After seven years as president, dealing with financial panics, earthquakes, and dizzying industrialization, it seemed like Teddy Roosevelt might take a nice, quiet retirement.But that wasn't in his nature.
Teddy didn't waste his golden years watching sports and doing the crossword.At 55 years old, he was crouched in a riverboat deep in the Amazon rainforest, nearly delirious.
He'd taken the trip to cheer himself up after he failed to secure a third term, but it turned out to be less glory, more dysentery.But that fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants nature of the excursion was also what made it a classic Roosevelt vacation.
Teddy didn't care if what lay ahead was dangerous. He'd even have his leg cut open on the riverbank for emergency surgery.Nothing could stop him.Roosevelt had always been a champion of stamina and grit.President or not, he wouldn't accept defeat.
It just wasn't his style. Welcome to Very Presidential.I'm your host, Ashley Flowers.Today, I'm bringing you the story of Teddy Roosevelt, yet another man who got promoted because his boss was shot.
Teddy remains notorious for many things, like making tiny glasses cool before John Lennon.An outdoorsman and a severe asthmatic, Roosevelt was truly a Renaissance man.
But how would the Veep-turned-president handle being cooped up in Washington, especially when he was happiest out West, acting like a cowboy and skinny-dipping in rivers? We'll find out coming up next.Stay with us.
At least Theodore Roosevelt postponed his vacation when someone tried to kill his boss, President McKinley.See, in 1901, Teddy had only been vice president for about six months.
He got the job after McKinley's first term VP died of heart disease before the election. Then, that fall, McKinley goes to the Pan American Expo to give a speech.
While he's greeting the public, a disgruntled steelworker approaches and shoots him twice in the stomach at point-blank range.
One bullet gets dangerously lodged in his torso, and the only person around who's even close to medically savvy enough to tend to it is a gynecologist, so he may not make it.Miraculously, though, McKinley starts to recover.
which Teddy takes as the green light to head off for his camping trip to the Adirondacks.About a week or so later, though, McKinley suddenly contracts gangrene.
By that point, Teddy is deep in the wilderness and getting ready to climb the highest mountain in New York State, Mount Marcy. When news that McKinley is deteriorating finally reaches the little cottage, Teddy is too worried to stay.
Under the moonlight, he organizes a caravan of wagon drivers to haul him out of the woods to the closest train station.Then he's catching the next train to Buffalo.
But on the platform, he learns that McKinley has died, so Teddy is now heading back to Washington as president. Understandably, the mood of America when Teddy takes over is sad.People liked McKinley.
Even King Edward VII declared that Britain, of all places, would hold national mourning for him.But old Teddy doesn't quite get the memo.When he takes office, he's all smiles and back slapping.
He was laughing and singing, unable to contain just how excited he was. At 42 years old, Teddy's got this undeniable energy.To this day, he was still the youngest president ever to take office.And to America, he's this total enigma.
One part jock, one part Ivy League brainiac, he's fluffy but also a little scary, like the most bizarre teddy bear you've ever seen.
More than anything, though, Roosevelt saw himself as an all-American success story, especially since he started out as a super frail kid.
Teddy's parents had been so desperate to toughen him up that they let doctors try out all sorts of quacky remedies on him.For example, to fix his asthma, he'd been encouraged to chug black coffee and occasionally smoke cigars.
However backwards, the attitude behind it worked.By the time he got to Harvard, Teddy was a tough guy.He boxed constantly, and while he wasn't exactly a winner, he was a bit of a small-time legend on campus.He was scrappy, and people liked that.
But being scrappy also meant that he was a bit of a hothead.In fact, Teddy was wildly jealous.Before he and his first wife Alice married, he watched any other guys that looked at her like a hawk.
Teddy even ordered special dueling pistols all the way from France just in case anyone wanted to challenge him over Alice. And this is probably because he wasn't the most suave guy alive.
I mean, thick glasses, handlebar mustache, a little bit of a gut.Everyone said Teddy was so obsessed with working out so he could eat big meals and keep his pants from busting open.So his style is a little odd, sure.But Teddy believes he has taste.
And if anyone gave him flack for his outfits, Teddy answered with his fists.Like this one time, another politician was incredibly drunk and made a joke about his clothes.
But instead of just saying like, hey, man, don't make fun of me, Teddy just turns around and punches the guy.And then Roosevelt waits for the gentleman to stand up, and then he punches him again.
Then Teddy tells him to go clean up his face before he walks away, muttering, when you're in the presence of gentlemen, conduct yourself like gentlemen.So America's got a guy who thinks he's million-dollar baby as president.
And despite holding the nation's highest office, Teddy isn't going to compromise his health for his job.When he's in DC, he's playing all the tennis he can.
Teddy calls his advisors the tennis cabinet, which is basically just an excuse to talk shop on the court and drink cold mint juleps afterwards.
And when he's not at the White House, Teddy's going off the grid, hiking strenuously, swimming naked in freezing cold rivers, and scaling the sides of mountains.He loves being outside.
Journalist Stephanie Buck best described Teddy as Man vs. Wild meets American Ninja Warrior.He ends up using his love for the outdoors to create a lot of our natural conservation standards.
But the conservative politicians don't care that Teddy's creating national parks.They're worried that he's going to be a wild card when it comes to Wall Street.So Teddy starts off by going trust-busting, just like McKinley had done.
See, trusts were getting really, really big in the early 1900s.Like, literally.These huge corporations play nice with other big corporations, but pretty much squash smaller competing businesses.
Teddy sees it as his moral duty to watch out for the little guys, so he turns his focus to cleaning up Wall Street. Roosevelt had words for all the men in Lower Manhattan.These fools on Wall Street think they can go on forever.They can't.
