from her, which
Dailey also shared with us.18 The letter was accompanied
by Grow’s obituary, which noted that he died in 1935, having
retired from the U.S. Navy at the rank of captain. He had served
“with the Naval Forces in Europe during the World War,” and
his seminal contribution had been “establishing standards of
vision in the Navy,”19 which must have been close to TR’s heart
considering his interest in eyesight and his love for the navy.
In her letter to Snyder, Ms. Grow noted that Roosevelt’s lenses
“have been in my husband’s bureau all these years, and largely
from sentiment and his handwriting I could not throw away the
little box.”20 However, one day when she had an appointment
with Dr. Auten, she inquired as to whether he might be interested
in them and was surprised to find that he was very pleased and
The most accurate information on this question is very
likely to be found in the transcript of an interview with Dr.
William H. Wilmer, a distinguished professor of ophthalmology
at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in the early
twentieth century (today the Department of Ophthalmology
at Johns Hopkins is called the Wilmer Institute), by Henry F.
Pringle, who published a biography of TR in 1931. A copy of this
transcript was given to Snyder by Robert H. Haynes, who was
then curator of the Roosevelt Collection at Harvard. Wilmer
noted that “President Roosevelt was seen with Admiral Rixey,
December 12, 1904. At that time the President gave a history
of having noticed for a while a dimness before the left eye after
wrestling, and the further history that about two weeks ago, he
was struck in the left eye while boxing. Since that time, he had
noticed black spots before the eye.” While “at first it seemed
rather central and blurred the vision, . . . now it seems to have
moved about two inches to the left. President Roosevelt was
very near-sighted, but with proper glass he had unusually
keen and accurate vision. Examination at the time showed a
few spots of hemorrhage in the retina of the left eye and some
floating opacities in the vitreous” (the clear gel that fills up the
back of the eye). Wilmer persuaded the President to “rest for a
short while, giving up his usual vigorous exercises.” TR initially
objected, but eventually consented when Wilmer pointed out
that “the President of the United States should at least have as
good treatment as an ignorant pauper in the hospital, which
appealed to him, and he did make an excellent patient.”
Wilmer continued to examine the President periodically
over the following years and noted that the retinal hemorrhages
were resolved and that only a few opacities remained in the
vitreous. However, in later life he developed a cataract (an
opacity of the lens), “reducing vision in the left eye to perception
of light. The type of cataract was one that could have been
Volume XXXII, Number 4, Fall 2011
Still, it does not entirely close the story. A cataract that
is dense enough to limit vision to only the perception of light
would likely preclude the ophthalmologist from seeing into the
back of the eye and determining whether a retinal detachment,
which could have developed later after formation of the cataract,
was also present. Today we have ultrasound instruments, which
allow determination of the retinal status through opaque media,
but nothing of the sort was available in Roosevelt’s time. In
addition, cataract surgery has advanced dramatically since the
early twentieth century, and it is quite likely that Roosevelt
would have such surgery today in order to regain binocular
vision, if his retina was determined to be healthy. But the
regrettable fact is that we are unlikely ever to know the full story
of the blindness in Theodore Roosevelt’s left eye.
As a final interesting aside, Wilmer concluded the interview
by noting:
It might be interesting to know that the last Sunday I spent
in America, before going to France in the early summer
of 1918, I passed with Colonel Roosevelt at Oyster Bay. I
arrived in the afternoon about half past three or four, and
found him sitting on the floor playing with his daughter
Ethel’s children. He jumped up with great alacrity, and
said, “Wilmer, behold in me the natural born grandfather!”
I congratulated him upon his seeming good health and
vigor and asked him how he felt. He replied, “Well, apart
from the fact that I am blind in one eye and cannot hear out
of one ear, I am fit as a fiddle.”24
Six months later, Theodore Roosevelt removed his glasses, lay
down in his bed at his beloved Sagamore Hill, and closed his
eyes for the last time.
myopia and his persona.
It has long been suggested that both myopia and hyperopia
may influence an individual’s compensating habits, preferences,
and mannerisms to some degree. While such generalizations
must be viewed with caution, theories about the influence
of both conditions seem logical. The myope, who sees more
comfortably close up, may prefer reading and other private or
individual pursuits that are within arm’s reach. As a result,
the person with the so-called “myopic personality” tends to be
more studious, shy, and withdrawn and is often seen as a bit less
sociable. The hyperope, in contrast, sees more comfortably at a
distance, and is more likely to prefer being out-of-doors, playing
sports, hunting, hiking, and the like. In general, the “hyperopic
personality” is said to tend more toward extroverted and
sociable behavior. While the impact of myopia on personality
has been a controversial issue, with published reports on both
sides, the most recent studies have failed to reveal a significant
correlation. The most notable of these studies is by Robert van
de Berg et al., who analyzed data from 633 individual twins and
278 family members, comparing refractive error with results
of the International Personality Item Pool questionnaire.
They concluded: “The long-held view that myopic persons are
introverted and conscientious may reflect intelligence-related
stereotypes rather than real correlations.”26
Theodore Roosevelt’s personality is clearly consistent with
these scientific observations regarding myopia and personality.
On the surface, despite his high degree of myopia, his interests
and personality are more in line with those of the “hyperopic
personality.” Yet he also had the enormous appetite for reading
that is seen more with the “myopic personality.” So, on the
whole, TR’s personality does not appear to correlate with his
refractive error. It should be noted, however, that most of the
studies regarding myopia and personality were performed on
persons wearing corrective eyewear for their nearsightedness.
The British ophthalmologist, Patrick Trevor-Roper, in The
World Through Blunted Sight, suggested over forty years ago
Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic
Site, New York City
removed but as long as vision in the other eye was quite perfect it
was not necessary to do so.” According to Dr. Wilmer, therefore,
Roosevelt’s blindness in the left eye was due to a cataract,
probably of traumatic origin, and not a retinal detachment,23
and that is where Snyder left it in his lecture.
11
Speculation on the Influence of TR’s Myopia
Having reviewed the facts, as we have them, of Theodore
Roosevelt’s ocular history, we now venture into more speculative
territory. Did TR’s myopia, especially in his formative years,
materially influence the development of his proclivities,
interests, and abilities? Or, put more simply, to what extent did
it influence TR in becoming who he was? When this question
was posed to Edmund Morris, he expressed the belief “that TR’s
myopia profoundly affected him,” noting as an example “that
his extraordinary auditory sensitivity may have derived from it.”
However, he would not “go so far as to suggest that it turned
him into an intellectual.”25 Morris is undoubtedly correct. Yet
a question remains as to the possible correlation between his
The bullet-damaged steel-reinforced spectacle case that TR
fortunately had in his vest pocket at the time of an attempted
assassination in Milwaukee in October 1912.
12
that “such influence [of any refractive error on personality]
is inevitably greater when the ocular defect develops in
childhood, and is often tempered, but never annulled, by the
early provision of corrective spectacles.”27 This leads us to
wonder whether TR’s very limited visual world during his first
thirteen years of life might have further enhanced his interest
in reading, writing, and intellectual pursuits, especially in
a person with his innate inquisitiveness, his speed-reading
ability, and his nearly photographic memory. Had his vision
been normal or corrected at an earlier age, would he have spent
more of his youth playing ball and engaging in the other outof-doors activities of the average young boy? And would he
then have read less and possibly developed a narrower range
of literary interests? And would this have meant that Roosevelt
the man would not have been the voracious reader, the writer
of more books than any other President, and the broadly
versed intellectual that he was? If so, we would expect to see
the association repeated with reasonable frequency in other
people. But this does not appear to be the case. For example,
another Republican President, Ronald Reagan, was also highly
nearsighted and did not receive glasses until age 9 or 10.28 And
yet, while he was a very talented and well-regarded President,
no one would put him in the same intellectual or literary league
with TR.
If Roosevelt’s myopia did not appreciably affect his
personality, might it have contributed to his political outlook?
We have already seen how his visual impairment in childhood
gave him empathy for children in similar situations, which may
have led to the current emphasis on vision testing in public
schools. It is also reasonable to assume that what “Teedie”
read influenced the development of his worldview and values
and opinions and his selection of role models during these
formative years. While we were unable to learn the entire
scope of his childhood reading, it is certain that it included
the Bible, Pilgrim’s Progress, and other classics in world and
American literature, which unquestionably influenced his
literary interests, and possibly too his political outlook, for the
remainder of his life.
The fact is that we will never know conclusively to what
extent TR’s myopia and other visual problems influenced his
remarkable life. It is of interest, however, to reflect on another
comment by Trevor-Roper regarding persons with myopia,
who, he observes, share “a common burden which, like any
other impediment, may be either stimulating or damaging to
the evolution of their characters.”29 In consideration of this
observation, one conclusion which can be drawn with certainty
is that Theodore Roosevelt’s character development was
stimulated by virtually every challenge he encountered in his
life–including, undoubtedly, his myopia.
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
Milton Bruce Shields is Professor and Chairman Emeritus in
the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Science at the
Yale University School of Medicine. Dr. Shields is the author
of Shields’ Textbook of Glaucoma (1982; 6th edition, 2011) and
is co-founder and past president of the American Glaucoma
Society. He is a resident of Burlington, North Carolina.
Louis Victor Priebe, a public relations counselor in Washington,
D.C., is an inductee in the National Capital Public Relations Hall
of Fame, a former governor of the National Press Club, and a
Distinguished Alumnus of the Gaylord College of Journalism
and Mass Communications at the University of Oklahoma. He
resides in Springfield, Virginia.
Acknowledgements
The authors express gratitude to the following individuals
for their invaluable assistance and advice in acquiring relevant
information and materials for this essay: Mike Amato, National
Park Service ranger, Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National
Historic Site; Terrence C. Brown, executive director, Theodore
Roosevelt Association; Wallace Finley Dailey, curator, Theodore
Roosevelt Collection, Harvard College Library; David Dary,
prominent western author and chairman emeritus, Gaylord
College of Journalism and Mass Communications, University
of Oklahoma; Howard Ehrlich, former acting executive director,
Theodore Roosevelt Association; J. Douglas Frantz, former
mayor, Enid, Oklahoma, and relative of Rough Rider Capt.
Frank Frantz; Edmund Morris, eminent Roosevelt biographer;
Mike Piorunski, librarian, Wilmer Eye Institute; Tweed
Roosevelt, great-grandson of TR and president, Theodore
Roosevelt Association; Beth Shanke, director of research, Eric
Friedheim National Journalism Library, National Press Club;
Anisa Threlkeld, Atlanta ophthalmologist; William N. Tilchin,
editor, Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal; and Ralph
W. Weitz III, stewardship pastor, Immanuel Bible Church,
Springfield, Virginia.
Endnotes
David McCullough, Mornings on Horseback (New York:
Simon & Schuster, 1981), p. 90.
1
Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
(1913; reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1985), p. 18.
2
3
Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (1979;
Volume XXXII, Number 4, Fall 2011
reprint, New York: Random House, 2010), p. 35.
4
Morris, Rise of TR, pp. 65-66.
Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex (2001; reprint, New York:
Random House, 2010), p. 172.
5
6
7
Morris, Rise of TR, pp. 198, 296.
Morris, Rise of TR, p. 648.
8
Morris, Rise of TR, p. 695.
9
Morris, Rise of TR, p. 667.
10
Morris, Rise of TR, p. 685.
Edmund Morris, Colonel Roosevelt (New York: Random
House, 2010), pp. 243-248.
13
William H. Wilmer to Henry F. Pringle, cited by Pringle
in Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography (New York: Harcourt,
Brace and Co., 1931), quoted in Roosevelt R130.Sn9t, derived
from Henry F. Pringle papers (Roosevelt R110.P93r, p. 1), TR
Collection.
23
24
Ibid.
25
Edmund Morris to Bruce Shields, e-mail, August 17, 2011.
Robert van de Berg, Mohamed Dirani, Christine Y.
Chen, Nicholas Haslam, and Paul N. Baird, Investigative
Ophthalmology and Visual Science, Vol. 49, No. 3, March 2008,
pp. 882-886.
