October 20, 2019 • 33 mins
In 1912, after Theodore Roosevelt was shot in the chest, he proceeded to deliver a 90-minute campaign speech before allowing someone to take him to the hospital. Was it for patriotism’s sake, or a bull-headed refusal to show weakness? Given his history, perhaps the latter. Mental Floss editor-in-chief Erin McCarthy traces Roosevelt’s battle against weakness back to his childhood as an asthmatic, wildly energetic boy determined to overcome his poor health with a commitment to “the strenuous life,” which essentially became his life philosophy.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
History Versus is a production of I Heart Radio and
Mental Flaws. It's October fourteenth and Theodore Roosevelt is standing
before a crowd of ten thousand in Wisconsin's Milwaukee Auditorium.
Fifty three year old former president is once again campaigning
(00:21):
for the highest office in the land, and he was
scheduled to deliver what was supposed to be a typical
campaign address. But the speech he's about to give is
anything but typical. Friends, I shall ask you to be
as quiet as possible. I don't know whether you fully
understand that I have just been shot. At first, the
(00:44):
crowd can't, doesn't quite believe it. Someone yells fake, but
there are gasps and screams as Roosevelt pulls aside his vest,
revealing a white shirt marred by a growing bloodstain. Just
moments before, Roosevelt had been standing in an open car
outside his hotel, waving to the assembled crowd, and it
would be assassin had shot him with a revolver from
(01:05):
just seven feet away. Roosevelt had dropped momentarily, but it
wasn't long before he was back on his feet. Aids
wanted to rush him to the hospital, and most people
would have gone. But that is not Theodore Roosevelt style. Instead,
he said, get me to that speech. And now on
stage he assures the shocked crowd, it takes more than
that to kill a bull. Moose, I give you my word,
(01:29):
I do not care a rap about being shot. Not
a rap. And then, although the slug is still inside him,
he proceeds to give a nearly ninety minute long speech.
If this sounds like an extraordinary occurrence, it was, or
it would have been for anyone but Theodore Roosevelt, a
(01:51):
man whose life was full of extraordinary occurrences. This was
the guy who charged up Kettle Hill on horseback, bullets
whizzing past him with a rough ride, ears who when
he assumed office, became the youngest president in history and
is still the youngest president we've ever had. Who helped
broker peace between Russia and Japan and won the Nobel
Prize for his efforts. Who paved the way for the
(02:13):
Panama Canal, who went off the grid to navigate a
previously uncharted river in the Amazon, who is immortalized on
Mount Rushmore, and who is often ranked as one of
the greatest presidents of all time. But Roosevelt wasn't always
strong enough to stop a bullet. In fact, as a child,
he was afflicted by asthma so terrible that his parents
feared he might not live to see his fourth birthday.
(02:35):
How did Roosevelt go from puny, sickly kid to person
capable of giving that incredible, unimaginable ninety minutes speech We're
about to find out. For Mental Flaws and I Heart Radio,
this is History Versus, a podcast about how your favorite
historical figures faced off against their greatest foes. For this
first season of the show, we're focusing on Theodore Roosevelt's
(02:56):
incredible life, using a convention that he, as a boxer,
would have appreciated. In each episode, we'll analyze how Roosevelt
took on a particular challenge, from conflict within his family
and conquering the hours of the day to his tussles
with other presidents and preserving the world for the next generation.
This episode is tr versus Weakness. But before we get started,
I want to tell you a little bit about how
(03:17):
I became interested in Theodore Roosevelt. Yes, I'm the editor
in chief of Mental Flaws, so history is kind of
my thing. But I didn't fully appreciate all things TR
until I plucked Edmund Morris's excellent book Colonel Roosevelt out
of the stacks at the Strand bookstore. I didn't realize
at the time that it was the third book in
a trilogy, so then I had to go back and
read the others. But anyway, I came out of it
(03:38):
with a huge admiration for TR and, if I'm being honest,
a little bit of an obsession, Okay, a big obsession.
My desk at work has more TR stuff on it
than it does photos of my cat's husband and best
friends combined. I even have a Theodore Roosevelt action figure
at home. I have an overflowing shelf voted to books
about Roosevelt. When I got married, I tried to convince
(03:58):
my husband to go on a tr forre of the
Dakotas for our honeymoon, which he did not go for
and you know fair enough. Also, as a wedding gift,
the Mental Flow staff got me some first edition books
of TRS collected speeches, which is way better than a
kitchen aid mixer, no offense to kitchen aid. And last
year I dressed up as Roosevelt for a Halloween costume
contest and one. So suffice to say, once you get
(04:20):
me started talking about theotre Roosevelt's incredible accomplishments, I can't
stop talking about them. Hence this podcast, which finally allowed
me to take that tr tour of the Dakotas. But
more on that later. The wonderful people at Sagamore Hill
called tr enthusiasts like me ted heads, and I'm going
to borrow that nickname for this podcast. So just a
note to all the ted heads out there, This is
(04:41):
not an exhaustive a to Z look at tars life.
If we tried to do that, well, there would be
a million episodes in this podcast because Roosevelt did a
staggering amount of stuff in his sixty years. We're going
to be dipping in and out of his life and
we're going to miss some things, but we're going to
be visiting some important Roosevelt sites and talking to some
really mart Roosevelt experts, so hopefully you'll still learn some
(05:02):
things along the way. Okay, ready to get started, Bully Today.
East between Park Avenue South and Broadway on the Island
of Manhattan is a mix of stores, businesses, and restaurants
and it's busy with taxis and trucks and cars. But
when Theodore Roosevelt was born in eighteen fifty eight, it
was a much more residential neighborhood that featured the clip
(05:23):
clop of horses hooves in the rattle of carriage wheels.
Behind the Brownstones was a garden, and around the corner
the Goley family built a mansion in the middle of
three lots, which they populated with cows and peacocks and
exotic birds. Theodore Roosevelt Jr. Came into the world on
the evening of October in a bedroom on the second
floor of the brownstone at East Twentie Street. He was
(05:43):
the second child of Martha Bullock Roosevelt or Middy, and
Theodore Roosevelt Senior, or the Their first child, Anna or Baby,
had been born three years earlier. Later would come brother
Elliott and sister Karin. Today, the elder Roosevelt's room is
covered with cream colored wallpaper, adorned with flowers, and filled
with original cherry stained walnut furniture. A portrait of Middy
(06:04):
hangs over the fireplace, but we don't know for sure
if that's what the room looked like when the Roosevelt
kids were born there. The family owned the home until
eighteen nine and then sold it, and soon after it
was either completely torn down or had the top two
stories torn down. Sources are a bit unclear on that point.
In nineteen nineteen, after TR's death, the Women's Roosevelt Memorial
Association repurchased that building and the one next to it,
(06:27):
which had belonged to Tiar's uncle, and reconstructed the home
as Baby and Karin remembered it. It's now Theodore Roosevelt
Birthplace National Historic Site. Shortly after he was born, Middi
described tr as a hideous baby who looked like a terrapin.
But TD, as he was called as a boy, quickly
became the center of his family's world. As a child,
he had a ton of energy, but from the age
(06:49):
of three he was, in his own words, a sickly,
delicate boy who suffered much from asthma. He also had
with a family called cholera morbus, a type of nervous diarrhea.
As a result of his illness, he was largely homeschooled
by his aunt Annie. When out and about in the city,
his younger brother Elliott had to defend him against police
tr spenting a lot of time indoors and pass the
time by reading voraciously. According to historian Kathleen Dalton, author
(07:12):
of Theodore Roosevelt, a strenuous life when he was sick,
and he often was the adults put the needs of
the other children's second, because Theodore's life was at stake.
