All language subtitles for S01E02 In the Arena (1901-1910) IMDB 8.4

Previously on "the Roosevelts, "

a sickly child roused himself
into a life of action.

Don't fritter away your time.

Take a place wherever
you are and be somebody.

Young Franklin and Eleanor
struggled to fit in.

When he got to Groton and
when he got to Harvard,

people didn't like him.

And an assassin's bullet brought
a Roosevelt into the White House.

He was a new species,
a new kind of man in a new century.

And now part 2

of "The Roosevelts,
an intimate history."

In The Arena (1901-1910)

For the first few nights
of his new presidency,

Theodore Roosevelt slept at
the home of his sister, Bamie,

at 1733 n street,

while the widow of his murdered
predecessor, William McKinley,

packed up to leave Washington.

But every morning at 8:30,
he started toward his office

in the executive mansion 10 blocks away,

while his secretary
struggled to keep up.

His first night there was
to be September 23, 1901,

and since his wife and
children had not yet arrived,

he asked his sisters Bamie and Corinne

and their husbands to
join him for dinner.

The day before had been the
birthday of the man whose memory

meant the most to him...
his father, Theodore Roosevelt, senior.

"What would I not give if only
he could have lived to see me

here in the White House,
" the President said.

Then he noticed that the
flowers on the dinner table

were Saffronia roses,
the same variety his father had worn

every day in his buttonhole.

"I feel as if my father's hand were
on my shoulder, " Roosevelt said,

as if there were a special blessing

"over the life I am to lead here."

The man and the moment
were perfectly met.

This was America at the turn
of the... what was to become

and Americans already felt it...
The American century.

Telephones, internal combustion engines,

airplanes, all kinds of stuff.

And here came this, this man who was
called a steam engine in trousers.

He just embodied the moment.

Roosevelt has the knack of doing things
and doing them noisily, clamorously.

While he is in the neighborhood,

the public can no more look the
other way than the small boy

can turn his head away from
a circus parade followed by

a steam Calliope.

Theodore Roosevelt would prove to be

a brand-new kind of President
for a brand-new century.

But at first, no one knew
precisely in which direction

Roosevelt would lead his parade.

In the decades after Abraham Lincoln,
most American presidents

had been content to be caretakers.

Real power lay with the congress,
with the party machines

that controlled what
did and did not happen

on capitol hill, and with the
financial giants whose power

grew steadily and whose orders
many senators followed without

a second thought.

"I did not care a rap for the
form and show of power, "

Roosevelt remembered.

"I cared immensely for the
use that could be made

of the substance."

One admirer hailed him
as "a stream of fresh",

"pure bracing air from the
mountains, sent to clear

the fetid atmosphere of
the national capital."

But the novelist Henry
James dismissed him as

"the monstrous embodiment
of unprecedented

and resounding noise."

"You must always remember, " his
friend the French ambassador warned,

"that the President is about 6."

I'm no orator, and in writing,
I'm afraid I'm not gifted at all.

If I have anything at all
resembling genius, it is

the gift of leadership.

He was the youngest President
in history, just 42;

the first to have been born

in a city; The first to be
known by his initials... t.R.

He was an author and
naturalist, bird-watcher

and big-game hunter,
historian and expansionist,

moral crusader and shrewd politician.

And he was also a proud
husband and father

whose 6 boisterous children
transformed the dark, formal

executive mansion into a
giant playhouse overnight.

He is a hyperactive adult,
is what Theodore Roosevelt is,

but the man is brilliant.

I think he's very close to a genius,
if there is such a thing as a genius.

Of all the presidents
of the United States.

He could speed-read before
anybody knew the expression,

let alone how to do it,

and quote from what he'd
read 5 years later.

He spoke a variety of
languages terribly,

almost incomprehensibly in some cases,

but that didn't slow him down.

The first President to go down
in a submarine; The first

President to leave the country
during the course of his time

in office; The first President
to send a transatlantic cable

for the purposes of diplomacy;
The first President to own

an automobile; And more
important than all of those,

the first President to win the nobel
peace prize; And greater still

the first President ever to
invite an African American

to dine with him in the White House.

And that's a short list.

He had pledged to "continue,
absolutely unbroken,

the policy of President McKinley, "

but he also had a
reputation for independence

and unpredictability.

He had been taught by his
father to view the world

in terms of right and wrong...

And to see himself always as
the defender of the right.

He carried a pulpit around with him.

He really was... this bully
pulpit was an appendage.

He was a moralist first,
last and always and not one

racked by doubts.

He also understood modern technology.

He understood the cycles
of the newspaper business.

He understood that he could claim
center stage if he wanted to.

And by claiming center stage
he could get his message out

to the American people in a
way previous presidents often

had not bothered to.

Among those waiting most
eagerly to see what

Theodore Roosevelt would do were two
young members of his own clan...

His orphaned niece, Eleanor,
just 16, studying in england

and following his activities
in the newspapers,

and his young fifth cousin,
Franklin, a student at Harvard

but already intrigued by the
idea of following into politics,

the man his mother called
"your noble kinsman."

It was from Teddy Roosevelt
that the American people first

got their sense of political
excitement from the President.

They've looked for many things
from Washington... competence,

leadership, help.

But excitement?

This is entertainment.

October 17, 1901,
the "Atlanta Constitution."

Tonight, just before 8:00,
a negro in evening dress

presented himself at the
White House door, and, giving

his name, said that he was
to dine with the President.

Booker Washington has made
several visits to the White House

and his face is known there,
so he was at once

admitted into the private apartment.

Within hours of becoming President,

Roosevelt had wired
booker t. Washington,

President of the tuskegee institute

and the most powerful black
man in America, asking him to

come and see him.

Each man wanted something
from the other.

Negro citizens had been
brutally and systematically

disenfranchised throughout the South.

Washington wanted the new
President's assurance that he

would continue to appoint African
Americans to federal jobs

and resist those
Republicans who wanted to

crack the solid Democratic
South by turning the party

of Lincoln "lily white."

Roosevelt, on the other hand,
wanted to make sure that he

and he alone controlled all
the black delegates to the

republican convention in 1904.

The dinner invitation for
Washington was a matter

of simple courtesy, he said.

"The very fact that I felt a
moment's qualm on inviting him"

because of his color made me
ashamed of myself and made me

"send the invitation."

A reporter for one of the wire
services noticed Washington's name

in the register of visitors
and filed a story.

Although black slaves had
built the executive mansion

and black servants had waited
upon all of its occupants,

no black American had ever
dined there before and not

only had the President dined
with Washington but he had

done so in the company of his wife
and teen-aged daughter, Alice.

White men of the South,
how do you like it?

White women of the South,
how do you like it?

The negro is not the
equal of the white man.

Mr. Roosevelt might as well
try to rub the stars out

of the firmament as try to
erase that conviction from

the hearts of the American people.

"New Orleans times-democrat"

"The action of President Roosevelt
in entertaining that nigger, "

said senator Ben tillman
of South Carolina,

"will necessitate our killing a
thousand niggers in the South

before they will learn
their place again."

The President was
astonished at the furor.

"I would not lose my self-
respect by fearing to have

a man like booker t. Washington to dinner,
" he wrote, " if it cost me

every political friend I have got."

Washington remained
Roosevelt's most important

African-American ally, but the
President never again asked him

or any other black person,
to dine at the White House.

When Theodore Roosevelt
became President,

industrial production
had never been higher

or the profits greater.

But only a handful of men
dominated American finance

and industry and reaped those profits.

Through the manipulation of
some 250 big interlocking,

interstate corporations...
Monopolistic trusts...

They dictated the rates
farmers paid to ship their

products and the wages
and hours and conditions

industrial workers had to accept.

They decided the cost to
consumers of everything:

From coal to whiskey,
canned carrots to lamp oil.

And they destroyed small
businessmen who dared try to

compete with them.

J. Pierpont Morgan, the new
York financial titan, who had

been a friend of the President's father,

spoke for most of the men who
ran the trusts when he said,

"I owe the public nothing."

That attitude was anathema
to Theodore Roosevelt.

He had a patrician scorn for
mere wealth and an inbred

sense of responsibility toward society.

I have been in a great
quandary over trusts.

I do not know what attitude to take.

I do not intend to play a demagogue.

On the other hand, I do intend
to see that the rich man

is held to the same
accountability as the poor man,

and when the rich man
is rich enough to buy

unscrupulous advice from very able
lawyers, this is not always easy.

I think Roosevelt understood

that the trusts were important
but they were getting out

of control.

When, the Constitution was
written in 1787, there were no

corporations,
there were almost no banks.

So all this had sprung
up in the 19th century

and particularly after the civil war.

The only counterweight to
capitalism is government.

Labor would like to be the
counterweight but it isn't quite yet.