26
Patrick Trevor-Roper, The World Through Blunted Sight
(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1970), p. 14.
27
11
“Blind in Left Eye, Roosevelt Admits,” New York Times,
October 22, 1917; “T.R. Tells Loss of Eye,” Washington Post,
October 22, 1917.
Edmund Morris, Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan (New
York: Modern Library, 1999), p. 46.
28
12
29
Trevor-Roper, World Through Blunted Sight, p. 14.
“The Man Who Put Out Roosevelt’s Eye,” New York Times,
October 28, 1917.
13
14
Morris, Theodore Rex, p. 246.
15
Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, p. 26.
16
Tweed Roosevelt, personal communication, May 20, 2011.
Charles Snyder, “T.R.,” paper read before the New England
Ophthalmological Society, April 13, 1959, Roosevelt R130.Sn9t,
Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard
University, Cambridge, MA.
17
A. K. Grow to Snyder, undated but copied by Snyder, April 15,
1959, Roosevelt R130.Sn9t, TR Collection.
18
Obituary of Capt. E. J. Grow, who died September 5, 1935,
from a clipping taken from the Army and Navy Journal,
date unknown, copied by Snyder, April 15, 1959, Roosevelt
R130.Sn9t, TR Collection.
19
A. K. Grow to Snyder, undated (see note 18), Roosevelt
R130.Sn9t, TR Collection.
20
Hanford L. Auten to Snyder, February 6, 1959, Roosevelt
R130.Sn9t, TR Collection.
21
A. K. Grow to Snyder, undated (see note 18), Roosevelt
R130.Sn9t, TR Collection.
22
Vision Statement
The purpose of the Theodore Roosevelt Association of
Oyster Bay, New York, is to perpetuate the memory and
ideals of Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the
United States, for the benefit of the people of the United
States of America and the world; to instill in all who may
be interested an appreciation for and understanding of
the values, policies, cares, concerns, interests, and ideals
of Theodore Roosevelt; to preserve, protect, and defend
the places, monuments, sites, artifacts, papers, and other
physical objects associated with Theodore Roosevelt’s
life; to ensure the historical accuracy of any account in
which Theodore Roosevelt is portrayed or described; to
encourage scholarly work and research concerning any and
all aspects of Theodore Roosevelt’s life, work, presidency,
and historical legacy and current interpretations of his
varied beliefs and actions; to highlight his selfless public
service and accomplishments through educational and
community outreach initiatives; and, in general, to do all
things appropriate and necessary to ensure that detailed
and accurate knowledge of Theodore Roosevelt’s great
and historic contributions is made available to any and all
persons.
14
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
Book Review
Rick Marschall. BULLY! The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt.
Washington: Regnery Publishing, 2011, 440 pp.
Reviewed by Robert Wexelblatt
its ideal subject in TR. BULLY! The Life and Times of Theodore
Roosevelt can be read straight through, as it is full of information
and tells TR’s story with concision and accuracy; but it is also
fun to browse. BULLY! affords both profit and delight.
from Rick Marschall, Bully! The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt, p. 235
It is usual for biographies to be illustrated with pictures,
but here it is the other way around. Rick Marschall’s lively
biography furnishes the personal and political context for scores
of political cartoons, the real glory of the book. As an art form,
the American political cartoon had reached considerable heights
a century ago, and this book makes a case that the genre found
A cartoon of 1904 by Homer Davenport, “one of the most famous
cartoons in American political history.”
Though uncritical and nearly boundless, the author’s
affection for TR is neither naïve nor uninformed. A historian and
cartoonist himself, Marschall retrospectively relishes a subject
irresistible to cartoonists for the sheer scope of his actions and
achievements no less than his physical presence. The twentysixth President, he reminds us, loved fun and found lots of it; he
delighted in humor and provoking more of it. TR even enjoyed
being the butt of other people’s humor, which Marschall counts
as “one of the many refutations [of] those who say he possessed
a large ego” (p. 6). He observes in his foreword that “Presidents
were boring before Theodore Roosevelt, and boring after him;
life, as many said after he died, seemed emptier without him” (p.
4). This sentiment was doubtless true for the nation’s political
cartoonists, who had been drawing TR for decades, and who
must have felt a fraternal kinship with him.
Marschall makes a persuasive case that it was the
cartoonists who left us the best visual record of TR’s career
and person: “Movies and newsreels were new, but cartoonists
told us how Roosevelt walked and ran and rode and gestured
and laughed” (p. 4). The cartoons collected in the book come
from well-known magazines like Puck, Judge, and Life and the
great metropolitan newspapers like New York’s Journal, World,
and Herald, but also from the work of obscure caricaturists in
forgotten journals. Even experts are bound to make delightful
discoveries.
BULLY! is a book both charming and useful. It is arranged
in ten chapters, each devoted to a phase of the great man’s
life, each providing a brief, lively account (interspersed with
cartoons) of TR’s activities and their political context, each
concluding with a large “cartoon portfolio” from the period,
with commentary. As a biography the book is characterized
by its author as “comprehensive but not exhaustive” (p. 10).
It is intended as an introduction to TR, not the Last Word on
15
from Marschall, Bully!, p. 393
Volume XXXII, Number 4, Fall 2011
“There was one cartoon made while I was President, in which I appeared incidentally,” declared Theodore Roosevelt, “that was always a great
favorite of mine.” This cartoon was created by Everett E. Lowry for the Chicago Chronicle.
him. Still, comprehensive it is, beginning with an account of
the Roosevelt family and concluding with an evaluative and
admiring afterword.
The author is well-qualified to execute what is clearly a
labor of love. Marschall is a widely published author with a
specialty in American popular culture who has had a lifelong
fascination with TR. He knows the trade of cartooning, having
served as an editor at Marvel and a writer for Disney Comics, as
well as teaching courses on the craft. His personal collection of
vintage newspapers, magazines, cartoons, and advertisements,
with a particular focus on the period between the Civil War and
World War I, is among the most extensive in the country. For
a time Marschall was himself a political cartoonist, and so he
has a feel for the symbiotic relationship between the people who
produced these pointed pictorial commentaries and their most
cherished and inexhaustible subject. As he puts it, TR was “the
cartoonists’ best friend. . . . ‘Slow news days’ were solved in the
city rooms of American newspapers: cartoonists could draw
what TR did, or would do, or might do” (p. 9). Marschall admits
that he regards TR as the most interesting of Americans, a
model politician, and an exemplary human being: “In my larger
political philosophy and my more personal, family-circle civic
discussions, he is a model” (p. 402). His hope is that BULLY!
will lead more Americans not just to study the life and times of
Theodore Roosevelt but to emulate him.
Robert Wexelblatt, a member of the Advisory Board of the
Theodore Roosevelt Association, is professor of humanities
at Boston University’s College of General Studies. He has
published essays, stories, and poems in a wide variety of
journals, as well as several books, including, most recently, the
novel Zublinka Among Women. This is the third book review he
has written for the TRA Journal.
16
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
THE MATERIAL CULTURE OF
THEODORE ROOSEVELT (#5)
a column by Gregory A. Wynn
A MONUMENTAL MEMORIAL
Gregory A. Wynn and Andy Wynn.
The article that follows this column tells a fascinating
story that describes a dedicated and important effort by the
Roosevelt Memorial Association, the forerunner of the Theodore
Roosevelt Association, to establish a “monumental memorial” in
Washington, D.C., to honor Theodore Roosevelt.1 RMA leaders
considered it their “most important undertaking.”2 It failed.
Its title is Plan and Design for the Roosevelt Memorial in the
City of Washington—John Russell Pope Architect—Submitted
to the Congress of the United States by the Roosevelt Memorial
Association Pursuant to the Joint Resolution of Congress
Approved by the President, February 12, 1925. Each copy was
produced with its own lidded cardboard box with a paper label
on the cover of the box that reads: “Roosevelt Memorial in the
City of Washington.”
The book was published in December 1925 by Pynson
Printers, Inc., a New York boutique press known for its beautiful
and expensive printing. It is folio sized, measuring approximately
11 ¾” x 14 ¼”. Hardbound with only nineteen pages, it contains
Gregory A. Wynn Theodore Roosevelt Collection
photo by Art Koch
produced for the fundraising effort and the competition, this
book is the only published item specifically promoting the final
design. And, as a special congressional presentation item, few
were made, and fewer are known today. It is a tangible example
of the RMA’s effort to mobilize Congress hurriedly on behalf of
the TR memorial cause and the excessively ambitious design of
John Russell Pope.
The article by Alan Havig, reprinted from American
Quarterly, provides insight into historical topics that are not
often addressed within the pages of this journal: the varying
stature of Theodore Roosevelt in the public consciousness
in the years following his death, the early efforts of our own
organization, and the political nature of the memorials at the
Washington tidal basin.
As an introduction to the article, this issue’s column will
briefly comment upon an elaborately produced publication of
the Roosevelt Memorial Association. It is the prospectus for
the memorial that was never built, what Havig refers to as “the
beautifully printed copy of the design given to each member of
Congress.”3 While there were a few booklets and pamphlets
Box label for the RMA’s prospectus for a
Theodore Roosevelt Memorial.
Volume XXXII, Number 4, Fall 2011
17
Gregory A. Wynn Theodore Roosevelt Collection
The RMA would not give up on its hope for a memorial in
Washington. It eventually settled on Analostan Island, which
would soon become Theodore Roosevelt Island. Interestingly,
RMA leaders maintained Pope as their chosen architect for this
effort, though they were undecided about what the character of
that memorial would be.6 Fraught with back-and-forth debate
and controversy, this memorial too took many years to finalize,
eventually without a Pope contribution.
Title page of the RMA’s prospectus.
Despite the array of personalities involved on behalf of the
RMA’s original cause, it was the combination of scale, location,
and TR’s uncertain historical legacy (later reinforced by Henry
F. Pringle in his misconceived Pulitzer Prize-winning 1931
biography) that resulted in its defeat. Even in our own young
century such ambitious monuments have been criticized. The
elaborate National World War II Memorial bears many striking
similarities to Pope’s TR design. It too had difficulties being
legislated into existence and received similar criticisms in regard
to its scale and design. Most notably, it was called “heavyhanded,”7 which seems to be an apt description of the RMA’s illfated effort as well.
Endnotes
Roosevelt Memorial Association, Roosevelt Memorial
Competition: Program of a Competition to Select the Artist
or Group of Artists Who Will Be Commissioned to Design
and Direct the Construction of a Monumental Memorial to
Theodore Roosevelt in the City of Washington (New York: Lenz
& Riecker, Inc., 1925), title page.
1
six detailed drawings from the architect’s design.
Numerous significant American artists and architects had
been invited by the RMA to submit designs. Architects invited
included C. Grant LaFarge and the firm of McKim, Mead & White.
Sculptors invited included, oddly enough, the taxidermist Carl
Akeley, and the landscape designers invited included Frederick
Law Olmsted, Jr.4
2
Ibid., p. 5.
Alan Havig, “Presidential Images, History, and Homage:
Memorializing Theodore Roosevelt, 1919-1967,” American
Quarterly, Vol. 30, No. 4, Autumn 1978, p. 520.
3
John Russell Pope won the design award, and his
magnificent, but over-the-top, drawings illustrate the book.
Despite the TR memorial’s failure, Pope would go on to design
the National Gallery of Art, the National Archives, and the
Jefferson Memorial. The memorial to our third President would
be built where Pope’s TR design was not to be. (Frank Lloyd
Wright called Pope’s Jefferson Memorial an “arrogant insult to
the memory of Thomas Jefferson.”5)
As it turned out, Pope was not done with Theodore
Roosevelt. A later design of his was chosen for the New York
State Roosevelt Memorial in 1928. This is the famous addition
to the American Museum of Natural History which faces Central
Park West. Not completed until 1936, it was renamed specifically
the “Theodore Roosevelt Memorial,” as by that time another
President Roosevelt, the guest speaker at the dedication, was
rapidly overshadowing his famous cousin.
