Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography

Summary

Theodore Roosevelt's Autobiography, written at Sagamore Hill in 1913, is less a full life than a series of chapters on the work and convictions of a public man. A foreword dated 1 October 1913 calls for joining practical efficiency with lofty idealism. Chapter I describes his Dutch and Southern ancestry, his father, whom he calls the best man he ever knew, his mother and his uncle James Bulloch, a sickly boyhood of asthma, a love of natural history, the spectacles that showed him how beautiful the world was, and Harvard. Chapter II, The Vigor of Life, tells how he built up his body by exercise, boxing, riding and hunting, and how, following a hint from Marryat, he learned courage by acting as if he were not afraid. Chapters III and V recount his entry into politics through a Republican district club, three terms in the New York Assembly, and six years on the Civil Service Commission. Chapter IV, In Cowboy Land, recalls his cattle ranches on the Little Missouri, round-ups, blizzards, a bully in a hotel bar-room who calls him Four Eyes, and the vigilantes and rustlers of the cattle country. Chapter VI covers his two years as president of the New York police board, his midnight rambles with Jacob Riis and his enforcement of the Sunday closing law. Chapter VII describes his work as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, the raising of the First Volunteer Cavalry with Leonard Wood, the landing in Cuba, the charge at Kettle Hill and San Juan on 1 July 1898, and the fever-stricken army's return; appendices print officers' reports. Chapters VIII and IX cover the New York governorship, his family life, his reading and his outdoor pursuits. The presidential chapters explain his stewardship theory of executive power, the Reclamation Act, national forests and bird reservations, the Northern Securities suit and the regulation of corporations, the anthracite coal strike, the square deal between capital and labor, meat inspection and pure food, the Monroe Doctrine and the Venezuelan and Santo Domingo questions, the acquisition of the Panama Canal Zone, and, in Chapter XV, the Portsmouth peace between Russia and Japan and the battle fleet's voyage round the world. The book was serialized in The Outlook and published by Macmillan in November 1913; it says nothing of his first wife, Alice Hathaway Lee, who died in 1884. The library text is the 1920 Scribner edition, which reprints the 1913 text complete with its appendices.

Top Lessons

• Making the body and the spirit

  Roosevelt describes himself as a sickly, nervous boy who trained himself painfully not only in body but in soul and spirit. He learned courage by acting as if he were not afraid until the habit became real. He offers his life as evidence that an ordinary person can grow strong through steady effort.

• Idealism joined to practical work

  The foreword argues that lofty idealism and practical efficiency are each common but rarely joined. Roosevelt shows this in the police board, where he and Riis went out at midnight to see conditions for themselves, and in politics, where he joined a district club rather than criticizing from outside. He believes good intentions must be made effective.

• Stewardship of power and of the land

  Roosevelt held that a president is a steward of the people, bound to do whatever the nation's needs require unless the Constitution or laws forbid it. He applied the same idea of stewardship to forests, water and wildlife, creating national forests and bird reservations. The chapters invite readers to consider what it means to hold something in trust for others.

• Equal justice to rich and poor

  Roosevelt calls his policy the square deal: he sued corporations he believed broke the law and condemned labor leaders he thought guilty of wrongdoing. The foreword asks for a nation where a poor man who works hard can live comfortably and a rich man cannot live dishonestly. He judges both by conduct, not by class.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Roosevelt gives a vivid lay account of childhood asthma: nights sitting up in bed gasping while his father carried him about the room, and trips in search of air he could breathe. He links his recovery to strenuous exercise, a view of body-building as moral discipline typical of his era's ideal of the strenuous life; this is his own interpretation, not a medical finding. His late discovery of severe nearsightedness leads him to sympathize with children wrongly blamed as stupid when their trouble is physical, and to support school efforts to correct such defects. In Chapter VII he describes the wounds of the Cuban campaign, an officer shot through the head behind the eyes who survived with one eye blinded, and the malaria, dysentery and some yellow fever that struck the army after the fighting; he recounts the officers' round robin urging that the army be sent home before it was destroyed by disease. The colonel of the regiment, Leonard Wood, had trained at Harvard Medical School as an army surgeon. Later chapters touch public health through tenement inspections with Jacob Riis, meat inspection, the Pure Food and Drugs Act, and laws protecting miners' lives and health.

• Chapter I

  Childhood asthma and the discovery of his nearsightedness and first spectacles.

• Chapter II

  Building up a weak constitution by exercise and his account of training soul and spirit along with the body.

• Chapter VI

  Night tours of the tenement districts with Jacob Riis and the work of the police and health boards.

• Chapter VII

  Wounds at San Juan, malaria and dysentery in the army before Santiago, and the round robin to General Shafter.

• Chapter XII

  Inspection of the packing-houses and the passage of the meat inspection law and the Pure Food and Drugs Act.