7:00 Breakfast
7:30 A speech
8:00 Reading a historical work
9:00 A speech
10 Dictating letters
11 Discussing Montana mines
11:30 A speeech
12 Reading an ornithological work
12:30 A speech
1:00 Lunch
1:30 A speech
2:30 Reading Sir Walter Scott
3 Answering telegrams
3:45 A speech
4 Meeting the press
4:30 Reading
5 A speech
6 Reading
7 Supper
8 - 10 pm: Speaking
11 Reading alone in his car
12 To Bed
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris (1979)
General Toral’s dignity was saved by an ingenious compromise worked out on 15 July. The Santiago garrison would surrender in two days if … the American forces would kindly bombard the city (shooting at a safe height above the houses), until all Spanish soldiers had handed in their arms. They might thus be truthfully said to have capitulated under fire.
How the Spanish American war was brilliantly ended by cunning diplomats in The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris (1979)
…she wrote that the “peculiar attraction and fascination” of the young Theodore Roosevelt “lay in the fact that he was like a child; with a child’s spontaneous outbursts of affection, of fun, and of anger; and with the brilliant brain and fancy of a child
A female friend of the young Teddy Roosevelt quoted in The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris (1979)
Never, never, you must never either of you remind a man at work on a political job that he may be President. It almost always kills him politically. He loses his nerve; he can’t do his work, he gives up the very traits that are making him a possilbility. I for instance, I am going to do great things here [as Governor of New York], hard things that require all the courage, ability, and work that I am capable of… But if I get to thinking of what it might lead to …
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris (1979)
Turnning from global to national matters, Roosevelt discusses the phenomenon of the “stationary state,” in which a freely developing nation tends to become rigid and authoritarian as its period of upward mobility comes to an end. But again he sees no cause for concern. It is right and proper that the power of government should increase to counteract “the mercilessness of private commercial warfare.” As for that other tendency of a maturing civilization, the crowding out of the upper class by the middle and lower, Roosevelt welcomes it as he welcomes all natural processes. Every new generation, he says, will increase the proportion of mechanics, workmen and farmers to that of scientists, statemen and poets, but as long as the aggregate population increases there will be no decline in cultural values. On the contrary, the nation’s overall quality will improve, thanks to “the transmission of acquired charachters” by an ever-thnning, ever-refining aristocracy. This process “in every civilization operates so strongly as to counterbalance .. that baleful law of natural selection which tells against the survival of the most desireable classes”.
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris (1979)
Theodore Roosevelt, as the British M.P. John Morley later observed “was” America — the America that grew to maturity after the Civil War, marshaled its resources at Chicago, and exploded into world power at the turn of the century.
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris (1979)
…the [Chicago] world’s fair asked for the first time “whether the American people knew where they were driving”. He [Adams] suspected they did not, “but that they might still be driving or drifting unconciously to some point in thought, as their solar system was said to be drifting towards some point in space; and that, possibly, if realations enough could be observed, this point might be fixed. Chicago was the first expression of American thought as a unity; one must start there.
Theodore Roosevelt and friends musing on the meaning of hosting the World’s Fair in Chicago in The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris (1979)
Oh lord, help me kill that bear,
And if you don’t help me,
Oh Lord, don’t help the bear.
‘Prayer of the Backwoodsman Fighting a Grizzly Bear’ recited by Theodore Roosevelt before an awkward meeting with the President of the United States in The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris (1979)
Although his Dakota venture had impoverished him, he was nevertheless rich in nonmonetary dividends. He had gone West sickly, foppish, and racked with perosnal despair; during his time there he had built a massive body, repaired his soul, and learned to live on equal terms with men poorer and rougher than himself… These men, in turn, had found him to be the leader they craved in that lawless land, a superior being, who, paradoxically did not make them feel inferior. They loved him so much they would follow him anywhere, to death if necessary — as some eventually did.
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris (1979)
In answer to the inevitable questions about his political plans, Roosevelt said he had none — at present. “I intend to divide my time between literature and ranching.
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris (1979)
