Research Proposal on "Theodore Roosevelt"

Research Proposal 10 pages (3918 words) Sources: 5 Style: Chicago

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Theodore Roosevelt: An American for a New Age

Few Americans have so profoundly influenced the modern era as Theodore Roosevelt. Statesman and cultural crusader, the twenty-sixth president of the United States brought issues of race, conservation, and American power to the forefront of public discussion. Roosevelt was both a product of his times and a sign of things to come. Raised in New York City, he developed an affinity for the American West and all that it symbolized. Product of the era of the Civil War, he advanced upon the issues that came out of the conflict and tried to lead the country forward. Roosevelt's views on race and social relations would reflect reformist attitudes. He believed strongly in the idea of projecting American power and influence across the globe. America, he thought, possessed unique qualities that could serve as lessons to a wider world. He was a peacemaker and a fighter, distinguishing himself in diplomacy and war. Above all, Theodore Roosevelt was born of the tragedies and triumphs that were the story of his own personal life and experiences. A self-made man he rose above the strictures of his upbringing and class to forge a new identity. And it was this identity that the force of his indomitable personality attempted to bring to the country and the world.

The Twenty-sixth President was born in New York City on October 27, 1858. At odds with later legend, the young Roosevelt grew up a child of privilege in the largest city in the United States. Roosevelt's experience of the outdoors and the Wild West were either occasional or but on the level of fantasy. The young "Teedie" - or so he liked to be called - requested a gymnasium from his financier father, and so begin a lifelong interest in athletics.

At the age of eleven, he traveled to Europe for the Grand Tour - the true mark of cultural education for a gentleman.

Roosevelt's early education steeped him in the traditions of Western Civilization. He was brought up to see the world as his exalted social rank demanded that he see it. In the process he was given his first taste of other peoples and cultures. Less than three years later, he went abroad again, this time visiting the monuments of Ancient Egypt. As a result of the experience, it was with the intention of becoming a leading naturalist that he entered Harvard in 1876.

Harvard of the late 1870s was a school well-attuned to Theodore's temperament. Recent reforms by university President Eliot had introduced the idea of a largely elective curriculum. Roosevelt studied math, physics, and chemistry along with Latin, Greek, and German.

The selection of courses reflected the future president's interest in both the natural, scientific world and the realm of human events and interactions. Roosevelt's focus on language, in particular, showed his interest in communication and reaching out to others. As well, the particular languages studied could be seen as an attempt to understand the human forces that shaped his world. Greece and Rome were seen at the time as the primary sources of Western civilization, Greece a kind of empire of the mind, while Rome was, of course, the great political empire and source of laws. Germany, in Roosevelt's time at Harvard, had just come into being as single, unified state. Its rapid growth and industrialization appeared to foreshadow an enormous role in world affairs. The German predilection for science and order suggested, too, a new "modern" outlook that would have appealed to Roosevelt. Theodore's father died while he was at Harvard, and he also fell in love with Alice Lee, his future wife. The two experiences further completed his progress to adulthood, each contributing to the making of an independent man. Roosevelt determined to preserve his father's legacy by going into public life.

His first forays into public life came in the form of his voluminous writings. Roosevelt liked to observe and to record his observations and musings. For this Harvard graduate, action was an essential completion of thought. Roosevelt's desire to know the world and to be at the source of its inspiration led him inevitably to America's Western frontier. Like so many of the time, he conceived of this half-wild half-settled land as the place where new ideas were born and where civilization could be improved and perfected. He started a cattle ranch in the Dakota Territory and wrote three books that focused on the natural history of the area. Others saw ranching as a business, but for Roosevelt it was a hands-on introduction to the conservationist ideas that were to become so important to him. Theodore saw in the frontier a confirmation of the theory of social Darwinism and this is reflected in his writings.

Roosevelt was among the major proponents of new movement that turned on its head traditional American notions of progress and relationship to the land. Men like Jefferson had seen farmers as the backbone of society, whereas Roosevelt looked to the wild landscape and the hunter as a source of real American virtue. Modern people were becoming too detached from the land and from their cultural origins. Mass immigration was transforming American society, "Through hunting, American men sought to invigorate themselves with frontier manliness, rekindle individualism and self-reliance, and demonstrate Anglo-Saxon might to immigrants and upstart foreign powers."

Roosevelt was formulating his own uniquely American worldview in response to both the foreign world he had seen in Europe and the Middle East, and that which he had encountered through his studies and at home in New York. The Frontier offered a way to find balance and move forward. One could impose new controls while rising to challenges.

Theodore Roosevelt was tested as few could have been when on February 14, 1884 his wife Alice and his mother died on the same day. Nature had conquered in the most ghastly way. Theodore left for the Badlands leaving his only daughter in the care of his sister. His sense of loss appeared to be reflected in the desolate landscape where, during the summer, "when the grassy prairies are left and the traveler enters a region of alkali desert and sagebrush, the look of the country becomes even more grim and forbidding. In places the alkali forms a white frost on the ground that glances in the sunlight like the surface of a frozen lake." It was as if the still young Roosevelt was pondering the strange turn his life had taken. Much as alkaline coatings might mimic frost, so too might the troubles of his current life be mirages that could be overcome through deep thought. For a time he gave up everything to nature. In the serve winter of 1886-1887 his cattle were wiped out. The disaster drove Roosevelt back to New York and to public life. The future president had learned that nature could not be defeated. It would take life according to its own rhythms. It operated in accord with its own laws. The experience turned Roosevelt even more to those areas that he could change while instilling within him a strong respect for the powers of the untamed.

Politics would be Theodore Roosevelt's new frontier and he would learn how to tame it. By 1895 he had become President of the New York City Board of Police Commissioners, a position in which he showed himself capable of making independent decisions. He challenged the machine but was ultimately unsuccessful in achieving lasting reform.

Still his demonstration of moral rectitude was an excellent recommendation for his next major post that of Assistant Secretary of the Navy during President McKinley's first term. Here he displayed many of the lessons he had learned before. Roosevelt earned the contempt of many career officers by trying to subject the military to stronger and more direct civilian control.

As everywhere else, Theodore saw himself as the great reconciler; the enlightened modern man who stood up for moral and progressive administration. As Assistant Secretary and later, as effective Secretary of the Navy, Roosevelt laid the groundwork for policies he would pursue during his own presidency. He turned to the foreign "frontier" as a new area for American expansion. Isolationism was the way of the past. Roosevelt wanted to remake the established order in America's favor, a position that required going against the attitudes of the old Civil War generation of which McKinley was a part. Roosevelt struggled against what he held to be the "extreme conservatism of the President."

Clearly, anyone who blocked his plans for change would be seen as steadfastly refusing to move with the times. When war came with Spain, Theodore resigned his post as Assistant Secretary and formed the First United States Volunteer Cavalry Regiment.

Known as the Rough Riders, the regiment appeared to represent everything that Theodore Roosevelt had become and all he believed. For Roosevelt these men represented the epitome of manhood. Many had been frontier fighters in the Indian Wars, even Texas Rangers who, in his own… READ MORE

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