Teddy roosevelt how long was he president

Roosevelt lost to Woodrow Wilson in the election, in a rather close popular vote. He considered running again in , winning the Progressive nomination, but bowed out in favor of Republican Party nominee Charles Evans Hughes.

His political aspirations, however, would soon prove to be far from over. When the U. Roosevelt was proud that all four of his sons enlisted for service during WWI, but brokenhearted when his youngest son, Quentin, was shot and killed in Germany. When Roosevelt was a young boy, doctors discovered that he had a weak heart, and advised him to get a desk job and not strain himself. However, he lived a more active life than most. Outside of his political career, Roosevelt published more than 25 books about a range of subjects, including history, biology, geography and philosophy.

He also published a biography and an autobiography, including The Winning of the West , comprised of four volumes. Roosevelt died in his sleep on January 6, , at his Long Island estate, Sagamore Hill , after suffering a coronary embolism. He was 60 years old. Although he was denied the Medal of Honor for the Battle of San Juan Heights, Roosevelt posthumously received the honor — the highest award for military service in the United States — more than years later, on January 16, , Roosevelt was the first president to receive the Medal of Honor, conferred by President Bill Clinton.

Roosevelt's energetic vision helped bring the nation into the new century. America owes nearly million acres of national forest and parkland to his foresight — some of which can be viewed atop Mount Rushmore, where Roosevelt's visage is carved in memorial.

We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Subscribe to the Biography newsletter to receive stories about the people who shaped our world and the stories that shaped their lives. Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal led the nation through the Great Depression.

Elected to four terms, his presidency helped ensure victory in World War II. The wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt changed the role of the first lady through her active participation in American politics.

Ulysses S. Grant served as U. Richard Nixon was the 37th U. Chester A. Arthur was the 21st president of the United States. He served as vice president at the time President James Garfield was assassinated, and acceded to the presidency thereafter.

One of the reasons he did so was because of a rediscovered love with his childhood sweetheart, Edith Kermit Carow.

After returning to New York, Roosevelt continued his writing career, which began with the publication of his book, The Naval War of , in Roosevelt also resumed his political career by running unsuccessfully for mayor of New York City in In , he campaigned for Republican presidential nominee Benjamin Harrison. When Harrison won the election, he appointed Roosevelt to the U. Civil Service Commission.

As commissioner, he worked hard to enforce the civil service laws, although he regularly clashed with party regulars and politicians who wanted him to ignore the law in favor of patronage.

Roosevelt served dutifully as a commissioner until he accepted the presidency of the New York City Police Board in He demonstrated honesty in office, much to the displeasure of party bosses.

He also cleaned up the corrupt Police Board and strictly enforced laws banning the sale of liquor on the Sabbath. Roosevelt had long believed in the importance of the Navy and the role it played in national defense. As acting secretary of the Navy, he responded to the explosion of the U.

See McKinley biography, Foreign Affairs section, for details. Roosevelt instructed Commodore George Dewey to make ready for war with Spain by taking the necessary steps for bottling up the Spanish squadron in Asian waters. He also asked Dewey to prepare for the probable invasion of the Philippines.

When the Spanish-American War began, Roosevelt resigned as assistant secretary of the Navy and volunteered for service as commander the 1st U. Volunteer Cavalry, a unit known as the Rough Riders—an elite company comprised of Ivy League gentlemen, western cowboys, sheriffs, prospectors, police officers, and Native Americans. The contingent suffered heavy casualties. The Rough Riders returned to the United States as war heroes.

Their varied backgrounds, colorful leader, and bravery on the battlefield brought them considerable attention. Roosevelt personally reveled in his time in the military. He later wrote about his military exploits: "I would rather have led that charge and earned my colonelcy than served three terms in the United States Senate. It makes me feel as though I could now leave something to my children which will serve as an apology for my having existed. Roosevelt returned home a war hero and caught the eye of Republican leaders in New York who were looking for a gubernatorial candidate.

