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roosevelt lodge, No. 42
FREE AND  ACCEPTED   MASONS
FREEMASONS'  HALL
PROVIDENCE,  R.  I.

Presented to

Frederick Bernays Wiener Brown,   1927
by
Roosevelt Lodge, Ho. 24, P. & A. M, as a token of appreciation
October 27,   1925

BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT
THEODORE ROOSEVELT AND HIS TIME.     2 Vols.
theodore roosevelt.   An Autobiography
LETTERS  TO HIS  CHILDREN
A BOOK-LOVER S HOLIDAYS IN THE OPEN THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS AFRICAN OAME TRAILS.      i vols. OUTDOOR PASTIMES OP AN AMERICAN HTJNTEB THE BOUGH RIDERS
Profusely Illustrated
THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS
AFRICAN GAME TRAILS
OUTDOOR PASTIMES OF AN AMERICAN HUNTER
LIFE-HISTORIES OF AFRICAN OAME ANIMALS With Edmund Heller
THE GREAT ADVENTURE AMERICA AND THE WORLD WAR HISTORY AS LITERATURE OLIVER CROMWELL
THE  ROOSEVELT  BOOK.      Selections from the Writings of Theodore Roosevelt

THEODORE ROOSEVELT AND  HIS  TIME
SHOWN IN  HIS OWN LETTERS
BY
JOSEPH BUCKLIN BISHOP
editor of "theodore roosevelt's letters to his children" author of "the panama gateway," etc.
WITH  ILLUSTRATIONS
VOLUMNE ONE.
NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SON'S
1920

copyright, 1919, 1920," by
Charles Scribner’s  sons
Published September 1920
THE SCRIBNER  PRESS

TO
HIS FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN

INTRODUCTION
five years or more before his death Theodore Roosevelt said he wished me to write the history of the period which covered his public career. His reason was that I had been in his close confidence during the greater part of that period and knew the inside of every movement nearly as well as he knew it himself. We talked often on the subject and in the early spring of 1918 the project took definite form. He turned over to me for exclusive use all his personal and official correspondence together with other material relating to his public career from the time he was elected to the New York Legislature in November, 1881, till his life ended.
I began work at once, and at the time of his death I had completed the first draft of the story of his public life down to the year 1905, and had received his approval of it. At different stages of the work I went over with him what I had written and had the inestimable advantage of his suggestions, obtaining from him incidents and anecdotes which added immeasurably to the interest and historical value of the narrative, making it virtually his own. Between us we evolved a general plan for the history, which was to let the story of his career be told, as far as possible, in his own letters, utterances and acts.
This was an arduous but not a difficult task to perform. It was arduous because the material was virtually inexhaustible, but it was not difficult because of the quality of Roosevelt's letters. One of his private secretaries has estimated that during his public career he wrote 150,000 letters. Copies of these have been preserved. With them

viii	INTRODUCTION
are the original letters of the many correspondents that he had in all parts of the world—authors, poets, historians, artists, explorers, naturalists, statesmen, prime ministers, kings, emperors. He not only touched life at all points, but on its intellectual side touched the highest points in every land. Not only is the correspondence limitless in its range, but from beginning to end it is Roosevelt himself and hence unlike the correspondence of any other person. Emerson, in his observations upon great men, says that "He is great who never reminds us of others." No man ever met this test more fully than Theodore Roosevelt. Nature has made many millions of men but she has made only one Theodore Roosevelt. From the beginning to the end of his life he was himself and was unlike any one else. It was this clearly defined personality, at once unique and commanding, which concentrated upon him the attention of the world and made his name familiar in all civilized lands. Fame of this phenomenal sort is given only to a dominating personality. Its bestowal is to be explained only by an examination of the man as revealed in his words and acts. Roosevelt's letters not merely reflect his personality, they reveal it with all the fulness of a frank and truthful man talking to tried and trusted friends. His letters are not merely like his talk, they are his talk—frank and free, with rays of irrepressible and always joyous humor playing about it, and with deft and sure thrusts at the foibles, vanities, perversities, and weaknesses of mankind. Few men have had a keener insight into human motives or could detect more quickly the real nature of them. When he sat down to write or to dictate a letter to a congenial friend, he did not compose, he talked. Whatever was uppermost in his mind at the time came out without restraint or reservation. As he wrote most freely in moments of greatest stress, at the height of crises created by himself in his struggle for the triumph of causes dear to his heart, his letters give us a veritable "inside history" of his time. They push aside the screen that hides the