So the one entity that can
really create a restraining

mechanism on runaway
capitalism is government.

And if the Constitution
doesn't seem to want that,

we're gonna do it anyway.

On February 18, 1902,
without any warning,

the President ordered his
justice department to file suit

against one of the trusts
in which j.P. Morgan had

a major interest,
the northern securities company.

Its goal was the
monopolistic control of all

of the rail roads
between the Great Lakes

and the Pacific Ocean.

Morgan was stunned.

He hurried to the White House.

"If we have done anything wrong,
" he told the President,

"send your man to my man
and they can fix it up."

"That can't be done,
" the President said.

"We don't want to fix it up,
" his Attorney General

philander knox added,
"we want to stop it."

Morgan asked if the
administration planned to

attack any of his other interests.

Roosevelt replied, not unless
they'd done something wrong.

The supreme court would
eventually uphold

Roosevelt's actions, finding
northern securities had been

in illegal restraint of trade.

The President never directly
challenged Morgan again,

but he would invoke the
sherman anti-trust act against

40 other trusts during his
presidency, more than all

3 of his predecessors combined.

He did not believe that
economic concentration

in itself was bad,
but he was confident the federal

government had the power

and the moral duty to
curb its worst excesses.

What was new in urban life,
what was new in all these

cities into which immigrants
were pouring as never before,

what was new was a kind of
interconnectedness, a sense

in which what happened in
Wisconsin to the price of milk

and what happened in Cincinnati to

the price of pork, and what happened to

the railway costs of shipping
goods to the east and out to

the west and elsewhere,
affected everybody.

Therefore, the federal
government as the unifier

of the nation was implicitly
involved in everything.

This was the beginning,
at the beginning of the 20th century,

what the 20th century became in America:

A great centralizing
nation-creating force.

The great corporations are the creatures

of the state, and the state
not only has the right to

control them, but it is in
duty bound to control them

wherever need of such control is shown.

Government was to be a
countervailing power.

It's almost the language
of newtonian physics,

the language of our Constitution,
checks and balances.

This was checks and balances
outside the Constitution.

That the meat trust and the
steel trust and the oil trust

were big, maybe they're
beneficial, maybe they're

inevitable, but they
should not operate alone.

The government must grow to
reach up to where they were.

I wonder how a man so thick-set,
of rather abdominal contour,

with eyes heavily spectated, could have

so much an air of magic and
wild romance about him,

could give one so stirring
an impression of adventure

and chivalry.

The "metropolitan magazine."

Fueled by cup after cup of coffee,

served to him in a special mug his
eldest son said was as big as a bathtub,

Theodore Roosevelt
raced through his day.

Letters were answered upon receipt...
A lifetime total of 150,000,

dictated to shifts of
weary stenographers.

Jefferson wrote 22,000 letters,
and we regard him

as one of the great correspondents

in American history.

Roosevelt wrote at
least 150,000 letters.

He's the writing-est President
in American history, by far.

And a number of his books
are American classics.

So he's an intellectual.

He read a book a day,
sometimes 3 books in a day

when he had some leisure.

You think of Jefferson as
America's renaissance man,

but it's really Roosevelt.

He would not stop talking.

He was a one-man gasbag.

But it was so interesting
that most people didn't mind.

One of my favorite stories is,
when he heard that there was

a famous big game hunter in
Washington, and he said to

some of the people on his staff,
"get that man over here.

I'd really like to meet him."

So the this big, strapping,
English fellow was taken into

the President's office.

And the door was closed and
people outside the office

heard this talking going on.

Finally the man emerged about
an hour and a half later

looking just beat down,
just as though he'd been

through a storm.

And one of the President's
staff said, "what did you tell"

the President?"

He said, "I told him my name."

We love him because of the energy.

His laugh was infectious.

His son Ted said, "my father had"

a dozen eggs for
breakfast every morning."

So he's a large man,
and he's larger-than-life.

Roosevelt once said, "there's
nothing quite so exhilarating"

as being thrown over the shoulders
of a 300-pound Japanese man."

He played all these wild
games in the White House.

He wrestled with diplomats.

He played a game called single
stick with Leonard Wood

in which they would wrap
themselves up in cushions

and then beat the living
daylights out of each other

with sticks until Roosevelt had to stop.

He boxed with a young aide,
too, until a blow

caused him to lose
vision in his left eye.

"Accordingly I thought it
better to acknowledge that I

had become an elderly man and
would have to stop boxing, "

he remembered.

"I then took up jiujitsu
for a year or two."

Photographers were forbidden to
cover his daily tennis games

because he thought
voters considered tennis

a rich man's pastime.

But when a cameraman failed to
capture his horse jumping over

an obstacle, he was more than
happy to make the jump again.

"Roosevelt bit me, " the editor
William Allen White said,

"and I went mad."

In the late summer of 1902,

Roosevelt set out on a two-
week tour of New England,

campaigning for trust reform.

He was on his way to speak at
the Pittsfield, Massachusetts,

country club on September 3rd...

When a trolley car slammed
into his carriage.

His bodyguard was killed.

Roosevelt was hurled 30 feet,
landed on his face,

and badly injured his left shin.

He was forced to spend several
weeks in a wheelchair,

confronted now with a new
crisis that threatened

not only the nation's economy
but his own political survival.

Coal mining is a business...
Not a religious, sentimental,

or academic proposition.

The rights and interests

of the laboring man will
be protected and cared for

not by the labor agitators,
but by the Christian men to whom God

in his infinite wisdom has given control

of the property interests
of the country.

George f. Baer,

President, Philadelphia &
reading coal and iron company.

America ran on anthracite
coal, much of it

mined from Pennsylvania hillsides.

It was a nightmarish business.

16-hour days.

The constant threat of
cave-ins and explosions.

Boys as young as 10 breaking
big chunks into small ones.

Low wages that had not been
raised for more than 20 years...

And company-owned stores
intended to swallow up what

little money the miners
could scrape together.

And dominating all of it,
mine owners adamantly opposed to change.

In the spring,
the united mine workers union

had called for a strike.

140,000 men laid down their pick axes.

Management refused even
to hear their grievances.

Over the next several months,
the price of coal rose from

$5.00 to $30 a ton.

Winter was coming.

Homes would remain unheated.

Roosevelt believed there was a
real chance of what he called

"the most awful riots this
country has ever seen."

The administration was
sure to take the blame.

And Roosevelt decided for the
good of the country that he

needed to intervene.

The problem was he had no
constitutional authority

of any sort to intervene.

The President summoned both sides to

Washington to discuss what he
called "a matter of vital"

concern to the whole nation."

Roosevelt holds them together
and he says, "gentlemen",

I want you to agree to arbitrate."

And the coal operators say,
"no way, we're not doing it."

We don't have to."

And Roosevelt says, "very well then."

"I will nationalize the mines
and use the United States army

to run them for the
good of this people."

And they all say, "you have
no constitutional authority"

of any sort to do that."

And he says, "I know I don't."

"The President has a moral duty
to the American people that is

"higher than his constitutional duty.

And by Godfrey,
I'm gonna do it if I have to."

A conservative congressman confronted

the President.

"What about the Constitution of
the United States?" He asked.

"How could private property be
put to public purposes without

due process of law?"

Roosevelt grasped his visitor's lapels.

"The Constitution was made for
the people and not the people

"for the Constitution, " he said.

The mine owners retreated,
but only slightly.

They agreed to follow the suggestions
of a presidential commission

provided no member of the united
mine workers union sat on it.

But Roosevelt was determined
that labor have a voice

and appointed the head of the rail
road conductor's union, instead.

The owners objected until
the President told them,

with a straight face,
that he was naming him as

a "sociologist, " not a union man.

I shall never forget
the mixture of relief

and amusement I felt when I
thoroughly grasped the fact

that while they would
heroically submit to anarchy

rather than have tweedledum,
yet if I would call it tweedledee,

they would accept it
with rapture; It gave me

an illuminating glimpse into
one corner of the mighty brains

of these "captains of industry."

The mine owners continued to

refuse to recognize the union,
but they did agree to

a 10% pay raise and a 9-hour day.

The strike ended.

American homes would be heated
and in the midterm elections,

the Republicans would
maintain majorities

in both houses of congress.

Roosevelt was jubilant.

He was the first President
to mediate a labor dispute,

the first to treat labor as
a full partner, the first to

threaten to employ
federal troops to seize

a strike-bound industry.

And it had all worked.

Cambridge, Massachusetts.
October 26, 1902.

Dearest mama, it has been very
chilly here for the past week,

and the Harvard buildings have
been cold through lack of fuel,

but now that the strike
is settled, the coal has

begun to come in small quantities.