If you watch some of the documentaries, they describe him
lying in the family crib, which you still see today
in the nursery, barely being able to blow out his
candle from suffering that bad from asthma. That's Alyssa Parker Geisman,
(07:36):
the lead ranger at Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site.
She says that the family tried almost everything to treat
trs asthma. Roosevelt wrote in his autobiography that one of
his memories was of my father walking up and down
the room with me in his arms at night when
I was a very small person, and of sitting up
in bed gasping, with my father and mother trying to
help me. Sometimes in an attempt to force air into
(07:58):
his son's lungs. The would take young TD and the
family buggy and race up and down Broadway, but they
also tried many remedies that, although standard at the time,
would raise eyebrows today. David McCullough, in his book Morning
on Horseback describes laudanum being used, which is opium mixed
with the wine UH. He also describes what is called
(08:18):
Indian hemp we call it marijuana today. Vinegar of squills
was used, which was a plant I believe used for
rat poison. Whiskey and gin were used. Kids were given
enemas tears. Parents weren't exactly feeding him rat poison, though
supposedly the vinegar and processing would mitigate some of the
plant's side effects. Later, Tier would recall having to smoke
(08:39):
cigars and drink black coffee to keep his asthma at bay.
And I think that it boggles the mind when you
think about it. In today's standards, hindsight is always but
I'm sure that was kind of cutting edge technology of
the day and additional treatment of the day. Perhaps if
you see a child suffering, you're going to try to
alleviate that in any way possible, which they could afford
(08:59):
to do. The Roosevelts were an affluent family, and that
fact is key. Theodore Roosevelt's story may have been very
different and if he hadn't been born into a life
of privilege and not only ensured he could get the
care he needed when he was ill, but it also
meant that his parents could show him the world. The
Roosevelt spent summers outside of the city, and they took
family trips to Europe, where Middy and Ted would visit
(09:20):
health resorts. Right, you go to these health resorts for treatment,
You're sitting hot baths, you soak in the hot waters.
You might be prescribed literally a walk in the woods
as part of the treatment. So this is all kind
of that time period and the health treatment back in
the day. This is probably a good place for a break.
(09:41):
We'll be right back. Following their first European tour, which
occurred when Tier was around twelve, a doctor recommended he
get plenty of fresh air and exercise with the goal
of expanding his chest to give his lungs room and
to ease the strain on his heart. After or words,
the issued his son a challenge. You have the mind,
(10:03):
but not the body, he told his son. And without
the help of the body, the mind cannot go as
far as it should. You must make your body through
gritted teeth. Tier responded that he would do just that.
It was not a promise that he took lightly. Tire
worshiped his father, whom he called the best man I
ever knew. These children called him great heart, and he
(10:24):
was a huge influence on Roosevelt, who would later in
life tell a journalist the thought of him now and
always has been a sense of comfort. I could breathe,
I could sleep when he had me in his arms.
My father, he got me breath, he got me lungs, strength, life.
According to Dalton, when his father was away during the
(10:46):
Civil War, Tierra's health would creator. It's important to note
that he was not away fighting. He paid a substitute
to fight for him, at least in part because Middi,
a Southerner, couldn't stand the thought of her husband fighting
her brother's instead. He was on a mission to get
troops at the front to sign up for what author
Deborah Davis describes as a payroll savings program that would
allow soldiers to put aside money for their families while
(11:08):
they were off fighting the war. It was just one
more expression of these lifelong commitment to philanthropy. He would
take his son with him on trips to visit missions
like the Newsboys Lodging House, giving tr in Dalton's words,
a loving example of how one man can use his
privilege to make society better. A proponent of what was
known as muscular Christianity, which has been defined as a
(11:28):
Christian life of brave and cheerful physical activity, he told
his son sickness is always a shame and often a sin.
His father was an example to his son, always trying
to instill in his son good moral character, strength, virility.
I think he was seeing around the city that there's
a lot of vice happening in CD characters, CD places
(11:51):
to visit in the city, and he doesn't want his
son does come to that. He has the strong sense
of morality, so he's going to instill that and his
son of this idea of muscular Christianity. So he challenges
his son right, and this belief of like overcoming your weakness,
overcoming your fragility, and really building up your body and
(12:11):
making sure that you're maintaining strong morals as well, and
so TD began to build his body. Karin would later
write of often seeing him working out on the piazza
overlooking the back garden between horizontal bars, widening his chest
by regular monotonous motion. He would work out there, keeping
a journal of how big his biceps are getting, how
big his chest size is getting. But two years into
(12:34):
his efforts he learned that he wasn't progressing as quickly
as he would have liked. In eighteen seventy two, when
TD was almost fourteen, he had a bad asthma attack,
and his father sent him away by himself for the
first time two Maine's moose Head Lake. It was a
life changing experience. In his autobiography, Roosevelt wrote that on
the stage coach ried to the lake, he met two
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boys his own age, and rather than making friends, they
found him to be an easy victim, and quickly his
life miserable. The worst feature was that when I finally
tried to fight them, I discovered that either one singly
could not only handle me with easy contempt, but handled
me so as not to hurt me much, and yet
(13:15):
to prevent my doing any damage whatever. In return, I
made up my mind that I must try to learn
so that I would not again be put in such
a helpless position. And so, with his father's encouragement, TD
began to learn how to box with ex prize fighter
John long Is his coach. Much to their surprise, td
was tough. He could take hit after hit and keep fighting.
(13:39):
Later that year, the Roosevelts took off on another grand tour. There,
Mitti and c deposited t d, Elliott, and Karn with
a family in Dresden, Germany, and though Tire was much
healthier than he had been, he still never quite conquered
his illnesses. During one attack of the months, he wrote
to his mother that he resembled an antiquated woodchuck with
his cheeks filled with nuts, and that your unhappy son
(14:01):
had his third attack of asthma, accompanied by a violent headache.
To his father, he said that an asthma attack rendered
him unable to speak without blowing up, like an abridged
edition of a Hippopotamus. According to Edmund Marris, Roosevelt's tutors
openly admired his ability to concentrate on his books and
his specimens to the exclusion of physical suffering. One of
(14:21):
those tutors was the first to predict that he'd be
president by the way. The Roosevelt's returned to the States
in eighteen seventy three, and the next summer they headed
out to a place that would come to hold a
huge significance for Roosevelt, Oyster Bay, New York, where his
grandfather and other Roosevelt families vacations. TR the President is
fifteen years old when he starts coming out to Oyster Bay.
(14:42):
That's Tyler CALIBERTA education technician at Sagamore Hill National Historic
Site on Long Island. Wealthy New Yorkers are spending their
summers out. Here's a place to escape New York City
for the family that's coming out here. This is a country.
We don't think about Long Island as the country any longer,
but it was for this family. It was an escape
from the heat of New York City, disease in New
York City, and it was a place to come out
(15:04):
and enjoy themselves. There might have been another benefit as well.
The air may have been cleaner than the air in
the city, which would have been better for t R's asthma.
TR Senior would have brought him out of the city
as frequently as he could have, especially when he was
undergoing those really terrible asthma attacks. I think that's probably
part of it for the family to come and spend
time outside of New York, So the family spent a
(15:25):
lot of times swimming. Roosevelt loved to row. He would
row all over Long Island Sound and the various coves
and necks around on the north shore Long Island. Who
would explore them? And Roosevelt is as a young boy
interested in taxidermy and learning about natural history and the
way that you do that in their days by shooting birds.
