Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)Twenty-sixth President (1901-1909)
No one craved the presidency more than Theodore Roosevelt, or used its authority so joyously while in office, or chafed so miserably in retirement. Peering out through his pince-nez, fingering the gold fob he customarily wore, Roosevelt might have been dismissed as a gentleman dabbler in politics but for the raw force of his nature, and the intensity of his commitment to presidential power as the foundation of national order.
Resolved, as he put it "not to content himself with the negative merit of keeping his talents undamaged in a napkin," TR rode roughly through a series of adventures on his way to the presidency: as a rancher in the Dakota Badlands, as police commissioner of his native New York City, as Jingoist and cavalry hero of the Spanish-American War, and as reform governor of New York. Caught momentarily in the sterile dignity of the vice-presidency during McKinley's second term, Roosevelt found himself in control of the White House and of his highest ambitions in 1901. As President for a new century, he shattered his predecessor's tradition of executive restraint by creating a strong national authority to equal and balance the domineering wealth in industry and the rising power of labor. The energy he could not absorb in domestic politics he expended in saber-rattling in Latin America - which produced the Panama Canal, and a lasting legacy of bitterness - and in exercising diplomacy to settle the Russo-Japanese War, which won him the Nobel Peace Prize.
Teddy Roosevelt was a vitalizer, an inspirer of movement and optimism in others. "Get action," he trumpeted, "do things, be sane." Taking him to heart as a rousing symbol for youth, the Jacob Riis Settlement House in New York City commissioned Sally Farnham, in 1905, to execute this bronze plaque to fix to the wall of their gymnasium - an unexpected tribute to a President, but for Theodore Roosevelt an entirely appropriate one.
Sally James Farnham (1876-1943)
Bronze relief, 1906
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
NPG.74.16
Enlarged image