In spite of the President's
success in settling the trouble,

I think that he makes a serious mistake

in interfering... politically, at least.

His tendency to make the
executive power stronger than

the houses of congress is
bound to be a bad thing,

especially when a man of
weaker personality succeeds

him in office.

Ever with love, f.D.R.

Franklin Roosevelt

was a Harvard sophomore now
and echoing the conservative

opinions of classmates whose
well-to-do parents were

appalled at his cousin's
willingness to deal directly

with labor.

His own mother disagreed.

"One cannot help loving and
admiring him the more for it, "

she told her son, "when one
realizes that he tried to"

right the wrong."

When James Roosevelt, Franklin's father,

had died in 1900,
Sara moved to Boston to be

closer to her son.

She interested herself in
every aspect of his life,

exulted in his successes and
overlooked his failures,

just as she always had.

Successes did not come easily.

He was not an outstanding student or
especially well-liked by his classmates.

Many of them thought him
an over-eager lightweight,

just as his schoolmates at Groton had.

He did become the editor of
the "Crimson, " and scored

a minor scoop when he learned
his famous cousin was coming

to Cambridge, but when he ran
for class marshal he lost.

Still too slight for sports,
he led cheers

at a football game...

Though he admitted it made
him feel "like a damned fool"

waving my arms and legs
before several thousand

"amused spectators."

He was elected to several clubs,
and fully expected

an invitation to join
Harvard's most exclusive club,

the porcellian.

His own father had been

an honorary member; His famous
cousin, Theodore, belonged.

But Franklin was blackballed,
probably by someone who knew

him at Groton, which made it even worse.

As always, he let no one know
how hurt he was, but 15 years

later, he would confide to
a young relative that his

rejection by porcellian
had been the "greatest"

"disappointment" of his life.

He was disappointed in love, as well.

Alice Sohier was the beautiful
daughter of a wealthy

Massachusetts yachtsman...

The "loveliest" debutante of her
year, Franklin remembered...

And after courting her for
several months he asked her to

marry him.

One day he hoped to be President
like his fifth cousin, he told her,

and he hoped to have no
fewer than 6 children,

the same number that now called
the executive mansion home.

Alice turned him down.

Later, she would say that
she'd rejected his proposal

in part because "I did not
wish to become a cow."

Franklin never told his mother
about Alice, and to ensure she

did not know too much about
his private life, had used

a secret code in his terse diary.

But within weeks of his
parting with Alice Sohier

in the late summer of 1902,
a new name began to

appear in its pages.

I have always been fond of
the old west African proverb:

"Speak softly and carry a big
stick and you will go far."

The American expansionism Roosevelt
had advocated since long before

his days at the Navy
department had succeeded

beyond his dreams.

The United States was now a world power.

It had annexed Hawaii,
driven Spain from the new world,

dominated Cuba and Puerto Rico,
wrested the Philippines

from the Spanish and then begun
a brutal, bloody campaign

to subjugate the philippine
people, who wanted

to be free of foreign rule by
anyone, including Americans.

Tens of thousands died so that
the United States could gain

a foothold in the pacific.

To anti-imperialists,
like mark twain, such military

adventures betrayed American
principles and Roosevelt

himself was nothing more
than a "showy charlatan."

I am an anti-imperialist.

I am opposed to having the eagle
put its talons on any other land.

Criticism did not much
concern Theodore Roosevelt.

He divided the world into what
he called "civilized" nations

industrialized and mostly white...

And "uncivilized" nations

that produced raw materials,
bought products

instead of manufacturing them,
and were incapable,

he believed, of self-government.

The great enemy of civilization
was what he called "chaos."

To combat it, it was the duty
of "civilized and orderly"

"powers" to police the rest.

Britain should be responsible
for India and Egypt.

Japan...

Which Roosevelt now numbered
among the "civilized" nations

because it had become an industrial

and military power...

Should control Korea and the Yellow Sea.

And the United States,
and only the United States,

must police the Western hemisphere.

It was called the Roosevelt
corollary to the Monroe doctrine.

I don't think Americans by
nature are very comfortable

with imperialism and never were.

And had he tried to be more
imperialistic than he was,

he would have been stopped.

I think he believed in power.

He was not as good as he
should have been in dealing

with foreign nations and
particularly if he thought

they were inferior to our way
of life or to us as a people.

His very high-handed treatment
of the Colombians during the

negotiations for the Panama
treaty was inexcusable.

For Roosevelt,
one great expansionist vision

remained unfulfilled.

For more than half a century,
American and European investors

had dreamed of a central
American canal linking

the Atlantic to the pacific.

Roosevelt believed such an
inter-ocean pathway was now

indispensable for the full
exercise of American naval power.

A French company was already
trying to build a canal across

the jungle-covered Panama
province in the nation

of Colombia, but that effort had stalled,
a victim of poor planning,

lack of money,
and deadly tropical diseases.

When the French offered to
sell their rights, Roosevelt

agreed to buy them, then instructed his

secretary of state,
John Hay, to negotiate

a treaty with Colombia.

It called for a payment of
$10 million, plus an annual

rental fee for a 6-mile "canal
zone" across the isthmus.

But the Colombian senate
rejected the deal, and then

demanded double the price.

Roosevelt was enraged.

"I do not think that the
bogota lot of Jack rabbits

"should be allowed permanently
to bar one of the future

"highways of civilization, " he said.

The refusal of the Colombian
senate to honor its

government's commitment was
just the latest embodiment

of the kind of "chaos" he deplored.

Roosevelt believed that a
canal across the central

American isthmus would be good
for the United States and good

for civilization.

It would also be good
for Theodore Roosevelt.

He often mingled those three.

And he believed that anybody,
any government, any person who

stood in the way of that was
obstructing civilization.

And Roosevelt had very little
patience for those people who

didn't see the way history
was going, the way history is

supposed to go in the
same light that he did,

and he simply wouldn't allow
them to get in the way.

He was determined to get an
American canal underway.

He would not attack Colombia
directly, but he would exploit

the aspirations of the people
of Panama province, who had

for 50 years asserted their
wish to be independent

of bogota.

Roosevelt agreed to meet
with Phillipe Bunau-Varilla,

a lobbyist for the French
canal-builders, who was

in touch with rebels already
eager to rise against

Colombian rule.

It was a delicate What did the

frenchman think was going to
happen in Panama province?

"Mr. President," his visitor
said, "a revolution."

Roosevelt was careful to say nothing about
how the United States might respond.

His silence spoke volumes.

He had no assurances in any way,
but he is a very able fellow,

and it was his business
to find out what he

thought our government would do.

I have no doubt that he was able
to make a very accurate guess

and to advise his people accordingly.

In fact, he would have
been a very dull man

had he been unable to make such a guess.

5 days later, the rebels
proclaimed their independence.

An American cruiser landed
troops to overcome the handful

of Colombian soldiers the
revolutionaries hadn't already

bought off.

It was all over within 72 hours.

The President was presiding
at a cabinet meeting at 11:35

on the morning of November 6,
1903, when a messenger brought

him the happy news.

By the time lunch was served,
the United States had

recognized the brand-new
Republic of Panama.

"The people of the isthmus, " Roosevelt
would claim, "rose literally as one man."

"Yes, " said a senate critic,
"and that man was Roosevelt."

Work on the great canal began again,

but now it was an American project.

And Roosevelt himself would not
be able to resist seeing it

for himself, the first
President ever to leave

the country while in office.

The Panama canal is one
of the great achievements

of the human race.

I mean just a stupendous achievement,
wonderfully conceived,

brilliantly executed, with all kinds

of ancillary benefits...
Conquest of disease

and other things.

And it's the sort of thing
that America did just to

affirm its greatness.

It's better to do it that way
than conquering other people.

This was a wholly beneficial addition.

Now we did get the land for the Panama
canal by a not-too-salubrious deal

with certain central American countries.

But as was said at the time
of the Panama canal treaty,

"we stole it fair and square."

I took the canal zone and let
congress debate, and while

the debate goes on, the canal does, too.

And now instead of discussing
the canal before it was built,

which would have been harmful,
they merely discuss me...

A discussion which I regard
with benign interest.

For Thanksgiving that year,
Franklin Roosevelt and his mother

traveled to the delano family
homestead at Fairhaven, Massachusetts,

rather than face the prospect of being

at Springwood without
his father, Mr. James.

After dinner, Franklin took
Sara for a walk in the garden.

He had something to tell her.

He had fallen in love with his
fifth cousin, Eleanor Roosevelt,

the orphaned daughter of the
President's late brother, Elliot.

He had asked her to marry him.

She had said yes.

Sara was stunned.

Franklin was just 21; Eleanor only 19.

And if they married,
she feared she would be left alone.

Franklin did his best to reassure her.