So Roosevelt is going all over and trying to find
(15:46):
different specimens and collecting them for his Roosevelt Museum of
Natural History that he kept in his parents house in
New York. Horseback riding, hiking, and just enjoying the outdoors.
Roosevelt loved Oyster Base so much that he would eventually
by land to build a house on the house that
would come to be named Sagamore Hill. There's a story
behind that name, by the way. Sagamore Mohanness was essentially
(16:09):
a chief or a satrum um. Satum is the Algonquin
word for chief, and then Sagamore is a lesser statum
or lieutenant statium. And this is apparently a place where
they had meetings. And Mohannas apparently is the native that
signed the land away, and Roosevelt decides to name it
Sagamore Hill. This is the highest point on co from X,
(16:31):
so this is the where they would have met. But
we're getting ahead of ourselves. Before any of that could happen,
Roosevelt had to go to college. He answered Harvard in
eighteen seventy six, where he chose to study the natural sciences.
So the first couple of years at Harvard, he was
the biggest nerd. Like he was just this, you know,
person who you'd see in you'd only be in his room.
(16:52):
He'd be doing essentially taxidermy. He'd have like animals and
drawers and things like that, and you can image is
and making very popular with people. But then all of
a sudden he broke out of it. Eventually starts joining
all these clubs. He becomes friendly with people all over campus.
When he wasn't in class or studying or in his clubs,
Tier kept up with his boxing and rowing, and he
(17:14):
took up wrestling too. Every spare moment was filled with
some kind of activity. That was doubly true when Roosevelt
was experiencing some kind of trauma in his sophomore year,
he passed away, and when Roosevelt went back to school,
he threw himself into his work, a frenzy of activity,
as if to dull his pain. According to historian Douglas Brinkley,
Tier wasn't scared of catching pneumonia and seemed to relish
(17:35):
spending hours in the cold. Instead of taking a street car,
Tier would walk three or four miles, and he'd still
be ice skating in frigid temperatures long after everyone else
went home. A friend from Harvard, Richard Welling, believed that
Tier was overcompensating for his weakness. Roosevelt had neither health
nor muscle, he would later write, but he had a
superabundance of a third quality, vitality, and he seemed to
(17:56):
realize that this nervous vitality had been given in order
to help him get the other two things. In between
years at Harvard, Roosevelt would spend as much time as
possible outdoors, often in Oyster Bay and in Maine. There
he lived with backwoodsman Bill Sewell, who would become a
lifelong friend, but his initial opinion of Roosevelt wasn't glowing.
He called him a thin, pale youngster with bad eyes
(18:18):
and a weak heart, and said he was mighty pindlin,
but Roosevelt quickly changed Bill's mind. One day that summer,
they watched twenty five miles, and Bill would later recall
that I do not think that I ever remember him
being out of sorts. He did not feel well sometimes,
but he would never admit it. On later trips to Maine,
Roosevelt would pursue cariboo in the snow without tents or
(18:40):
blankets for thirty six hours with Sewell and his nephew
Wilmot Doo. He'd summit the five thousand, two hundred and
sixty eight foot tall Mount cadad In, the tallest peak
in the state, making the trip partially in moccasin's after
he lost one shoe in a stream, after which tr
wrote news journal I can endure fatigue and hardship nearly
as well as these lumbermen. That wasn't the end of
(19:03):
the excursions. He Sewell, and Dow also took a six
day trip up a river in a dugout canoe through
a number of rapids, and then marched a hundred miles
and pouring rain for three days. Back at Harvard for
his senior year, Roosevelt became engaged his first wife, Alice
Hathaway Lee, and eventually decided on a career in politics.
That year, he also had an appointment with a doctor
(19:24):
at the university, and the news was not good. The
doctor informed him that his heart was dangerously strained. The
only way to live a long life, the doctor said,
was to live a quiet, sedentary life. Roosevelt's response was unequivocal, doctor,
I'm going to do all the things you tell me
not to do. If I've got to live the sort
(19:44):
of life you've described, I don't care how short it is.
For decades, he kept quiet about the doctor's advice and
continued to live as if he'd never heard it. The
only reason we know about it is that the doctor
wrote about the encounter, wishes confirmed by Harvard's records. Later year,
he married Alice on his birthday, and on their honeymoon
he claimed Pilattice, the Riggie, Grindelwald, and the young Frau.
(20:06):
In the span of ten days after that, tr and
Amateur summitted the matter Horn, a mountain so deadly that
many skilled mountaineers have died in the attempt. Why did
he do it? He told Sewel that it was to
prove to some snobby English climbers he'd met in the
lobby of his hotel that a Yankee could climb just
as well as they could. Roosevelt never fully conquered his asthma.
(20:28):
In fact, his sister karn One, said that he suffered
from it all his life, though in later years only
at long separated intervals. But his active lifestyle, what he
would come to call the strenuous life, built his stamina
and helped him manage his illness, and he never quit
being active. When he was governor of New York, he
had a wrestling matt installed in the governor's mansion. Roosevelt
(20:48):
wrote in his autobiography that the controller put up a
fuss about the purchase. He refused to audit a bill
i put in for a wrestling match, explaining that I
could have a billiard d boop billiards being recognized as
a proper gubernatorial amusement is that a wrestling matt symbolized
something unusual and unheard of and could not be permitted.
(21:11):
When he got word that President William McKinley was dying, Roosevelt,
then vice President, had just summited Mount Marcy, the highest
peak in New York state in the White House. He
continued to box, at least until a hard hit took
the vision in his left eye. After that he picked
up jiu jitsu, and then he had a tennis court installed.
Though his playing style was unconventional, his method of playing
(21:32):
pass was interesting. He would take the handle of Hello
into the ball. According to Michael cullinane, author of Theodore
Roosevelt's Ghost, The History and Memory of an American Icon,
Tire wasn't actually all that good at tennis or sports
in general. He was terrible a sports. I mean, there's
a really funny story about this kid who was playing
tennis with he was kr with then President was playing
(21:53):
tennis at Sagamore Hill, I think, or maybe it was
the White House. I can't recall, but this kid used
like a teenagers, like this guy is terrible at tennis
and he's the President and I admire him so much,
but he's like the worst tennis player in the world.
When he lacked in skill, he made up for an energy.
He'd also engaged in other physical pursuits, which his daughter
Alice called endurance tests. At Sagamore Hill, there's a place
(22:16):
to go on these long point to point walks where
Roosevelt would ask the children to walk in a perfectly
straight direction towards a certain place that was their goal,
and in that path, no matter what was in your way,
you had to go either over through it or around itself.
It was a thornbush, you had to go through it.
If it was a body of water like a pond,
you'd have to wade through it. If it was a wall,
(22:37):
you had to climb over it. This was his living
the strenuous life. Their idea of recreation wasn't what most
other people would think that I was sitting and drinking
lemonade on the porch and being taken care of by
your servants. For Roosevelt, it was going out and really
exhausting yourself. Most people who didn't know him, Willy, I
think they didn't. They didn't understand what they were getting
(22:59):
into when they were coming here to Sagamore. Hell, let's
take a quick break and we'll be right back. For Roosevelt,
working at a sweat wasn't just a way to stay healthy.
It was also a key part of his life philosophy
of bodily vigor as a method of getting that vigor
of soul without which vigor of the body counts for nothing.
