Hunting

Vice-President Elect Roosevelt and a hunting party stand in thee snow outside the Meeker Hotel in Colorado.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1901-01

Photograph showing Theodore Roosevelt with hunting dogs in a snowy landscape.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1905

In a fragment of a letter from German Ambassador Sternburg, he informs President Roosevelt that a young German visited the embassy with a letter of introduction from Prince Henry to Roosevelt. He is excited to hear about Roosevelt’s successful bear and wolf hunting.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1905-04-25

John C. Greenway sends Theodore Roosevelt a copy of Life in Mexico, praising its account of early Mexican life and expressing disappointment at missing Roosevelt in New York. Greenway shares news of his travels, mentions political views including support for Taft’s veto of the Statehood Bill, and asks if Roosevelt received information about Jim Martin.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-09-13

C. P. Utting’s report allayed fears concerning the safety of Kermit Roosevelt and his hunting party in Lower California and Sonora because of Mexican political unrest. 

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-08-19

Information about the Sangerfield Country Club, including officers, committees, incorporation, constitution, by-laws, house rules, sportsmanship guide, and member directory. The club seeks to encourage and promote interest in the various pleasures of country life and outdoor sports, study of farm management and wildlife conservation, and breeding of livestock and poultry.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-04-17

A blank form providing space for the bearer to record the places and game that they have hunted. Bearers are instructed to fill out the form and return it to the listed address.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-03-01

Two men walk down Wall Street wearing hunting attire and holding guns and bags labeled “Democratic campaign fund” and “Republican campaign fund” respectively. Bulls and bears run away while a sheep with a top hat and an “immune” bow winks.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1904-08-10

Ohio Senator Marcus Alonzo Hanna uses a stamp to make bear tracks labeled “nomination” on the ground that President Roosevelt follows with a rifle and a revolver.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1903-12-17

This cartoon summarizes a number of important political events in 1903, including presidential and vice presidential aspirations, the Panama Canal, Tammany Hall, equal rights, and the Post Office scandal. President Roosevelt is in the center with his gun in his hands and his foot on a dead “graft” bear.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1903-11

President Roosevelt holds a “nomination 1904” lasso labeled with a number of states, which he swings toward the “White House.” He rides a horse carrying “skins” of various animals, a bag of “Hanna’s scalp,” and two revolvers: “personal popularity” and “presidential power.”

Comments and Context

The great cartoonist Charles Green Bush consistently portrayed Theodore Roosevelt in Rough Rider uniform, or cowboy garb, as many cartoonists did. In this cartoon the outfit, the hunter with his catches and lasso, were even more appropriate because the context was the president’s return from an extended swing through the Northern plains, the Pacific Northwest, and the Midwest. He fulfilled an elaborate speaking schedule, but also visited Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon, visited his beloved Badlands, and was guest of honor at Cheyenne’s famed Pioneer Days.

So it was appropriate fodder for the cartoonists to seize upon  Roosevelt’s return to Washington from what was also a public tour in advance of his reelection campaign a year hence, with political trophies and scalps in tow.

President Roosevelt looks at a raided “U. S. Post Office Department” as he holds “bear skins” and “deer skins” with “Hanna’s scalp” attached to his belt and holding two revolvers, “presidential power” and “personal popularity.” There are various items strewn across the floor with the label of “practical politics.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

The perspicacious political cartoonist Charles Green Bush provided posterity with a clear graphic window on two important events of a week in the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt. Ironically, one that has survived in accounts of the period’s political history was peripherally referred to; and a potentially major scandal that is largely forgotten was the major focus of the cartoon.

President Roosevelt holds a variety of weapons, including two pistols in his hands: “presidential power” and “personal popularity.” He is surrounded by the skins of animals and a laughing Ohio Senator Marcus Alonzo Hanna. One sword has a paper attached to it: “Now’s your time.” Caption: “Those who favor my administration and nominations will indorse them, and those who do not will oppose them.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

Of all of the hundreds of caricatures by Charles Green Bush of Theodore Roosevelt, through the years in Harper’s Weekly, the New York Herald, and the New York World — virtually none of them complimentary — this drawing might have been the most denigrating, showing the president at his aggressive worst.