"You know, dear mummy,
that nothing can ever change

"what we have always been and always
will be to each other, " he wrote.

"Only now you have two children
to love and to love you."

It is impossible for me
to tell you how I feel

toward Franklin.

I can only say that my one
great wish is always to prove

worthy of him.

I know just how you feel
and how hard it must be,

but I do want you to learn
to love me a little.

Being loved a little

was the best Eleanor
Roosevelt dared wish for.

"Franklin had always been
so secure in every way, "

she remembered, "and then
he discovered that I was"

perfectly insecure."

Everything in her upbringing
had seemed calculated to make

her feel that way.

Her beautiful mother,
Anna hall, had been

distracted, disappointed
in her daughter's looks

and called her "granny."

She made her feel unattractive.

And she made her feel diminished.

And Eleanor Roosevelt grew up
really feeling both that her

mother didn't love her and
that she failed her mother.

Her mother was very beautiful and quite

self-obsessed, I think.

But she was subject to headaches,
and she would allow

Eleanor to rub her forehead
and soothe her for hours.

And she says in her
autobiography that that was

when she realized that
the way to be loved

was to be of use to others.

And that lesson she never forgot.

I can't even bear to think of
what it was like for her when

her mother would call her "granny."

And yet to be able somehow
because of that sadness to

connect to other people for
whom fate had also dealt

an unkind hand, somehow
that connection gave her

the strength because her
vulnerability could be

expressed by helping them.

Her largely absent father...
whom she idealized

and would never stop yearning
for... had in reality been

an erratic alcoholic and delusional.

From afar, he sent her letters
full of promises he could

She would come and care
for him someday, he said;

they would travel the world
together; He would show her

the Taj Mahal by moonlight.

Eleanor Roosevelt suffered all
her life from the romanticism

that happens when you lose a parent.

She had the notion that
somehow her mother had driven

her wonderful father away
when her father was, in fact,

an alcoholic.

And she believed somehow the
way small children do that

the absent parent is a
sort of fairy-tale person.

She never stopped believing.

When she was an old lady she
asked a clergyman if she might

possibly be reunited with him in heaven.

So it really was a
life-long unexamined thing.

And it gave her a sort of
unrealistic view of what

men could be.

Both her parents were dead
by the time she was 10.

She and her younger brother,
hall, for whom she would

always feel responsible,
were sent off to live with her

grim, pious, maternal grandmother

in Tivoli, New York.

An abusive nurse was
with her, day and night.

An unstable aunt lived at home.

So did two drunken uncles.

None of them was much
interested in Eleanor.

She was a lonely little girl,
she remembered, timid,

withdrawn, and "frightened of
practically everything"...

Mice, the dark,
other children, "displeasing"

the people I lived with."

During her infrequent visits to
Sagamore Hill, Theodore Roosevelt

was always especially warm toward
his late brother's daughter.

He once hugged her so hard,
he tore the buttonholes

out of her petticoat.

Well, she spoke about
him when she was a child

and how she was very fearful
of her visits to his family

because they were a rowdy bunch
of kids having a good time,

rushing around.

And also when her Uncle
discovered she couldn't swim,

he threw her into the
water and then she was

scared of water all her life.

"Poor little soul, she is very plain, "

the President's wife Edith
Roosevelt had written.

"Her mouth and teeth
seem to have no future."

It was the President's sister,
Bamie, who would indirectly be

Eleanor's salvation.

Bamie had once spent a
season studying overseas

with an extraordinary woman,
named Marie Souvestre.

Now she suggested that Eleanor be
sent to Souvestre's girl's school

just outside London... Allenswood.

I felt that I was starting a
new life, free from all my

former sins and traditions.

This was the first time in all my life

that all my fears left me.

Eleanor spent 3 years at Allenswood,

the happiest of her life,
she remembered.

Mademoiselle Souvestre
insisted that her students be

independent-minded,
intellectually alive,

and socially conscious.

"Why was your mind given you,
" she liked to ask her students,

"but to think things out for yourself?"

She devoted herself to the tall,
diffident American orphan

and brought out all the
tact and intelligence,

discipline and energy
and empathy that would

characterize her later in life.

Eleanor eventually became
the most-admired girl

in the school.

It was at Allenswood,
a cousin recalled, "that she"

for the first time was deeply
loved and loved in return."

"Whatever I have become,
" Eleanor would say many years

later, "had its seeds in
those 3 years of contact"

with a liberal mind and
strong personality."

But when she was 17,
her grandmother insisted she

end her schooling and come
home to prepare for her debut

in New York society.

In her grandmother's circle,
you joined society,

you went to fancy dress balls,
and you got married at 18.

And Eleanor Roosevelt was
quite miserable about that,

and always, to the end of her life,
complained about how she

was deprived of what she always
wanted... a real education.

She spent that summer back at Tivoli,

where one of her alcoholic
uncles had become

so uncontrollable, he could not
be discouraged from spraying

buckshot from his bedroom
window at anyone who dared

venture onto the lawn.

3 locks had to be installed
on Eleanor's bedroom door.

"It was not, " she
remembered, "a very good

preparation for being a
gay and joyous debutante."

I imagine that I was
well-dressed, but there was

absolutely nothing about me to
attract anybody's attention.

By no stretch of the
imagination could I fool myself

into thinking that I was
a popular debutante.

On November 17, 1902, just 5 weeks after

Franklin Roosevelt had said
good-bye to Alice Sohier,

he had attended the New York horse
show at Madison square garden.

Several Roosevelt cousins were invited to
sit in his half-brother Rosy's special box,

including Eleanor.

She and Franklin had seen one
another casually at family

events over the years,
but now he asked to see her again

and again and again.

It happened on the rebound.

She was also Theodore
Roosevelt's favorite niece.

But I think that was a very
small part of the equation.

She was very intelligent.

She was very substantive.

There was a lot there.

He was fascinated by
her substance, I think.

He truly did love her.

I think that's very
important to understand.

I think he saw in
Eleanor somebody who had

deeper complexities,

the part of him that wanted
to reach out to other people.

She cared about issues.

I don't know how many other
women in that social world

that he was in would have
talked that same way to him.

Perhaps it was opposites
attracting in some ways.

He saw that stubbornness
in her, that idealism.

He was much more pliable
in a certain sense.

But it speaks really well of
the depth to him that many

people might not have seen at
the time, that Eleanor was

the girl that he fell in love with.

A little over a year later,
he invited her to

Cambridge for the Harvard-Yale game.

That evening, he wrote another
entry in his diary: "After lunch",

I have a never-to-be-
forgotten walk to the river

"with my darling."

He had proposed.

With her help, he said, he could make

something of himself.

She had asked him, "why me? I am plain."

I have little to bring you."

But she had also said yes.

When Franklin told his mother
his big news at Thanksgiving,

she asked him to keep
the engagement a secret

for a year, to see if their
feelings for one another were

truly lasting.

His personality so crowds
the room that the walls are

worn thin and threaten
to burst outwards.

You go to the White House,
you shake hands with Roosevelt

and hear him talk,
and then go home to wring

the personality out of your clothes.

Richard Washburn child.

As the 1904 presidential election
drew near, the executive mansion...

Newly rebuilt, refurbished,
and officially renamed the White House...

Mirrored Theodore
Roosevelt's enthusiasms.

Footmen wore blue-and-
white Roosevelt livery.

The President's gilt initials
gleamed from the sides

of 3 new carriages.

The stuffed heads of a dozen
north American mammals he'd

shot personally stared down
from the walls of the state

dining room.

Theodore and Edith Roosevelt
delighted in the company

of writers, artists,
and musicians, who were

frequent visitors to the White House.

The pianist paderewski performed at one

of Edith's musicales.

So did a promising young
cellist named Pablo casals.

The President invited John
singer sargent to live

with the first family for a
week while he painted TR's

official portrait, and when
Roosevelt learned that his

favorite poet, Edwin Arlington
Robinson, was working

12 hours a day in the New
York subway, he got him

a less-demanding position at
the New York customs house.

"A poet, " he said,
"can do much more for this country

than the proprietor of a nail factory."

The public loved reading about
the Roosevelt White House,

but they clamored to see the
President in person, and he

was more than happy to oblige.

Huge crowds turned out to
see him wherever he went,

and he went everywhere.

Whenever I stopped at a
small city or country town,

I was greeted by the usual shy,
self-conscious, awkward body

of local committeemen,
and spoke to the usual

audience of thoroughly
good American citizens.

That is, the audience consisted
of the townspeople, but even more

largely of gaunt,
sinewy farmers and hired hands

who had driven in with
their wives and daughters,

from 10 or 20 or even
30 Miles round about.

And for all the superficial
differences between us,

down at bottom these men and
I think a good deal alike,

or at least have the same ideals,
and I am always sure

of reaching them in speeches
which many of my Harvard friends

would think not only homely,
but commonplace.

