Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt was born in New York City in 1858 to a wealthy family and overcame severe childhood asthma through physical discipline and intense ambition. He became a historian, rancher, reform politician, police commissioner, assistant secretary of the navy, and hero of the Spanish-American War. After serving as governor of New York, he became William McKinley’s vice president and then president in 1901 after McKinley’s assassination.

Roosevelt brought new energy to the office and treated the presidency as a national platform, or “bully pulpit.” His Square Deal sought to balance labor, business, and the public interest. He used the Sherman Antitrust Act against major corporations, intervened in the 1902 coal strike, and supported the Pure Food and Drug Act and Meat Inspection Act of 1906.

Conservation became one of his signature achievements. Roosevelt created or expanded national forests, parks, monuments, and wildlife refuges, preserving millions of acres of public land. In foreign policy, he backed construction of the Panama Canal, asserted American power in the Caribbean and Latin America through the Roosevelt Corollary, and won the Nobel Peace Prize for helping mediate the Russo-Japanese War.

Roosevelt left office in 1909 but remained politically restless. Dissatisfied with William Howard Taft, he ran for president in 1912 as the Progressive, or Bull Moose, candidate, splitting the Republican vote. His legacy is one of the most consequential in American history — progressive reform, conservation, and the expansion of American strength and global influence.