(23:21):
As he described it in his autobiography, he credited his
hard work for his successes, writing that I never won
anything without hard labor and the exercise of my best
judgment and careful planning, and working long in advance. Having
been a rather sickly and awkward boy, I was a
young man at first, both nervous and distrustful of my
(23:44):
own prowess. I had to train myself painfully and laboriously,
not merely as regards my body, but as regards my
soul and spirit. Roosevelt didn't just advocate the strenuous life
for himself but for others. At the end of his
second term, he ordered that military officers be able to
walk fifty miles or ride around a hundred miles on
(24:05):
horseback in three days, later declaring it a test which
many a healthy middle aged woman would be able to meet.
When the officers and the press ball to the requirement,
he demonstrated how easy it was by doing it himself,
and in his autobiography he advised that a man whose
business is sedentary should get some kind of exercise if
(24:26):
he wishes to keep himself in as good physical Trim
as his brethren who do manual labor. When I worked
on a ranch, I needed no form of exercise except
my work. But when I worked in an office the
case was different. He also expected his children to live
the strenuous life, especially his children. I would rather one
(24:48):
of them should die than have them grow up weaklings.
He was especially tough on his oldest son, Ted, who
like his father, had asthma and later would suffer from
headaches and depression. Eventually he had what tr called kind
of a nervous breakdown. The doctors say, Theodore, you know
he was overstressed or he had a breakdown, and maybe
(25:09):
it's because you're pushing too hard. Tr was Contrite, telling
the doctor, I'll never push Ted again. He said he
had been so hard on the boy because Ted could
have been all the things I would like to have
been and wasn't, and it has been a great temptation
to push him. But Dalton writes that he never could
quite let up as he promised. Later, Edith would write
(25:30):
to Ted, as I look back, you fared worst because
father tried to toughen you, but happily was too busy
to exert the same pressure on the others. According to Dalton,
the weakling tr had been as a child made him
uncomfortable and ashamed because he detested the invalid he had been.
Dalton writes he looked back on his childhood with a
sense of detachment. Roosevelt hated weakness. It's not hard to
(25:54):
trace a line from this back to his father, whom
Roosevelt adored and who put so much emphasis on being
wrong and manly. Roosevelt would always feel inferior to Great Heart,
and he never wanted his children to be the kind
of weakling he had been. Both Roosevelt and his father
had worried about American society becoming weaker due to over civilization.
(26:15):
The idea was that men were so used to modern
comforts that they lost touch with some of the things
that made them manly. In speech delivered at the Hamilton
Club when he was governor of New York, Roosevelt laid
out his plan for making his country and its people
as strong as it could be. He used the speech,
which he would later call The Strenuous Life, to argue
for US militarism and imperial expansion, which will cover in
(26:37):
another episode, and to argue against a life of ignoble ease.
I wish to preach not the doctrine of ignoble ease,
but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of
toil and effort, of labor and strife. He urged the
wealthy fathers of the event to encourage their sons to
devote time to non remunerative work, as his father had
(26:59):
done with him, and noted that in this life we
get nothing saved by effort. Freedom from effort in the
present merely means that there has been stored up effort
in the past. Men should use that freedom to explore
different kinds of work, whether it be in politics or exploration.
But if a man used that freedom just for enjoyment,
(27:21):
he shows that he is simply a cumberer of the
earth's surface. A mere life of ease is not, in
the end, a very satisfactory life, And above all, it
is a life which ultimately unfits those who follow it
for serious work in the world. As it is with
the individual, so it is with the nation. He finished
(27:42):
by saying that living a life of ease and seeking
peace when war was called for would doom America to
be left behind. The twentieth century looms before us big
with the fate of many nations. If we stand iddly by,
then the bolder and stronger people's will pass us I
and will win for themselves the domination of the world.
(28:04):
Let us therefore boldly face the life of strife, resolute
to do our duty well and manfully. Resolute to uphold
righteousness by deed and by word. Resolute to be both
honest and brave, to serve high ideals. Get to use
practical methods. Above all, let us shrink from no strife,
(28:27):
moral or physical, within or without the nation, provided we
are certain that the strife is justified. For it is
only through strife, through hard and dangerous endeavor, that we
shall ultimately win the goal of true national greatness. According
(28:47):
to one of Roosevelt's friends, he had a policy of
forcing the spirit to ignore the weakness of the flesh.
And I think there's no better example of that than
when he was shot in John Shrank was the man
who fired the bullet. Shrink would later say that he
was against a third term president, but that wasn't his
only reason for pulling the trigger. As tr stood outside
(29:08):
the Gilpatrick Hotel, he was advised by the ghost of
William McKinley to avenge McKinley's death while pointing to a
picture of Theodore Roosevelt. So Shrink followed Roosevelt on the
campaign trail from New Orleans to Milwaukee. When Shrink fired
at Roosevelt, he was tackled to the ground. Roosevelt didn't
(29:29):
bring Shrink up, but the gentleman around him did. He
actually asked Shrink, like, why did you do it? And obviously,
realizing like there's not going to be an answer to that,
he's like, okay, fine, cops take him away. Later, Shrink
would be examined and deemed insane. He spent the rest
of his life in a mental hospital and died there
in nineteen forty three. After Shrink was hauled away, Roosevelt
(29:51):
went on to do his speech. As a hunter, he
knew to check yourself, and if you're coughing up blood,
that probably means the longest function you're in trouble. But
he checked, and he's like, you know, okay, it doesn't
hurt to breathe this way, so I'm going to go on.
According to Maris, the whole right side of Roosevelt's body
had turned black, but the wound was bleeding slowly, so
(30:12):
tr slapped a handkerchief over the bullet hole and went
out on stage. He didn't realize until after he pulled
out his speech, unfolded it, and began to read that
the bullet had gone through it, at which point he joked,
you see, I was going to make quite a long speech,
and make a long speech he did. Who gets shot
point blank and can then go on to carry out
(30:32):
about an approximately ninety minutes speech. Wow. But it wasn't
as though Roosevelt was unaffected. He spoke in a voice
Marris writes was no longer husky but weak. A knife
like pain in his ribs forced him to breathe in
short gasps. Two or three times he appeared to totter.
Party aids stood below the footlights in case he fell,
(30:53):
but Roosevelt didn't fall still. By the time he was
finished speaking, he had lost a lot of blood and
was taken to Milwaukee's emergency Hospital. Doctors there did an
X ray and found that the bullet had hit his
fourth rib on the right side. It had been headed
straight for the heart, but had been slowed by Roosevelt's
speech and his eyeglasses case before it hit and cracked
(31:15):
his rib. Today you can see the speech, eyeglasses, case,
and shirt tr war on the day he was shot
on display at the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site.
I mean they did the X ray. They saw that
the bullet was lodged since his rib, and they decided
not to take it out. So he carried that bullet
with him for the rest of his life yep, to
(31:36):
his death. Even more incredibly, Roosevelt gave his next speech
at Madison Square Garden a mere sixteen days later. Ultimately,
weakness was no match for try. History Versus is hosted
(31:57):
by me Aaron McCarthy. This episode was written by me,
with additional research by Michael Salgarolo and fact checking by
Austin Thompson. Field recording by John Mayer. Joe Wigan played
Theodore Roosevelt in this episode. The executive producers are Aaron McCarthy,
Julie Douglas, and Tyler Klang. The supervising producer is Dylan Fagan.
The show is edited by Dylan Fagan and Loeberlante. Special
(32:21):
thanks to a listen Parker Geisman, Tyler Caliberta, and Michael Collinane.