He was the first American President

who had the look and the
sound and the education

of a Harvard man, and there'd
never been anything like that

in American politics.

And I think part of the immense
appeal of Theodore Roosevelt

is that he didn't shed that background.

He didn't try to talk
like the ordinary folk.

His upper-class accent,
his upper-class tastes...

Once people got over that,
then they realized we love him

because he is this way,
because he isn't trying to be

just like we are.

He's himself.

And he's resolutely himself
all through his life.

That year, the democrats nominated

judge alton b. Parker of
New York for President...

An able jurist but also,
as Roosevelt said privately,

"a neutral-tinted individual."

The President promised voters
what he called a "square deal, "

favoring neither capital nor labor,

rich nor poor.

"If the cards do not come to any man, "

he said, "or if they do come,
and he has not the power"

"to play them, that is his affair.

"All I mean is that there
shall be no crookedness

in the dealing."

Here's what you can expect
from your government.

You can expect a square deal,
so that the rich man

and the poor man are treated fairly,
that there is due process

that doesn't favor the rich.

Roosevelt's essential view
was government needn't

redistribute to the lower orders,
but it should never

align itself with the wealthy
and the privileged against

common people.

At the very least, government
needs to be absolutely neutral

in the way it treats the
citizens of this country.

By late October,
a Roosevelt victory seemed

so likely that the big
financiers who both feared

and hated him scurried
to write handsome checks

for his campaign.

Still, he wrote to one of his sons,
he worried that he might

not be elected President
in his own right.

If things go wrong on election
night remember, Kermit,

that we are very, very
fortunate to have had 3 years

in the White House,
and that I have had a chance

to accomplish work such as
comes to very, very few men

in any generation; And that I
have no business to feel downcast

merely because when so
much has been given me,

I have not had even more.

Your loving father.

Edith Roosevelt invited a few friends

for dinner on election night...
"A little feast, "

she called it, "which can
be turned into a festival"

of rejoicing or into a wake
as circumstances warrant."

It was soon clear her husband
would win by a landslide.

He took nearly every
state outside the old

Democratic confederacy.

"Have swept the country,
" he wired a friend.

"I had no idea there
would be such a sweep."

Then at this moment of
personal triumph, and without

consulting anyone,
he made the worst blunder of his

political career.

The Constitution said
nothing about how many terms

a President might serve.

But because George Washington
had refused to stand

for a third term, none of his
successors had dared try to

break that precedent.

Roosevelt could have argued
that he would not really have

had two full terms since he
had shared his first with the

assassinated William McKinley,

but he viewed that as
a mere technicality.

"Under no circumstances,
" he told the press, "will I

accept another nomination."

As he spoke, Edith and
his daughter Alice

visibly flinched.

Roosevelt decided in the flush
of victory on election night

that he was going to silence
all of those people who said

that he was merely a politician.

And he said that he would not
run for another term in 1908.

Now this appalled his wife, Edith.

It appalled all of his supporters.

It eventually appalled him.

"I would cut my hand off,
" he told a friend,

"if I could recall that statement."

At the pinnacle of his power,
he worried that he had made

himself a lame duck.

He would do everything he
could to make sure that would

not happen.

Dear Franklin, we are greatly rejoiced.

I am as fond of Eleanor as if
she were my daughter, and I

like you and trust you
and believe in you.

You and Eleanor are true and brave, and I
believe you love each other unselfishly,

and golden years open before you.

May all good fortune attend you both.
Give my love to your dear mother.

Your affectionate cousin,
Theodore Roosevelt.

On December 1, 1904,

less than 3 weeks after
Franklin Roosevelt

had proudly cast his
first presidential vote

for his cousin, Theodore,
he and Eleanor finally

announced their engagement.

The newspapers paid most attention to

the President's niece.

Franklin was identified only
as a member of the New York

yacht club who'd lost an
election for class marshal

at Harvard.

The year of secrecy about
their relationship had been

hard on both Franklin and Eleanor.

They had to meet without
arousing the curiosity

of friends or relatives
or talkative servants,

and they could rarely be alone together.

"I want you so much, " Eleanor wrote after
plans for one meeting had to be canceled.

Franklin's mother made
things still more difficult.

She promised her son she would
"love Eleanor and adopt her

"fully when the right time comes,
" but meanwhile she

looked for ways to keep them
apart, even took her son

on a Caribbean cruise in
hope that he might get over

his infatuation.

Meanwhile, Eleanor had
discovered the rewards

of useful work.

Like many debutantes of her era,
she had volunteered to

work with immigrant children
in a settlement house...

In her case, on Rivington
street on the lower east side.

Unlike most of her
contemporaries, she took her

work seriously.

She rode public transportation, worked

overtime, sometimes turned
down invitations rather than

miss a class.

She meets with folks who
create the junior league.

The junior league is made up
of young women, just like

Eleanor Roosevelt, very affluent,
born to privilege,

who recognize that there is
no security for anybody when

there's insecurity and misery for many.

One afternoon,
when Franklin dropped by to

visit, a little girl fell ill.

Eleanor asked him to carry her home.

He did and never forgot
the sights and foul smells

of the tenement in which she lived.

"My God, " he told Eleanor.

"I didn't know anyone lived like that."

I think Eleanor Roosevelt
played a very important part

in making Franklin see the
world out beyond the very

elegant Harvard world that he had known,

and it had an enormous impact on him.

And I really think that went
on throughout their lives,

when he couldn't move beyond
his office she really

did become his eyes and ears.

She was far, far more than that.

But she told him what was
really happening in the real

world all the time.

She loved her work,
found fulfillment in helping

others that she never found elsewhere.

But she was willing to give up that work

and the independent life it promised

for marriage, hoping to find
in her husband a confidant

and to find in his mother
something like the loving

mother she had never had.

It was a bargain she would often regret.

Each wanted from a
relationship something that

the other in the end
couldn't quite give.

She wanted an intimate,
someone she could confide in,

a husband who was always
supportive and always

there for her.

He could not provide that.

He wanted someone who had all
the devotion to him that his

mother had had but not the
admonitory part, the part that

told him what to do and what not to do.

And sadly Eleanor couldn't
be worshipful and had to

be admonitory.

On March 4, 1905, the President invited

the newly engaged couple
to his inauguration.

Franklin and I went to our
seats on the capitol steps

just back of Uncle Ted and his family.

I was interested and excited,
but politics still meant

little to me, though I can
remember the forceful manner

in which Uncle Ted delivered his speech.

I told myself I had
seen an historic event,

and I never expected to see

another inauguration in the family.

Franklin never took his
eyes off the President.

13 days later on March 17th,
President Roosevelt

was to lead the St. Patrick's day
parade up Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt
chose that day to marry

in a cousin's parlor on
east 76th street, so that

the President could be there
to give his late brother's

daughter away.

The wedding of miss Eleanor Roosevelt and
Franklin delano Roosevelt, her cousin,

took on the semblance
of a national event.

The presence of President
Roosevelt, the bride's Uncle,

Miss Alice Roosevelt, and Mrs.
Roosevelt and, as some rather

enthusiastic if not discreet
woman observed, the entire

family in every degree of Cousinship...

Made it very much like
a "royal alliance."

The "New York Times"

When the reverend Endicott
peabody of Groton, asked,

"who giveth this woman in marriage?"

The President shouted back, "I do!"

His oldest daughter Alice
remembered that "father always"

wanted to be the bride at
every wedding, the corpse

"at every funeral, and the
baby at every christening."

As soon as Franklin and
Eleanor exchanged their vows,

he slapped the groom on the back.

"Well, Franklin, " he said,
"there's nothing like keeping

the name in the family."

Then, he hurried into the room
where refreshments were served

and held forth for an hour and a half.

The newlyweds were largely overlooked.

Franklin and Eleanor's
honeymoon would last

more than 3 months.

He assured his mother
he and Eleanor were

having a "scrumptious time."

But there were private hints of strain:

Franklin sleepwalked,
suffered nightmares, developed

persistent hives.

Eleanor grew jealous when she
chose not to accompany him up

an Italian mountainside and he
went anyway, in a party that

included an attractive new
York milliner who happened to

be staying at their hotel.

But everywhere they went,
Franklin told his mother,

all anyone wanted to talk about was

cousin Theodore.

President Roosevelt had just
succeeded at something no

other statesman had dared
attempt... helping to end

the conflict that threatened to
disrupt the balance of power

in the pacific.

For 2 years, Russia and
Japan had been at war over

which would dominate
manchuria and Korea.

Russia had found itself
on the losing end.

Japan occupied Korea,
took Port Arthur, and sank most

of the czar's fleet in
the battle of Tsushima.