4
Roosevelt Memorial Competition, p. 16.
Thomas S. Hines, review of Steven Bedford, John Russell
Pope: Architect of Empire (New York: Rizzoli, 1998), New York
Times, November 15, 1998.
5
Analostan Island: The Site for the National Memorial to
Theodore Roosevelt in Washington (New York: Roosevelt
Memorial Association, 1931), p. 9.
6
Michael Z. Wise, “The New World War II Memorial in
Washington, D.C. Is Meant to Celebrate the Power of Democracy.
So Why Does It Resemble a Monument to a Defeated Fascist?”,
Architecture, May 2004, p. 95.
7
18
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
Presidential Images, History, and
Homage: Memorializing
Theodore Roosevelt, 1919-19671
by Alan Havig
The final axis terminal became the focus of an unintended
controversy during the 1920s. Confident of their hero’s right
to be memorialized with Washington and Lincoln, the devoted
friends of the recently deceased Theodore Roosevelt saw an
initial hold on the valued location slip from their grasp before the
stronger historical claims of Thomas Jefferson. In a fascinating
contest of historical images and the conflicting responsibilities
of national homage, Jefferson eventually gained a position with
Washington and Lincoln in the nation’s most significant garden
of honor. By the time another President bearing his name had
come to reside in the nearby executive mansion, Theodore
Roosevelt had been memorialized by the dedication of an island
in the Potomac River—within sight of, but excluded from, the
charmed triangle of greats.
* * * * *
Until the turn of the twentieth century the Mall had more
the appearance of an overgrown pasture and railroad yard than
a magnificent focus of the nation’s public life. A meeting of the
American Institute of Architects in the capital city in 1900 was
the occasion for the first serious consideration in decades of
ways to beautify the city and rescue L’Enfant’s vision of central
Washington from neglect and commercial development. An
A.I.A. delegation established contact with the Senate Committee
from American Quarterly, Autumn 1978, p. 515
By the 1920s, the Mall and the adjacent Potomac Park-Tidal
Basin area in the nation’s capital were approaching the finished
form envisioned in the plans of Pierre L’Enfant in the 1790s and
the Senate Park Commission in 1902. Since 1885 the completed
Washington Monument had stood near the intersection of the
Capitol and White House axes that L’Enfant had incorporated
into his original plan for the federal city. Three of the four
terminal points of the huge cross formed by the axes were
occupied by 1922: to the east of the Washington Monument
the Capitol; to the north the White House; and to the west the
recently completed Lincoln Memorial. Although the Mall area
was assuming its present appearance, it remained unbalanced
and incomplete, for south of the towering obelisk memorializing
George Washington, in the Tidal Basin area, lay an unoccupied
but significant site (see the image on this page).
on the District of Columbia, and in 1901 its chairman, James
McMillan of Michigan, gained Senate authorization to
commission plans for the improvement of the District’s park
system. The resulting Senate Park Commission was notable
both for the prestige and ability of its members and for the
scope and boldness of its vision. Daniel Burnham, Charles F.
McKim, Augustus St. Gaudens, and Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr.,
dedicated themselves to the revival and expansion of L’Enfant’s
plan for the entire city. Working in a national atmosphere
sensitive to the “city beautiful,” these creators of Chicago’s
White City of 1893 submitted their plans to the Senate in 1902.
The proposals, though not binding, came to have “great moral
force” over the years as Congress funded public structures. As
historian John Reps has written, these “skilled and dedicated
men . . . set the pattern for the subsequent development of one
of America’s major cities.”2
An example of this “moral force” was the selection of a
site for the Lincoln Memorial on land not yet reclaimed from
the Potomac. Though the Commission’s decision provoked
opposition, it was here that the Memorial was built within two
decades. The Commission was much less specific about the
potential memorial site south of the Washington Monument.
Volume XXXII, Number 4, Fall 2011
This Tidal Basin area became in the 1902 report the location of a
cluster of buildings dedicated to notable Americans, perhaps the
Founding Fathers. This dormant suggestion was the reigning
proposal for the site which the friends of Roosevelt would find
alluring during the 1920s.3
More than 85 years elapsed between the death of George
Washington and the completion of the monument dedicated to
him; 57 years passed between Lincoln’s assassination and the
dedication of the Lincoln Memorial.4 Perhaps to avoid such
delays, Roosevelt’s friends quickly organized after his death
in January 1919. If they were finally unable to place their
hero on a symbolic par with the Founder and the Defender of
American nationhood, they at least surpassed the promoters of
Washington and Lincoln in their organizational and financial
power.
after its founding in March 1919, the group held over $1,700,000
in contributions. The fund was pledged to the fulfillment of
three goals: to create a memorial park at Oyster Bay, Long
Island; to perpetuate Roosevelt’s “ideals” through such efforts
as underwriting programs in the schools and collecting
sources relating to TR’s life; and, of primary importance, “To
erect a monumental memorial in Washington to rank with
the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial.” The
Association pledged one million dollars toward this final goal
in 1923, and established a prestigious committee, chaired by
Roosevelt cabinet members Elihu Root and James R. Garfield,
to oversee the selection of a site and design.5
Together with Garfield, Hermann Hagedorn, Director of
the R.M.A. for many years, directed the tangible and intangible
resources of the Association during the 1920s. Hagedorn served
the memory and interpreted the meaning of Theodore Roosevelt
with remarkable devotion. The New York City-born son of a
wealthy German immigrant, he met and worked with the former
President in 1916, during the maneuvering
that killed the Progressive Party. In 1918 the
thirty-six-year-old Hagedorn published The
Boy’s Life of Theodore Roosevelt, the first of a
series of books on TR that continued into the
1950s. Foreshadowing the themes of patriotism
and Americanism that would constitute a
considerable measure of the R.M.A.’s message
during the 1920s, Hagedorn devoted his efforts
during the war to a newspaper propaganda
group called the “Vigilantes” and wrote a book on
loyalty aimed at German-Americans.6
Gregory A. Wynn Theodore Roosevelt Collection
The organization was the Roosevelt Memorial Association
[later renamed the Theodore Roosevelt Association]. Two years
19
The RMA’s 1919 TR-birthday mailer soliciting contributions for a
Theodore Roosevelt Memorial in Washington.
Hagedorn’s efforts on behalf of Roosevelt
aroused controversy and even ridicule, relevant to
the campaign for a Roosevelt Memorial. Despite
the R.M.A.’s positive contributions, skeptics had
good reason to fault the organization’s uncritical
approach to all that TR ever did and said, and its
alacrity in pushing for a national memorial so
soon after his death. At least one old Roosevelt
friend, the naturalist John Burroughs, balked
at “this indecent haste” to build a monument
in 1919. “Give the grass time to grow on his
grave before we pile up the marble.” By 1927,
Kansas historian James C. Malin complained
that the historical Theodore Roosevelt had
been obscured by “the Roosevelt Legend,” one
produced by his “uncritical admirers.” On the
occasion of the Roosevelt centennial in 1958,
two longtime acquaintances of Hagedorn harshly
summarized his four decades of service to
Roosevelt’s memory. Writing to his friend Van
Wyck Brooks, Lewis Mumford noted “something
quixotic and pathetic . . . about Hagedorn’s trying
to bring to life the dead bones of T.R.” Brooks
20
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
replied: “There is in all this much childish sentiment, along with
the endemic German worship of the fuhrer. Hermann’s fuhrer
happened to be T.R.”7 [Editor’s note: Written after World War
II, Brooks’s comment on Hagedorn, even acknowledging its
private context and even assuming thoroughly benign intent,
seems particularly ignorant and distasteful and insulting and
inappropriate.]
The most sarcastic public critic of the R.M.A. was Oswald
Garrison Villard, editor of The Nation. In April 1925 he
published a scathing piece in The American Mercury entitled
“Creating Reputations, Ltd.” He was organizing a new business,
announced Villard, a firm designed to defend and embellish the
reputations of prominent men. No longer need the friends of
politicians rely upon “that vague thing called the ‘truth of history’
and . . . Father Time himself.” Instead, Villard’s firm would use
modern advertising techniques to manufacture reputations, “to
anticipate the future and to copper rivet a favorable decision
so soundly that the work can never be offset or undone.” The
model that he would follow was the R.M.A. and Hagedorn.
With its skills and resources, this organization had fashioned a
one-dimensional image of Roosevelt designed to be immune to
criticism or revision. Although Hagedorn had reason to object
to the exaggerations and implications of “the witch-hunting
Mr. Villard,” there was an essence of truth in the charges.
As a historian of Theodore Roosevelt’s changing image has
concluded, the Association’s efforts were “at times misdirected
and over-religious,” producing “an unending stream of minutia
and idolatry which seem almost ahistorical in their moralistic
and evangelistic bent.” However worthy of recognition
Roosevelt’s achievements were, the R.M.A.’s unquestioning
devotion and narrow perspective during the 1920s would lead
it to push too early and with seeming arrogance for a grand
memorial in Potomac Park.8
Joint Resolution 135 was also rapidly approved because James
Garfield marshalled support for it. After Hagedorn requested
that Pepper be prodded, Garfield conferred not only with the
Senator but also with House Speaker Frederick Gillett, with
Roosevelt’s son-in-law Congressman Nicholas Longworth, and
with President Coolidge. On January 10, 1925, he reported to
Hagedorn that the resolution would pass and that Coolidge
would sign it. The President acted routinely on the measure in
mid-February.10
Misgivings about the R.M.A.’s plan in early 1925 were
sufficient to force two modifications in the Association’s
resolution. In its petition the organization had stated that
Congress might have to appropriate funds to complete the
project, as had been necessary with both the Washington
Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. The resolution as
passed, however, made no mention of the possible future use
of public monies, and the Association was charged with sole
financial responsibility for obtaining an architectural design.
Hagedorn’s group had also petitioned for a conditional grant of
the site for construction of a memorial, not simply the use of the
location as a basis for the design competition. The resolution
which Coolidge signed specifically stated that the Association
did not have the authority to execute its plans for a memorial
without further congressional approval, and that the Tidal Basin
site was the organization’s to use only as the basis for a design
competition. At this early stage, Congress hesitated to make
even the conditional commitment that Roosevelt’s partisans
desired.11
From May 1923, when the R.M.A. selected the Tidal Basin
site, until May 1926, when a House committee decided in favor
of a Jefferson memorial for that location, Congress and the
public faced the issue of memorializing Theodore Roosevelt.
The Association settled on the location after a survey of possible
sites in Washington, during which it was advised by a group of
artists which included Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., a member of
the 1901 Park Commission. Following the group’s pledge of one
million dollars to the memorial’s construction in October 1923,
it drafted a resolution requesting congressional permission to
use the Tidal Basin site. Republican Senator George W. Pepper
of Pennsylvania, Chairman of the Joint Committee on Library,
introduced the petition in May 1924.9
The Association held its design competition between April
and early October of 1925. Approximately eighteen architects,
sculptors, and landscape designers either were invited or
applied to solve “a many-sided and complex problem of the
first magnitude, permanently establishing the only remaining
cardinal point of the great central composition around which
the Capital of the United States is developing.” Adhering to the
rules of the American Institute of Architects, the Association
arranged for a professional jury of award, which submitted its
decision to Hagedorn on October 4, 1925. Two days later, in
a ceremony at Washington’s Corcoran Gallery of Art, R.M.A.
