Your TR Source
Theodore Roosevelt’s secretary directs Sam Long to Roosevelt’s article in The Outlook on February 3rd, 1912, entitled “Women’s Rights; and the Duties of Both Men and Women” for his opinion on women’s suffrage.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1912-02-03
Theodore Roosevelt informs Florence Kelley that he has read the book she sent, but he will reread it. Roosevelt states that he would go from being a moderate supporter of women’s suffrage to an intense believer in the movement if women were to take an effective stand against sexual violence, like they did in Seattle.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1912-01-09
Chronology of the daily life of Theodore Roosevelt from January 1892 to December 1898. Notable events include the death of Elliott Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt is appointed New York City Police Commissioner, his tenure as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, the Spanish-American War, and Roosevelt’s gubernatorial campaign.
Theodore Roosevelt Association
1985
Chronology of the daily life of Theodore Roosevelt from January 1884 to December 1891. Notable events include the deaths of Alice Lee Roosevelt and Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, Roosevelt’s time on his ranch, the completion of Sagamore Hill, Roosevelt’s engagement and marriage to Edith Kermit Carow, Theodore “Ted” Roosevelt’s birth, the “Great-Dieup” of cattle in North Dakota, and the founding of the Boone and Crockett Club.
Theodore Roosevelt Association
1985
Postcard featuring a black and white political cartoon by Clifford Kennedy Berryman. The postcard shows Theodore Roosevelt giving a speech in support of letting the people rule. Both men and animals affirm their roles, while women ask, “We’re what?” The reverse of the postcard features a message discussing suffrage efforts in Ohio wards.
1913
Four page pamphlet produced by the Progressive Party in 1912 that includes four affirmations of the party’s support for women’s suffrage. The first page of the pamphlet features an appeal to women in states where they can vote to cast ballots for the Progressive Party. Jane Addams’ short speech seconding the nomination of Theodore Roosevelt as the Progressive Party presidential nominee appears on the second page. Roosevelt thanks Addams for her support in a letter on page three along with another endorsement of women’s suffrage by Albert J. Beveridge. The platform of the party in all aspects, except for foreign policy, appears on page four.
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
1912
The front cover of this issue features a commemorative stamp issued by the United States Postal Service in 2020 to mark the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the nineteenth amendment in 1920. A postcard featuring the work of political cartoonist Clifford Kennedy Berryman that also addresses the topic of women’s suffrage appears on the back cover.
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
2020
Natalie A. Naylor charts Theodore Roosevelt’s support of women’s suffrage from his writing an essay supporting equal rights for women as a Harvard student, to his tepid support of the movement as president, and his embrace of the right of women to vote in his 1912 Progressive Party campaign for president. Naylor notes the unsuccessful efforts of pioneer suffragettes like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to move Roosevelt on the issue while president, and she shows how the 1912 campaign saw a change in Roosevelt’s attitude that he would maintain until the end of his life. Naylor details Roosevelt’s efforts in support of women’s suffrage in the years surrounding World War I, including the successful passage of women’s suffrage in 1917 in New York State.
The article includes a transcript of Roosevelt’s undergraduate essay “Practicability of Equalizing Men and Women before the Law” along with a one page hand-written excerpt from the essay. Two photographs of Roosevelt speaking and a drawing by Roosevelt supplement the article.
Gregory A. Wynn describes a rare item from his Theodore Roosevelt collection, a flask depicting Roosevelt dressed as a woman and a suffragette. Wynn believes the flask probably originated in England and that it meant to poke fun at Roosevelt for supporting women’s suffrage. Photographs of Wynn and the flask accompany the essay.
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
2020
Louise W. Knight chronicles the friendship between Jane Addams and Theodore Roosevelt which reached its apex during the 1912 Progressive Party convention in Chicago and which was broken by the outbreak of World War I and Addams’s adoption of a pacifist stance. Knight focuses on Addams’s drive to achieve women’s suffrage across the United States, and not just in selected states, and she examines Addams’s embrace of the Progressive Party as the best vehicle to promote women’s suffrage. Knight highlights Addams’s prominent role at the Progressive Party convention of 1912 and her extensive campaigning for both Roosevelt and votes for women. Knight reveals that Roosevelt never fully embraced Addams’s view of women’s suffrage and that he tried unsuccessfully to gain her endorsement for the Republican presidential nominee in 1916.