To learn more about this episode, check out our website
at mental flass dot com slash History Versus. That's mental
flass dot com. Slash h I S t O R
y vs. History Versus is a production of iHeart Radio
and Mental Floss. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
(32:56):
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favor rit shows.
History Versus is a production of I Heart Radio and
Mental Flaws. It's October fourteenth and Theodore Roosevelt is standing
before a crowd of ten thousand in Wisconsin's Milwaukee Auditorium.
Fifty three year old former president is once again campaigning
(00:21):
for the highest office in the land, and he was
scheduled to deliver what was supposed to be a typical
campaign address. But the speech he's about to give is
anything but typical. Friends, I shall ask you to be
as quiet as possible. I don't know whether you fully
understand that I have just been shot. At first, the
(00:44):
crowd can't, doesn't quite believe it. Someone yells fake, but
there are gasps and screams as Roosevelt pulls aside his vest,
revealing a white shirt marred by a growing bloodstain. Just
moments before, Roosevelt had been standing in an open car
outside his hotel, waving to the assembled crowd, and it
would be assassin had shot him with a revolver from
(01:05):
just seven feet away. Roosevelt had dropped momentarily, but it
wasn't long before he was back on his feet. Aids
wanted to rush him to the hospital, and most people
would have gone. But that is not Theodore Roosevelt style. Instead,
he said, get me to that speech. And now on
stage he assures the shocked crowd, it takes more than
that to kill a bull. Moose, I give you my word,
(01:29):
I do not care a rap about being shot. Not
a rap. And then, although the slug is still inside him,
he proceeds to give a nearly ninety minute long speech.
If this sounds like an extraordinary occurrence, it was, or
it would have been for anyone but Theodore Roosevelt, a
(01:51):
man whose life was full of extraordinary occurrences. This was
the guy who charged up Kettle Hill on horseback, bullets
whizzing past him with a rough ride, ears who when
he assumed office, became the youngest president in history and
is still the youngest president we've ever had. Who helped
broker peace between Russia and Japan and won the Nobel
Prize for his efforts. Who paved the way for the
(02:13):
Panama Canal, who went off the grid to navigate a
previously uncharted river in the Amazon, who is immortalized on
Mount Rushmore, and who is often ranked as one of
the greatest presidents of all time. But Roosevelt wasn't always
strong enough to stop a bullet. In fact, as a child,
he was afflicted by asthma so terrible that his parents
feared he might not live to see his fourth birthday.
(02:35):
How did Roosevelt go from puny, sickly kid to person
capable of giving that incredible, unimaginable ninety minutes speech We're
about to find out. For Mental Flaws and I Heart Radio,
this is History Versus, a podcast about how your favorite
historical figures faced off against their greatest foes. For this
first season of the show, we're focusing on Theodore Roosevelt's
(02:56):
incredible life, using a convention that he, as a boxer,
would have appreciated. In each episode, we'll analyze how Roosevelt
took on a particular challenge, from conflict within his family
and conquering the hours of the day to his tussles
with other presidents and preserving the world for the next generation.
This episode is tr versus Weakness. But before we get started,
I want to tell you a little bit about how
(03:17):
I became interested in Theodore Roosevelt. Yes, I'm the editor
in chief of Mental Flaws, so history is kind of
my thing. But I didn't fully appreciate all things TR
until I plucked Edmund Morris's excellent book Colonel Roosevelt out
of the stacks at the Strand bookstore. I didn't realize
at the time that it was the third book in
a trilogy, so then I had to go back and
read the others. But anyway, I came out of it
(03:38):
with a huge admiration for TR and, if I'm being honest,
a little bit of an obsession, Okay, a big obsession.
My desk at work has more TR stuff on it
than it does photos of my cat's husband and best
friends combined. I even have a Theodore Roosevelt action figure
at home. I have an overflowing shelf voted to books
about Roosevelt. When I got married, I tried to convince
(03:58):
my husband to go on a tr forre of the
Dakotas for our honeymoon, which he did not go for
and you know fair enough. Also, as a wedding gift,
the Mental Flow staff got me some first edition books
of TRS collected speeches, which is way better than a
kitchen aid mixer, no offense to kitchen aid. And last
year I dressed up as Roosevelt for a Halloween costume
contest and one. So suffice to say, once you get
(04:20):
me started talking about theotre Roosevelt's incredible accomplishments, I can't
stop talking about them. Hence this podcast, which finally allowed
me to take that tr tour of the Dakotas. But
more on that later. The wonderful people at Sagamore Hill
called tr enthusiasts like me ted heads, and I'm going
to borrow that nickname for this podcast. So just a
note to all the ted heads out there, This is
(04:41):
not an exhaustive a to Z look at tars life.
If we tried to do that, well, there would be
a million episodes in this podcast because Roosevelt did a
staggering amount of stuff in his sixty years. We're going
to be dipping in and out of his life and
we're going to miss some things, but we're going to
be visiting some important Roosevelt sites and talking to some
really mart Roosevelt experts, so hopefully you'll still learn some
(05:02):
things along the way. Okay, ready to get started, Bully Today.
East between Park Avenue South and Broadway on the Island
of Manhattan is a mix of stores, businesses, and restaurants
and it's busy with taxis and trucks and cars. But
when Theodore Roosevelt was born in eighteen fifty eight, it
was a much more residential neighborhood that featured the clip
(05:23):
clop of horses hooves in the rattle of carriage wheels.
Behind the Brownstones was a garden, and around the corner
the Goley family built a mansion in the middle of
three lots, which they populated with cows and peacocks and
exotic birds. Theodore Roosevelt Jr. Came into the world on
the evening of October in a bedroom on the second
floor of the brownstone at East Twentie Street. He was
(05:43):
the second child of Martha Bullock Roosevelt or Middy, and
Theodore Roosevelt Senior, or the Their first child, Anna or Baby,
had been born three years earlier. Later would come brother
Elliott and sister Karin. Today, the elder Roosevelt's room is
covered with cream colored wallpaper, adorned with flowers, and filled
with original cherry stained walnut furniture. A portrait of Middy
(06:04):
hangs over the fireplace, but we don't know for sure
if that's what the room looked like when the Roosevelt
kids were born there. The family owned the home until
eighteen nine and then sold it, and soon after it
was either completely torn down or had the top two
stories torn down. Sources are a bit unclear on that point.
In nineteen nineteen, after TR's death, the Women's Roosevelt Memorial
Association repurchased that building and the one next to it,
(06:27):
which had belonged to Tiar's uncle, and reconstructed the home
as Baby and Karin remembered it. It's now Theodore Roosevelt
Birthplace National Historic Site. Shortly after he was born, Middi
described tr as a hideous baby who looked like a terrapin.
But TD, as he was called as a boy, quickly
became the center of his family's world. As a child,
he had a ton of energy, but from the age
(06:49):
of three he was, in his own words, a sickly,
delicate boy who suffered much from asthma. He also had
with a family called cholera morbus, a type of nervous diarrhea.
As a result of his illness, he was largely homeschooled
by his aunt Annie. When out and about in the city,
his younger brother Elliott had to defend him against police
tr spenting a lot of time indoors and pass the
time by reading voraciously. According to historian Kathleen Dalton, author
(07:12):
of Theodore Roosevelt, a strenuous life when he was sick,
and he often was the adults put the needs of
the other children's second, because Theodore's life was at stake.