Roosevelt carried the election by just a few thousand votes; his victory stemmed largely from the work of the state's Republican Party boss, Thomas C. Platt, who threw the full support of his political machine behind the hero of San Juan Hill. Although Platt and Roosevelt had agreed to consult each other on matters of policy and patronage, the new governor was his own man.

TR steadfastly refused to appoint party regulars as State Insurance Commissioner or Public Works Commissioner—the two most important patronage jobs in the state. When Governor Roosevelt supported a bill for the taxation of the value and assets of public services gas, water, electric, and streetcars , his actions led to an explosive break with Platt. Almost overnight the insurance companies, the construction contractors, and the privately owned public service corporations realized that all the money they were contributing to Platt's political machine brought them little if any influence with Governor Roosevelt.

The President himself, having the absolute leisure and peace of the White House, wrote his account of the trip nearly two years ago! But with the stress and strain of my life at "Slabsides,"—administering the affairs of so many of the wild creatures of the woods about me,—I have not till this blessed season found the time to put on record an account of the most interesting thing I saw in that wonderful land, which, of course, was the President himself.

When I accepted his invitation I was well aware that during the journey I should be in a storm centre most of the time, which is not always a pleasant prospect to a man of my habits and disposition. The President himself is a good deal of a storm,—a man of such abounding energy and ceaseless activity that he sets everything in motion around him wherever he goes.

But I knew he would be pretty well occupied on his way to the Park in speaking to eager throngs and in receiving personal and political homage in the towns and cities we were to pass through.

But when all this was over, and I found myself with him in the wilderness of the Park, with only the superintendent and a few attendants to help take up his tremendous personal impact, how was it likely to fare with a non-strenuous person like myself, I asked? I had visions of snow six and seven feet deep where traveling could be done only upon snowshoes, and I had never had the things on my feet in my life. If the infernal fires beneath, that keep the pot boiling so out there, should melt the snows, I could see the party tearing along on horseback at a wolf-bunt pace over a rough country; and as I had not been on a horse's back since the President was born, how would it be likely to fare with me there?

I had known the President several years before be became famous, and we had had some correspondence on subjects of natural history. His interest in such themes is always very fresh and keen, and the main motive of his visit to the Park at this time was to see and study in its semi-domesticated condition the great game which he had so often hunted during his ranch days; and he was kind enough to think it would be an additional pleasure to see it with a nature-lover like myself.

For my own part, I knew nothing about big game, but I knew there was no man in the country with whom I should so like to see it as Roosevelt. Some of our newspapers reported that the President intended to hunt in the Park. A woman in Vermont wrote me, to protest against the hunting, and hoped I would teach the President to love the animals as much as I did—as if he did not love them much more, because his love is founded upon knowledge, and because they had been a part of his life.

She did not know that I was then cherishing the secret hope that I might be allowed to shoot a cougar or bobcat; but this fun did not come to me. The President said, "I will not fire a gun in the Park; then I shall have no explanations to make. I always have. I have never been disturbed by the President's hunting trips. It is to such men as he that the big game legitimately belongs—men who regard it from the point of view of the naturalist as well as from that of the sportsman, who are interested in its preservation, and who share with the world the delight they experience in the chase.

Such a hunter as Roosevelt is as far removed from the game-butcher as day is from night; and as for his killing of the "varmints,"—bears, cougars, and bobcats,—the fewer of these there are, the better for the useful and beautiful game. The cougars, or mountain lions, in the Park certainly needed killing. The superintendent reported that he had seen where they had slain nineteen elk, and we saw where they had killed a deer, and dragged its body across the trail.

Of course, the President would not now on his hunting trips shoot an elk or a deer except to "keep the camp in meat," and for this purpose it is as legitimate as to slay a sheep or a steer for the table at home. We left Washington on April 1, and strung several of the larger Western cities on our thread of travel,—Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, St.

Paul, Minneapolis,—as well as many lesser towns, in each of which the President made an address, sometimes brief, on a few occasions of an hour or more. He gave himself very freely and heartily to the people wherever he went. He could easily match their Western cordiality and good-fellowship. Wherever his train stopped, crowds soon gathered, or had already gathered, to welcome him.