President Garfield announced John Russell Pope of New York
as the winner. His design was made public on December 12,
on the occasion of its submission to Congress. Accompanying
the beautifully printed copy of the design given to each member
of Congress was the R.M.A.’s request for approval of the plan
and permission to erect the memorial. Congressional passage
of the resolution introduced in the Senate by Pepper and in the
House by Robert Bacon of New York would have authorized
construction of the memorial.12
Although Hagedorn became impatient with Congress’
failure to act on the request, in reality the legislators moved
quickly considering its significance. While this partially resulted
from an absence of serious opposition to the request, Senate
Pope’s design, in its grand dimensions and its classical style,
was worthy of a heroic national figure. Its central feature was a
huge shaft of water thrust two hundred feet into the air from
the center of an island of white granite. The island was set in a
* * * * *
Volume XXXII, Number 4, Fall 2011
circular basin which was flanked on the east and west by curving
colonnades. Although the memorial was not “calculated to
dwarf the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument,”
as Villard charged, it was out of proportion to other structures
in the Mall composition. After their first exposure to the design,
even Hagedorn and Garfield admitted that “it seemed to lack
unity.” The island from which the fountain rose was 280 feet in
diameter, just short of the length of a football field, and the basin
was 600 feet across. A straight line drawn from the center of
one colonnade to the other measured 800 feet. Each colonnade
was 670 feet long and 60 feet high. A Washington Post writer
calculated that the entire memorial, landscaping included,
would extend 1,940 feet from east to west. By comparison, the
Capitol building was only 751 feet in length, and the Washington
Monument 555 feet tall. In the debate that occurred in late
1925 and early 1926, however, few people made size or visual
disunity the basis of their criticism. Nor were there objections
to the classical mode of the Pope design or the credentials of
the architect. Ironically, one of Pope’s final contributions
to monumental Washington was the more restrained and
manageable Jefferson Memorial, erected on the site for which
his Roosevelt memorial had been intended.13
21
of the deep sources of his nation’s history and sank back into
them only to rise anew, cleansing the air and inspiring his
countrymen with power, sparkle, faith and endurance. The
fountain ever changing in its rising and falling, now flashing
in the sunlight, now scarcely visible in the cloudy dusk, is
always the Potomac River; even as Roosevelt, legislator,
soldier, Governor, President, apostle of civic righteousness,
a square deal, of national defense and national unity and
the helping hand across the sea, is always—America.
The theme of Roosevelt the nationalist, the unifier, was further
represented in the idea that the memorial, with its imposing
colonnades on the east and west, was a gateway between the
sections as they met at the Potomac River. The New York-born
Roosevelt, through his mother’s family a son of the South as
well as of the North, symbolized as President “the final closing
of the breach” between the one-time antagonists and the true
restoration of “a more perfect union.”15
The Roosevelt Memorial Association used two arguments to
justify the appropriateness of the Tidal Basin site. One related
vaguely to Roosevelt’s role in the revitalization of L’Enfant’s
Surprisingly, in the economy-minded
Coolidge era, interested commentators made
little mention either of the memorial’s cost or of
the likely need for public funds to complete it.
The press unofficially quoted an R.M.A. estimate
of five million dollars for the realization of the
Pope design, and an equal sum for reclaiming
land from the Potomac and other “incidental
improvements,” the latter to be borne by the
government. One vocal citizen deplored the
Association’s intention to “pass the buck to
Congress” after it had spent its one million
dollars on the memorial, but he did not represent
a major public concern. The burden of the
opponents’ case rested on the appropriateness of
memorializing Roosevelt on the chosen site at all,
not on such practical considerations as cost.14
It is to Roosevelt, the American, exemplar
of patriotic devotion, that this design is
dedicated. . . . Roosevelt’s spirit sprang out
Gregory A. Wynn Theodore Roosevelt Collection
The R.M.A.’s strategy for winning approval
of the memorial plan included “rapidity of
action” to “prevent opposition” and efforts to
highlight the merits of the design itself. The
Association missed few opportunities to interpret
the symbolism inherent in the memorial. The
“spout of living water” was chosen to represent
the Rooseveltian vitality and energy, as well as
the hero’s multifaceted Americanism. According
to Garfield:
Cover of the RMA’s prospectus for a Theodore Roosevelt Memorial.
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
Gregory A. Wynn Theodore Roosevelt Collection
22
The proposed Theodore Roosevelt Memorial on the Washington Tidal Basin, as pictured in the RMA’s prospectus.
plan for the city by the Park Commission in 1901 and after. The
R.M.A. maintained that its location for the memorial was fitting
because “of President Roosevelt’s part in the creation of the Park
Commission plan,” by his support of it, and “by his insistence
that each new element of beauty or utility introduced into the
city should be in harmony with it.” When critics charged that
Roosevelt’s admirers intended to alter the L’Enfant plan or its
1901 revival, Hagedorn asserted that the memorial would fulfill,
not violate, these plans by developing the remaining undeveloped
site in the Mall composition. Shortly after he saw the design,
Hagedorn seriously considered using this argument as the focus
of the Association’s publicity campaign: “that the carrying out
of the great Washington plan, rather than any monument in
marble, was the national memorial to Mr. Roosevelt.” Such an
approach reflected doubts about the sprawling memorial and
the wisdom of focusing on the design itself, but it was also based
on doubtful history. Hagedorn and other partisans exaggerated
Roosevelt’s role in the work of the Park Commission. Though
as President he did give crucial support to the 1901 plan, the
Commission was a creation of the Senate; it was formed and put
to work prior to TR’s succession to the presidency; and it had
been activated and invigorated more by the spirit and dedication
of Senator McMillan than by those of anyone else.16
More significant than all of this, however, was the second
and fundamental justification for Roosevelt’s presence in the
axial design with Washington and Lincoln: His champions
believed that Roosevelt was one of the three greatest American
leaders, and that this historical judgment could be made within
a brief time following his death. Although Hagedorn reported in
October 1926 that the officers of the R.M.A. had “refrained from
embarking on a public debate regarding the relative greatness
of Washington, Lincoln and Roosevelt,” he knew that this was
the issue upon which Congress and the nation would decide
the Association’s request. And it was not true that Roosevelt’s
supporters had refrained from such a debate, for the Director
and others were unable to mute their belief that Roosevelt was
the equal of Washington and Lincoln.
Hagedorn drew forceful parallels between the Founder and
the Savior of the nation, on the one hand, and Roosevelt, on
the other. Each man stood at a crucial juncture in the nation’s
history; each symbolized a central theme in its successful
development. As Hagedorn phrased it late in 1925:
Just as Washington founded the Republic and Lincoln
united it, so did Roosevelt consolidate and revitalize it.
Roosevelt’s greatest service to us was as a fighter for national
unity. All his career was devoted to a struggle against
cleavage—sectional, religious, class and racial cleavage.
Elihu Root agreed. Roosevelt deserved memorialization with
Washington and Lincoln because of his greatest contribution,
“uniting and harmonizing capital and democracy.” As the nation
honored Washington for founding an independent republic and
Lincoln for maintaining the Union, so should it also “honor
Roosevelt for preventing the dissolution of the Republic through
clashes between classes.” Or as Roosevelt’s former employer
and ardent supporter, The Outlook, phrased the comparison:
“Washington stands for the birth of the Republic, Lincoln for
the permanency of its political union, Roosevelt for those social
ideals that permeate all groups and conditions of Americans.”
“Son of the East and South, foster-child of the West, Theodore
Roosevelt expressed in his single personality the multiple
virtues and achievements of our American democracy.” As
a nationalist, as unifier of a divided and disrupted nation, as
healer of sectional and social cleavages—this Roosevelt merited
historic and symbolic equality with those other preeminent
Volume XXXII, Number 4, Fall 2011
Americans, Washington and Lincoln.17
This case failed to convince many private citizens, key public
officials, and members of the press corps. While the controversy
did not become a raging national debate, and while the full
Senate and House never had the opportunity to discuss or vote
on the memorial proposal, substantial opposition to the plan
developed. Ultimately it focused on the Roosevelt reputation
and the nation’s responsibilities toward other historical
figures. Before the location was irrevocably appropriated,
Theodore Roosevelt’s historical credentials received a thorough
examination. The verdict was that, at the very least, it was too
soon to freeze in granite the judgment that he was the equal of
Washington and Lincoln.
At times during 1925 and 1926, Garfield and Hagedorn
misjudged or overemphasized certain motives of their
opponents. They saw Villard’s attack on the R.M.A. in March
1925, for example, as largely a personal release of “his own spite
and venom.” The group’s leaders did not reflect, as they might
have, on the truth of Villard’s admittedly caustic remarks on the
way in which organization and publicity techniques could be
used to influence written history. Several months after Villard’s
piece appeared, Hagedorn became alarmed that partisan
Democrats coveted the Tidal Basin site, that the location “is
being eyed by the Wilsonians.” But while Hagedorn continued
to fear “mendacious and malicious” political opposition, he
knew that, given large Republican majorities in Congress, the
Roosevelt proposal was not defeated solely by Democrats,
Wilsonians or others.18
No less a Republican than Coolidge recognized that it might
be premature to grant the Tidal Basin site to Roosevelt. Garfield
discussed the matter with the President on October 29, 1925,
and found him concerned about possible “serious opposition
to the selection of the Roosevelt site on the ground that it is
now too soon to determine definitely his place in history.” The
President chose not to become involved in the memorial debate,
and he was said by several news reports to favor a site on 16th
Street at the entrance to Rock Creek Park. Coolidge’s doubts
about making instant historical judgments on past leaders did
not surprise Hagedorn, even though he disagreed with them.
Noting that he had expected strong opposition to the R.M.A.’s
plan in Congress and elsewhere, he revealed that doubt also
plagued the Roosevelt camp: “Even ardent Rooseveltians, I
find, question the advisability of giving this particular site to
Roosevelt so soon after his death.” That sentiment, when it
united with the realization that other historic figures had not yet
received proper recognition even though their reputations had
withstood the test of time, doomed the proposal.19
Among the opponents of the plan was Dr. Charles Moore
of Detroit, Chairman of the District of Columbia Commission
of Fine Arts. In 1901 Moore had been Senator McMillan’s
personal secretary, and he had worked closely with the Park
23
Commission professionals. This longtime overseer of the capital
city’s development firmly opposed the Tidal Basin as the site for
Roosevelt’s memorial. He preferred a location that he had first
suggested to the R.M.A. in 1919, one near Walter Reed Hospital
at the edge of the District. One cause of Moore’s concern in
1925 was the integrity of established procedures for the capital
city’s embellishment. The Association had ignored the Fine
Arts Commission by directly approaching Congress with its
plan. Beyond procedural niceties, however, Moore further
charged the R.M.A. with a substantive error: “The allotment
of this particular site to a memorial for any one man is bound
to result in controversy.” Agreeing with the Park Commission
of 1901, he believed that the location should house a memorial
to the founding fathers. Throughout the fall of 1925, Garfield
and Hagedorn feared that Moore was using his considerable
influence behind the scenes “to block the approval of the
design,” and they made discreet inquiries about his position.
Moore’s opposition certainly harmed the Association’s hope for
congressional and public approval.20
Influential opposition to the plan also developed among
architects, many of whom wished to reserve the site for a future
Supreme Court building. By late November 1926 the New York
and Chicago chapters of the American Institute of Architects
had passed resolutions “protesting against the erection” of
the Roosevelt fountain, and others within the profession
were reportedly prepared “to bring all possible pressure upon
Congress to preserve this location” for the Court. Although
other architects pointed out that the justices did not wish to be
housed so far away from the Library of Congress and the Capitol,
the critics urged professional unity to preserve the symmetry of
official Washington embodied in the city’s plan. The R.M.A.,
troubled by this opposition, obtained assurances from Chief
Justice William Howard Taft that the Court did not want its
building “put down in the flat lands of the Potomac.” Taft was
reported to have told Elihu Root that “the Supreme Court is
enough of a tomb as it is, . . . and he did not want to see it made
into a Walhalla.” While these assurances seemed to eliminate
the Court as a potential competitor for the site, the opposition of
some architects harmed the R.M.A.’s cause.21
The New York Times carried the most extensive coverage of
the memorial debate. It was also read and frequently corrected
by Hagedorn. In its pages in late 1925 one finds articles
continually maintaining that there existed a bitter controversy
over the memorial plan, letters to the editor increasingly critical
of the R.M.A.’s proposal, and correctives from Hagedorn futilely
attempting to keep the discussion under control and properly
informed.22
Citizen critics made several points. They advised that
Congress avoid any hasty, ill-considered decision in filling
the site, “incomparably the most important” remaining in the
capital. Accepting the axiom that contemporaries are unable to
judge their leading public figures properly, thoughtful observers
24
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
argued that the general procedure for paying monumental
homage to dead heroes was haphazard and unjust. As one writer
put it: “In the country at large we have 110,000,000 Democrats,
Republicans and Borahs, each of whom is perfectly free, if his
friends so choose, to have a monument in Washington.” As a
result, Congress had committed serious errors of commission
and omission, including the failure to erect a monument to
Thomas Jefferson. The nation needed a fair and systematic
procedure, and the occasion provided by the Roosevelt proposal
should lead to the establishment of one.23
Finally, vocal citizens voiced a concern that became the
focus of congressional thinking when the politicians thwarted
the Roosevelt memorial proposal in the spring of 1926. As H.