For the first time in centuries,
an Asian power had

defeated a Western one,

but its victories had been
won at a fearful cost.

Roosevelt believed that the United
States needed to assert itself

and say, "we're a player."

We're not that isolationist
nation across the Atlantic.

We're part of this story
now and we're going to

"assert ourselves."

He decides it would be ruinous
for the future of the planet

if either side won decisively.

He wanted Russia to be humbled
by the Japanese and he admired

the Japanese.

But he realized that if
the Japanese won outright

and devastated Russia,
this would lead to

a destabilization of the pacific.

And so he wanted to settle
this before it got too far

out of hand.

In August of 1905,
President Roosevelt was able

to persuade both sides to
agree to send representatives

to a conference near
Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Before talks began, he invited
them aboard the presidential

yacht in Oyster Bay, provided a
stand-up lunch so that no one

could claim he'd been
slighted by the seating

arrangements, and proposed a
toast to which he insisted

there be no responses, asking
"in the interests of all mankind

that a just and lasting peace
may speedily be concluded."

Then, he worked behind
the scenes to hammer out

an agreement...
the treaty of Portsmouth.

Each side could claim some Russia

abandoned all claims to Korea;
Japan dropped its demand

for payment for the costs of
the war; The disputed island

of sakhalin was split in two.

This is splendid, this is magnificent.

This is a mighty good thing
for Russia, a mighty good

thing for Japan,
and mighty good for me, too!

Roosevelt's friend

and frequent critic, Henry Adams,
declared him "the best"

herder of emperors since Napoleon."

For his efforts, Roosevelt was
awarded the nobel peace prize,

the first American to
win any nobel prize.

But the President remained a realist

about the prospects
for a permanent peace

in the pacific.

Sooner or later, the Japanese
will try to bolster up their

power by another war.

Unfortunately for us,
we have what they want most:

The Philippines.

When it comes, we will win over Japan,

but it will be one of the most
disastrous conflicts the world

has ever seen.

Oyster Bay. August 26, 1905.

Dear Kermit, the other day
a reporter asked Quentin

something about me, to which
that affable and canny young

gentleman responded, "yes,
I see him sometimes; But I"

know nothing of his family life."

The country was as obsessed

with Roosevelt's family
as it was with him.

Sagamore Hill still
provided some privacy.

Roosevelt cousins gathered
there during the summer,

sometimes 14 at a time.

The President led them on what he called

"point-to-point" walks...

Long strenuous dashes through
woods and marshes, pushing

through brambles, crawling
under fences or scrambling

over them, and never,
ever going around anything.

He didn't tell his children,
especially his sons, that they

needed to live up to his example.

But everything that he did
indicated that people who

didn't live up to that kind
of example were somehow

lesser individuals.

And the sons couldn't help
but imbibe that attitude.

It was very difficult being
a child, especially a son,

of Theodore Roosevelt.

Theodore, Jr... Ted...

Was an 18-year-old Harvard freshman.

His father had pushed him so
hard when he was small that

Edith and a physician
had had to intervene.

He remained a "regular bull
terrier, " his proud father

wrote, stoical enough to have
finished a Groton football game

despite a broken collarbone.

16-year-old Kermit was shy,
bookish, moody, a student

at Groton who sometimes
suffered from the family curse

of depression.

But the White House was still
home to 14-year-old Ethel

and Archie, age 11.

Both were quiet and sweet-tempered.

7-year-old Quentin was
sweet-tempered, too.

But he was also mischievous
and irrepressible, a "fine"

"little bad boy, " according to
his mother, fond of big words

that he bit off just as his
father did, and accustomed to

giving orders to the band
of small boys that called

themselves "the White House gang."

His father's nickname for
him was "quentyquee."

The children's' pets were
allowed to roam everywhere...

Rabbits, raccoons, cats, dogs,
a badger named josiah that

their father described as
looking "like a mattress"

with legs."

It bit only legs,
Archie assured nervous visitors,

not faces.

They smuggled a pony into the
White House elevator and up to

the second floor, rolled giant
snowballs down the White House roof

and onto the heads of policemen,
spattered Gilbert Stuart's

portrait of George
Washington with spitballs,

and used mirrors to reflect
sunlight into the eyes

of clerks trying to
work in the neighboring

state-war-Navy building.

Father doesn't care for me
one-eighth as much as he does

for the other children.

It is perfectly true that he doesn't,
and lord, why should he?

We are not in the least congenial,
and if I don't care

overmuch for him and don't
take a bit of interest

in the things he likes,
why should he pay any

attention to me or the things
I live for, except to look

on them with disapproval?

Alice Roosevelt.

Alice was 21, the daughter

of Theodore Roosevelt's first wife,
Alice Lee, whose death

remained so painful to
him he could not bear to

speak her name.

Her early life had been
divided among her mother's

parents, her aunt Bamie and
her father and stepmother

at Sagamore Hill.

Like her cousin Eleanor,
she felt she had never had

a real home of her own.

She always felt like the fifth wheel.

She felt that for some reason
or other TR resisted her.

And so there's a sort of
tension in their relationship.

Alice had some of that
mighty Rooseveltian energy.

But for a woman in this period,
there were so few avenues to

release that energy in a
socially useful way, so she

was straight-jacketed by
the mores of her time.

Edith and Theodore had
urged her to remain

ladylike, tractable, reserved...

To behave the way Eleanor did.

Instead, Alice set out
to be "conspicuous."

She had been the first
teen-aged girl to grow up

in the White House in a
quarter of a century,

was attractive, outspoken,
desperate to be noticed.

She did everything...

Or almost everything...

A young woman of her age and
standing should not have done.

She smoked.

She bet on the horses,
took long un-chaperoned

automobile rides in a bright
red roadster, flirted

with battalions of wealthy
young men in New York

and Newport and wore a green
snake as a wriggling fashion

accessory to divert attention
during one of her father's

meetings with the press.

Her face was everywhere...

Candy boxes, song sheets,
the front pages of newspapers

around the world.

The German Navy named a ship for her.

Overseas crowds hailed
her as "princess Alice."

The family was always telling me,
"beware of publicity!"

And there was publicity hitting
me in the face every day.

And once stories got out,
or were invented,

I was accused of courting publicity.

I destroyed a savage letter on
the subject from my father.

There was he, one of the
greatest experts in publicity

there ever was, accusing me of
trying to steal his limelight.

Alice Roosevelt would remain

a Thorn in the side of
one Roosevelt or another

for decades.

The "Washington Post."

It is now universally
recognized by experienced

politicians of all parties
that Roosevelt has more

political acumen in one lobe
of his brain than the whole

militant tribe of American
politicians have in their

combined intelligence;
That his political perception,

so acute as to amount almost
to divination, is superior to

that of any American
statesman of the present

or immediate past era.

In June of 1906, Theodore Roosevelt
seemed almost invincible.

In his most recent message
to congress, he had called

for a series of national
solutions to national problems,

righting wrongs through
progressive legislation.

The country was changing,
and the "troublesome conscience"

he had inherited from
his father would not let

him ignore those injustices.

Roosevelt realized that we
were no longer a rural people.

We were an urban people.

He realized that industry
was out of control.

So when he looked at this,
he thought, "well what can we do"

to make sure that all
Americans can thrive?"

So he's essentially trying to
do what Jefferson was trying

to do in the "declaration of
independence, " but he's looking

around at the technologies,
the demographics,

the ethnicity, and he realizes
that in order to achieve

a jeffersonian nation,
you have to adopt hamiltonian means.

And so progressive is
using government to bring

about reforms that will enable
everyone to thrive even if

they don't have the
advantages of the jeffersons,

the Madisons, the monroes,
the white anglo-Saxon peoples

for whom the country works best.

The country has to work for
everyone or it doesn't work

for anyone in Roosevelt's mind.

Now, over the furious objections

of the rail roads and the
powerful republican senators

they controlled, Roosevelt won passage

of the hepburn act.

It empowered the interstate
commerce commission to limit

the rates the rail roads could
charge to move goods from

place to place, and for the
first time in American history

gave the rulings of a federal
agency the force of law.

One of Teddy Roosevelt's
great accomplishments was

the hepburn act.

No one remembers it now,
but it was a big deal at that time

because he not only favored
federal regulation of rail road

freight rates, but he did
something no one had ever done

before... he campaigned as
President around the country

for a piece of legislation.

That was a shocking
expansion of the pretenses

of the presidency.

Employing his skill to
out think and outmaneuver

the opposition behind the
scenes and his uncanny

ability to rally the people to
his cause, he pushed through

more bills

that began to rewrite
the role of government

in American life.

With indirect help from
crusading journalists,

he championed the pure food
and drug act, which demanded

that the producers of everything
from patent medicines

to canned tomatoes accurately
label their products.

