The big stick then and now
In the upper left-hand corner is a Native American man standing in a canoe with a stick with “1607” in the corner. The rest of the cartoon is a much larger President Roosevelt holding a “big stick” and standing on a battleship cruising into the “Jamestown Exposition” in 1907.
Comments and Context
A number of expositions and fairs were held during the Theodore Roosevelt Administration. The Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, of course, is where President William McKinley was shot, leading to Roosevelt’s succession. The St. Louis World’s Fair was opened by the president by electronic signal, and only visited in late 1904, because Roosevelt did not want to appear to use a visit to the Fair as an advantage during his presidential campaign. In the last weeks of his presidency, among several national observances, Roosevelt made his way to Hardin, Kentucky, to mark the centennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth.
