in action with gallantry and skill against the Indians. On the promotion of Colonel Wood to the command of the brigade, Mr Roosevelt became colonel of the regiment, which took an especially prominent part in the storming of San Juan Hill. In this battle Colonel Roosevelt became the ranking officer and, abandoning his horse, led the charge up the hill on foot under severe fire at the head of his troops. This charge, in which many of the “Rough Riders” were killed or wounded, drove the Spaniards from the trenches and opened the way to the surrender of Santiago. At the conclusion of the war, while the troops were still in camp in the South, Mr Roosevelt joined in a “round robin” of protest against the mismanagement in the War Department, which had resulted in widespread suffering among the troops from wretched food and bad sanitary arrangements. This “round robin” created a sensation which aroused public opinion and was instrumental in bringing about some desirable reforms in the War Department.
When his regiment was mustered out of service in September 1898, Mr Roosevelt was nominated by the Republican party for the governorship of New York State and was elected in November by a substantial plurality. He was governor for two years. He reformed the administration of the state canals, making the Canal Commission non-partisan; he introduced the merit system into many of the subordinate offices of the state; and he vigorously urged the passage of and signed the Ford Franchise Act (1899), taxing corporation franchises. In various contests, in which he was almost uniformly victorious, he showed himself to be independent of “boss” control. In 1900, although he wished to serve another term as governor in order to complete and establish certain policies within the state, he was nominated for the vice-presidency of the United States on the ticket with President McKinley by the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia in spite of his protest. It was very commonly believed at the time that this nomination for the vice-presidency was participated in and heartily approved of by the machine politicians or “bosses” of the State of New York in their belief that it would result in his elimination from active political life. The office of vice-president of the United States had so far in the history of the country been almost purely a perfunctory one, and has rarely, if ever, led to political promotion. The vice-president is ex officio president of the Senate, but has little voice or part in shaping either legislation or the affairs of the party. Mr Roosevelt never, however, presided over the deliberations of the Senate, because before the session following his inauguration convened he had ceased to be vice-president.
Upon the assassination of McKinley, on the 14th of September 1901, he succeeded to the presidency. No previous president had entered the office at so early an age as forty-three. It was his frankly expressed wish to be nominated and elected president in 1904, and he was nominated unanimously by the Republican National Convention at Chicago, and was elected in November of that year by the largest popular majority ever given to any candidate in any presidential election. He received 7,623,486 popular votes and 336 electoral votes to 5,077,971 popular votes and 140 electoral votes cast for Judge Alton B. Parker, the nominee of the Democratic party. Immediately after his election he publicly declared that he would not accept the nomination for the presidency in 1908, and he adhered to that pledge in spite of great popular pressure brought to bear upon him to accept the nomination of the party for another term. The nomination and election of President Taft, who had been a member of Mr Roosevelt's cabinet, was very largely due to the latter's great influence in the party. On March 23rd, two weeks after he ceased to be president, Mr Roosevelt sailed for Africa, to carry out a long-cherished plan of conducting an expedition for the purpose of making a scientific collection of the fauna and flora of the tropical regions of that continent. Expert naturalists accompanied the party, which did not emerge from the wilderness until the middle of the following March, bringing with it a collection which scientists pronounce of unusual value for students of natural history. Most of the specimens were sent to the National Museum of the Smithsonian Institution at Washington. The experiences of his African journey were recorded by Mr Roosevelt in a volume entitled African Game Trails: The Wanderings of an American Hunter Naturalist. The spring and early summer of 1910 were spent by Mr Roosevelt in travelling through Egypt, the continent of Europe, and England, in acceptance of invitations which he had received to make various public speeches in these countries. Honorary academic degrees were conferred upon him by the universities of Cairo, Christiania, Berlin, Cambridge and Oxford, and he was given both popular and official ovations of almost royal distinction—ovations which were repeated by his own countrymen on his return to America.
It may be said without exaggeration that no American public man in the history of the country has achieved such extraordinary popularity during his lifetime as Mr Roosevelt had attained at fifty years of age, both at home and abroad. Great popularity necessarily brings with it bitter enmity and genuine criticism. To understand clearly his career as a public man, and to appreciate the forces at work which caused both the popularity and the enmity, two facts must be kept distinctly in mind: first, that at twenty-two years of age he deliberately decided to make politics his life-work at a time when in the United States the word “politics” had a sinister sound in the ears of almost all of the so-called cultivated classes; and secondly, that in making this deliberate choice he recognized that the government of the United States is primarily a party government. He therefore allied himself with the Republican party, to which by tradition, by family association, and by political principles he was naturally drawn.
In the history of the United States the politician has been too often the man who, in connexion with some other trade or profession, has taken up politics as a tool to carve out some personal ambition or manufacture a financial profit. Mr Roosevelt from the beginning apparently believed with the lexicographers that politics is the science and practice of government. He has himself told the story of an early experience that illustrates his point of view. When in 1881 he decided to join the Republican Association of his assembly district in New York City, members of his family were shocked. “You will find at the meetings,” they said, “nobody but grooms, liquor dealers and low politicians.” “Well,” said Mr Roosevelt in reply, “if that is so, they belong to the governing class, and you do not. I mean if I can to be one of the governing class.” He forthwith became an active member of the political organization of his district. He also early determined to work with his party as being the only way in which a legislator can work. A free lance, an independent, a journalist, or a preacher, without definite political affiliations, may create public opinion, but a legislator or an administrator must belong to a party. Mr Roosevelt was severely criticized by many “independent Republicans” for having supported the presidential candidacy of James G. Blaine in 1884, when he had vigorously opposed his nomination in the convention on moral grounds. The reply to this criticism is that Mr Blaine was the choice of the majority of the party, and that while Mr Roosevelt felt free to fight within the party vigorously for reform, he did not feel that the nomination justified a schism like that which occurred in the Democratic party over the free silver issue in 1896 a schism which remained afterwards a hopeless weakness in that party. His position in the Blaine campaign, his attitude in tariff discussions and legislation, his relations with United States senators, congressional representatives, and other party leaders, his methods in making official appointments, were entirely consistent with his constantly reiterated conviction that in politics permanent good is achieved not by guerilla warfare, but by working through and within the party. He was so often accused by political purists for associating politically with men of discredited reputation that his own picturesque statement of his conversion to a belief that in legislative or administrative politics