If you watch some of the documentaries, they describe him
lying in the family crib, which you still see today
in the nursery, barely being able to blow out his
candle from suffering that bad from asthma. That's Alyssa Parker Geisman,
(07:36):
the lead ranger at Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site.
She says that the family tried almost everything to treat
trs asthma. Roosevelt wrote in his autobiography that one of
his memories was of my father walking up and down
the room with me in his arms at night when
I was a very small person, and of sitting up
in bed gasping, with my father and mother trying to
help me. Sometimes in an attempt to force air into
(07:58):
his son's lungs. The would take young TD and the
family buggy and race up and down Broadway, but they
also tried many remedies that, although standard at the time,
would raise eyebrows today. David McCullough, in his book Morning
on Horseback describes laudanum being used, which is opium mixed
with the wine UH. He also describes what is called
(08:18):
Indian hemp we call it marijuana today. Vinegar of squills
was used, which was a plant I believe used for
rat poison. Whiskey and gin were used. Kids were given
enemas tears. Parents weren't exactly feeding him rat poison, though
supposedly the vinegar and processing would mitigate some of the
plant's side effects. Later, Tier would recall having to smoke
(08:39):
cigars and drink black coffee to keep his asthma at bay.
And I think that it boggles the mind when you
think about it. In today's standards, hindsight is always but
I'm sure that was kind of cutting edge technology of
the day and additional treatment of the day. Perhaps if
you see a child suffering, you're going to try to
alleviate that in any way possible, which they could afford
(08:59):
to do. The Roosevelts were an affluent family, and that
fact is key. Theodore Roosevelt's story may have been very
different and if he hadn't been born into a life
of privilege and not only ensured he could get the
care he needed when he was ill, but it also
meant that his parents could show him the world. The
Roosevelt spent summers outside of the city, and they took
family trips to Europe, where Middy and Ted would visit
(09:20):
health resorts. Right, you go to these health resorts for treatment,
You're sitting hot baths, you soak in the hot waters.
You might be prescribed literally a walk in the woods
as part of the treatment. So this is all kind
of that time period and the health treatment back in
the day. This is probably a good place for a break.
(09:41):
We'll be right back. Following their first European tour, which
occurred when Tier was around twelve, a doctor recommended he
get plenty of fresh air and exercise with the goal
of expanding his chest to give his lungs room and
to ease the strain on his heart. After or words,
the issued his son a challenge. You have the mind,
(10:03):
but not the body, he told his son. And without
the help of the body, the mind cannot go as
far as it should. You must make your body through
gritted teeth. Tier responded that he would do just that.
It was not a promise that he took lightly. Tire
worshiped his father, whom he called the best man I
ever knew. These children called him great heart, and he
(10:24):
was a huge influence on Roosevelt, who would later in
life tell a journalist the thought of him now and
always has been a sense of comfort. I could breathe,
I could sleep when he had me in his arms.
My father, he got me breath, he got me lungs, strength, life.
According to Dalton, when his father was away during the
(10:46):
Civil War, Tierra's health would creator. It's important to note
that he was not away fighting. He paid a substitute
to fight for him, at least in part because Middi,
a Southerner, couldn't stand the thought of her husband fighting
her brother's instead. He was on a mission to get
troops at the front to sign up for what author
Deborah Davis describes as a payroll savings program that would
allow soldiers to put aside money for their families while
(11:08):
they were off fighting the war. It was just one
more expression of these lifelong commitment to philanthropy. He would
take his son with him on trips to visit missions
like the Newsboys Lodging House, giving tr in Dalton's words,
a loving example of how one man can use his
privilege to make society better. A proponent of what was
known as muscular Christianity, which has been defined as a
(11:28):
Christian life of brave and cheerful physical activity, he told
his son sickness is always a shame and often a sin.
His father was an example to his son, always trying
to instill in his son good moral character, strength, virility.
I think he was seeing around the city that there's
a lot of vice happening in CD characters, CD places
(11:51):
to visit in the city, and he doesn't want his
son does come to that. He has the strong sense
of morality, so he's going to instill that and his
son of this idea of muscular Christianity. So he challenges
his son right, and this belief of like overcoming your weakness,
overcoming your fragility, and really building up your body and
(12:11):
making sure that you're maintaining strong morals as well, and
so TD began to build his body. Karin would later
write of often seeing him working out on the piazza
overlooking the back garden between horizontal bars, widening his chest
by regular monotonous motion. He would work out there, keeping
a journal of how big his biceps are getting, how
big his chest size is getting. But two years into
(12:34):
his efforts he learned that he wasn't progressing as quickly
as he would have liked. In eighteen seventy two, when
TD was almost fourteen, he had a bad asthma attack,
and his father sent him away by himself for the
first time two Maine's moose Head Lake. It was a
life changing experience. In his autobiography, Roosevelt wrote that on
the stage coach ried to the lake, he met two
(12:54):
boys his own age, and rather than making friends, they
found him to be an easy victim, and quickly his
life miserable. The worst feature was that when I finally
tried to fight them, I discovered that either one singly
could not only handle me with easy contempt, but handled
me so as not to hurt me much, and yet
(13:15):
to prevent my doing any damage whatever. In return, I
made up my mind that I must try to learn
so that I would not again be put in such
a helpless position. And so, with his father's encouragement, TD
began to learn how to box with ex prize fighter
John long Is his coach. Much to their surprise, td
was tough. He could take hit after hit and keep fighting.
(13:39):
Later that year, the Roosevelts took off on another grand tour. There,
Mitti and c deposited t d, Elliott, and Karn with
a family in Dresden, Germany, and though Tire was much
healthier than he had been, he still never quite conquered
his illnesses. During one attack of the months, he wrote
to his mother that he resembled an antiquated woodchuck with
his cheeks filled with nuts, and that your unhappy son
(14:01):
had his third attack of asthma, accompanied by a violent headache.
To his father, he said that an asthma attack rendered
him unable to speak without blowing up, like an abridged
edition of a Hippopotamus. According to Edmund Marris, Roosevelt's tutors
openly admired his ability to concentrate on his books and
his specimens to the exclusion of physical suffering. One of
(14:21):
those tutors was the first to predict that he'd be
president by the way. The Roosevelt's returned to the States
in eighteen seventy three, and the next summer they headed
out to a place that would come to hold a
huge significance for Roosevelt, Oyster Bay, New York, where his
grandfather and other Roosevelt families vacations. TR the President is
fifteen years old when he starts coming out to Oyster Bay.
(14:42):
That's Tyler CALIBERTA education technician at Sagamore Hill National Historic
Site on Long Island. Wealthy New Yorkers are spending their
summers out. Here's a place to escape New York City
for the family that's coming out here. This is a country.
We don't think about Long Island as the country any longer,
but it was for this family. It was an escape
from the heat of New York City, disease in New
York City, and it was a place to come out
(15:04):
and enjoy themselves. There might have been another benefit as well.
The air may have been cleaner than the air in
the city, which would have been better for t R's asthma.
TR Senior would have brought him out of the city
as frequently as he could have, especially when he was
undergoing those really terrible asthma attacks. I think that's probably
part of it for the family to come and spend
time outside of New York, So the family spent a
(15:25):
lot of times swimming. Roosevelt loved to row. He would
row all over Long Island Sound and the various coves
and necks around on the north shore Long Island. Who
would explore them? And Roosevelt is as a young boy
interested in taxidermy and learning about natural history and the
way that you do that in their days by shooting birds.
So Roosevelt is going all over and trying to find
(15:46):
different specimens and collecting them for his Roosevelt Museum of
Natural History that he kept in his parents house in
New York. Horseback riding, hiking, and just enjoying the outdoors.