G. Dwight, a one-time State Department official, wrote to the
Times, the site in question was so significant that it should only
receive a monument to “commemorate one of the greatest events
in our history or one of our three greatest men.” The R.M.A. had
not adequately defended Roosevelt in these terms. As another
writer noted, while Washington and Lincoln were by consensus
the greatest American leaders, if “a third choice were to be made
. . . a dozen men would divide the votes.” The central question
was whether to turn the location over “to an organization which
represents only ‘some of the people,’ ” or to withhold it from use
until “a figure shall emerge clearly discerned by all the people”
as the foremost figure of “our great war period.” There is no
way to know how widely these views were held by the interested
public, or how large that public was, but it is reasonable to
assume that they made a strong appeal to the common sense
notions of many people. Hagedorn and Garfield, at least, took
special note of Dwight’s persuasive arguments. As “a writer of
considerable reputation,” Hagedorn believed, this gentleman
could turn opinion against the memorial plan.24
Few politicians took a position on the memorial controversy,
probably because they were not forced to do so. But those who
went on record to oppose the R.M.A. chose to dispute Roosevelt’s
right to a place in history, or in the Mall area, with Washington
and Lincoln. In December 1925, shortly after the Association
had submitted the Pope design to Congress, Democrat William
King of Utah addressed the Senate on the proposal. He called it
an ill-advised, if not an audacious plan which contemplates
the placing of Roosevelt’s name alongside [those] of
Washington and Lincoln, and the creation of a great
national triumvirate by constituting Mr. Roosevelt the third
member of this illustrious and immortal group.
King did not object to honoring Roosevelt, but he reminded
his colleagues that important figures, long dead, including
Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton,
James Madison, and Andrew Jackson, had not yet received
suitable monuments in Washington. Whether any of these
men should be honored in the Tidal Basin site King did not say,
but he firmly opposed building a Roosevelt memorial “at such
a place as will indicate a purpose to apotheosize Mr. Roosevelt
and declare to the world that the three immortal figures in our
history are Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt.” The Senator
hoped that the R.M.A. would “not press its demand.”25
The memorial controversy came quickly to a head on May
12 and 13, 1926. The precipitating figure in disposing of the
issue was John J. Boylan, a Democratic congressman from New
York who fancied himself a Jeffersonian. But while Boylan was
the active agent in the culminating events, he only reflected
an apparent congressional consensus that the movement to
memorialize Roosevelt was inappropriate. On May 12 Boylan
sent a letter to House Library Committee Chairman, Republican
Robert Luce of Massachusetts, which transformed “wavering
committee sentiment on the Roosevelt proposal” into positive
action on a memorial for Thomas Jefferson. Boylan argued
that the construction of a Roosevelt memorial would be
unacceptable to many Americans so long as Jefferson remained
unrecognized. Luce’s reply the following day signified the
demise of the R.M.A.’s goal: “There seems little likelihood of
favorable action being taken on the proposal of the Roosevelt
Memorial Association about which you wrote us.” The site itself
and the prospect of considerable governmental expense do “not
meet with general favor in the committee.” In a meeting on
the 13th, after Boylan had spoken, the committee authorized
the drafting of a resolution to call for a Jefferson memorial
on the Tidal Basin site. This action did not quickly lead to the
construction of the present Jefferson Memorial, which was not
begun until 1938 and was completed only in 1943. But it did
effectively kill further consideration of the Roosevelt proposal.26
* * * * *
The Roosevelt Memorial Association and its Director
took their defeat gracefully, though they were reluctant to
acknowledge that the proposal had in fact been rejected.
Technically, Hagedorn was correct when he pointed out in late
1926 that Congress had not rejected the R.M.A.’s design; it had
simply failed to approve it, and Hagedorn did not consider the
matter closed. The Association’s Executive Committee decided
“not to take any active steps for the present to push” its proposal,
but rather to allow the Pope design itself to win converts. But
as the years passed, the R.M.A. came to accept the reality of
congressional opinion. In a special report to the Trustees in
1931, marked “Not For Publication,” Hagedorn confessed that
opposition to the use of the Tidal Basin site “was practically
insuperable,” and that further Association pursuit of the original
goal would “have no result except to postpone for a generation
the construction of any memorial.”27
Frustrated in its initial attempt to secure a memorial site,
the Association requested that the National Capital Park and
Planning Commission suggest alternate locations. Among those
proposed was Analostan Island, lying west of the White House
in the Potomac. On May 8, 1930, the organization selected the
Volume XXXII, Number 4, Fall 2011
Island as “far more promising even than the original site” chosen
seven years earlier. After a fifteen-month period of difficult
negotiations with the Island’s owner, the Washington Gas Light
Company, the Association purchased the property in the fall
of 1931 for $364,000. On Roosevelt’s birthday in October of
that year, the R.M.A.’s Trustees voted “to perpetuate Analostan
Island . . . as a Roosevelt memorial by presenting it to the United
States Government for use as a park.” More than eleven years
after it had established the goal of erecting a Roosevelt memorial
in Washington, the R.M.A. had at last obtained a clear title to an
appropriate site.28
With homage to Roosevelt now placed in a physical context
quite different from that of the Tidal Basin location, there
occurred a marked shift in the image of the former President
which was to be projected. While Roosevelt the nation-healer,
the unifier of sectional and social division, was symbolized in
the Pope design, it was Roosevelt the rugged outdoorsman, the
hiker and camper, the naturalist and conservationist, who was
best represented by the overgrown and undeveloped woods and
meadows of Analostan Island. “The Island gives an impression
of wild country peculiarly appropriate as a setting for a
memorial to Colonel Roosevelt,” Hagedorn wrote, and for the
present the R.M.A. was content to let the property itself stand as
the memorial, unencumbered by structures or monuments. As
Hagedorn told a Senate committee in 1932, the Island “should
be kept . . . a wild place” so that it will retain “a sense of sanctuary
where the people may flee from modern civilization.”29
In view of its past difficulties, the R.M.A. accomplished
25
a smooth transfer of “Roosevelt Island” to the government
in the election year of 1932. Its acceptance by the nation
was ceremonially sealed at a small White House gathering
on December 12. In what must have been an overriding
atmosphere of political gloom, Garfield, who had been chairman
of the platform committee at the recent Republican convention,
presented the Island to the recently defeated President Hoover.
As another Roosevelt era was about to begin, it was perhaps
poignantly and ironically fitting that the defeated Republicans
should pause for a moment to honor the Roosevelt who had led
the Republican Party during better days. The irony did not end
on that day. In early 1933 the lame-duck Hoover signed into
law a bill changing “Roosevelt Island” to “Theodore Roosevelt
Island,” lest anyone confuse the man soon to occupy the White
House with the man honored by the patch of land in the river a
short distance away.30
Theodore Roosevelt Island eventually did receive a
memorial to the man whom it honored. On October 27, 1967,
Roosevelt’s birthday, President Lyndon Johnson dedicated a
monument built on the Island at public expense. Standing near
a bronze statue of the former President, in a “woodsy setting”
that was “exactly what any outdoorsman would have ordered,”
Johnson chose to recall a Roosevelt who could be put to service
in the defense of his administration’s Asian policy. LBJ called
for national unity and resolve by using Roosevelt’s words: “Woe
to the country where a generation arises which shrinks from
doing the rough work of the world.” In a discordant mixture of
Rooseveltian belligerence and love of the outdoors, the nation at
last dedicated a memorial to Theodore Roosevelt in Washington.
Hermann Hagedorn, dead since 1964, would
have been satisfied.31
photo by Rachel Cooper
* * * * *
Theodore Roosevelt Island, wrote Hermann Hagedorn, “gives an impression of wild country
peculiarly appropriate as a setting for a memorial to Colonel Roosevelt.”
Far from the heated controversy
over the proposed Roosevelt memorial in
Washington, in the rugged Black Hills of
western South Dakota, Theodore Roosevelt
was accorded monumental parity with
Washington, Lincoln, and Thomas Jefferson.
During the same years that public officials
denied Roosevelt a position of equality with
the American immortals, sculptor Gutzon
Borglum chose to elevate him to the heights
of Mount Rushmore. As a creative artist and
private citizen, Borglum was free to interpret
American history as he saw fit. Borglum
had known Roosevelt personally, and had
followed his Progressive Party in 1912. To
the sculptor, the twenty-sixth President
exemplified, fully as much as did his
colleagues on the mountain, one of the “four
great periods in the country’s progress.”32
26
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
Regardless of the Roosevelt image embodied in the
Rushmore sculpture, Roosevelt rose to join the immortals
on a western mountain just as he was being relegated to a
subordinate place in central Washington. The Roosevelt
Memorial Association, which had nothing at all to do with
Mount Rushmore, could derive at least a small measure of
triumph from its hero’s symbolic victory.
photo by Rachel Cooper
Alan Havig moved from his home state of Minnesota in 1962 to
pursue graduate study in history at the University of Missouri,
Columbia. His dissertation investigated the political activities
of six supporters of Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, when they
backed the Bull Moose Party, and in 1916, when most of them
joined TR in returning to the Republican Party. Dr. Havig
earned his Ph.D. in 1966 and began teaching at Stephens
College the following year. His publications encompass a
variety of fields in American history. He retired from teaching
in 2006.
A seventeen-foot bronze statue of TR stands in the
center of Theodore Roosevelt Island.
Although Borglum was often pressed to defend his selection
of Roosevelt, particularly by partisans of Woodrow Wilson,
he reportedly considered only one other man for inclusion,
Benjamin Franklin. His justification of Roosevelt’s presence
honored the nationalist and imperialist. He was honoring
Jefferson as the philosopher of democracy, Washington as the
father of the Republic, and Lincoln as preserver of the Union,
Borglum once explained. Roosevelt joined the group
for completing the dream of Columbus and opening forever
the way between the great western and eastern oceans. . . .
He was eminently Anglo-Saxon in spirit, and consciously or
unconsciously made this ocean-to-ocean Republic . . . the
controlling factor of the western world.
When Calvin Coolidge dedicated the Rushmore Memorial site on
August 10, 1927, he, too, stressed Roosevelt the empire-builder
and internationalist: “By building the Panama Canal he brought
into closer relationship the east and west and realized the vision
that inspired Columbus in his search for a new passage to the
Orient.”33
Endnotes
This article was originally published under the same title in
American Quarterly, Vol. 30, No. 4, Autumn 1978, pp. 514-532
(© 1978, The American Studies Association). It is reprinted
here with the gracious permission of the author and The Johns
Hopkins University Press. Aside from the correction of typing
errors, the text is essentially unmodified. Endnotes have been
partially reconfigured to bring them into line with the style of
the TRA Journal.
1
John W. Reps, Monumental Washington: The Planning
and Development of the Capital Center (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1967), p. xiii quoted, see also pp. 72-108;
Thomas S. Hines, Burnham of Chicago: Architect and Planner
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), pp. 139-151, 155;
Constance McLaughlin Green, Washington: Capital City, 18791950 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), pp. 132-146,
p. 139 quoted; Charles Moore, Washington, Past and Present
(New York, 1929), pp. 257-268.
