Your TR Source
Theodore Roosevelt was pleased with Herbert David Croly’s letter and intends to show it to Senator Lodge. Once the “Hanna matter” is ready, Roosevelt would like to host Croly again at Oyster Bay, New York to review the matter.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-11-21
Herbert David Croly sends Theodore Roosevelt a chapter of his biography of Marcus Alonzo Hanna, requesting that Roosevelt read over Croly’s account of the Republican National Convention of 1900. The chapter also contains statements made by Roosevelt during interviews with newspaperman James B. Morrow and letters Roosevelt had written to Hanna, all of which Croly asks Roosevelt to approve. According to Hanna’s son Daniel Rhodes Hanna, Roosevelt could possibly speak to Hanna’s involvement with the Panama Canal. Croly closes by asking about Hanna’s reaction to Roosevelt’s suit against the Northern Securities Company. Croly is open to meeting with Roosevelt at Sagamore Hill if needed.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-12-04
Clara Louise Stone Hay has no objections to Houghton, Mifflin and Company’s publication of the volume about her late husband, John Hay, and she thinks the choice of President Roosevelt as author is a good one since he knew her husband well.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1909-01-14
Mark Sullivan sends President Roosevelt a short article written by Mrs. Humphry Ward about Roosevelt and Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt. Sullivan believes Ward has the potential to write an “adequate literary portrait” of Roosevelt at this time. Sullivan would like to contact Ward and ask her to expand her article into a “formal characterization.”
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1909-01-26
William N. Tilchin charts the path to publication of the translation of a French booklet about Theodore Roosevelt by Leon Bazalgette. The 1905 tract was translated by Roosevelt biographer Edmund Morris and offered to John A. Gable, editor of the Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal (TRAJ), in 2001. Tilchin describes the rediscovery of the translation by Gregory A. Wynn and the subsequent enlistment of the French Roosevelt scholar Serge Ricard to assist in the publication and contextualization of the translation. The front cover illustrations from works by Ricard and Morris supplement the text.
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
2020
Serge Ricard recounts his involvement with the Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal in publishing Edmund Morris’s translation of Leon Bazalgette’s 1905 booklet about Theodore Roosevelt. Ricard provides biographies of Bazalgette and another French scholar, Albert Savine, who published a longer study of Roosevelt in 1904. Ricard highlights Bazalgette’s other biographies of notable Americans, Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau, and he notes that Savine translated four of Roosevelt’s books into French.
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
2020
Gregory A. Wynn writes that his criticisms of Michael Cullinane’s Theodore Roosevelt’s Ghost: The History and Memory of an American Icon amount to “merely quibbles,” and he states that it is thoroughly researched and well-written. Wynn highlights the work of Kathleen Dalton, Henry F. Pringle, and John A. Gable in his review, and he describes the wide ranging topics addressed by Cullinane, including the work of the Theodore Roosevelt Association (TRA) in safeguarding the memory of Theodore Roosevelt. Wynn notes that Cullinane’s work should serve as an inspiration to members of the TRA to continue the organization’s work.
Two photographs, including one of Cullinane, supplement the text.
The Theodore Roosevelt Association (TRA) announces that this issue of its journal is dedicated to the memory of Edmund Morris, author of a three volume biography of Theodore Roosevelt. The TRA also encourages its members to purchase a copy of its book, Spotlighting TR: Selections from the Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal, 2007-2014, as a gift for the holiday season. A text box lists the President and Executive Directors of the TRA, along with those responsible for assembling its journal, guidelines for submitting manuscripts, and information regarding the governance of the TRA.
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
2019
William N. Tilchin discusses the significance of Edmund Morris’s three volume biography of Theodore Roosevelt on the heels of Morris’s death in May 2019. Tilchin cites a letter to him from John A. Gable, a former Executive Director of the Theodore Roosevelt Association (TRA) in which Gable claims that Morris’s The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt completely upended Roosevelt’s historical standing. Tilchin also quotes from Roosevelt’s address to the American Historical Association in 1912, and he asserts that Morris’s work meets Roosevelt’s challenge that good history should be well written and considered as literature. Tilchin’s essay serves as an introduction to a chapter from Morris’s second volume, Theodore Rex.
The covers of all three volumes of the Roosevelt trilogy join a photograph of Morris with Tweed Roosevelt, and an excerpt from Gable’s letter to Tilchin in illustrating the essay.
Tweed Roosevelt reveals the genesis of his project with Carlos Camargo to study Theodore Roosevelt’s struggle with asthma as a child. Roosevelt writes that he was skeptical of David G. McCullough’s assertion that Roosevelt’s condition was psychosomatic and designed to keep him from attending Sunday church services. Roosevelt and Camargo found that Theodore Roosevelt never shirked church attendance, and they also note that, despite his assertions, Theodore Roosevelt did not cure himself of his asthma by his vigorous exercise regimen and living a strenuous life.
A photograph of Tweed Roosevelt and the front cover of McCullough’s biography, Mornings on Horseback, accompany the essay.
Stacey A. Cordery reviews the final volume of Edmund Morris’s trilogy of the life of Theodore Roosevelt, Colonel Roosevelt. Cordery contends that with his final volumes on Roosevelt, Morris has restored his reputation as a biographer which had been damaged by his inventive biography of Ronald Reagan, Dutch. Cordery praises Morris for his “marvelous prose” and his ability to set a scene, but she balks at some of the language he employs, especially references to sexuality and race. Cordery asserts that Morris handles politics poorly, and that he pays insufficient attention to the women in Roosevelt’s life, especially his wife Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt. Cordery believes that Morris has not adequately incorporated the latest in Roosevelt scholarship, but she recognizes that his work has made Roosevelt known to legions of readers and elevated his place in American culture.
The front cover illustrations for all three volumes of Morris’s trilogy appear in the review.
Charles O. Bishop explores the origins of the friendship between Theodore Roosevelt and Joseph Bucklin Bishop. Bishop traces the relationship to the time when Roosevelt served as a police commissioner in New York City, and Joseph Bucklin Bishop publicized Roosevelt’s work in his newspaper editorials. Bishop notes Joseph Bucklin Bishop’s disregard for Andrew D. Parker, another member of the police commission, and he highlights Bishop’s work on the Isthmian Canal Commission and Roosevelt’s request that Bishop write his biography.
Four photographs of Joseph Bucklin Bishop supplement the text.
In “Best Wishes From Oyster Bay,” twenty-six friends, colleagues, and fellow historians offer their thoughts on the life and work of John A. Gable, the Executive Director of the Theodore Roosevelt Association (TRA) and the founder and editor of the Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal. Some of the themes that recur are Gable’s support and mentoring of historians and biographers in the early stages of their careers, his encyclopedic knowledge of Theodore Roosevelt, and his promotion of membership in the TRA. The authors also note his unsentimental critique of their work and his fostering a truce between the feuding Oyster Bay and Hyde Park, New York factions of the Roosevelt family. Two of the contributors, William N. Tilchin and Gregory A. Wynn, share some of their correspondence with Gable to demonstrate these themes, and almost all of the contributors highlight Gable’s generosity with his time and talents.
The piece includes a table of contents on its first page and it concludes with brief biographies of each of the authors. Twenty-three photographs populate the text, including twenty of Gable.
Owen Wister notes that he has not seen President Roosevelt since 1907 and proposes to visit him in the upcoming weeks. Wister would like to talk about what Roosevelt has accomplished, discuss possible short biographies he hopes to write, and speak with Roosevelt undisturbed by callers and distractions.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1909-01-06