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Line 223: − == Sidelights == − The Teddy Bear is named for Theodore Roosevelt. After it was reported that Roosevelt had refused to shoot a bear on a hunting expedition a toy shop owner placed a sign next to a toy bear in his shop window announcing that this was "Teddy's Bear". The name stuck. − − Roosevelt was not sworn in on a Bible. He remains the only president in history to do so.<ref>[http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/pihtml/pinotable.html Library of Congress Presidential Inauguration Precedents and Notable Events]</ref> − ===Football reform=== − Both Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson took an intense interest in the controversy over the reform of college football to make the game more efficient and less brutal. In the 1890s and early 1900s, football faced widespread harsh criticism over injuries and the exaggerated role of athletics in college life. Roosevelt and Wilson, loyal followers of Harvard and Princeton, had defended football in the 1890s. In the fall of 1905, however, Roosevelt called a conference of football experts at the White House to discuss brutality and unsportsmanlike conduct. Thereafter, Roosevelt worked behind the scenes to bring about sufficient reform to preserve football and insure that it would continue to be played at Harvard. In the years 1909-10, when college football again faced an injury crisis, Woodrow Wilson, president of Princeton University worked with the presidents at Harvard and Yale to make reasonable reforms. Both Roosevelt's and Wilson's approaches were consistent with their strategies for national political change. In the years that followed the reforms on the gridiron, football evolved rapidly into the 'attractive' game that Wilson had advocated and a far less brutal game than the unruly spectacle that Roosevelt had tried to control.<ref> John S. Watterson, "Political Football: Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and the Gridiron Reform Movement." ''Presidential Studies Quarterly'' 1995 25(3): 555-564 </ref>
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When President McKinley was fatally shot by an [[anarchist]] in 1901, Roosevelt automatically became President, and was reelected against a challenge by the Democratic candidate Alton B. Parker in [[United States presidential election, 1904|1904]].
When President McKinley was fatally shot by an [[anarchist]] in 1901, Roosevelt automatically became President, and was reelected against a challenge by the Democratic candidate Alton B. Parker in [[United States presidential election, 1904|1904]].
[[Image:Tr2006.jpg|thumb|290px|''Time'' July 3, 2006]]
[[Image:Tr2006.jpg|thumb|290px|''Time'' July 3, 2006]]
===Life in the White House===
Roosevelt relished the presidency and seemed to be everywhere at once. He took Cabinet members and friends on long, fast-paced hikes, boxed in the state rooms of the White House, romped with his children, and read voraciously. In 1904, he was permanently blinded in his left eye during one of his boxing bouts, but this injury was kept from the public at the time.<ref>Brands, (1997) 565</ref> His many enthusiastic interests and limitless energy led one ambassador to wryly explain, "You must always remember that the President is about six."<ref>Cecil Spring Rice, ''The Letters and Friendships of Sir Cecil Spring-Rice,'' (1929) p 437</ref>
Roosevelt's oldest daughter, Alice, was a controversial character during Roosevelt's stay in the White House. When friends asked if he could rein in his elder daughter, Roosevelt said, "I can be President of the United States, or I can attend to Alice." In turn, Alice said of him that he always wanted to be "the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral."<ref> Carol Felsenthal, ''Princess Alice: The Life and Times of Alice Roosevelt Longsworth'' (1988) pp. 60, 105</ref>
Roosevelt's contribution to the White House was the construction of the original West Wing, which he had built to free up the second floor rooms in the residence that formerly housed the president's staff. He and Edith also had the entire house renovated and restored to the [[federal style]], tearing out the Victorian furnishings and details (including Tiffany windows) that had been installed over the previous three decades.
===Domestic policy===
===Domestic policy===
==Coal strike==
==Coal strike==
Everyone admires his amazingly dynamic style and willingness to confront the issues of the day by bringing everyone to the negotiating table, his settlement of the war between Japan and Russia (which led to Roosevelt's winning the Nobel peace prize), and his building of the Panama Canal (though liberals complain he was too rough with Colombia).