2
Reps, Monumental Washington, pp. 20, 66-69, 109-111, 155159, 167; Hines, Burnham, pp. 152-156; Moore, Washington,
Past and Present, p. 267.
3
On the memorialization of these two Presidents see Moore,
Washington, Past and Present, chapters 13, 19; Frank Freidel
and Lonnelle Aikman, George Washington, Man and Monument
4
Volume XXXII, Number 4, Fall 2011
(Washington: Washington National Monument Association,
1965), pp. 30-55.
Roosevelt Memorial Association, A Report of Its Activities,
1919-1921 (New York, 1921), pp. 9-11, 18, 32-34; Report of
Activities, 1921-1922 (New York, 1923), p. 6; Annual Report,
1923 (New York, c. 1924), p. 12; Annual Report, 1926 (New
York, c. 1927), p. 4; Annual Report, 1928 (New York, 1928), pp.
3-9, 10-21; Annual Report, 1929 (New York, 1930), p. 23.
5
“Hermann Hagedorn,” in The National Cyclopedia of
American Biography, Current Volume A (New York: James T.
White, 1930), pp. 247-248.
6
Clara Barrus, The Life and Letters of John Burroughs (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1925), Vol. 2, pp. 371-372; James C. Malin,
quoted in Richard H. Collin, “The Image of Theodore Roosevelt
in American History and Thought, 1885-1965” (Diss., New
York University, 1966), pp. 288-289; Robert E. Spiller, ed., The
Van Wyck Brooks-Lewis Mumford Letters: The Record of a
Literary Friendship, 1921-1963 (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1970),
pp. 412-413.
7
Oswald Garrison Villard, “Creating Reputations, Ltd.,”
The American Mercury, Vol. 4, April 1925, pp. 385-389. For
Hagedorn’s response see New York Times, Mar. 23, 1925.
Collin, “Image of TR,” pp. 276-277, 299; Villard, “Roosevelt vs.
Wilson: Fourth Round,” The Nation, Jan. 20, 1926, p. 52.
8
R.M.A., Report of Activities, 1921-1922, pp. 11-12; Annual
Report, 1923, pp. 3-5.
9
27
“Roosevelt vs. Wilson,” p. 52. On Pope see Henry F. Withey
and Elsie Rathburn Withey, comps., Biographical Dictionary of
American Architects (Deceased) (Los Angeles: Hennessey and
Ingalls, 1970), pp. 480-481.
Washington Post, Dec. 13, 1925; New York Times, Nov. 1,
1925.
14
Garfield to Hagedorn, Oct. 14, 1925, Garfield Papers;
Hagedorn to Elihu Root, Dec. 19, 1925, Elihu Root Papers,
Manuscript Division, Library of Congress; “Great Roosevelt
Memorial Planned in Washington,” p. 11; Doolittle, “A Roosevelt
Memorial,” pp. 263-270; Washington Post, Dec. 13, 1925; “The
Proposed Roosevelt Memorial in Washington Designed by John
Russell Pope,” The Outlook, Dec. 23, 1925, pp. 632-633.
15
Hagedorn to Garfield, Oct. 9 and 14, 1925, Nov. 25, 1925,
Dec. 1, 1925, Garfield Papers; Hagedorn letters to the editor,
New York Times, Nov. 9 and 24, 1925; Washington Post, Dec.
13, 1925. Henry F. Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography
(New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1931), and William
Henry Harbaugh, Power and Responsibility: The Life and
Times of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Farrar, Straus and
Cudahy, 1961), do not mention TR’s relationship with the Park
Commission, but Reps gives Roosevelt credit for defending the
1901 plan. Monumental Washington, pp. 147-151.
16
R.M.A., Annual Report, 1926, pp. 7-8; Annual Report, 1929,
pp. 17-18; Hagedorn, quoted in Harris E. Ewing, “Roosevelt
Memorial Stirs up a Dispute,” New York Times, Nov. 22, 1925;
Root quoted in Glenn Brown, “The Roosevelt Memorial Site,”
Architectural Record, December 1926, pp. 587-588; “Are You
Ready for the Question?”, The Outlook, Dec. 23, 1925, p. 624.
17
Hagedorn to James R. Garfield, Dec. 4, 1924; Garfield to
George W. Pepper, Dec. 6, 1924; Pepper to Garfield, Dec. 8,
1924; Garfield to Hagedorn, Jan. 9, 10, and 13, 1924, James
R. Garfield Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress,
Washington, D.C.
18
R.M.A., Annual Report, 1924 (New York, c. 1925), pp. 5-7;
Annual Report, 1925 (New York, c. 1926), pp. 5-6; Congressional
Record, 68th Cong., 1st sess., 65:8, May 3, 1924, p. 7737.
19
10
Hagedorn to Garfield, Mar. 20, 1925, Oct. 12, 1925, Nov. 25,
1925, Garfield Papers; Garfield to Hagedorn, Mar. 27, 1925,
Garfield Papers; New York World, Oct. 3, 1925, clipping in
Garfield Papers.
11
R.M.A., Annual Report, 1925, pp. 5-10; Annual Report, 1926,
pp. 6-7; New York Times, Apr. 6, 1925, Sept. 28, 1925, Oct. 1 and
7, 1925, Dec. 13, 1925; Washington Post, Oct. 7, 1925.
12
“Great Roosevelt Memorial Planned in Washington,”
Exporters and Importers Journal, Vol. 34, Mar. 5, 1926,
p. 11; Will O. Doolittle, “A Roosevelt Memorial,” Parks and
Recreation, Vol. 9, January-February 1926, pp. 263-270. Both
of the above are in the Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Harvard
University, Cambridge, MA. Washington Post, Dec. 13, 1925;
“The Roosevelt Memorial,” editorial, Washington Post, Jan.
5, 1926; Garfield, unpublished diary, Vol. 43, 1925, entries
for Oct. 6, 7, and 8, Garfield Papers. Villard’s comment is in
13
Garfield to Hagedorn, Oct. 30, 1925, Nov. 5 and 21, 1925, Garfield
Papers; Hagedorn to Garfield, Nov. 7, 19, and 25, 1925, Garfield
Papers; Henry L. Stoddard to Garfield, Nov. 2, 1925, Garfield
Papers; Garfield to Stoddard, Nov. 5, 1925, Garfield Papers. On
Coolidge’s views see Washington Times, Oct. 24, 1925, and New
York World, Oct. 3, 1925, clippings in Garfield Papers.
Charles Moore to Root, Aug. 27, 1919, Charles Moore Papers,
Manuscript Division, Library of Congress; Hagedorn to Moore,
Dec. 17, 1920, Jan. 19, 1921, Moore Papers. Moore’s opinions are
in Ewing, “Memorial Stirs up a Dispute,” and in “How Great was
Roosevelt?”, Washington Daily News, Nov. 4, 1925, clipping in
Garfield Papers. Hagedorn to Garfield, Oct. 29, 1925, Garfield
Papers; Garfield to Charles D. Wolcott, Dec. 24, 1925, Garfield
Papers; Wolcott to Garfield, Dec. 29, 1925, Garfield Papers;
Moore, Washington, Past and Present, pp. 3-4.
20
28
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
Negative comment is found in Ewing,
“Memorial Stirs up a Dispute,” and in The
Architect, Vol. 5, January 1926, p. 387,
copy in TR Collection; positive views are in
The American Architect, Jan. 20, 1926, p.
183, copy in TR Collection, and in Brown,
“Roosevelt Memorial Site,” pp. 587-588.
Taft’s views are reported in Hagedorn to
Garfield, Dec. 2, 1925, Garfield Papers.
image from the public domain
21
On Hagedorn’s problems with the press
see his letters to Garfield of Nov. 9 and 25,
1925, and Dec. 16, 1925, Garfield Papers.
22
See New York Times editorial page on Oct.
18 and 21, 1925, Nov. 1, 1925, and Dec. 7, 1925.
23
Hagedorn to Garfield, Oct. 23, 1925, Garfield
Papers; “How Great Was Roosevelt?”; see
also sources in note 23.
24
Congressional Record, 69th Cong., 1st Sess., 67:1, Dec. 16,
1925, pp. 919-920.
25
New York Times, May 14, 1926; Washington Evening Star,
May 13, 1926. For efforts to honor Thomas Jefferson see Merrill
D. Peterson, The Jefferson Image in the American Mind (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1962), pp. 377-379, 420-432,
Reps, Monumental Washington, pp. 173-176, and “Jefferson
Monument to Have Precedence,” New York Times, July 4, 1926.
26
R.M.A., Annual Report, 1926, pp. 7-8; Annual Report, 1927
(New York, c. 1928), pp. 3-4, 17-18; Hagedorn, confidential
report, “To the Trustees of the Roosevelt Memorial Association,”
March 15, 1931, p. 1, copy in Herbert Hoover Presidential
Papers—Individual Name File, Theodore Roosevelt Memorial,
Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, IA.
27
Hagedorn, “To the Trustees of the R.M.A.,” pp. 1-3; R.M.A.,
Annual Report, 1931 (New York, c. October 1931), in Hoover
Presidential Papers; New York Times, Oct. 14 and 28, 1931.
The negotiations are revealed in papers located in the file at the
Hoover Library cited in note 27.
28
R.M.A., Annual Report, 1931, pp. 2-4; “Analostan Island:
The Site for the National Memorial to Theodore Roosevelt in
Washington,” pamphlet, no date, in Hoover Presidential Papers;
Hearings Before the Senate Library Committee on S. 290, A Bill
to Establish a Memorial to Theodore Roosevelt in the National
Capital, 72nd Cong., 1st Sess., Jan. 29, 1932, in TR Collection.
29
Hearings on S. 290; Public Law 146, May 21, 1932, 47 Stat.
163; New York Times, May 17, 22, 24, and 31, 1932, Dec. 13,
1932, Feb. 8 and 15, 1933.
30
Mount Rushmore.
New York Times, June 11, 1967, Oct. 28, 1967; “Happy
Birthday, TR,” Time, Nov. 3, 1967, p. 22; Irene McManus,
“Return of the Rough Rider,” American Forests, October 1967,
pp. 18-21, 44-48; W. Douglas Lindsay, Jr., U.S. Department of
the Interior, to author, May 6, 1975; John A. Gable, Executive
Director, Theodore Roosevelt Association, to author, May 10
and 14, 1975.
31
Robert M. Casey and Mary Borglum, Give the Man Room:
The Story of Gutzon Borglum (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill,
1952), p. 282.
32
Gilbert C. Fite, Mount Rushmore (Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1952), pp. 4-5, 45, 47, 81, 85, 211. Borglum
quotation is from his “First Survey and the Development of the
Memorial Project,” in Mount Rushmore National Memorial
(Mount Rushmore National Memorial Commission, 1930),
p. viii. Calvin Coolidge’s address is also in Mount Rushmore
National Memorial, pp. ix-x.
33
Volume XXXII, Number 4, Fall 2011
29
FORGOTTEN FRAGMENTS (#12)
a column by Tweed Roosevelt
AN ESSENTIAL TR LIBRARY: FIFTY INDISPENSABLE BOOKS
Some time ago on the TRA listserve someone challenged
members to post their ideas about the five best books relating to
Theodore Roosevelt. Many were proposed.
The list needed to be varied and “fun.” In reading order
my proposed list is as follows: First, I suggest Edmund Morris’s
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, possibly the best book on TR,
very readable, and, although long, captivating. Also, this is the
portion of TR’s life often found most interesting by novices.
Next, I suggest Cowboys and Kings: Three Great Letters by
Theodore Roosevelt, edited by Elting E. Morison. It is short,
charming, and a good introduction to the “real” TR. This ought
to hold and confirm their interest. Then, I recommend one of
the recent one-volume biographies, probably H. W. Brands’s
TR: The Last Romantic—although this is among the longest
books ever written about TR, and any of several others would
do as well. Fourth, in order for novices to get a better feel for
the breadth of TR, would be Edward Wagenknecht’s The Seven
Worlds of Theodore Roosevelt. Finally, Hermann Hagedorn’s
The Roosevelt Family of Sagamore Hill would provide a flavor
of TR’s family and personal life. If readers are not hooked after
reading these books, they never will be.
