America's Greatest 20th Century Presidents (6 page)

The Rough Riders on San Juan Hill

Governor of New York

Roosevelt was now a national military hero, which made him enormously proud.  Those who knew Teddy were well aware of his adventurous masculinity, and he and was happy to have that persona surface publicly for the entire nation.

Upon his return from Cuba, Roosevelt was quickly recognized as an ideal option for Republican nominee for Governor of New York.  The GOP in New York had been heavily divided by pro-machine and anti-machine elements, and the party had fallen on hard times throughout much of the state.  To win in 1898, it needed a strong and popular candidate.  Theodore Roosevelt was the perfect solution.

In the general election campaign, Roosevelt took on the Tammany Hall boss who was backing his Democratic opponent.  This proved a narrowly effective strategy, and Roosevelt won the election with a narrow margin of victory.  He won a plurality of 49% to his Democratic opponent's nearly 48%.

Roosevelt's time as Governor of New York was busy, and it was defined by some of the same conflicts he encountered as Police Commissioner and on the Civil Service Commission.  Once again, Roosevelt concentrated on rooting out crime and greed while improving the lot of working Americans. To achieve these goals, Governor Roosevelt's legislative agenda took on the state's political machines and large corporations directly.  A former Civil Servant himself, Roosevelt ensured that New York's Civil Service Law was reenacted after being terminated by the prior governor. 

Roosevelt also secured a long list of labor legislation, some of the most progressive in the nation including laws requiring factory inspections, the regulation of tenements, and an eight hour work day.  Roosevelt also regulated the safety of freight trains and ensured that women and children were not working in dangerous conditions.  And ever mindful of the country and conservation, Roosevelt’s agenda also assisted in conserving New York's natural resources.

Roosevelt's governorship showed enormous political courage, and he was awarded with high favorability among voters.  Naturally, political machine and corporate interests detested Roosevelt, frequently labeling him a communist or socialist for his far-reaching reforms.

The Election of 1900 and the Vice Presidency

Roosevelt's New York enemies hoped to rid the state of their progressive governor, but that would be easier said than done. Governor Roosevelt was very popular and would undoubtedly be tough to beat as an incumbent in 1902. Machine and corporate interests devised an interesting solution in the summer of 1900.  At the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, the New York machine leaders decided to
promote
Roosevelt for the Vice Presidency.  Doing so would remove him from New York.  Furthermore, the Vice President was notoriously insignificant in national politics.  Machinists thus thought that making Roosevelt the Vice President would turn him into a nobody.

The machinists, led by Senator Thomas Platt of New York, encountered a problem: McKinley's campaign chief, Mark Hanna, did not think Roosevelt would make a good addition to the Republican ticket. The machinists, however, managed to convince Hanna and most other delegations at the National Convention that Roosevelt was the perfect addition to the GOP ticket.  Roosevelt was initially unsure of the position.  While many thought it would end his political career, Roosevelt wasn't even sure that was a bad thing.  Perhaps it was time to return to the countryside, anyway.

After some convincing, Roosevelt thus accepted the nomination as Vice President alongside President McKinley.  The pair won the election of 1900, making Roosevelt the Vice President in March of 1901. 

Chapter 4: The Presidency

The Assassination of William McKinley

In the months after his reelection and second inauguration, President McKinely planned a tour around the United States, with the final stop coming at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. Expos had been popular methods for cities to present themselves on national and global stages, making them ideal events for presidents to attend. McKinley also enjoyed greeting the public, which concerned his security staff. By the time he gave a speech at the Expo on September 5, 1901, his security had been doubled.

The following day, McKinley took a trip to Niagara Falls before returning to the Expo. While on his way to the Temple of Music, anarchist Leon Czolgosz got within point blank range of the president and shot him twice in the chest. McKinley was conscious enough to implore the crowd not to tear Czolgosz limb to limb, and in the days after the shooting he seemed to be on the path to recovery. In fact, Vice President Roosevelt went on a camping trick to the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York while McKinley continued his convalescence.

As it turned out, doctors did not have the necessary technology to locate the bullet still lodged in McKinley’s abdomen, and the sunny prognostications that they kept making to reassure the public were false hope. Ironically, a new invention, a primitive form of an X-ray machine, was on the Expo grounds, but it could not be trusted to be used. Doctors had no idea that McKinley was critically ill until gangrene made him take a turn for the worse about a week after he was shot. On September 14, 1901, President McKinley died.

In one of the greatest ironies of electoral history, President McKinley was shot six months after Roosevelt's assumption of the Vice Presidency, catapulting Theodore Roosevelt into the White House.  This was a far cry from what the machinists had intended: instead of consigning him into a political abyss, Roosevelt was now the most powerful person in the United States.

Fittingly, Roosevelt was enjoying the leisure of the Vice Presidency by experiencing the great outdoors when he received news of the President's death.  While Roosevelt was hiking in the Adirondacks, a guide sought out Roosevelt in the woods on the afternoon of September 14 and brought him to Buffalo, where he was sworn in as the 26
^th
President of the United States.  At the age of 42, he was the youngest man ever to become President.

Once he reached the White House, Roosevelt maintained the McKinley cabinet as it was and pledged to continue McKinley's policies in the slain President's honor. Despite vowing to continue his predecessor’s policies, Roosevelt made history within his first few months in office.  In October, he dined with Booker T. Washington in the White House, making it the first meal a black man ever shared with a President in the Executive Mansion.  And he had found his own voice by the end of 1901, calling on Congress for laws that would break up industrial conglomerates and protect workers from corporate abuse.