Everyone admires his amazingly dynamic style and willingness to confront the issues of the day by bringing everyone to the negotiating table, his settlement of the war between Japan and Russia (which led to Roosevelt's winning the Nobel peace prize), and his building of the Panama Canal (though liberals complain he was too rough with Colombia).
== Sidelights ==
The Teddy Bear is named for Theodore Roosevelt. After it was reported that Roosevelt had refused to shoot a bear on a hunting expedition a toy shop owner placed a sign next to a toy bear in his shop window announcing that this was "Teddy's Bear". The name stuck.
Roosevelt was not sworn in on a Bible. He remains the only president in history to do so.<ref>[http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/pihtml/pinotable.html Library of Congress Presidential Inauguration Precedents and Notable Events]</ref>
===Spelling reform==
[[Image:TRSpelling.jpg|thumb|Roosevelt shoots holes in the dictionary as the ghosts of Chaucer, Shakespeare and Dr Johnson moan.]]
During his presidency, Roosevelt tried but did not succeed to advance the cause of simplified spelling. He tried to force government to adopt the system, sending an order to the Public Printer to use the system in all public documents. The reform annoyed the public, forcing him to rescind the order. Roosevelt told his friend, literary critic [[Brander Matthews]], one of the chief advocates of the reform, "I could not by fighting have kept the new spelling in, and it was evidently worse than useless to go into an undignified contest when I was beaten. Do you know that the one word as to which I thought the new spelling was wrong — thru — was more responsible than anything else for our discomfiture?" Next summer Roosevelt was watching a naval review when a launch marked "Pres Bot" chugged ostentatiously by. The President waved and laughed with delight.<ref>Pringle 465-7; Brands 555ff</ref>
===Football reform===
Both Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson took an intense interest in the controversy over the reform of college football to make the game more efficient and less brutal. In the 1890s and early 1900s, football faced widespread harsh criticism over injuries and the exaggerated role of athletics in college life. Roosevelt and Wilson, loyal followers of Harvard and Princeton, had defended football in the 1890s. In the fall of 1905, however, Roosevelt called a conference of football experts at the White House to discuss brutality and unsportsmanlike conduct. Thereafter, Roosevelt worked behind the scenes to bring about sufficient reform to preserve football and insure that it would continue to be played at Harvard. In the years 1909-10, when college football again faced an injury crisis, Woodrow Wilson, president of Princeton University worked with the presidents at Harvard and Yale to make reasonable reforms. Both Roosevelt's and Wilson's approaches were consistent with their strategies for national political change. In the years that followed the reforms on the gridiron, football evolved rapidly into the 'attractive' game that Wilson had advocated and a far less brutal game than the unruly spectacle that Roosevelt had tried to control.<ref> John S. Watterson, "Political Football: Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and the Gridiron Reform Movement." ''Presidential Studies Quarterly'' 1995 25(3): 555-564 </ref>
==Religion and character==
==Religion and character==
:''Now to you men, who, in your turn, have come together to spend and be spent in the endless crusade against wrong, to you who face the future resolute and confident, to you who strive in a spirit of brotherhood for the betterment of our Nation, to you who gird yourselves for this great new fight in the never-ending warfare for the good of humankind, I say in closing what in that speech I said in closing: We stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord''<ref>A Confession of Faith, delivered in Chicago, Illinois, 6 August 1912</ref>
:''Now to you men, who, in your turn, have come together to spend and be spent in the endless crusade against wrong, to you who face the future resolute and confident, to you who strive in a spirit of brotherhood for the betterment of our Nation, to you who gird yourselves for this great new fight in the never-ending warfare for the good of humankind, I say in closing what in that speech I said in closing: We stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord''<ref>A Confession of Faith, delivered in Chicago, Illinois, 6 August 1912</ref>
==Bibliography==
==Bibliography==