After this exercise, I determined to take on a much more
ambitious project. I decided to create a list of books that any TR
enthusiast should have read and have in his or her library. This
was not to be a list of the best books on TR, but, rather differently,
it was to be a list of the essential books, books that are required
reading for a well-rounded education on Theodore Roosevelt.
Therefore, a less good book might be included if none better is
available and the particular subject matter is important, while a
very good or excellent book, such as Cowboys and Kings, might
be excluded because there is an even better one on the subject or
the subject is adequately covered in other volumes.
photo by Will Kincaid
I eventually modified the endeavor. I am often asked to
recommend books to those who are unfamiliar with TR. So I
decided to determine which five books I would recommend to
novices—to my mind, quite a different objective than choosing
the five best. The point was to capture their interest so they
would want to learn more.
Tweed Roosevelt.
Biographies offered another dilemma. I think it is
important that several be read, and I have included them.
Perhaps the most controversial is Henry Pringle’s Theodore
Roosevelt: A Biography. This is a very uncomplimentary and
misguided biography which is viewed with horror by many TR
historians and aficionados, and which caused much damage to
TR’s reputation for many decades—to a degree, right up to the
present. But simply because of its enormous impact I think it
should be included.
Another criterion was that the books should be reasonably
easy to obtain and not too costly. This is not a list for collectors.
An example of a book I omitted for one of these reasons is A
Companion to Theodore Roosevelt, a fine new collection edited
by Serge Ricard, which contains some superb essays but is
extremely expensive.
The next decision was about how long the list should be.
30
This was not easy, but I realized the necessity of imposing selfdiscipline. After trial and error I decided on fifty; even at that
high number it was hard to fit in all the ones I wanted to, and
some important books had to be left out. (Two of the listed items,
it should be noted, are multi-volume collections of TR’s own
writings.) It is interesting to speculate on what size such a list
ought to be for other Presidents. I believe that the only President
for whom there would be a longer list is Abraham Lincoln. A
few, such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, might
join TR at the fifty level, while the rest would merit significantly
less than fifty, some only a very small number.
I am cognizant of what TR wrote, while he was in Africa on
safari, of Harvard President Charles Eliot’s newly published list
of the one hundred best books, and therefore I emphasize that
this is not “the” list but merely “a” list. I realize that some of
the books I have included may perplex certain readers, and that
some I have failed to include may outrage others.
So I will not write an analysis of this list but will leave that
assignment to you. Have fun!
I look forward to hearing from my readers, but I will impose
one caveat. If you wish to propose an addition, you must also
recommend a deletion.
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
Tweed’s Essential TR Library
1. Abbott, Lawrence, ed. The Letters of Archie Butt,
Personal Aide to President Roosevelt. New York: Doubleday,
Page & Co., 1924.
2. Beale, Howard K. Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of
America to World Power. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1956.
3. Bishop, Joseph Bucklin, ed. Theodore Roosevelt’s
Letters to His Children. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons,
1919.
4. Blum, John Morton. The Republican Roosevelt.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1954.
5. Brands, H. W. TR: The Last Romantic. New York: Basic
Books, 1997.
6.
Brinkley, Douglas.
The Wilderness Warrior:
Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America. New York:
HarperCollins, 2009.
7. Burroughs, John. Camping & Tramping with Roosevelt.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1906.
8. Burton, David H. Theodore Roosevelt: Confident
Imperialist. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1968.
9. Chessman, G. Wallace. Governor Theodore
Roosevelt: The Albany Apprenticeship, 1898-1900.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965.
10. Cooper, John Milton, Jr. The Warrior and
the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt.
Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University
Press, 1983.
11. Cutright, Paul Russell. Theodore Roosevelt: The
Naturalist. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1956.
12. Dalton, Kathleen. Theodore Roosevelt: A
Strenuous Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.
13. Dyer, Thomas G. Theodore Roosevelt and the
Idea of Race. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press, 1980.
14. Gable, John Allen. The Bull Moose Years:
Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Party. Port
Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1978.
15. Gardner, Joseph L. Departing Glory: Theodore
Volume XXXII, Number 4, Fall 2011
Roosevelt as Ex-President.
Sons, 1973.
31
New York: Charles Scribner’s
16. Gatewood, Willard B. Theodore Roosevelt and the Art
of Controversy: Episodes of the White House Years. Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1970.
17. Gould, Lewis L. The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt.
Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991.
18. Hagan, William T. Theodore Roosevelt and Six
Friends of the Indian. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
1997.
19. Hagedorn, Hermann. The Roosevelt Family of
Sagamore Hill. New York: Macmillan, 1954.
20. Hagedorn, Hermann. Roosevelt in the Badlands.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1921.
21. Hagedorn, Hermann, ed. The Works of Theodore
Roosevelt. Memorial Edition, 24 vols., New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1923-1926.
22. Harbaugh, William Henry. Power and Responsibility:
The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt. New York: Farrar,
Straus & Cudahy, 1961.
23. Hart, Albert Bushnell, and Ferleger, Herbert Ronald,
eds. Theodore Roosevelt Cyclopedia. Second edition, Oyster
Bay, NY, and Westport, CT: Theodore Roosevelt Association
and Meckler Corporation, 1989.
24. Hendrix, Henry J. Theodore Roosevelt’s Naval
Diplomacy: The U.S. Navy and the Birth of the American
Century. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2009.
25. Hoyt, Edwin P. Teddy Roosevelt in Africa. New York:
Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1966.
26. Jones, Virgil Carrington. Roosevelt’s Rough Riders.
New York: Doubleday & Co., 1971.
27.
Lang, Lincoln A.
Ranching with Roosevelt.
Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1926.
28. Lorant, Stefan. The Life and Times of Theodore
Roosevelt. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1959.
31. Marschall, Rick. BULLY! The Life and Times of
Theodore Roosevelt. Washington: Regnery Publishing, 2011.
32. McCullough, David. Mornings on Horseback. New
York: Simon & Schuster, 1981.
33. Millard, Candice. The River of Doubt: Theodore
Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey. New York: Doubleday, 2005.
34. Miller, Nathan. The Roosevelt Chronicles. Garden
City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1979.
35. Miller, Nathan. Theodore Roosevelt: A Life. New York:
William Morrow and Co., 1992.
29. Lutts, Ralph H. The Nature Fakers: Wildlife, Science &
Sentiment. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 1990.
36. Morison, Elting E., et al., eds. The Letters of Theodore
Roosevelt. 8 vols., Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1951-1954.
30. Marks, Frederick W., III. Velvet on Iron: The
Diplomacy of Theodore Roosevelt. Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1979.
37. Morris, Edmund. Colonel Roosevelt. New York:
Random House, 2010.
32
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
44. Pringle, Henry F. Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography.
New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1931.
45. Putnam, Carleton. Theodore Roosevelt: The Formative
Years, 1858-1886. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958.
46. Tilchin, William N. Theodore Roosevelt and the British
Empire: A Study in Presidential Statecraft. New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 1997.
47. Wagenknecht, Edward. The Seven Worlds of Theodore
Roosevelt. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1958.
48. Weaver, John D. The Brownsville Raid. College
Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1992.
49. Wister, Owen. Roosevelt: The Story of a Friendship,
1880-1919. New York: Macmillan Company, 1930.
50. Wood, Frederick S. Roosevelt as We Knew Him: The
Personal Recollections of One Hundred and Fifty of His Friends
and Associates. Philadelphia: John C. Winston Company, 1927.
Tweed loves to hear from his readers. He can be reached at
[email protected].
38. Morris, Edmund. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt.
New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1979.
39. Morris, Edmund. Theodore Rex. New York: Random
House, 2001.
40. Morris, Sylvia Jukes. Edith Kermit Roosevelt: Portrait
of a First Lady. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan,
1980.
41. Mowry, George E. The Era of Theodore Roosevelt and
the Birth of Modern America, 1900-1912. New York: Harper &
Brothers, 1958.
42. Naylor, Natalie A., Brinkley, Douglas, and Gable,
John Allen, eds. Theodore Roosevelt: Many-Sided American.
Interlaken, NY: Heart of the Lakes Publishing, 1992.
43. Neu, Charles E. An Uncertain Friendship: Theodore
Roosevelt and Japan, 1906-1909. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1967.
Volume XXXII, Number 4, Fall 2011
33
PRESIDENTIAL SHAPSHOT (#17)
President Roosevelt Assesses
Conditions in Cuba and Oversees U.S. Policy
Just Days Before Reluctantly Initiating
the U.S. Military Intervention
of September 1906 - January 1909
the complete text of a letter of September 10, 1906,
to Assistant Secretary of State Robert Bacon
(in Morison et al., eds.,
The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt,
Vol. V, pp. 402-403)
“I am more and more imprest [this letter includes several
instances of the employment by Roosevelt of the new “simplified
spelling”] by your suggestion about Root, tho I greatly wish we
could have an hour’s talk with him before he went to Cuba. If
he could stop in Havana and make a serious address to the
people, calling attention to the fact that those who bring about
revolution and disturbance are in reality doing their best to
secure the intervention and domination of the United States and
are in the profoundest way unpatriotic to the cause of Cuban
independence, he might accomplish a great deal. It may be
impossible to wait, however, until he can get there, and when
you come here next Saturday or Sunday we will have to consider
whether it is not desirable for me in some shape or way, whether
in a formal letter to the Cuban Congress or otherwise, to speak
a solemn warning stating that we do not want to intervene, but
that they will leave us no alternative if they reduce the country
to a condition of revolutionary anarchy. It may be that such a
warning would make some of the revolutionists pause. In any
event it would clear our skirts.
“Cannot you write to Steinhart to tell Palma to use in the
most effective fashion all the resources at his command to
quell the revolt? Sleeper is evidently a wretched and worthless
creature; and Morgan needs to be told that he has mist the great
chance of his diplomatic life by not being on the spot. At the first
symptom of disturbance in Cuba he should have been hurrying
to his post.
“I send you the enclosed from Steinhart, which please look
thru carefully, and treat it as confidential. Steinhart is wrong
about immediate intervention; but it may be worth while
considering whether an emphatic warning to the people of Cuba
as to what revolutionary disturbances will surely entail in the
way of intervention would be a good thing. I will speak to you
about this next Saturday. Meanwhile cable to Steinhart for his
private information that it would be out of the question for us to
intervene at this time; but that we are considering whether or
not to send a word of emphatic warning as to the certainty that
intervention will come in the end unless the people are able to
patch up their difficulties and live in peace. Let him convey this
confidentially to Palma, but not publish it. Let him, however,
publish the authorized statement that the article in La Lucha
purporting to give a statement by the Herald as to my views
on the Cuban situation is without one particle of foundation
and represents simply a tissue of deliberate and malicious
inventions.”
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Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
TR-ERA IMAGES
Image #10
Art Koch
Image #9
Six co-winning responses were received from Captain Jeff Hennessy, Mike
Thompson, Robert J. Walker, Larry Marple, Dick Boera, and Philip Fontana.
(Honorable Mention goes to Phillip Gibbons, Bill Moline, Dennis Crawford, Al Frazia,
and Gene Kopelson.) Capt. Hennessy wrote: “The picture . . . was taken on Sept.
13, 1898, at Montauk, Long Island. Colonel Roosevelt is shown at the mustering
out of his men. After being escorted out of his tent, Roosevelt was presented with
[Frederic] Remington’s ‘The Bronco-Buster’ by his men. You can see the bronze on
the table behind Roosevelt. As all of the men filed past Roosevelt, he shook their
hands in a good-bye.” Mr. Thompson added that “the statuette had been purchased
with monies collected from members of the regiment.” Mr. Fontana’s submission
drew from Douglas Brinkley’s excellent discussion of this event in The Wilderness
Warrior; according to Brinkley, “the Rough Riders had given Colonel Roosevelt the
best gift possible.” TR was overwhelmed with gratitude. This cast can be found at
Sagamore Hill National Historic Site (currently closed for renovations); another is in
the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington.