President Roosevelt speaks on the value of exercise and athleticism, saying that it is “an aid to vigor of mind, and above all, to vigor of character,” but that it should not become an end unto itself. He reflects that he believes himself to be average in the areas of hunting, riding, and general exercise, but makes the point that he nevertheless chooses to do them. Roosevelt highlights that many other people could choose to do similar activities, but do not always do so, and says that making the choice to go out and do these sorts of ordinary activities “is the ordinary kind of success or kind of greatness” that anyone can achieve.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1909-02-01

President Roosevelt holds hands with a woman clad in the Stars and Stripes. There is a paper on the ground that says, “Africa–$1 per word.” Caption: By-O, Baby Bunting,/Teddy’s goin’ hunting,/To get a nice, big lion skin/To wrap his stern ambition in./Although we balk at nature fakes,/From mouth to mouth it’s flyin’;/The biggest game he’ll ever take’s/The literary lion.

comments and context

Comments and Context

This cartoon was composed by an anonymous cartoonist (who declined to caricature President Roosevelt, although application of a photograph is not jarring), or perhaps the signature was sublimated in the montage.

President Roosevelt hides in “The Nile” reeds as a crocodile opens its mouth and swims down the river. Caption: The President–When anything makes a personal dental appeal to me like that, I wouldn’t shoot for the world. The President proposes to finish his African hunt when he reaches the Nile.–News Item.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Students of history and political cartooning might expect that one of America’s most notable Socialist newspaper cartoonists, drawing for a Socialist syndicate out of Baltimore (this cartoon was picked up by a Honolulu paper), would lodge a pro forma attack on the outgoing president, Theodore Roosevelt, as Democratic cartoonists were doing.

President Roosevelt types on a typewriter as a “scout” stands nearby. On the ground is a paper that reads, “The game has all left the country. Mumbo, the scout, reports cigarette boxes thicker than ever on the trail ahead. Looks hopeless. ($22.00)” Beside Roosevelt’s desk is a box of “asbestos message paper.” Caption: It is reported that three New York men are going to hunt in Africa ahead of Mr. Roosevelt.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1909-01-10

The “official public notary” raises his right hand and tells President Roosevelt, who also has his hand raised, “Understand. Anything you say now may be used against you later on.” The “official weigher” and “official measurer” get information about a dead rhinoceros while the “official stenographer” takes notes. There are a gun and a book of “official sworn statements” on the ground.

comments and context

Comments and Context

To twentieth-century eyes, the idea behind Luther Daniels Bradley’s cartoon in his series forecasting events in Theodore Roosevelt’s upcoming African safari, would be the necessity to be environmentally sensitive and punctilious in his pursuit of animal specimens.

“Marion County” holds a “national forest” bouquet “presented by Roosevelt.” She says, “Come down and go hunting. The woods are full of deer, bear, wild bore, and turkey!!” President Roosevelt tips his hat and says, “Dee-lighted!!!”

comments and context

Comments and Context

In 1908 President Roosevelt established the Ocala National Forest, 607 square miles, as the first National Forest east of the Mississippi River. It remains a unique oasis of untouched lands, distinctive landscapes, and native flora and fauna not existent elsewhere — a crowning jewel among of many of Roosevelt’s conservation and preservation initiatives.

President Roosevelt fires his “no. 2 for birds” shotgun at a “Panama lyre-bird” (Joseph Pulitzer) in the African wilderness. Meanwhile, a “Congress” lion and “Foraker & Brownsville” hippopotamus stay in the background. Roosevelt is surrounded by his big stick–“for fighting at close quarters”–a typewriter, a notebook, a wireless box, a camera, a “no. 6 for lions etc.” gun, a toothbrush, and a book entitled “Wild Animals and Their Habits.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

This cartoon represents a fair summary of Theodore Roosevelt’s last months in office. He was wildly popular throughout the country, and by common consensus he could have been renominated by the Republican Party if he had not renounced interest on election night of 1904. And even as some Democrats urged him to run again, and recognized that their platforms and Roosevelt’s policies were consanguine, he could have been confident of reelection.