And when the meat-packing
trust tried to block

an inspection bill that
would have cleaned up their

appalling slaughterhouses,
Roosevelt released part

of the findings of a federal
investigation into industry

practices and then threatened
to make public the rest

if they didn't back down.

They did.

I attack.

I attack iniquities.

I try to choose the time for
an attack when I can get

the bulk of the people
to accept the principles

for which I stand.

Roosevelt enraged those
whom he denounced

as "malefactors of great
wealth", especially those

who had contributed to his
1904 campaign in hopes

of having some control
over his policies.

"We bought the son of a bitch,
" one said, "but he

wouldn't stay bought."

Theodore Roosevelt understood
the enormous energies that

were being loosed in America.

And he saw that among the
things they could devour,

these forces, if not
contained, would be some

of the irreplaceable
beauties of the country.

The antiquities act
Roosevelt had also signed

in June of 1906 empowered
the President to provide

protection for prehistoric
ruins as well as "objects"

"of scientific interest"
on federal lands

without having to ask
permission of the congress.

He immediately reinterpreted
the act so that he could also

save as national monuments
some of the country's most

extraordinary natural wonders,

including devil's tower and
the muir woods, mount Olympus,

and more than 800,000 acres of
the grandest canyon on earth.

Before Theodore Roosevelt left office...

And over the objections of the speaker
of the house, Joseph g. Cannon,

who liked to say,
"not one cent for scenery"...

He would create 51 bird sanctuaries,
4 national game refuges,

and 18 national monuments.

He doubled the number of
national parks from 5 to 10,

saving Western landscapes
like those where he had first

learned that ceaseless
action could defeat despair.

He also helped save the
buffalo from extinction,

leather animal he had
actionable loved to shoot. Air.

He set aside more than 280,000
square Miles of federal land

under one kind of conservation
protection or another...

An area larger than
the state of Texas...

And created the United States
forest service to see that

the development of
natural resources be done

in a responsible, sustainable way.

Surely our people do not
understand even yet the rich

heritage that is theirs.

There can be nothing more
beautiful than the yosemite,

the groves of giant
sequoias and redwoods,

the canyon of the Colorado,
the canyon of the yellowstone,

the 3 tetons.

And our children should see to it

that they are preserved
for their children

and their children's children
forever with their majestic

beauty unmarred.

We are not building this
country of ours for a day.

It is to last through the ages.

Office of the mayor, brownsville, Texas.

Dear Mr. President,
at a few minutes before midnight

on Monday, August 13,
1906, a body of soldiers

of the first battalion of the 25th
United States infantry, colored,

numbering between 20 to 30 men,

began firing in town
directly into dwellings,

offices, stores,
and at police and citizens.

Our women and children are terrorized.

Back in August of 1906,
President Roosevelt had

ordered the war department
inspector general,

a white South carolinian,
to investigate charges related to

an alleged rampage in brownsville,
Texas, by black troops

that had left a white bartender
dead and a police officer wounded.

The army was totally segregated then,

and the soldiers had been
abused and insulted by whites

ever since they'd arrived in
brownsville just 3 weeks earlier.

The soldiers denied any wrongdoing.

The regiment's white commanding
officer backed them up.

His men had all been
safely in their barracks

on the night in question.

A Texas grand jury failed to
indict any of the soldiers.

Race relations had not
improved since Roosevelt

invited booker t. Washington to
dinner at the White House in 1901.

More than 400 black men and women
had been lynched since then.

Black voters were still
barred from the polls

throughout the South.

And a new generation of
African Americans was growing

impatient with booker t. Washington's
caution and his coziness with Roosevelt.

The President had made a few
symbolic gestures toward

civil rights.

He denounced the lawlessness
of lynching and when whites

in Indianola, Mississippi,
forced his black appointee as

postmistress to resign,
he closed the post office

and made them travel 20
Miles to get their mail.

But he also made much of his
confederate ancestry whenever

he was in the South and
privately said it would take

black people "many thousands
of years" to match

the intellectual powers of white people.

The inspector general's report

on the brownsville incident
recommended that the President

should dismiss all of the
soldiers, because none

would confess.

Booker t. Washington wrote to him
and said, "please, Mr. President",

"I will not criticize you publicly.

"You are my dear friend.

But I ask you to reopen this
case and to look again."

He refused and he got
more and more righteous

and shrill about it.

This is without question the
most dishonorable moment

of Roosevelt's long and
extraordinary career.

Roosevelt waited till November 7th,

the day after hundreds of
thousands of blacks cast their

votes for his party's
congressional candidates all

across the north, and then dismissed
all 167 men from the service.

One had fought alongside TR in Cuba.

That sergeant remembered
splitting his rations

with Roosevelt himself after
the battle of Las Guasimas.

None of the men would
get a penny in pension.

Some black intellectuals,
including w.E.B. Dubious,

began to suggest that
African-Americans now abandon

the party of Abraham
Lincoln for the democrats.

Roosevelt angrily denounced
critics of his brownsville

decision as naive
"sentimentalists, " but when

the time came to write his
autobiography, he chose to make

no mention of the case.

A Christmas present to
Franklin and Eleanor

from mama.

Number and street not quite yet
decided... 19 or 20 feet wide.

In the winter of 1908,

Franklin and Eleanor moved into
the 6-story New York townhouse

his mother had built for
them at 49 east 65th street.

With them came their first
two children, 2-year-old Anna

and 11-month-old James,
as well as Eleanor's

younger brother hall and 6 servants.

Sara and 3 more servants
occupied the house's twin

at number 47.

The Roosevelt family crest
was carved above the common

entrance and open doors
on three floors connected

the households.

Sara had hired the staff.

She and her son had also overseen
the construction and furnishing.

Eleanor had played almost no part.

Not long after they moved in,
Franklin found her weeping.

He asked what was wrong.

I said I did not like to
live in a house, which was

not in any way mine,
one that I had done nothing about

and which did not represent
the way I wanted to live.

Being an eminently reasonable person,
he thought I was quite mad

and told me so gently,
and said I would feel

different in a little while
and left me alone until I

should become calmer.

Eleanor did calm down, she recalled,

but her outburst was the first sign

that in the interest of her
marriage she had simply been

"absorbing the personalities
of those around me and letting

"their tastes and interests dominate
me" and that she resented it.

Franklin delighted in his children.

Eleanor seemed mostly puzzled by them.

"I had never had any interest
in dolls or in little

children, " she remembered,
"and I knew absolutely nothing

about handling or feeding a baby."

Nannies hired and fired by her
mother-in-law saw to such details.

"Brother fell out of his chair
this morning, " she noted one day.

"Anna did not come to
breakfast because she said,

no, I won't. '"

misbehavior alarmed her;
So did the nurses

who told her how to handle it.

I think Eleanor never found
her stride as a mother,

in part because she had had such
terrible mothering on her own,

her own mother being so
cold to her, dying when

Eleanor was young, but also
maybe never accepting Eleanor

for who she was.

So she had no model to go
toward when she had her

own children.

Franklin had attended
Columbia law school,

passed the New York bar,
and, with the help of family

connections, had gone to work
as a clerk for the Wall Street

law firm of Carter,
led yard, and mil burn.

The law itself didn't interest him much.

A member of the firm recalled
that he "tended to dance"

"on the top of the hills" and
leave to others the hard work

on the slopes below.

But at the courthouse,
he got to know all kinds of people

he'd never encountered at
Groton or Harvard... ambulance

chasers and penniless
plaintiffs and witnesses both

credible and incredible.

And "thanks to Uncle Ted,
" his wife remembered, he was

already interested in politics.

A few months after the
Roosevelts moved to 65th street,

Eleanor gave birth to a
third child, at 11 pounds,

"the biggest and most
beautiful of all the babies, "

she remembered.

They named him Franklin, Jr.

And immediately registered
his name at Groton.

That July, Eleanor and several
servants took the 3 children

to their summer home in
Campobello, new brunswick.

Sara had bought the younger
Roosevelts their own "cottage"

on the island,
entirely separate from hers.

There was no electricity,
no telephone; All the cooking

had to be done on a coal stove.

Eleanor loved it.

It was hers, the first real
home she had ever known.

But as the weeks went by,
it became clear that something

was wrong with the new baby's heart.

Doctors were consulted,
first on the island, then

in Hyde Park, finally back in Manhattan.

No one seemed able to do anything.

November 1st.

At a little before 7 A.M.,
Franklin called my room.

"Better come, mama, baby is sinking."

I went in.

The little angel ceased
breathing at 7:25.

Franklin and Eleanor are most wonderful,

but poor Eleanor's mother's
heart is well nigh broken.

She so hoped and cannot
believe her baby is

gone from her.