Image #10
Can you identify this stereoscope card? Readers are invited to send responses to Art Koch by e-mail at [email protected]
(or by mail at One West View Drive, Oyster Bay, NY 11771). Mr. Koch will identify the writer of the best response on his TR-Era Images
page in the next issue of the Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal.
Volume XXXII, Number 4, Fall 2011
35
Theodore Roosevelt Celebrated at
Boston University
by William N. Tilchin
The enormous and unrivaled Theodore
Roosevelt Collection at Harvard University is wellknown to TR enthusiasts and widely utilized by
TR scholars. However, another extensive (even if
much less so than Harvard’s) TR collection, this one
housed in the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research
Center at Boston University, appears to have escaped
the attention of many students of TR and certainly is
underutilized by researchers.
Boston University’s Theodore Roosevelt
Collection came as a gift from Paul C. Richards,
who spent two decades assembling it. This
collection encompasses more than a hundred
original manuscripts of Roosevelt’s articles, books,
and speeches, along with a very large number
of letters, almost seven hundred of which are
handwritten. It also contains approximately eightyfive photographs of Roosevelt, many inscribed;
contemporary engravings, postcards, cartoons, and
memorabilia (including campaign buttons from TR’s
vice presidential and presidential campaigns); and
three recordings of Roosevelt’s speeches. Among
many books by and about Roosevelt are signed first
editions; a full eight-volume set of The Letters of
Theodore Roosevelt, edited by Elting E. Morison and
his associates; and complete sets of both Scribner’s
editions of The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, one in
twenty-four volumes, the other in twenty-eight.
Each academic year the Howard Gotlieb Archival
Research Center hosts approximately six “Student
Discovery Seminars” in its Reading Room on the fifth
floor of Boston University’s Mugar Library. These
hour-long seminars give students the opportunity
to view, hold, and examine original letters,
manuscripts, photographs, and other items. After
brief introductory presentations by a member of the
Gotlieb Center’s staff and a guest speaker from the
B.U. faculty, student participants are encouraged “to
walk the room, handle the documents, and experience
your own revelations” (with the staff member and the
professor available to answer questions).
Handwritten four-page contract dated June 20, 1885, among Theodore Roosevelt,
William Sewall, and Wilmot Dow. The original was on display during the Howard
Gotlieb Archival Research Center’s Student Discovery Seminar on February 24, 2011.
36
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
At 6:00 P.M. on Thursday, February 24, 2011, a Student
Discovery Seminar titled “Theodore Roosevelt and the American
Presidency” took place. Approximately thirty students were in
attendance. The Gotlieb Center’s Alex Rankin introduced the
seminar and then introduced me as the guest speaker. My
presentation follows, in full:
* * * * * * * * * *
The materials on display here today pertain to the life
and career of one of the most interesting and one of the most
extraordinary individuals ever to cross the stage of United
States history, the country’s twenty-sixth President, Theodore
Roosevelt. So, in my remarks here this evening, I would like
to address both Roosevelt as a unique character and the
significance of his achievement-filled presidency.
Having overcome a severe asthmatic condition as a youth,
the adult Roosevelt became America’s leading apostle of what
he called “the strenuous life.” An enthusiast of nature and the
outdoors since his childhood, the upper-class New Yorker TR
toughened himself by spending large parts of three years as
a rancher in the Dakota Territory in the mid-1880s. An avid
reader with a powerful intellect and an amazingly retentive
memory, Roosevelt also became a versatile and prolific author,
publishing his first book, the highly acclaimed The Naval War
of 1812, at the age of twenty-three and well over thirty total
books on history and natural science and political questions
during his sixty-year lifetime. In addition, incredibly, he wrote
more than 100,000 letters. Prior to TR’s presidency he was a
member of the U.S. Civil Service Commission, was president
of the New York City Board of Police Commissioners, made a
great impact during a one-year stint as assistant secretary of
the navy, organized the Rough Riders and heroically led them
as they fought in Cuba during the Spanish-American War, was
a very popular reformer as governor of New York, and then was
elected Vice President of the United States in 1900. And upon
the assassination of William McKinley in September 1901, TR
became at forty-two the youngest-ever U.S. President.
Even as President, Roosevelt lived the strenuous life. In
Washington, TR frequently engaged in demanding physical
activity; he enjoyed some rugged vacations; and he played hard
with his six children during his many months at his Summer
White House in Oyster Bay, New York.
After his presidency, Roosevelt went on a long African safari
and then, in 1914, experienced the most dangerous adventure of
his life, a near-fatal trip down the previously unexplored River
of Doubt in Brazil. And when the United States entered World
War I in 1917, at which time TR was fifty-eight years old, he
sought a front-line battlefield deployment—but was denied by
his bitter political rival, President Woodrow Wilson.
Roosevelt really is an irresistible historical figure, and his
enduring appeal to Americans is closely tied to the personal
attributes he embodied. In this regard I will read a quotation
from Jonathan Tobin, who wrote these words in a recent review
essay:
The legacy that has so endeared Theodore Roosevelt to
successive generations is not so much his progressivism,
[his] enthusiasm for global American power, or even his
environmentalism. It is, instead, based on an understanding
that the spirit of adventure, service, sacrifice, and yes,
valor that Theodore Roosevelt exemplified is one they find
uniquely admirable regardless of the politics of his day or
our own. . . . These virtues are precisely the ones that have
earned him his enduring popularity.
Of course, it is Theodore Roosevelt’s accomplishments and
legacy as President of the United States from 1901 to 1909 that
are by far the most historically significant aspects of his life. So
here I will briefly address Roosevelt’s presidency by focusing on
four areas: public relations, progressivism, environmentalism,
and foreign policy.
Least important of these four—but certainly still
noteworthy—TR was the first modern President in the way he
utilized the media to build his image and to help himself gain and
maintain political support. His knack for media relations was
a real asset to him as he pursued a very ambitious substantive
policy agenda.
Regarding domestic policy, TR was the first of the modern
progressive Presidents (and the only one who was a Republican).
Despite TR’s well-earned reputation as a trust-buster, the
primary objective of what Roosevelt called his Square Deal
program was federal regulation of large corporations in the
interest of the American citizenry. Such landmark laws as the
Hepburn railroad bill, the Pure Food and Drug Act, and the
Meat Inspection Act were the first major contributions to the
system of federal regulation of business on behalf of the people
that became and remains an important element in modern
American life.
Theodore Roosevelt also was the foremost environmentalist
President in U.S. history. His conservation policies provided a
vivid demonstration of the Rooseveltian concept of stewardship,
according to which a primary duty of the President is to act for
the benefit of the American people as a whole, future generations
emphatically included. The results were more than 150 million
acres of new forest reserves, the first twenty-four federal
irrigation projects, the first four national game preserves,
the first fifty-one federal bird reservations, the first eighteen
national monuments, five new national parks, and, during the
final year of Roosevelt’s presidency, the convening of three
major conservation conferences. This was truly a breathtaking
record—a record that by itself would be sufficient to mark TR’s
presidency as a very beneficial and important one.
Volume XXXII, Number 4, Fall 2011
37
Campaign poster, 1898. The original was on display during the Gotlieb Center’s Student Discovery Seminar on February 24, 2011.
President Roosevelt’s accomplishments in the arena of
foreign policy also were extraordinary. A hands-on diplomatist
of great discretion, acumen, and vision, Roosevelt fully grasped
the complex and far-reaching implications of the United States’
recent emergence as a great power. He sharply increased the
size and efficiency of the American navy, secured permanent
U.S. control of the Panama Canal Zone, began building the canal,
and established U.S. hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. He
adroitly cultivated a special relationship between Great Britain
and the United States, while at the same time maintaining
amicable relations with Germany and Japan, the two powers
he viewed as America’s most formidable potential enemies. His
skillful mediation—illuminated by some of the items available
for viewing here today—brought an end to the Russo-Japanese
War (and won him a Nobel Peace Prize), and his deft behindthe-scenes diplomacy facilitated a peaceful resolution of the
highly dangerous Franco-German crisis over Morocco. Overall,
the twenty-sixth President was almost uniformly successful
both in dealing with specific foreign policy challenges and in
advancing his broader objectives. Moreover, his statesmanship
significantly enhanced the United States’ image in the world.
And, decades later, updated versions of TR’s core foreign policy
principles—broadly defined U.S. interests, formidable military
power, and an Anglo-American partnership—would guide the
U.S. to victories over Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in
World War II and over the Soviet Union in the Cold War and,
still later, would guide America in its confrontation with Islamic
extremism.
When historians rank American Presidents, Theodore
Roosevelt most often comes in fourth, behind Abraham Lincoln,
Franklin Roosevelt, and George Washington. Back in 2005, the
Gotlieb Center produced a booklet called Capturing History,
to which I contributed a short chapter on the Lincoln and TR
38
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
collections. In that chapter, titled “The Country’s
Greatest Presidents Are at Boston University,”
I wrote the following about TR and the matter of
rankings:
A case can be made that Theodore Roosevelt—
despite never experiencing a crisis nearly as
severe as the Great Depression or the Second
World War—should be ranked right behind
Abraham Lincoln. TR’s domestic policy
record was outstanding. As to foreign policy,
TR encountered no extreme crisis largely
because he expertly promoted international
peace and stability and was remarkably good
at anticipating crises and heading them off.
. . . All the while he upheld his broad and wellconsidered conception of vital U.S. interests.
Indeed, the consistently stellar diplomatic
record of the first President Roosevelt led the
author of this essay to identify TR in a book
published in 1997 as probably “the United
States’ greatest practitioner of statecraft in the
twentieth century.”
photos by Katherine Kominis
I would like to close my prepared remarks
by telling everyone here about the Theodore
Roosevelt Association. I am a Vice President of this
organization and, as Alex mentioned, the editor of
the quarterly Theodore Roosevelt Association
Journal. The TRA promotes historical research
and writing on Roosevelt and advocates for the
contemporary and, even more, the permanent
relevance of many of TR’s ideals and policy
prescriptions and actual presidential policies. I
have brought with me some membership
application forms and several copies of a recent
issue of the TRA Journal, which I will be pleased
to share with anyone who might like to consider
joining the TRA.
Four of Professor William Tilchin’s students (at the time enrolled in his Social Science
202 course on U.S. foreign policy since the 1930s) investigate display items from
Boston University’s Theodore Roosevelt Collection on February 24, 2011.
Bottom photo: Jose Chavez. Middle photo, left to right: Yessenia Guncay,
Neva Wallach, Liliana Pon. Top photo, right: Prof. Tilchin.
And now it’s time for all of us to look at the
treasure trove of items from Boston University’s
Theodore Roosevelt Collection set out on the tables
in this room this evening. I will stay around to help
Alex answer any questions. Thank you very much
for your kind attention.
* * * * * * * * * *
Following my presentation, the students
in attendance (all wearing white gloves) spent
about forty minutes handling and closely viewing
the dozens of items on display. These included
original letters, original marked-up manuscripts,
and memorabilia of various sorts. As I too
Volume XXXII, Number 4, Fall 2011
39
Letter of August 12, 1905, from Theodore Roosevelt to Julia Ward Howe. The original was on
display during the Gotlieb Center’s Student Discovery Seminar on February 24, 2011.
examined the display items, I had the opportunity to answer
numerous questions and to engage several students in animated
conversations regarding Theodore Roosevelt. Students were
learning firsthand about TR and, more generally, about the
nature of the primary materials that constitute the foundation
of the historical record.
The Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center’s Student
Discovery Seminars are aptly named. This particular event,
enthusiastically and thoughtfully and very capably organized by
Alex Rankin, appears to have been a grand success. And for the
guest speaker in particular, it also was extremely enjoyable!
T heodore R oosevelt
A ssociation J ournal
F all 2011