His advent made a holiday in each town he visited. At all the principal stops the usual programme was: first, his reception by the committee of citizens appointed to receive him; they usually boarded his private car, and were one by one introduced to him; then a drive through the town with a concourse of carriages; then to the hall or open air platform, where he spoke to the assembled throng; then to lunch or dinner; and then back to the train, and off for the next stop,—a round of hand-shaking, carriage-driving, speechmaking each day.

He usually spoke from eight to ten times every twenty-four hours, sometimes for only a few minutes, from the rear platform of his private car, at others for an hour or more in some large hall. In Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul, elaborate banquets were given him and his party, and on each occasion he delivered a carefully prepared speech upon questions that involved the policy of his administration.

The throng that greeted him in the vast Auditorium in Chicago—that rose and waved and waved again—was one of the grandest human spectacles I ever witnessed. In Milwaukee the dense cloud of tobacco smoke that presently filled the large hall after the feasting was over was enough to choke any speaker, but it did not seem to choke the President, though he does not use tobacco in any form himself; nor was there anything foggy about his utterances on that occasion upon legislative control of the trusts.

In St. Paul the city was inundated with humanity,—a vast human tide that left the middle of the streets bare as our line of carriages moved slowly along, but that rose up in solid walls of town and prairie humanity on the sidewalks and city dooryards.

How hearty and happy the myriad faces looked! At one point I spied in the throng on the curbstone a large silk banner that bore my own name as the title of some society. I presently saw that it was borne by half a dozen anxious and expectant-looking schoolgirls with braids down their backs. As my carriage drew near them, they pressed their way through the throng, and threw a large bouquet of flowers into my lap. I think it would be hard to say who blushed the deeper, the girls or myself.

It was the first time I had ever had flowers showered upon me in public; and then, maybe, I felt that on such an occasion I was only a minor side issue, and public recognition was not called for. But the incident pleased the President. Paul for that pretty attention. The time of the passing of the presidential train seemed well known, even on the Dakota prairies.

At one point I remember a little brown schoolhouse stood not far off; and near the track the schoolma'am, with her flock, drawn up in line. We were at luncheon, but the President caught a glimpse ahead through the window, and quickly took in the situation.

With napkin in hand, he rushed out on the platform and waved to them. They may never have another chance. What a deep impression such things make when we are young! At some point in the Dakotas we picked up the former foreman of his ranch, and another cowboy friend of the old days, and they rode with the President in his private car for several hours. He was as happy with them as a schoolboy ever was in meeting old chums. He beamed with delight all over.

The life which those men represented, and of which he had himself once formed a part, meant so much to him; it had entered into the very marrow of his being, and I could see the joy of it all shining in his face as he sat and lived parts of it over again with those men that day. He bubbled with laughter continually.

The men, I thought, seemed a little embarrassed by his openhanded cordiality and good-fellowship. He himself evidently wanted to forget the present, and to live only in the memory of those wonderful ranch days,—that free, hardy, adventurous life upon the plains.

It all came back to him with a rush when he found himself alone with these heroes of the rope and the stirrup. How much more keen his appreciation was, and how much quicker his memory, than theirs!

He was constantly recalling to their minds incidents which they had forgotten, and the names of horses and dogs which had escaped them. His subsequent life, instead of making dim the memory of his ranch days, seemed to have made it more vivid by contrast. When they had gone, I said to him, "I think your affection for those men very beautiful.

He said afterwards that his ranch life had been the making of him. It had built him up and hardened him physically, and it had opened his eyes to the wealth of manly character among the plainsmen and cattlemen. Had he not gone West, he said he never would have raised the Rough Riders Regiment; and had he not raised that regiment and gone to the Cuban War, he would not have been made governor of New York; and had not this happened, the politicians would not unwittingly have made his rise to the Presidency so inevitable.

There is no doubt, I think, that he would have got there some day; but without the, chain of events above outlined, his rise could not have been so rapid. Our train entered the Bad Lands of North Dakota in the early evening twilight, and the President stood on the rear platform of his car, gazing wistfully upon the scene. My old ranch is not far off. We shall soon reach Medora, which was my station.

