Stories from a President to the Present
What We Can Learn from The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
I didn’t find this book… it found me :’).
Given to me as a Christmas gift with glowing endorsements, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris covers the first 42 years of the president’s life and clocks in at a staggering 800 pages. But, as a testament to Morris, it doesn’t seem long.
He painstakingly collects vast amounts of primary source material — including direct quotations from TR’s more than 150,000 surviving letters — to construct an extraordinarily compelling narrative. The stories are vivid, the writing is tight, and I can’t help feeling like I’ve met the tenacious Teddy (though he hated the nickname) in the flesh.
Setting it down, I’m more than convinced this book deserves each and every one of its accolades, even the lofty Pulitzer Prize for Biography. Despite high expectations, I was not disappointed.
Interesting Stories to Tell Your Friends
1. There was something wrong with TR’s childhood.
I know the classic maxim: you can’t judge historical figures out of the context of their day, but this still just feels wrong.
I don’t even know what to call this… elitist?
I’ll just quote the entry from TR’s journal as a 10 year-old about his time with some Italian beggars:
“Then came some more fun. Papa bought two baskets of doughey cakes. A great crowd of boys girls and women.
We tossed the cakes to them and we fed them like chickens with small pieces of cake and like chickens they ate it. Mr Stevens [a fellow traveler] kept guard with a whip with which he pretended to whip a small boy.
We made them open their mouths and tossed cake into it.
For a ‘Coup de Grace’ we threw a lot of them in a place and a writhing heap of human beings… We made the crowds… give us three cheers for U.S.A. before we gave them cakes.”
I —
I just —
I can’t.
2. TR built a cattle ranch that was a financial mess.
In 1883, he invested in a cattle ranch… in the Badlands. Wikipedia tells me that “Badlands” are a type of terrain, not just an area in the Dakotas, but still, I feel like the warning signs are right there in the name. It’s kind of how, no matter how nice it may be, I’m thinking twice before buying a house in Hell, Michigan.
By 1886, his investment had grown to a cool $85,000 ($2.2M+ in 2021), and sure enough, the reckoning was right around the corner. That winter of ‘86-‘87 was terrible. For weeks on end, temperatures would hover around minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit. Thousands of cattle were buried alive in blizzards. For others, “their hoofs were locked in ice, and they froze like so many statues.” For still others, they simple starved to death.
When the snow finally melted,
a flood-wave was hurtling down the valley, so full of heavy debris [READ: COW CARCASSES] that it battered the cottonwoods like reeds… This river of death roared on for days.”
In the end, the ranchers just gave up guessing after their estimated losses reached the tens of thousands.
Teddy’s Admirable Attributes
1. TR possessed a radiant energy.
Despite wincing at his displays of arrogance and obnoxiousness, I found myself drawn to Teddy’s charisma. His boundless energy endowed him with a certain irresistible charm that I’ve often found immensely attractive in others. I couldn’t help but admire (and perhaps feel a bit jealous of) the glowing descriptions of him.
‘There was a vital radiance about the man — a glowing, unfeigned cordiality towards those he liked that was irresistible.’ Men of essentially cold blood, like Reed and Adams and Lodge, grew dependent on his warmth, as lizards crave the sun.
With words like “warmth,” “glowing,” “radiance,” and “sun”, the mere act of reading someone else’s brief encounter with him is enough to make me painfully aware of how rare his charisma really is. I don’t think I can overstate this part of his personality.
2. TR was extremely successful in shaping his narratives.
I love how TR enters a room. I think it really speaks to his flair for the dramatic. Most people, especially if they’re late, gently open the door and quickly walk straight to a seat, but not Teddy. Oh no, definitely not Teddy.
This man throws open doors, pauses at the entrance long enough for all eyes to turn to him, before slowly and purposefully striding to the furthest seat. As with most other things he did, TR knew how to get people’s attention.
His relationship with the press was no different. He was certainly not one to pass up free coverage.
The photographers found themselves being escorted up the gangplank. ‘I can’t take care of a regiment,’ said nineteenth-century America’s greatest master of press relations, ‘but I might be able to handle two more.’
Despite limited naval resources forcing TR to leave half of his Rough Riders in Florida, he found space for these two reporters, all but ensuring his Spanish-American War campaign leading the “Rough Riders” in Cuba would be well-documented and widely publicized.
Then, as Governor of New York,
Twice daily without fail, when he was in Albany, he would summon reporters into his office for fifteen minutes of questions and answers…
When required to make a formal statement, he spoke with deliberate precision… Relaxing again, he would confess the truth behind the statement, with such gleeful frankness that the reporters felt flattered to be included in his conspiracy.
It was understood that none of these gubernatorial indiscretions were for publication, on pain of instant banishment from the Executive Office.
Teddy’s Troublesome Tendencies
1. In times of success, TR’s arrogance was second-to-none.
As President of the New York City Board of Police Commissioners, TR successfully cleaned up corruption. That success went straight to his head.
“The word ‘I’ invaded his speeches to such an extent that the Herald took to reproducing it in bold type: the effect on a column of gray newsprint was of buckshot at close range”
Time had little effect on this tendency. Years later, after his election to the Governorship of New York, TR dictated his war memories, the Rough Riders.
“During the year preceding the outbreak of the Spanish War,’ Roosevelt intoned, ‘I was Assistant Secretary of the Navy.’ Eleven more times before his stenographer reached the end of her first page, he proudly repeated the words I, my, me.”
2. In times of despair, TR consoled himself with carnage.
Following the death of his mother and wife on the same day, TR was understandable desolate. He went West to the Big Horn Mountains in search of respite. His diary of the time reads like a butcher’s sales receipt…
19 Aug. 4 grouse, 5 duck.
25 Aug. 6 sharp-tail grouse, 2 doves, 2 teal.
26 Aug. 8 prairie chickens.
27 Aug. 12 sage hens and prairie chickens, 1 yearling whitetail “through the heart.”
4 Sept. 2 elk.
5 Sept. 1 red rabbit, 1 blue grouse.
7 Sept. 2 elk, 1 black-tail doe.
11 Sept. 50 trout.
13 Sept. 1 grizzly bear “through the brain.”
14 Sept. 1 black-tail buck, 1 female grizzly, 1 bear cub.
A bear cub? Really? Who kills a bear cub?
50 trout? Huh? What are you gonna do with all that trout?
And this isn’t even all of his entries. In the short 47-day trip, his total bag reached 170 items.
Conclusion
I can think of no better illustration of Morris’s success than those reading moments where you suddenly think of something interesting from earlier. You pause, unsuccessfully struggle to remember the appropriate page, and ultimately just guess where that something was based on a feeling of how much has happened since.
Well, in a book like this, with so much worth remembering, I constantly found myself pausing and flipping back. Most of the time I’d go back a chapter or two initially. Only then would I realize that all of that feeling of a lot happening had been conveyed by Morris in as little as 3 pages…
Overall, the Rise of Theodore Roosevelt is a brilliantly researched and written narrative cataloguing TR’s life up until William McKinley’s death. Morris pulls off the impressive biographical feat of leaving readers feeling like we’ve met the person, and his book serves as a case study in the psychological workings of one of America’s most prominent presidents.
Rating
Biography Rating: 10/10
General Rating: 9/10
