Theodore Roosevelt: The Complete Political Career

At 23, fresh out of Harvard, Roosevelt was elected to the New York State Assembly.

He made a name for himself by tackling corruption, particularly the practices of railroads and city political bosses.

Roosevelt was serving in Albany when he was urgently recalled. His mother died of typhoid around 3 a.m.; his wife Alice died a few hours later in the same house, two days after giving birth to their daughter.

In his diary, he drew a large cross and wrote: the light has gone out of my life. He turned his back on politics and, in late 1884, left to live in the Dakotas.

At 28 years old, as the Republican mayoral candidate, Roosevelt finished third with 60,435 votes, behind Democrat Abram Hewitt (90,552) and economist Henry George (68,110).

A portion of his own party voted for Hewitt to block George. His first real electoral setback.

President Benjamin Harrison appoints him to the Civil Service Commission. Roosevelt remains there for six years, rooting out favoritism and defending merit-based recruitment in the federal administration.

His intransigence earns him enemies and a reputation as an incorruptible man.

Appointed by Mayor William Strong, Roosevelt took the lead of the New York City Police Department. He tackled endemic corruption, imposed professional standards, and enforced the Sunday closing of saloons.

Popular with the public, he clashed with established politicians. His energetic and highly visible leadership style was already recognizable.

Under the McKinley presidency, Roosevelt became Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Convinced that a strong fleet was essential to American power, he pushed for its modernization and expansion.

He prepared the country for the then-imminent Spanish-American War.

Leading his Rough Riders (1st Volunteer Cavalry Regiment), Roosevelt leads the charge up Kettle Hill and then the San Juan Heights during the Spanish-American War.

Although the episode is strategically more complex than its legend suggests, it makes him a national war hero. His popularity paves the way for his governorship.

Building on his status as a war hero, Roosevelt is elected Governor of New York.

He pursues a reformist policy against trusts and political machines. His independence irritates the leaders of his own party, who soon seek to remove him from the state.

Republican leaders in New York want to get rid of this overly reformist governor and send him to the vice presidency, a position he considers powerless.

He refuses, the convention cheers him, and he finally gives in. He abstains from voting for his own nomination.

The McKinley-Roosevelt ticket wins with 51.6% of the vote and 292 electoral votes.

Roosevelt becomes Vice President, a position he considers powerless and which was imposed on him to remove him from New York. He will preside over the Senate for only a few days before McKinley's death changes everything.

McKinley died on September 14, 1901, following the assassination attempt on September 6. Roosevelt was sworn in that same afternoon in the library of lawyer Ansley Wilcox's home in Buffalo.

At 42, he became the youngest president in American history to take office. He promised to continue the policies of his predecessor.

The Pennsylvania anthracite miners' strike threatens to cause a coal shortage as winter approaches. Roosevelt summons operators and the union to the temporary White House, a first for a president in a labor dispute.

The October 3 meeting fails: the operators refuse to deal with the union. Roosevelt then informs them that the army could take over the mines, and the union ends the strike on October 23.

Roosevelt signs the law creating the Department of Commerce and Labor. It includes a Bureau of Corporations, responsible for investigating large companies and enforcing antitrust laws.

The federal government empowers itself to closely monitor trusts.

The phrase was not his own: it had already been circulating in the 19th century. It became associated with Roosevelt after the coal strike of 1902, and he repeated it relentlessly from 1903 onwards, in Montana in May, then during his Labor Day speech in Syracuse.

The Square Deal 'program' is a construction by historians: consumer protection, regulation of large corporations, and nature conservation.

Colombia refused to ratify the canal treaty. Panama proclaims its independence, the American gunboat Nashville dissuades Colombian troops from intervening, and Washington recognizes the new republic three days later.

The treaty granting the United States the Canal Zone is signed on November 18. In 1911, Roosevelt himself would say he took the Canal Zone. The canal is a success, the method remains a subject of debate.

On May 4, 1904, the United States officially took over the construction site abandoned by the French. They had held the Canal Zone since the treaty signed after Panama's independence.

The project was Roosevelt's major foreign policy endeavor. He would not see the inauguration: the canal opened in 1914, five years after he left the White House.

On the night of his landslide victory, Roosevelt declares to the press that he will not be a candidate for another term under any circumstances: in his view, three and a half years at the head of the country count as a first term.

He keeps his word in 1908 and makes way for Taft. He will come to regret it, and this promise will weigh heavily on his break in 1912.

Roosevelt is re-elected with 336 electoral votes against Democrat Alton Parker.

For the first time, he wins the presidency through the ballot box rather than the death of his predecessor. He tells his wife Edith that he is no longer a political accident.

Roosevelt never set foot in Portsmouth, but it was he who pushed the Russians and Japanese to negotiate and who chose the location.

The treaty was signed at 3:47 p.m. in a shipyard warehouse converted into a negotiation room. This success would earn him the Nobel Peace Prize.

Roosevelt signs the law allowing the president to designate sites of historical or scientific interest as national monuments without going through Congress.

During his presidency, he will protect some 230 million acres of public land: national parks, monuments, and bird reserves. The National Park Service itself will not be created until 1916.

Roosevelt signs two food safety laws: the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. They establish federal standards for food and drugs and mandate meat inspection.

Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle, which describes Chicago's slaughterhouses, influenced the vote.

Three months after signing the Antiquities Act, Roosevelt used it for the first time to designate Devils Tower, Wyoming. Seventeen other monuments would follow during his presidency.

Some historians doubt he ever saw the tower with his own eyes.

After a night shooting in Brownsville in August, the town accused the Black soldiers of the 25th Infantry Regiment, who all denied involvement. With no culprit identified, Roosevelt dismissed them from the army without honor and without trial, citing a conspiracy of silence, including veterans just years away from their pension.

The army did not overturn the decision until 1972, when nearly all were deceased.

The 1906 Nobel Peace Prize recognizes his role in the Treaty of Portsmouth, which ended the Russo-Japanese War. Roosevelt is the first American to receive a Nobel Prize, and the first head of state.

He is not in Oslo: Ambassador Herbert Peirce receives the prize on his behalf, and Roosevelt will not deliver his Nobel lecture until May 5, 1910. He announces that the money will fund a committee for industrial peace. Congress will never create it, and he recovers the funds during World War I for war relief efforts.

Sidelined from the Republican nomination in June in favor of Taft, his former protégé, Roosevelt accepts the nomination of the new Progressive Party, nicknamed Bull Moose, in Chicago.

He breaks with the party he had served for thirty years. His candidacy will split the Republican vote.

Campaigning for the Progressive Party, Roosevelt is shot in the chest by a former saloonkeeper outside his hotel. His fifty-page manuscript and his eyeglass case slowed the projectile.

He refuses to go to the hospital, announces to the audience that he has just been shot, and speaks for over an hour. The bullet will remain in his body until his death.

Roosevelt follows the results from his home. With 27.4% of the vote and 88 electors, he finishes ahead of incumbent President Taft but splits the Republican vote, leading to Woodrow Wilson's victory.

This remains the best score ever achieved by a third-party candidate. He concedes defeat that same evening and writes to his son Kermit that they have suffered a crushing defeat.

Roosevelt dies in his sleep at Sagamore Hill at the age of 60. The Milwaukee bullet is still in his chest.

He leaves behind a presidency that changed the role of the federal government and the position of the United States in the world.