The Panama Canal

In June of 1902, Congress passed the Spooner Act, which authorized funding for the building of a canal across the Isthmus of Panama.  When Roosevelt was Assistant Secretary of the Navy, he championed this idea as a way of connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.  But at the time the Spooner Act was passed, Panama remained a part of Columbia, and the U.S. was having difficulty getting the Columbians to agree to the Canal.  As a backup, the Spooner Act also authorized funds to build a canal through Nicaragua if the Panamanian isthmus was not an option.

Throughout 1902, the Columbian government continued to oppose American construction of the canal.  In 1903, however, the Panamanians successfully revolted against the Columbian government, with help from the United States.  Roosevelt quickly acknowledged the new nation and began negotiating for the construction of the Panama Canal.  Within days of the successful Panamanian revolt, the U.S. and the new nation of Panama signed the Hay-Buneau-Varilla Treaty, which gave the US control over a ten mile strip of land in Panama in exchange for $10 million and $250,000 annually.

With the land now under U.S. control, President Roosevelt appointed the Panama Canal Commission to oversee the construction of the Canal.  Construction began in 1904, and continued until 1914, when the Canal was complete.  It was a great achievement on the part of the Roosevelt Administration.  The two coasts of the United States were now much more easily accessible by sea, and the U.S. now controlled a heavily-trafficked piece of land, which it could use as a bargaining chip in foreign policy.

The Square Deal

Just a year into his Presidency, Roosevelt reiterated his commitment to breaking up large companies and offering the nation improved antitrust laws.  On August 19, 1902, during a tour of the Midwest, Roosevelt first coined the term “Square Deal”, which was subsequently used to describe his legislative agenda.

The Square Deal focused on three main commitments: natural resources conservation, limitation of corporate power, and consumer and worker protection.  With this, Roosevelt was able to champion some of his most cherished causes, while veering off the trail of honoring his predecessor, William McKinley, much to the chagrin of those who hoped Roosevelt's political career was over. Roosevelt was going to be his own president.

Much of Roosevelt's Square Deal progressive policies would come in his second term in office.  His first term was not without accomplishments, however.  Among the most important was the Elkins Anti-Rebate Act, which passed Congress in February of 1903.  The Act disallowed railroads from giving special prices to other large corporations.  This practice had disadvantaged small farmers and business owners, who relied on trains for freight but were charged higher prices than large corporations.  The Elkins Act forced railroads to charge everyone the same advertised price.

That same month, Roosevelt also formed the Department of Commerce and Labor to administer new laws regulating labor and large corporations.  Environmental conservation was also important during the first Roosevelt term, as the President created the first federal bird reservation on Pelican Island, Florida.  At the very end of his first term, he appointed Gifford Pinchot the first head of the National Forest Service, a division of the Department of Agriculture.  The new Service was to administer the national parks and monuments Roosevelt would create throughout his second term.

Reelection and the Roosevelt Corollary

Theodore Roosevelt faced two major candidates in his quest for reelection in 1904.  Although he had been president for nearly an entire term, the election of 1904 was still his first at the head of a national ticket. The Democrats nominated Alton Parker of New York, while the Socialist Party nominated Eugene Debs.  Parker was a conservative who had abandoned the more progressive wing of the party, leaving his supporters with the hope that he would attract support from the corporate interests Roosevelt had isolated and attacked.

Their plan didn't work, however, and Roosevelt was handily reelected, winning every state north of the Mason-Dixon Line except Maryland.  He lost all of the traditional Southern states, however, including Texas, as that bloc would remain firmly Democratic for another 60 years. Nevertheless, he won 336 electoral votes to his Democratic opponent's 140, with nearly 57% of the vote to Parker's 38%.  It was a significant victory.

After winning reelection, Roosevelt proposed his Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine in his annual address to Congress.  At the end of 1904, Roosevelt proposed that the United States should serve as a police power in the Western Hemisphere to stop “flagrant cases of wrongdoing or impotence.”  Although Teddy’s foreign policy is best remembered for the phrase “walk softly and carry a big stick”, the Roosevelt Corollary was quite vocally establishing a more robust policy of American intervention against European powers that sought claims in Latin America.

Portsmouth Treaty

Throughout the early 1900's, Russia and Japan were at war over claims to various pieces of land throughout Manchuria and the area between Russia and Japan.  Roosevelt invited both sides to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, where he negotiated a settlement between the two nations. The result was the Portsmouth Treaty of 1905.  Manchuria was ceded by both Japan and Russia and returned to China.  Other territories were divided peacefully between the two nations, and various sums of money were exchanged.

By mediating this treaty, the U.S. emerged as a major player in global diplomacy.  Likewise, Japan became an important power in Asia.  The Portsmouth Treaty was the first international treaty signed in the United States, and it was an early example of multilateral peacemaking diplomacy. For being an arbiter that helped end the war, President Roosevelt received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906, making him the first U.S. President to receive the honor.

Making Progress with the Square Deal

While the Square Deal moved at a snail's pace during Roosevelt's first term, it expanded rapidly during his second.  In the summer of 1906, a series of legislative initiatives passed through Congress that helped complete Roosevelt's commitment to progressivism.

In June, the National Monuments Act was passed, which established 18 national environmental monuments, including Devil's Tower, Muir Woods and Mount Olympus.  That same month, the Hepburn Act passed, which revitalized the Interstate Commerce Commission and granted greater government oversight of American railroads, ensuring safety and limiting corruption.

Inspired by Upton Sinclair's graphic depiction of slaughterhouses in
The Jungle
, Congress also passed food and drug inspection laws that June.  Among these were the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act.  This required that all plants crossing state borders be inspected and that the contents of foods be clearly and accurately labeled to ensure consumers knew what they were consuming.  Basic sanitary standards were also set, and the Food and Drug Administration was created.