Your TR Source
Theodore Roosevelt describes to his sister Anna a recent visit by his wife Edith’s mother and sister. He also discusses his and Edith’s trip to Geneseo. Both he and Edith are enjoying the country and sporting events. Roosevelt also discusses the upcoming presidential election and Fourth of July festivities.
1888-07-08
Edited pages from a biography of President Roosevelt, written shortly after the 1904 Republican Convention where he was renominated for the presidency. The pages include a history of Roosevelt’s professional and literary life.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1904-06
James Sullivan Clarkson forwards a letter to President Roosevelt from Colonel L. E. Parsons of Alabama.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1904-12-20
Russell B. Harrison writes primarily on Indiana politics where the Republicans had off year defeats and the Philippine-American War is damaging the Republican party image. He also thanks President Roosevelt for naming a military post in Indianapolis after his father, President Benjamin Harrison.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1902-05-30
The writer of the article suggests that some political candidates are elected by their merits, and other through the “accident” of being broadly popular and facing an unpopular or bad candidate as an opponent. President Roosevelt has reached his office on his merits, and the writer argues against attempting to nominate Senator Marcus Alonzo Hanna to replace him.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1903-11-07
Theodore Roosevelt writes to his sister Anna Roosevelt about a political dinner that he and wife Edith recently attended and his feelings toward a Senator. He has been doing quite a bit of horseback riding and has made good progress in his Baltimore investigation. His history of New York manuscript has been well received.
1891-04-19
Theodore Roosevelt writes to his sister Anna about recent happenings in Washington. Roosevelt has begun to vary his civil service work, with his “chief ally” being Charles J. Bonaparte. He recently spent a few days in New York visiting friends. Their sister, Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, is having difficulty with her in-laws.
1891-04-05
Theodore Roosevelt writes to his sister Anna Roosevelt about current happenings in Oyster Bay, New York. The Roosevelts have been entertaining guests and playing tennis and polo. Roosevelt also discusses the upcoming election and thinks that Benjamin Harrison will be a good candidate.
1888-07-30
Theodore Roosevelt updates his sister Anna on plans for his trip west. He will return to New York in October in time for the lead-up to the election. Roosevelt is pleased with Republican presidential candidate Benjamin Harrison.
1888-08-22
“Senator Clark,” of Montana, with a bag of money hanging at his side, and “Senator Quay,” of Pennsylvania, on the right, with an iron bar labeled “Political ‘Jimmy'” hanging at his side like a sword, point at each other and laugh. The U.S. Capitol is in the background.
Senators William A. Clark of Montana and Matthew S. Quay of Pennsylvania, Democrat and Republican, respectively, were two of the most odious politicians in a time of widespread political corruption. Quay was a long-time Republican “boss” in Pennsylvania and bragged about rigging elections. As Benjamin Harrison’s manager in 1888, he invented a system whereby Indiana voters in blocks of five cast multiple votes in different polling places. In New York State he outmaneuvered the Democrats’s schemes. Harrison lost the popular vote to Grover Cleveland but won the electoral-college vote, thanks to the tally in a few states like Indiana and New York. William A. Clark of Montana became one of the richest men in America thanks to lucky strikes in gold and copper mines, and resultant business activities. At the time of this cartoon, United States senators were still elected by state legislatures, not popular votes. Despite widespread bribery and “financial contributions” attendant on senatorial elections, at the time of Dalrymple’s cartoon Clark and Quay were hampered by investigations into their “purchases” of senatorial seats. Both overcame their challenges, hence the cynical celebration depicted here.
President William McKinley sits on a chair with two paintings hanging on the wall behind him that illustrate the foreign policies of former presidents Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland. Harrison and Cleveland, standing on the left, have turned their backs on McKinley and start to leave the room, not wanting to be associated with his foreign policy. Caption: The Ex-Presidents. — Shocking! Shocking! Your reckless policy will ruin the country!
comments and context
The occasion of this cartoon was two mildly anti-Imperialist speeches by former presidents Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland. President McKinley, whose policies they implicitly but not directly criticized, points to examples of relatively robust foreign-policy acts in their administrations. In Harrison’s case he intervened in Chile (here, “Chili”) on behalf of American companies. In Cleveland’s case to sternly invoke the Monroe Doctrine against England, which attempted collect debts in Venezuela. Puck, with uncharacteristic modesty, does not note that the framed images are each from old cover cartoons in Puck itself.
President Roosevelt praises the efforts of the Navy. He declares that an efficient navy of adequate size is “not only the best guarantee of peace, but is also the surest means for seeing that if war does come the result shall be honorable to our good name and favorable to our national interests.” He stresses the necessity of training and preparedness in assuring the Navy’s success in times of war.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1902-08-26
Theodore Roosevelts writes a letter of introduction for Patrick Egan to Edward T. Devine.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-05-16
Theodore Roosevelt has just finished reading Arthur Twining Hadley’s Undercurrents in American Politics, and he discusses Hadley’s conclusions, particularly as they relate to the records of American presidents through the Civil War.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1915-07-08
President Roosevelt outlines and refutes the falsehoods in Alfred Holt Stone’s Studies in the American Race Problem. He tells John Graham Brooks that he judges a work’s reliability by seeing what it says about a subject he is familiar with, and then deciding if he can trust it on things that he does not know as much about. He explains that Stone is spreading falsehoods about the so-called “referee” system in the Southern states, especially Mississippi. Roosevelt points out that the practice was common with presidents before him, and that it is necessary in areas where the Republican party does not have a strong enough presence to provide good appointees to positions. He also discusses his handling of the case of African American postmistress Minnie M. Geddings Cox, who was forced by an angry mob to resign her position and leave town.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1908-11-13
President Roosevelt sends Lyman Abbott letters he wrote to various Senators about the Brownsville incident and a matter concerning Colonel William F. Stewart. Roosevelt asserts his executive authority as President to make determinations about the dismissal and stationing of soldiers, citing past precedents. He also provides his rationale for dismissing the Brownsville soldiers and for refusing to grant Stewart a court of inquiry.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1908-05-10
President Roosevelt tells Mary Lord Harrison that he visited Benjamin Harrison’s grave on Memorial Day and laid a wreath there. “He was my old chief,” Roosevelt says.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-06-24
President Roosevelt writes to his son Kermit about the funeral of former President McKinley’s widow Ida McKinley. He then describes his trip on the train out west as he passed through Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Michigan. Roosevelt closes by saying he needs to talk to Kermit about his hunting trip.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-06-01
After talking with George Horace Lorimer, President Roosevelt went back and read The Plum Tree through all the way, after previously having read only half of it. The ending of the book reconciles Roosevelt to many of the problems he had with it throughout, but he still holds many issues with the book which he lays out for Lorimer. The author, David Graham Phillips, falls into the trap of overstating the sort of corruption that is present in politics, and while Roosevelt freely admits that corruption is present–which, he points out, he is working against–there are also many good people working in politics as well. In a postscript of several days later, Roosevelt comments on several of Phillips’s articles on the Senate, in which he acts similarly by taking “certain facts that are true in themselves, and […] ignoring utterly a very much large mass of facts that are just as true and just as important.” Roosevelt criticizes Phillips for working with William Randolph Hearst to achieve notoriety.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1906-05-12
President Roosevelt introduces Patrick Egan, former minister to Chile in the Harrison administration, to Commissioner Forbes.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1905-02-18