Governors--Biography

Biography dominates the “Reviews” section of this issue: five biographies are considered, including those of four Roosevelts and one of Gifford Pinchot. Charles W. Snyder finds H. Paul Jeffers’s examination of Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt’s life to be less than complete, and he notes that the work focuses on Roosevelt’s military career, especially his service during World War II. John A. Gable revisits the work of husband and wife biographers Edmund Morris and Sylvia Jukes Morris in his essays on their biographies of Theodore Roosevelt and Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt. Gable compares The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt with Theodore Rex, and he asserts that the endnotes in both works are worth reading. He notes that paperback editions of both of the Morris biographies have been issued to coincide with the release of Theodore Rex. 

 

Gable reviews Char Miller’s Gifford Pinchot and the Making of Modern Environmentalism, and he describes the split in the environmental movement between the followers of Pinchot and John Muir. Gable highlights Pinchot’s career after his service in the Roosevelt administration, and he notes that Miller’s work has won two book awards for biography. “In Medal of Honor Revisited,” Gregory A. Wynn examines the arguments of two acclaimed military historians who take opposing views on Theodore Roosevelt’s Medal of Honor award. Wynn summarizes the arguments of  Edward M. Coffman and Allan Reed Millett, and he finds more merit in Coffman’s assertions based on eyewitness accounts of Roosevelt’s actions in battle. 

 

Richard O. Weber examines Theodore Roosevelt’s term as Governor of New York, emphasizing his efforts at reform, rooting out corruption, and protecting natural resources. Weber focuses on Roosevelt’s foes in these varied efforts, Thomas Collier Platt, the Republican boss of New York, and the Democratic political machine Tammany Hall. Weber highlights Roosevelt’s call for civil service, election, and police reforms, and he notes that some of Roosevelt’s initiatives were later implemented by Governor Benjamin B. Odell. 

Two photographs of Roosevelt appear in the article.

Collection

Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal

G. Wallace Chessman looks at the evolving historiography of the study of Theodore Roosevelt and places his own work on Roosevelt’s time as Governor of New York within that framework. He asserts that Roosevelt’s reputation suffered in the 1930s with the publication of Henry Pringle’s biography (Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography), but the work of historians such as George Mowry and John Blum served as a correction to Pringle’s work. Chessman argues that the 1930s, with its isolationism in foreign affairs and its hostility to big business, further undermined Roosevelt’s standing.

Chessman argues that as Governor of New York, Roosevelt mostly took stands that should be viewed as “progressive,” and that he successfully navigated a course between obedience to the New York political machine led by Thomas Platt and his own reform agenda. He says that Roosevelt’s time as governor prepared him for the presidency, and he concludes his essay by contending that Roosevelt, however much he loved the American West, should primarily be seen as a man of New York City: “T.R. was surely an urban man.”

Collection

Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal