Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt
26th President of the United States
Term of office September 14, 1901 - March 4, 1909
Political party	Republican
Vice Presidents	None (1901-1905) Charles W. Fairbanks (1905-1909)
Preceded by	William McKinley
Succeeded by	William Howard Taft
25th Vice-President of the United States
Term of office March 4, 1901 - September 14, 1901
President	William McKinley
Preceded by	Garret Hobart
Succeeded by	Charles W. Fairbanks
Born	October 27, 1858 New York, New York
Died	January 6, 1919 Oyster Bay, New York
Spouse	Alice Hathaway Lee Edith Kermit Carow
Religion	Dutch Reformed

Theodore Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States of America. He suffered from asthma as a boy but was able to work through it with the assistance of exercise. He worked in both the New York Police Department and later, the Navy Department. He was appointed to the civil service by President Benjamin Harrison.

When the Spanish-American War started he resigned his assistant secretaryship in the Navy and became a rough rider. Because of his well known assault on San Juan Hill and other patriotic acts he was nominated for Vice-President with incumbent William McKinley. 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 1904.

When Roosevelt's term was up he supported Republican candidate and then Secretary of War William Howard Taft, but later he expressed disapproval of Taft's handling of the presidency and ran against him. He lost the Republican nomination to Taft but ran as an independent on the Bull Moose Progressive party. Both he and Taft lost to Democrat Woodrow Wilson in the election of 1912. While campaigning in 1912, Roosevelt was shot before giving in a speech in Milwaukee. The bullet lodged in a copy of the speech located in his breast pocket, saving his life. He gave the speech anyway that day, beginning the speech with the famous line, "I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose."

Roosevelt once declared:

We must have but one flag. We must also have but one language. That must be the language of the Declaration of Independence, of Washington’s Farewell address, of Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech and second inaugural. We cannot tolerate any attempt to oppose or supplant the language and culture that has come down to us from the builders of this Republic.

After leaving office, Roosevelt took a trip along the Amazon River and wrote a book about his experience, Through the Brazilian Wilderness. While in South America, Roosevelt contracted malaria and nearly died. At one point, he requested that his expedition leave him behind. His son, Kermit, helped nurse him back to help, and Theodore credited Kermit with saving his life.

In the last year of his life Roosevelt was quoted in the Kansas City Star newspaper about the need for truth in regards to the Presidency of the USA

The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.