Teddy Roosevelt

Vice President seemed at odds with the President's relaxed style, it was perfectly like Mckinley to go along with what the party and the people wanted. He never admitted to sharing the fears of his good friend and political advisor, Ohio Senator Marcus Hanna, who was also chairman of the national Republican committee. For Hanna, Roosevelt was too young, too inexperienced and too much of a maverick. He could not help but think: What if McKinley should die in office?

Rough Rider in the White House , 1901 - 1909

No event had a more profound effect on Theodore Roosevelt's political career than the assassination of President William McKinley in September

1901. At the age of forty-two, Vice President Theodore Roosevelt took the oath of office, becoming the youngest President of the United States before or since. From the start, Roosevelt was committed to making the government work for the people, and in many respects, the people never needed government more. The post-Civil War industrial revolution had generated enormous wealth and power for the men who controlled the levers of business and capital. Regulating the great business trusts to foster fair competition without socializing the free enterprise system would be one of

Roosevelt's primary concerns. The railroads, labor, and the processed food industry all came under his scrutiny. Although the regulations he implemented were modest by today's standards, collectively they were a significant first step in an age before warning labels and consumer lawsuits.

Internationally, America was on the threshold of world leadership.

Acquisition of the Philippines and Guam after the recent war with Spain expanded the nation's territorial borders almost to Asia. The Panama Canal would only increase American trade and defense interests in the Far East, as well as in Central and South America. In an age that saw the rise of oceanic steamship travel, the country's sense of isolation was on the verge of suddenly becoming as antiquated as yardarms and sails.

A conservative by nature, Roosevelt was progressive in the way he addressed the nation's problems and modern in his view of the presidency. If the people were to be served, according to him, then it was incumbent upon the

President to orchestrate the initiatives that would be to their benefit and the nation's welfare. Not since Abraham Lincoln, and Andrew Jackson before him, had a President exercised his executive powers as an equal branch of government. If the Constitution did not specifically deny the President the exercise of power, Roosevelt felt at liberty to do so. "Is there any law that will prevent me from declaring Pelican Island a Federal Bird

Reservation? . . .Very well, then I so declare it!" By executive order in

March 1903, he established the first of fifty-one national bird sanctuaries. These and the national parks and monuments he created are a part of his great legacy.

Theodore Roosevelt's dynamic view of the presidency infused vigor into a branch of government that traditionally had been ceremonial and sedate. His famous "Tennis Cabinet" was indicative of how he liked to work. Riding and hiking were daily pastimes; one senator jested that anyone wishing to have influence with the President would have to buy a horse. When the press could keep pace with him, it reveled in his activities, making him the first celebrity of the twentieth century. His spectacled image adorned countless magazine covers before beauty, sex, and scandal became chic. This image of Roosevelt by Peter Juley appeared on the cover of Harper's Weekly,

July 2, 1904.

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(Left to right):

Quentin (1897-1918), Theodore (1858-1919), Theodore Jr. (1887-1944),

Archibald (1894-1979),Alice Lee (1884-1980), Kermit (1889-1943), Edith

Kermit (1861-1948),

and Ethel Carow (1891-1977)Like Roosevelt himself, the first family was young, energetic, and a novelty in the White House. Public interest in them was spontaneous, as pictures of Theodore, Edith, and their six children began appearing in newspapers and magazines. For once in history, the executive mansion acquired aspects of a normal American home, complete, with roller skates, bicycles, and tennis racquets.

Theodore Roosevelt's eldest child, Alice Lee, was an impressionable teenager when the family moved into the White House in 1901. High-spirited and defiant by nature, she enjoyed pushing the limits of decorum, while competing for her father's attention. Naturally she was a favorite of the press, which called her Princess Alice. Stories about her antics, her favorite color, a blue-gray dubbed "Alice blue," and her cast of acquaintances filled the newspapers. She smoked in public, bet at the racetrack, and was caught speeding in her red runabout by the Washington police. Photographs of her connote the classic Gibson Girl and suggest an air of youthful haughtiness. In 1906, she married Nicholas Longworth, a