INTRODUCTION	ix
wires which control great events and we see them operating before our eyes. We see, in very truth, history in the making, shown and explained to us by the man who himself is making it.
We get also a complete self-revelation of the man, of the motives, desires, and principles which guided his life. It is this quality of self-revelation, more than any other perhaps, which makes his letters so admirable a vehicle for telling the story of his career. Many writers have sought to depict the man Roosevelt, and many others will repeat the effort, but none has, and none can, depict him as he really was with that vivid clearness in which he stands self-revealed in his letters. All sides of this many-sided man are disclosed there—the intellectual, which covered all fields of human knowledge, ancient and modern; the political, which shows him to have been a sagacious statesman of the first rank rather than a politician, for as a politician he repeatedly broke the fundamental rules of the game; the executive and administrator first of a great State and then of a great nation, whose motto was action, action and still more action, and who accomplished great and supposedly impossible tasks by the driving force of his character; the diplomatist and peacemaker, a role which he played with greater success than any other man of his time; and finally, the inspiring and uplifting leader of his countrymen, the intense, vigilant, militant, uncompromising patriot, eager to serve the nation in peace or in war, who throughout his life was first and always an American.
It is the purpose of the present study of the man and his time to let his words and acts tell the story of his career and also of the epoch which it constitutes in American history, an epoch in which he was the leading and molding figure. As the narrative concerns itself chiefly with his public career, it passes briefly over his ancestry, childhood and youth, a full account of which he has given in his 'Autobiography,' and begins in detail with his entry into political life.

x	INTRODUCTION
While in a few instances, in order to maintain the continuity of the narrative, the present record overlaps the 'Autobiography,' it really supplements and completes it, and the two works together constitute authentically the Life and Letters of Theodore Roosevelt as designed by himself.
J. B. B.
September, 1920.

CONTENTS VOL. I.
PAGE
introduction	
CHAPTEK
I.   ancestry, childhood and youth    ....	1
II.   legislature—first term		6
III.	legislature—second term		17
IV.	legislature—third term		24
V.   first appearance in national politics.   mr.
Blaine's candidacy		33
VI.   literary labors—tilt with jefferson davis
—candidate for mayor		39
VII.   civil service commissioner   ......	43
VIII.   police commissioner		58
IX.   assistant secretary or the navy ....	70
X.   the war with spain		92
XI.   governor of new york—first year .     .  	109
XII.   governor of new york—second year    . .	128
XIII.	nominated and elected vice president .     .	134
XIV.	president—early declarations of policy   .	148
XV.   the booker washington incident       .    .    .	165
XVI.   controversies with general miles    .   .	171
XVII.   the northern securities suit		182
XVIII.   incidents op a busy year		188
XIX.   coal strike settlement		198
XX.   the kaiser and venezuela		221
XXI.   popular approval—views on various subjects	230
XXII.   for president in 1904—futile opposition—
His own attitude		243
XXIII.   notable sentiments in speeches and letters—
alaska boundary—wide range of reading	256
xi

xii	CONTENTS
CHAPTER	PAGE
XXIV.    securing the panama canal		270
XXV.    securing the panama canal—concluded .     .291
XXVI.    national convention and campaign of 1904 .	312
XXVII.    attitude  toward  campaign  contributions—
judge parker's charges		328
XXVIII.    visit of john morley at the white house   .	337
XXIX.    illuminating  letters  on  various  subjects,
including questions of policy     ....343
XXX.    inaugurated president—death of john hay	362
XXXI.    russo-japanese peace conference ....	374
XXXII.      RUSSO-JAPANESEPEACECONFERENCE—CONCLUDED     401
XXXIII.	messages to congress—paul morton case—
senate on santo domingo and arbitration
treaties	     .   .    425
XXXIV.	rebukes to riotous strikers and lynchers—
dealings with senators—letters on vari
ous subjects		438
XXXV.    builder of the panama canal		449
XXXVI.    secret history of the algeciras convention	467
XXXVII.    secret history of the algeciras convention
—concluded	488

ILLUSTRATIONS
VOL. I.
Theodore Roosevelt, 1908	Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
Theodore Roosevelt, New York Legislature, 1881       ...	10
Theodore Roosevelt, Police Commissioner, 1895     ....	60
Theodore Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, 1897    .	72
Theodore Roosevelt, Governor, 1899		112
Inauguration Medal, 1905, and Coinage designs, by Augustus
Saint-Gaudens, 1906	  360
The completed Panama Canal, 1919	  450