A photograph of Knight, two of Addams, and one of Roosevelt on the campaign trail supplement the text along with a political cartoon and two handbills from the 1912 campaign.
David H. Burton provides biographies of three Roosevelt women: Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, and Eleanor Roosevelt. Burton emphasizes Edith Roosevelt’s importance to her husband, Theodore Roosevelt, from raising their children to overseeing the renovation of the White House. With Longworth, Burton notes her marriage to Nicholas Longworth and her antipathy to Franklin D. Roosevelt, and he says that her influence suffered because “she was never for anything.” Burton highlights Eleanor Roosevelt’s sad childhood but pays attention to, and praises, her considerable humanitarian work both as First Lady and in her later life.
A drawing of Edith Roosevelt by John Singer Sargent and photographs of Longworth and Eleanor Roosevelt supplement the text. A text box containing contact information for the Theodore Roosevelt Association also appears in the article.
Theodore Roosevelt speaks to a group of suffragists from the front porch of his home, Sagamore Hill.
Sherman Grinberg Film Collection
1917
There are twenty-three constitutional amendments up for vote at the October 10, 1911 California state special election.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-09-19
The Woman Voter, a publication by the Woman Suffrage Party, features several articles relating to women’s right to vote in the United States and abroad. Of particular note is the article “A talk with Colonel Roosevelt.” in which Priscilla D. Hackstaff and Grace G. Wolterbeek inquired with Theodore Roosevelt on his thoughts about women’s suffrage. After Wolterbeek informed Roosevelt that she voted for him as vice-president, he remarked that he “consider[s him]self quite a courageous man because [his] sentiment in favor of woman suffrage as [his] wife if tepid on the subject and [his] sisters are pronounced anti suffragists. The family call [him] the suffragette of the family.”
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-06
President Roosevelt leaves his big stick and “my policies” book and runs away from a crowd of female suffragists holding a “Votes for Women” sign.
C. R. Macauley (later spelled MacAuley) was not the only political cartoonist or newspaper editorialist who criticized Theodore Roosevelt for opposing women’s suffrage while not supporting the voting rights of women, or failing to criticize Democratic politicians for opposing the franchise.
President Roosevelt holds his “presidential letter” big stick over an open box labeled “woman suffrage” that has female ghosts coming out of it. A teddy bear cowers behind him.
Theodore Roosevelt was one of the earliest American political leaders to forcefully advocate for women’s suffrage, in 1912, and at that time his wife Edith was relatively lukewarm on the issue. In a long letter to his son Ted shortly before this cartoon appeared (and in which he released a letter, to Ted and to the public, about women’s voting rights sent to a suffrage leader), the president confided that his sisters Bamie and Corinne were opposed to women having the franchise. “I do not myself think it makes much difference one way or the other,” he wrote. “I do not think that either enough good or enough harm has been done [where women had the vote] to warrant much interest in the movement.”
President Roosevelt flees from a group of women holding a banner reading “Votes for Women.” On the ground lies a small folder labeled “My Policies,” as well as Roosevelt’s “big stick.”
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1908-12-07
Lawrence F. Abbott belatedly expresses his appreciation for his being able to attend the labor dinner. The articles that President Roosevelt returned to The Outlook have been received. The magazine will follow Roosevelt’s wishes, but Abbott states that they would like to print the papers Roosevelt leaves at least within six months of his departure for Africa. Abbott has also received Roosevelt’s letter on women’s suffrage, which he will show to his father, Lyman Abbott, when he sees him on Thanksgiving.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1908-11-25
Sheet music for “G. O. P.,” a popular song related to current politics. The song mentions Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley, President Roosevelt, and women’s suffrage. The cover features an illustration of a Republican elephant with a pointed cap and holding wheat in its trunk. There is also a photograph of Nat M. Wills, who sung the song in Duke of Duluth.
Dr. Danny O. Crew Theodore Roosevelt Sheet Music Collection
1905
Theodore Roosevelt responds to Mary Bowditch Forbes’s letter that there are pacifist women just as much as there are pacifist men. Sometimes women can also vote better than the men, but it still comes down to leadership.
Massachusetts Historical Society
1917-01-04