Roosevelt loved Oyster Base so much that he would eventually
by land to build a house on the house that
would come to be named Sagamore Hill. There's a story
behind that name, by the way. Sagamore Mohanness was essentially
(16:09):
a chief or a satrum um. Satum is the Algonquin
word for chief, and then Sagamore is a lesser statum
or lieutenant statium. And this is apparently a place where
they had meetings. And Mohannas apparently is the native that
signed the land away, and Roosevelt decides to name it
Sagamore Hill. This is the highest point on co from X,
(16:31):
so this is the where they would have met. But
we're getting ahead of ourselves. Before any of that could happen,
Roosevelt had to go to college. He answered Harvard in
eighteen seventy six, where he chose to study the natural sciences.
So the first couple of years at Harvard, he was
the biggest nerd. Like he was just this, you know,
person who you'd see in you'd only be in his room.
(16:52):
He'd be doing essentially taxidermy. He'd have like animals and
drawers and things like that, and you can image is
and making very popular with people. But then all of
a sudden he broke out of it. Eventually starts joining
all these clubs. He becomes friendly with people all over campus.
When he wasn't in class or studying or in his clubs,
Tier kept up with his boxing and rowing, and he
(17:14):
took up wrestling too. Every spare moment was filled with
some kind of activity. That was doubly true when Roosevelt
was experiencing some kind of trauma in his sophomore year,
he passed away, and when Roosevelt went back to school,
he threw himself into his work, a frenzy of activity,
as if to dull his pain. According to historian Douglas Brinkley,
Tier wasn't scared of catching pneumonia and seemed to relish
(17:35):
spending hours in the cold. Instead of taking a street car,
Tier would walk three or four miles, and he'd still
be ice skating in frigid temperatures long after everyone else
went home. A friend from Harvard, Richard Welling, believed that
Tier was overcompensating for his weakness. Roosevelt had neither health
nor muscle, he would later write, but he had a
superabundance of a third quality, vitality, and he seemed to
(17:56):
realize that this nervous vitality had been given in order
to help him get the other two things. In between
years at Harvard, Roosevelt would spend as much time as
possible outdoors, often in Oyster Bay and in Maine. There
he lived with backwoodsman Bill Sewell, who would become a
lifelong friend, but his initial opinion of Roosevelt wasn't glowing.
He called him a thin, pale youngster with bad eyes
(18:18):
and a weak heart, and said he was mighty pindlin,
but Roosevelt quickly changed Bill's mind. One day that summer,
they watched twenty five miles, and Bill would later recall
that I do not think that I ever remember him
being out of sorts. He did not feel well sometimes,
but he would never admit it. On later trips to Maine,
Roosevelt would pursue cariboo in the snow without tents or
(18:40):
blankets for thirty six hours with Sewell and his nephew
Wilmot Doo. He'd summit the five thousand, two hundred and
sixty eight foot tall Mount cadad In, the tallest peak
in the state, making the trip partially in moccasin's after
he lost one shoe in a stream, after which tr
wrote news journal I can endure fatigue and hardship nearly
as well as these lumbermen. That wasn't the end of
(19:03):
the excursions. He Sewell, and Dow also took a six
day trip up a river in a dugout canoe through
a number of rapids, and then marched a hundred miles
and pouring rain for three days. Back at Harvard for
his senior year, Roosevelt became engaged his first wife, Alice
Hathaway Lee, and eventually decided on a career in politics.
That year, he also had an appointment with a doctor
(19:24):
at the university, and the news was not good. The
doctor informed him that his heart was dangerously strained. The
only way to live a long life, the doctor said,
was to live a quiet, sedentary life. Roosevelt's response was unequivocal, doctor,
I'm going to do all the things you tell me
not to do. If I've got to live the sort
(19:44):
of life you've described, I don't care how short it is.
For decades, he kept quiet about the doctor's advice and
continued to live as if he'd never heard it. The
only reason we know about it is that the doctor
wrote about the encounter, wishes confirmed by Harvard's records. Later year,
he married Alice on his birthday, and on their honeymoon
he claimed Pilattice, the Riggie, Grindelwald, and the young Frau.
(20:06):
In the span of ten days after that, tr and
Amateur summitted the matter Horn, a mountain so deadly that
many skilled mountaineers have died in the attempt. Why did
he do it? He told Sewel that it was to
prove to some snobby English climbers he'd met in the
lobby of his hotel that a Yankee could climb just
as well as they could. Roosevelt never fully conquered his asthma.
(20:28):
In fact, his sister karn One, said that he suffered
from it all his life, though in later years only
at long separated intervals. But his active lifestyle, what he
would come to call the strenuous life, built his stamina
and helped him manage his illness, and he never quit
being active. When he was governor of New York, he
had a wrestling matt installed in the governor's mansion. Roosevelt
(20:48):
wrote in his autobiography that the controller put up a
fuss about the purchase. He refused to audit a bill
i put in for a wrestling match, explaining that I
could have a billiard d boop billiards being recognized as
a proper gubernatorial amusement is that a wrestling matt symbolized
something unusual and unheard of and could not be permitted.
(21:11):
When he got word that President William McKinley was dying, Roosevelt,
then vice President, had just summited Mount Marcy, the highest
peak in New York state in the White House. He
continued to box, at least until a hard hit took
the vision in his left eye. After that he picked
up jiu jitsu, and then he had a tennis court installed.
Though his playing style was unconventional, his method of playing
(21:32):
pass was interesting. He would take the handle of Hello
into the ball. According to Michael cullinane, author of Theodore
Roosevelt's Ghost, The History and Memory of an American Icon,
Tire wasn't actually all that good at tennis or sports
in general. He was terrible a sports. I mean, there's
a really funny story about this kid who was playing
tennis with he was kr with then President was playing
(21:53):
tennis at Sagamore Hill, I think, or maybe it was
the White House. I can't recall, but this kid used
like a teenagers, like this guy is terrible at tennis
and he's the President and I admire him so much,
but he's like the worst tennis player in the world.
When he lacked in skill, he made up for an energy.
He'd also engaged in other physical pursuits, which his daughter
Alice called endurance tests. At Sagamore Hill, there's a place
(22:16):
to go on these long point to point walks where
Roosevelt would ask the children to walk in a perfectly
straight direction towards a certain place that was their goal,
and in that path, no matter what was in your way,
you had to go either over through it or around itself.
It was a thornbush, you had to go through it.
If it was a body of water like a pond,
you'd have to wade through it. If it was a wall,
(22:37):
you had to climb over it. This was his living
the strenuous life. Their idea of recreation wasn't what most
other people would think that I was sitting and drinking
lemonade on the porch and being taken care of by
your servants. For Roosevelt, it was going out and really
exhausting yourself. Most people who didn't know him, Willy, I
think they didn't. They didn't understand what they were getting
(22:59):
into when they were coming here to Sagamore. Hell, let's
take a quick break and we'll be right back. For Roosevelt,
working at a sweat wasn't just a way to stay healthy.
It was also a key part of his life philosophy
of bodily vigor as a method of getting that vigor
of soul without which vigor of the body counts for nothing.