There were streaks of good pasturage here and there where his cattle used to graze, and where the deer and the prong-horn used to linger. When we reached Medora, where the train was scheduled to stop an hour, it was nearly dark, but the whole town and country round had turned out to welcome their old townsman.

After much handshaking, the committee conducted us down to a little hall, where the President stood on a low platform, and made a short address to the standing crowd that filled the place. Then some flashlight pictures were taken by the local photographer, after which the President stepped down, and, while the people filed past him, shook hands with every man, woman, and child of them, calling many of them by name, and greeting them all most cordially.

I recall one grizzled old frontiersman whose hand he grasped, calling him by name, and saying, "How well I remember you!

You once mended my gun lock for me,—put on a new hammer. I heard one of the women tell him they were going to have a dance presently, and ask him if he would not stay and open it! The President laughingly excused himself, and said his train had to leave on schedule time, and his time was nearly up. I thought of the incident in his Ranch Life, in which he says he once opened a cowboy ball with the wife of a Minnesota man, who had recently shot a bullying Scotchman who danced opposite.

He says the scene reminded him of the ball where Bret Harte's heroine "went down the middle with the man that shot Sandy Magee. But it turned out that Hell Roaring Bill bad begun to celebrate the coming of the President too early in the day, and when we reached Medora he was not in a presentable condition.

I forget now how he had earned his name, but no doubt he had come honestly by it; it was part of his history, as was that of "The Pike," "Cold Turkey Bill," "Hash Knife Joe," and other classic heroes of the frontier.

It is curious how certain things go to the bad in the Far West, or a certain proportion of them,—bad lands, bad horses, and bad men. And it is a degree of badness that the East has no conception of:—land that looks as raw and unnatural as if time had never laid its shaping and softening hand upon it; horses that, when mounted, put their heads to the ground and their heels in the air, and, squealing defiantly, resort to the most diabolically ingenious tricks to shake off or to kill their riders; and men who amuse themselves in barrooms by shooting about the feet of a "tenderfoot" to make him dance, or who ride along the street and shoot at everyone in sight.

Just as old plutonic fires come to the surface out there in the Rockies, and hint very strongly of the infernal regions, so a kind satanic element in men and animals—an underlying devilishness—crops out, and we have the border ruffian and the bucking broncho.

The President told of an Englishman on a hunting trip in the West, who, being an expert horseman at home, scorned idea the idea that he could not ride any of their "grass-fed ponies. He was soon lying on the ground, much stunned. When he could speak, he said, "I should not have minded him, you know, but 'e 'ides 'is 'ead.

At one place in Dakota the train stopped to take water while we were at lunch. A crowd soon gathered, and the President went out to greet them. We could hear his voice, and the cheers and laughter of the crowd. And then we heard him say, "Well, good-by, I must go now. Then we heard more talking and laughing, and another "good-by," and yet he did not come. Then I went out to see what had happened. I found the President down on the ground shaking hands with the whole lot of them.

Some one had reached up to shake his hand as he was about withdrawing, and this had been followed by such eagerness on the part of the rest of the people to do likewise, that the President had instantly got down to gratify them. Had the secret service men known it, they would have been in a pickle.

We probably have never had a President who responded more freely and heartily to the popular liking for him than Roosevelt. The crowd always seem to be in love with him the moment they see him and hear his voice.

And it is not by reason of any arts or eloquence, or charm of address, but by reason of his inborn heartiness and sincerity, and his genuine manliness. The people feel his quality at once. In Bermuda last winter I met a Catholic priest who had sat on the platform at some place in New England very near the President while he was speaking, and who said, "The man had not spoken three minutes before I loved him, and had any one tried to molest him, I could have torn him to pieces.

I once heard him say that he did not like to be addressed as "His Excellency;" he added laughingly, "They might just as well call me His Transparency, for all I care. The people do love transparency,—all of them but the politicians. A friend of his one day took him to task for some mistake he had made in one of his appointments.

