Theodore Roosevelt

III

Early Career

Roosevelt explored several careers before entering politics. He attended law classes at Columbia University, but he didn’t enjoy it. He worked industriously at his first book, The Naval War of 1812, for which he had begun research while still at Harvard. A thorough study of the subject, it was published in 1882. Although people of Roosevelt’s social position often believed politics to be beneath them, Roosevelt declared that he “intended to be one of the governing class.” Roosevelt easily won his first election in 1881 to the state assembly in Albany, New York, as a member of the Republican Party.

A

State Legislator

Despite his extreme youth, his expensive clothes, upper-class manners, and his high squeaky voice, Roosevelt immediately made his mark. He won respect by exposing a corrupt judge and by learning to work with men of both parties, notably Democratic Governor (later President) Grover Cleveland. Roosevelt became leader of the Republican minority but earned the ill will of powerful members of his party. In 1884, after rejecting what would have been another term in the legislature, he went to the Republican National Convention in Chicago, Illinois, as chairman of the New York delegation. There he offended Republicans favoring reform by supporting the party’s presidential choice, United States Senator James G. Blaine of Maine.

B

Cowboy and Ranch Owner

Roosevelt suffered a double shock on February 14, 1884, with the death of both his mother and his wife. His wife died while giving birth to their daughter, Alice. Although deeply grieved, he continued to work, leaving Alice in the care of his older sister, Anna.

In 1883 Roosevelt had visited the West, and the next year he started what became the Elkhorn Ranch on the Little Missouri River, in Dakota Territory. During much of the next several years he lived the hard life of a cowboy. At one time he took part in the capture of three thieves, whom it took six days to escort at gunpoint to the authorities. His accustomed heartiness and enthusiasm never flagged. He often traveled back and forth to the East and published such different books as Hunting Trips of a Ranch Man (1885) and the vigorous but lightly researched Thomas Hart Benton (1886). Roosevelt, mistrusted by both liberals and party leaders, remained unsure of his career in politics.

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In 1885 Roosevelt fell in love with Edith Kermit Carow, a life-long friend, and that year they became secretly engaged. In 1886 he went East to be the Republican candidate for mayor of New York City. He ran a disheartening third.

Roosevelt then went abroad. On December 2, 1886, he and Edith were married in London. Roosevelt brought her back to the new home he had built on Sagamore Hill, in Oyster Bay, Long Island. The couple had five children, Theodore Jr., Kermit, Ethel Carow, Archibald Bullock, and Quentin. They also raised Alice, Roosevelt’s daughter from his first marriage.

Discouraged with politics, Roosevelt enjoyed family life and literary pursuits. He wrote Essays on Practical Politics in 1888. The same year he also wrote an opinionated biography of Gouverneur Morris, an American statesman who helped draft the Constitution of the United States. The book revealed far more about Roosevelt’s mind than that of his subject. Roosevelt then undertook what became his most famous book, The Winning of the West, the four volumes of which appeared from 1889 to 1896.

C

Reformer

C

1

Civil Service Commissioner

Roosevelt was active in the presidential campaign of 1888, when Benjamin Harrison defeated incumbent Grover Cleveland. During this time, Roosevelt also spoke forcefully in favor of hiring workers for government jobs (also called civil service jobs) based on their skills. At that time many government workers were hired not because of their skills, but because they were loyal members of the winning political party. Giving out government jobs based on party loyalty was called patronage. Harrison rewarded Roosevelt’s activities by appointing him U.S. Civil Service commissioner in 1889. Roosevelt broadened his knowledge of capital politics and became an intimate of intellectuals, like historian Henry Adams, and of scholar-politicians like Massachusetts Representative Henry Cabot Lodge. Roosevelt injected new life into the battle for competence in government appointments. He exposed weaknesses in the patronage system and challenged the postmaster general, a major dispenser of federal jobs. Roosevelt made the civil service debate interesting, and, in the process, increased his own public reputation. When Cleveland defeated Harrison and won election to a second presidential term in 1892, he kept Roosevelt on as commissioner.

C

2

New York Police Commissioner

Roosevelt’s fame as a public servant spread, and in 1895 he returned to New York City to become president of the police board. Roosevelt had long been interested in New York municipal government, and in 1895 people in New York, like those in the rest of the country, were beginning to demand reform. This period of reform was called the Progressive era, and lasted from the last decade of the 19th century into World War I (1914-1918). Reformers, or progressives as they were called, were concerned about abuses of power by government and businesses. They wanted to make the United States a better place to live, and like Roosevelt, they believed that the government had an important role to play in this transformation. The demands for reform in New York grew with the exposure of alliances between criminals and police and by Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Lives (1890), which exposed poverty and its effects. The book had deeply stirred Roosevelt. Roosevelt’s war on police corruption and saloonkeepers was more apparent than real, but it directed newspaper attention to the situation, enhanced Roosevelt’s public image, and broadened his experience.

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