(23:21):
As he described it in his autobiography, he credited his
hard work for his successes, writing that I never won
anything without hard labor and the exercise of my best
judgment and careful planning, and working long in advance. Having
been a rather sickly and awkward boy, I was a
young man at first, both nervous and distrustful of my
(23:44):
own prowess. I had to train myself painfully and laboriously,
not merely as regards my body, but as regards my
soul and spirit. Roosevelt didn't just advocate the strenuous life
for himself but for others. At the end of his
second term, he ordered that military officers be able to
walk fifty miles or ride around a hundred miles on
(24:05):
horseback in three days, later declaring it a test which
many a healthy middle aged woman would be able to meet.
When the officers and the press ball to the requirement,
he demonstrated how easy it was by doing it himself,
and in his autobiography he advised that a man whose
business is sedentary should get some kind of exercise if
(24:26):
he wishes to keep himself in as good physical Trim
as his brethren who do manual labor. When I worked
on a ranch, I needed no form of exercise except
my work. But when I worked in an office the
case was different. He also expected his children to live
the strenuous life, especially his children. I would rather one
(24:48):
of them should die than have them grow up weaklings.
He was especially tough on his oldest son, Ted, who
like his father, had asthma and later would suffer from
headaches and depression. Eventually he had what tr called kind
of a nervous breakdown. The doctors say, Theodore, you know
he was overstressed or he had a breakdown, and maybe
(25:09):
it's because you're pushing too hard. Tr was Contrite, telling
the doctor, I'll never push Ted again. He said he
had been so hard on the boy because Ted could
have been all the things I would like to have
been and wasn't, and it has been a great temptation
to push him. But Dalton writes that he never could
quite let up as he promised. Later, Edith would write
(25:30):
to Ted, as I look back, you fared worst because
father tried to toughen you, but happily was too busy
to exert the same pressure on the others. According to Dalton,
the weakling tr had been as a child made him
uncomfortable and ashamed because he detested the invalid he had been.
Dalton writes he looked back on his childhood with a
sense of detachment. Roosevelt hated weakness. It's not hard to
(25:54):
trace a line from this back to his father, whom
Roosevelt adored and who put so much emphasis on being
wrong and manly. Roosevelt would always feel inferior to Great Heart,
and he never wanted his children to be the kind
of weakling he had been. Both Roosevelt and his father
had worried about American society becoming weaker due to over civilization.
(26:15):
The idea was that men were so used to modern
comforts that they lost touch with some of the things
that made them manly. In speech delivered at the Hamilton
Club when he was governor of New York, Roosevelt laid
out his plan for making his country and its people
as strong as it could be. He used the speech,
which he would later call The Strenuous Life, to argue
for US militarism and imperial expansion, which will cover in
(26:37):
another episode, and to argue against a life of ignoble ease.
I wish to preach not the doctrine of ignoble ease,
but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of
toil and effort, of labor and strife. He urged the
wealthy fathers of the event to encourage their sons to
devote time to non remunerative work, as his father had
(26:59):
done with him, and noted that in this life we
get nothing saved by effort. Freedom from effort in the
present merely means that there has been stored up effort
in the past. Men should use that freedom to explore
different kinds of work, whether it be in politics or exploration.
But if a man used that freedom just for enjoyment,
(27:21):
he shows that he is simply a cumberer of the
earth's surface. A mere life of ease is not, in
the end, a very satisfactory life, And above all, it
is a life which ultimately unfits those who follow it
for serious work in the world. As it is with
the individual, so it is with the nation. He finished
(27:42):
by saying that living a life of ease and seeking
peace when war was called for would doom America to
be left behind. The twentieth century looms before us big
with the fate of many nations. If we stand iddly by,
then the bolder and stronger people's will pass us I
and will win for themselves the domination of the world.
(28:04):
Let us therefore boldly face the life of strife, resolute
to do our duty well and manfully. Resolute to uphold
righteousness by deed and by word. Resolute to be both
honest and brave, to serve high ideals. Get to use
practical methods. Above all, let us shrink from no strife,
(28:27):
moral or physical, within or without the nation, provided we
are certain that the strife is justified. For it is
only through strife, through hard and dangerous endeavor, that we
shall ultimately win the goal of true national greatness. According
(28:47):
to one of Roosevelt's friends, he had a policy of
forcing the spirit to ignore the weakness of the flesh.
And I think there's no better example of that than
when he was shot in John Shrank was the man
who fired the bullet. Shrink would later say that he
was against a third term president, but that wasn't his
only reason for pulling the trigger. As tr stood outside
(29:08):
the Gilpatrick Hotel, he was advised by the ghost of
William McKinley to avenge McKinley's death while pointing to a
picture of Theodore Roosevelt. So Shrink followed Roosevelt on the
campaign trail from New Orleans to Milwaukee. When Shrink fired
at Roosevelt, he was tackled to the ground. Roosevelt didn't
(29:29):
bring Shrink up, but the gentleman around him did. He
actually asked Shrink, like, why did you do it? And obviously,
realizing like there's not going to be an answer to that,
he's like, okay, fine, cops take him away. Later, Shrink
would be examined and deemed insane. He spent the rest
of his life in a mental hospital and died there
in nineteen forty three. After Shrink was hauled away, Roosevelt
(29:51):
went on to do his speech. As a hunter, he
knew to check yourself, and if you're coughing up blood,
that probably means the longest function you're in trouble. But
he checked, and he's like, you know, okay, it doesn't
hurt to breathe this way, so I'm going to go on.
According to Maris, the whole right side of Roosevelt's body
had turned black, but the wound was bleeding slowly, so
(30:12):
tr slapped a handkerchief over the bullet hole and went
out on stage. He didn't realize until after he pulled
out his speech, unfolded it, and began to read that
the bullet had gone through it, at which point he joked,
you see, I was going to make quite a long speech,
and make a long speech he did. Who gets shot
point blank and can then go on to carry out
(30:32):
about an approximately ninety minutes speech. Wow. But it wasn't
as though Roosevelt was unaffected. He spoke in a voice
Marris writes was no longer husky but weak. A knife
like pain in his ribs forced him to breathe in
short gasps. Two or three times he appeared to totter.
Party aids stood below the footlights in case he fell,
(30:53):
but Roosevelt didn't fall still. By the time he was
finished speaking, he had lost a lot of blood and
was taken to Milwaukee's emergency Hospital. Doctors there did an
X ray and found that the bullet had hit his
fourth rib on the right side. It had been headed
straight for the heart, but had been slowed by Roosevelt's
speech and his eyeglasses case before it hit and cracked
(31:15):
his rib. Today you can see the speech, eyeglasses, case,
and shirt tr war on the day he was shot
on display at the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site.
I mean they did the X ray. They saw that
the bullet was lodged since his rib, and they decided
not to take it out. So he carried that bullet
with him for the rest of his life yep, to
(31:36):
his death. Even more incredibly, Roosevelt gave his next speech
at Madison Square Garden a mere sixteen days later. Ultimately,
weakness was no match for try. History Versus is hosted
(31:57):
by me Aaron McCarthy. This episode was written by me,
with additional research by Michael Salgarolo and fact checking by
Austin Thompson. Field recording by John Mayer. Joe Wigan played
Theodore Roosevelt in this episode. The executive producers are Aaron McCarthy,
Julie Douglas, and Tyler Klang. The supervising producer is Dylan Fagan.
The show is edited by Dylan Fagan and Loeberlante. Special
(32:21):
thanks to a listen Parker Geisman, Tyler Caliberta, and Michael Collinane.
To learn more about this episode, check out our website
at mental flass dot com slash History Versus. That's mental
flass dot com. Slash h I S t O R
y vs. History Versus is a production of iHeart Radio
and Mental Floss. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
(32:56):
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favor rit shows.
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