I have said that I stood in dread of the necessity of snowshoeing in the Park, and, in lieu of that, of horseback riding. Yet when we reached Gardiner, the entrance to the Park, on that bright, crisp April morning, with no snow in sight save that on the mountain tops, and found Major Pitcher and Captain Chittenden at the head of a squad of soldiers, with a fine saddle horse for the President, and an ambulance drawn by two span of mules for me, I confess that I experienced just a slight shade of mortification.

I thought they might have given me the option of the saddle or the ambulance. Yet I entered the vehicle as if it was just what I had been expecting. The President and his escort, with a cloud of cowboys hovering in the rear, were soon off at a lively pace, and my ambulance followed close, and at a lively pace, too; so lively that I soon found myself gripping the seat with my hands.

The driver and his mules were shut off from me by a curtain, but, looking ahead out of the sides of the vehicle, I saw two good-sized logs lying across our course.

Surely, I thought and barely had time to think , he will avoid these. But he did not, and as we passed over them I was nearly thrown through the top of the ambulance. Presently I saw the cowboys scrambling up the bank as if to get out of our way; then the President on his fine gray stallion scrambling up the bank with his escort, and looking ominously in my direction, as we thundered by.

I am given the right of way over all. And not till we reached the fort did I learn that our mules had run away. They had been excited beyond control by the presidential cavalcade, and the driver, finding he could not hold them, had aimed only to keep them in the road, and we very soon had the road all to ourselves. Fort Yellowstone is at Mammoth Hot Springs, where one gets his first view of the characteristic scenery of the Park,—huge, boiling springs with their columns of vapor, and the first characteristic odors which suggest the traditional infernal regions quite as much as the boiling and steaming water does.

One also gets a taste of a much more rarefied air than he has been used to, and finds himself panting for breath on a very slight exertion. The Mammoth Hot Springs have built themselves up an enormous mound that stands there above the village on the side of the mountain, terraced and scalloped and fluted, and suggesting some vitreous formation, or rare carving of enormous, many-colored precious stones.

It looks quite unearthly, and, though the devil's frying pan, and ink pot, and the Stygian caves are not far off, the suggestion is of something celestial rather than of the nether regions,—a vision of jasper walls, and of amethyst battlements. With Captain Chittenden I climbed to the top, stepping over the rills and creeks of steaming hot water, and looked at the marvelously clear, cerulean, but boiling, pools on the summit.

The water seemed as unearthly in its beauty and purity as the gigantic sculpturing that held it. The Stygian caves are still farther up the mountain,—little pockets in the rocks, or well-holes in the ground at your feet, filled with deadly carbon dioxide. We saw birds' feathers and quills in all of them.

The birds hop into them, probably in quest of food or seeking shelter, and they never come out. We saw the body of a martin on the bank of one hole. Into one we sank a lighted torch, and it was extinguished as quickly as if we had dropped it into water. Each cave or niche is a death valley on a small scale. Near by we came upon a steaming pool, or lakelet, of an acre or more in extent.

A pair of mallard ducks were swimming about in one end of it,—the cool end. When we approached, they swam slowly over into the warmer water. As they progressed, the water got hotter and hotter and the ducks' discomfort was evident. Presently they stopped, and turned toward us, half appealingly, as I thought. They could go no farther; would we please come no nearer? As I took another step or two, up they rose and disappeared over the hill. Had they gone to the extreme end of the pool, we could have had boiled mallard for dinner.

Another novel spectacle was at night, or near sundown, when the deer came down from the hills into the streets, and ate hay a few yards from the officers' quarters, as unconcernedly as so many domestic sheep.

This they had been doing all winter, and they kept it up till May, at times a score or more of them profiting thus on the government's bounty. When the sundown gun was fired a couple of hundred yards away, they gave a nervous start but kept on with their feeding. The antelope and elk and mountain sheep had not yet grown bold enough to accept Uncle Sam's charity in that way. The President wanted all the freedom and solitude possible while in the Park, so all newspaper men and other strangers were excluded.

Even the secret service men and his physician and private secretaries were left at Gardiner.