Theodore Teddy Roosevelt

1
Theodore Teddy Roosevelt

• By
• Javier Garza
• Matthew Martinez
• (Coach Whites 5th Period U.S. History)

2
Early Life

• Roosevelt was born in New York City on October
  27, 1858, into a wealthy, prominent New York
  family.
• As a child, he suffered from nearsightedness and
  asthma. As a youth, he participated in a
  strenuous bodybuilding program to overcome his
  asthma and general weakness.

3
Adult life

• He studied with tutors until he went to college
  at Harvard, where he earned good grades, wrote a
  book, The Naval War of 1812 (published in 1880),
  and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1880.
• After college, he married Alice Hathaway Lee and
  began studying at Columbia University Law School.
  In 1881 at the age of 23, he was elected to the
  New York state assembly and reelected to two more
  annual terms in 1882 and 1883.

4
Police Commissioner

• Roosevelt was appointed police commissioner in
  New York City in 1895 and again fought the
  corruption in the police department, which
  angered Democrats and Republicans alike. He even
  walked the streets at night to catch policemen
  sleeping on the job. In 1896, he supported
  Republican presidential nominee William McKinley
  and applied for a position in Washington.
  McKinley was disinclined to bring such an upstart
  into his administration, but Roosevelt's
  political support was too strong, and McKinley
  finally appointed him the assistant secretary of
  the navy.

5
Vice-Presidency

• After the war, he returned to New York, where
  several powerful groups urged him to run for
  various public offices. U.S. Senator Thomas C.
  Platt, New York's Republican boss, did not like
  Roosevelt, but he needed a candidate who could
  win the governor's race. Roosevelt accepted
  Platt's offer and won the election, but he
  refused to follow orders and even pushed through
  the legislature a bill to require taxes from
  public utility franchises. This hurt Platt
  directly since he had taken money from these
  utilities to prevent them from having to pay
  taxes. More than any of the other reforms that
  Roosevelt initiated, this tax irritated Platt so
  much that he pressed President McKinley to take
  Roosevelt as his vice presidential running mate.
  Finding a new vice president was necessary since
  Garret Hobart, McKinley's first vice president,
  had died in 1899.

6
Rise to Presidency

• September 14, 1901, Roosevelt became the
  President of the United States after President
  McKinley was assassinated.

7
Early Days

• Early on, Roosevelt tried to convince businessmen
  that he would not interfere with them, but he
  never quite succeeded. In December 1901, in his
  first address to Congress, he praised industrial
  leaders but pointed out that some of them had
  done "real and grave evils." By 1902, inflation
  was high, and the citizenry blamed the trusts for
  high prices. Roosevelt responded by ordering his
  Justice Department to file an antitrust action
  against the Northern Securities Company, a
  holding company run by the richest men in the
  United States to control railroad rates.

8
Rough Riders

• The First Cavalry Regiment during the
  Spanish-American War, commanded by Theodore
  Roosevelt, was informally known as the Rough
  Riders and became famous for its charge up Kettle
  Hill during the Santiago campaign in Cuba.

9
Elkins Act

• Roosevelt sponsored the 1903 Elkins Act to
  prohibit railroads from rebates (or kicking back
  money) to favored shippers, which put rivals out
  of business, but such practices had not stopped.
  Roosevelt then pushed Congress to pass the 1906
  Hepburn Railway Rate Act to reduce the evil
  rebates, although they still were not stopped
  entirely.

10
The Great White Fleet

• Roosevelt had pushed for major increases in U.S.
  naval strength, built 16 new battleships and
  cruisers, and moved the United States from having
  the fifth largest navy at the beginning of his
  term to being the second only to the British by
  the end of his term. In a show of strength, he
  then sent his navypainted whitearound the world
  as the Great White Fleet.

11
Roosevelts Retirement

• After his failure to achieve presidency again,
  Roosevelt "retired" to an exhausting and nearly
  fatal South America journey, and he continued to
  write. While he complained about President
  Wilson's foreign policy, he supported Wilson on
  the war. In fact, he tried to persuade Wilson to
  let him organize another volunteer division as he
  had during the Spanish-American War.

12
Roosevelts death

• Roosevelt was clearly planning to run for the
  Republican nomination in 1920 when he would have
  been only 62 years old. Most observers believe he
  might have won, but he had many serious medical
  conditions, and he died on January 6, 1919.

13
Citations

• Text Citation
• "Roosevelt, Theodore." American History Online.
  Facts On File, Inc. http//www.fofweb.com/activeli
  nk2.asp?ItemIDWE52iPinAHI0174SingleRecordTru
  e (accessed November 18, 2008).
• Image Citation
• "Roosevelt, Theodore." Library of Congress.
  Prints and Photographs Division. American History
  Online. Facts On File, Inc. http//www.fofweb.com/
  activelink2.asp?ItemIDWE52iPinAHI0174SingleRe
  cordTrue (accessed November 18, 2008).