November 2nd.

I sat often beside my little grandson.

It is hard to give him up,
and my heart aches for Eleanor.

Franklin Roosevelt, Jr.

Was buried in the Roosevelt family
plot at St. James church in Hyde Park.

It seemed "cruel, " Eleanor wrote,
"to leave him out there in the cold."

I reproached myself very
bitterly for having done

so little about the care of this baby.

I felt he had been left too
much to the nurse and I knew

too little about him,
that in some way I was to blame.

Within a month of her baby's burial,

Eleanor would find
herself pregnant again.

A man has to take advantage
of his opportunities,

but the opportunities have to come.

If there is not war,
you don't get the great general;

if there is not the great
occasion, you don't get the

great statesman; If Lincoln
had lived in times of peace,

no one would know his name.

Theodore Roosevelt
accomplished a great deal

during his 7 years as
President... the break-up

of northern securities,
the coal strike settlement,

the Panama canal, the pure food
and drug act, the hepburn act,

an end to the Russo-Japanese war,
millions of wild acres

preserved for future
generations to enjoy,

but he himself was not satisfied.

Roosevelt could not class
himself as a great President

because he had faced no great
crisis while in office.

There was no war, no crisis.

Some people thought he was the crisis.

But you don't have to
have a war in order to be

immortalized as a great President.

He's shown that. He proved that.

Now hampered by his own pledge not to

run again in 1908, Roosevelt hand-picked

a successor, his good friend
and secretary of war,

William Howard taft of Ohio,
who promised to remain true to

the progressive principles
Theodore Roosevelt had laid down.

Their friendship went a long way back,

and they shared a
similar outlook on life.

They were both civil service reformers.

They spent so much time
together that Corinne,

Theodore's sister, said that
they seemed to love each other.

TR ran his campaign.

He told him advice at every moment.

He edited his speeches.

He said he was as nervous
about taft's campaign as he

was about his own.

And he was thrilled when taft won.

He thought that this amiable
person who seemed to share his

values and his progressive
ideals would make the perfect

President to put into law all
the things that he had then

put out there as executive orders,

but it didn't work out the way he hoped.

As he left the white house,
Roosevelt did his best

to seem cheerful, but when a
friend assured him he had not

finished with politics, he said,

"my dear fellow,
for heaven's sake, don't talk

"about my having a future.

My future is in the past."

He was just 50 years old.

The hunter who wanders through
these lands sees sights which

ever afterward remain
fixed in his mind...

A giraffe looking over the tree
tops at the nearing horsemen;

zebras barking in the moonlight,
as the laden caravan

passes on its night March
through a thirsty land.

And after years, there
shall come to him memories

of the lion's charge,
the gray bulk of the elephant

close at hand in the somber woodland,

of the rhinoceros, truculent and
stupid, standing in the bright

sunlight on the empty plain.

These things can be told,

but there are no words that
can tell the hidden spirit

of the wilderness,
that can reveal its mystery,

its melancholy, and its charm.

All his life, Roosevelt had dreamed

of hunting big game in Africa.

Now with his son Kermit at
his side, he could make that

dream a reality and not be
tempted to answer reporters'

questions about how his
successor was doing.

On that subject, he promised to
be as "silent as an oyster."

When he sailed for British
east Africa, j.P. Morgan was

supposed to have said, "every
American hopes that every lion"

will do its duty."

The Roosevelt safari reminded onlookers

of a military campaign.

A vast American flag flew
over the ex-President's tent.

Skilled white hunters served as guides.

3 naturalists from the
Smithsonian institution saw to

the steadily growing
collection of specimens.

206 porters carried supplies, including

cans of California peaches
and Boston baked beans,

90 pounds of jams, 4 tons of
salt to cure animal skins,

and 60 miniature volumes,
ranging from "Alice in wonderland"

to the "federalist papers."

His tent was cared for by 2 men.
2 more saw to his horses.

Another pair was responsible
for his guns and ammunition.

For good luck on the hunt,
the President carried

a gold-mounted rabbit's foot,
given to him by his friend,

the former heavyweight champion,
John I. Sullivan.

He didn't need it.

Together, his and Kermit's
rifles accounted for 512 animals

and large birds,
including 20 rhinoceroses...

17 lions...

11 elephants,

And 9 giraffes,

and not including countless
smaller birds felled by

their shotguns.

They kept only a dozen
trophies for themselves,

Roosevelt said, and "shot
nothing that was not used"

either as a museum
specimen or for meat."

The expedition would
eventually send home crates

and barrels containing
11,397 preserved creatures.

Roosevelt was away from Edith
and the rest of his family

for 11 months.

Sweetest of all sweet girls,
last night I dreamed

that I was with you, that our
separation was but a dream;

and when I woke up it was
almost too hard to bear.

You have made the real
happiness of my life.

Do you remember when you were
such a pretty engaged girl

and said to your love,

"no, Theodore, that I cannot allow?"

Darling, I love you so.

How very happy we have
been these last 23 years.

Your own lover, Theodore.

In March of 1910, Edith and Theodore

were finally reunited
at khartoum and began

a 3-month parade across north
Africa and Europe, making

headlines wherever he went.

He upset Egyptians by telling
them they were not ready

for independence from Great Britain.

In Paris, he hurried Edith
through the louvre...

Refusing to look at ruben's
nudes because he thought them

not suitable for mixed company.

Near Berlin, he watched maneuvers

with kaiser Wilhelm and took
the opportunity to warn him

that a war between Germany
and england would be

"an unspeakable calamity."

Everywhere, crowds cheered him
as if he still held office.

Father is so tired that
whenever we go in a motor,

he falls asleep.

The people are quite mad about
him and stand around the hotel

to see him go in and out.

Though it was midnight,

I had to send him out on our
balcony before they would disperse.

King Edward VII of england died

while Roosevelt was still
abroad and President taft

asked him to represent the United States

at the London funeral.

He spent so much time with
royalty that week, he said,

that he felt "that if I met
another king, I should bite him."

No one followed Theodore
Roosevelt's travels

with more interest than his
fifth cousin, Franklin, did.

He was eager now to begin
following the political path

his relative had blazed.

But other members of the
Roosevelt clan harbored

similar ambitions.

Theodore Roosevelt Jr.

Was just 20 years old,
still too young to run for office,

but already being called
the "crown prince"

in the newspapers; His 3
younger brothers might choose

to run for national
office someday, as well,

and all of them would
run as Republicans.

When the Democratic dutchess
county district attorney

dropped by Franklin's law
office and asked if he'd be

interested in running for the
state legislature, he jumped

at the chance.

It was, after all, the party of his
beloved late father, Mr. James.

No democrat could win in
dutchess county unless he

could peel votes away from
the republican incumbent.

Who was more likely to do that
than a personable young man

named Roosevelt?

Franklin saw no need
to consult his wife.

I listened to all Franklin's plans
with a great deal of interest.

It never occurred to me that
I had any part to play.

I felt I must acquiesce in
whatever he might decide to do.

I was having a baby,
and for a time at least that

was my only mission in life.

Her husband always lived "his own life"

"exactly as he wanted it,
" she remembered.

Only one thing held Franklin back.

He was worried that his cousin
Theodore might object to

a member of the family
running for office

on the Democratic ticket.

On the morning of June 18,
1910, Theodore Roosevelt

finally arrived home into
New York harbor aboard

the German passenger ship
"Kaiserin Auguste Victoria."

The cutter "Manhattan" drew up
alongside, prepared to take

the Roosevelts ashore.

Among the newspapermen,
old friends, and family members

on her top deck were
Franklin and Eleanor.

At some point during the day's
festivities, Franklin asked

his cousin for his blessing.

Theodore gave him the go-ahead.

It was too bad he was choosing to run
as a democrat, the ex-President said,

but he knew he could be
counted on to battle

the bosses in whatever party he chose.

A million New Yorkers were
waiting to welcome him home,

including scores of reporters
eager to ask him what he

thought of President taft and
whether he would ever consider

running for the white
house again himself.

He deflected every question.

But there was no way Theodore
Roosevelt could stay out

of public life for long.

It is not the critic who counts;
Not the man who points

out how the strong man stumbles,
or where the doer

of deeds could have done them better.

The credit belongs to the man
who is actually in the arena,

whose face is marred by
dust and sweat and blood;

who strives valiantly;
Who errs, who comes short again

and again, because there
is no effort without error

and shortcoming; But who
does actually strive to do

the deeds; Who knows great
enthusiasms, great devotions;

who spends himself in a worthy
cause; Who at the best knows

in the end the triumph of
high achievement, and who

at the worst, if he fails,
at least fails while daring greatly

so that his place shall
never be with those cold

and timid souls who neither
know victory nor defeat.

Theodore Roosevelt.