I would like to be the buffer between their foolishness and the wrath that is surely to come.And he brings it. After taking office, the first major case Teddy sends his attorney general out on is this huge trust held by J.P.Morgan.Yes, the J.P.
Morgan who founded the bank and had his hands on every U.S.corporation you could imagine.Thing is, Roosevelt doesn't even bother telling his cabinet, which really ticks off J.P.Morgan.
He was used to negotiating with the feds and expected kind of a heads up when a big change was coming his way. Apparently, the business tycoon showed up at the White House and he was so peeved that he sounded like a mobster.
As historian Louis Auchincloss explained, Morgan asked Roosevelt why he had not sent his man to consult my man to fix it up.Clearly, Morgan thinks they might make some kind of gentleman's agreement. But not so.
Teddy's motto is always about fixing what he feels is morally wrong.So he's going to let the Supreme Court decide.And the court ends up siding with him.It votes to break up that trust, which is a feather in Teddy's cap.
He feels pretty good knowing that he's got the law behind him. What's more, this sets a sort of precedent.Now all of the other big trusts are worried that they might be next to get busted.
In fact, chasing down big businesses becomes something of a trademark for Roosevelt.And soon, Teddy would turn his fury toward one of the country's nastiest secrets. Coming up, TR goes knives out after Chicago's meat industry.
And now back to the story.Teddy's three years after taking over from McKinley are pretty smooth sailing.Americans liked Teddy's hustle.Feeling confident in 1904, Roosevelt runs for re-election and wins in a landslide.
In fact, he takes home the largest popular vote margin since 1820, and he's not even 47 years old. But then, Teddy proceeds to do something very dumb.
After he'd found out that he'd won, he proceeds to tell everyone that he's definitely not going to run for a third term.At the height of his victory, he's like, don't worry, I'm done after this.
Teddy was apparently so angry at himself that he said he'd cut off his right hand just to take it back. But what's done is done.So Teddy figures he might as well make the best of the next four years.
And his next best idea is a total overhaul of one of the dirtiest, most vile industries in the nation, meatpacking. Like I said, Teddy was a bit of a health nut, but in the early 1900s, there was basically no food regulation.
At the epicenter of meatpacking, all sorts of things were being put through the meat grinders in Chicago and sold to American families as, quote unquote, food.I mean, we're talking rat poison, rat poop, even limbs.
Like, sometimes a machine worker would get injured and lose a thumb in the meat churner, and it would just get packed right in with what they were selling. So knowing this, a guy named Dr. Harvey Wiley is crusading for food safety.
He's even formed his own poison squad that he feeds food laced with chemical additives.Once they get sick, he turns to politicians and physicians like, look, America, this is what you're eating.It's toxic.
His work even gets him the nickname Old Borax. So when Roosevelt catches wind of what old Borax is up to, he's interested.
Both guys have big personalities, and Teddy doesn't love Dr. Wiley, but he'll listen to him because Teddy knows something awful is happening.America's kids simply can't be drinking formaldehyde-laced milk on his watch.
So to go after these beef trust people, as he calls them, Roosevelt appoints his own federal probe squad.And let's be clear, he's not trying to ruin the industry.
Teddy didn't want Americans to stop buying meat and cheese, just to stop buying the kind that might kill them. After some pressure on both Congress and the meatpacking industry, things are turning around.
Even the working conditions in the meatpacking plants aren't as horrific.One of Roosevelt's investigators went to Chicago and reported back to the president, the sausage girls were moved upstairs where they could get sun and light.
To seal the deal, the Pure Food and Drug Act passes in June of 1906. After helping set standards for the bill, Dr. Wiley becomes the first commissioner of the FDA.Teddy cleans up the meat, and America is grateful to keep cooking burgers and brats.
But all is not rosy in Washington, though.Dr. Wiley and the president are not on good terms after this.Since this was his big win, Roosevelt took the credit for the Food Act, and Wiley felt stilted, which, of course, Teddy didn't want to hear about.
In fact, he had a habit of blowing up over the smallest, silliest provocations.With Wiley, the big argument was over ketchup. See, while he's FDA commissioner, Dr. Wiley is still running experiments with his poison squad.
And by 1908, they're suspicious that one of the preservatives in ketchup, sodium benzoate, is carcinogenic.Turns out Heinz Ketchup is the only manufacturer not using sodium benzoate.
And when Dr. Wiley starts condemning every other company that uses it, Those manufacturers think that he's getting paid off by Heinz.This little tiff gets kicked up to the White House, and now it's up to President Roosevelt to sort it out.
He's annoyed and asks Dr. Wiley if the benzoate in ketchup is actually toxic, or if maybe this is just one more hyperbole.Wiley says, well, Mr. President, I'm positive.
And then, for whatever reason, maybe just that old rage coming back, he goes on a tangential rant about saccharin, an artificial sweetener.This causes Roosevelt to really explode.
Wiley recalled in his memoir that Roosevelt went scarlet, balling up his fist and hissing, you say saccharin is injurious to health?Why, Dr. Rixey gives it to me every day.Anybody who says saccharin is injurious to health is an idiot.
So you can guess that after being called an idiot by the president, Dr. Wiley booked it out of the White House.The two barely spoke after that.Clearly, Teddy could be a bit of a hothead.And even when he was calm, he was still really intense.
And that extended to his family, too.In fact, he insisted that his sons grow into strapping young men, saying, I would rather have one of them die than to have them grow up weaklings.
Maybe Teddy was just afraid if he was stern, they'd suffer like he had as a frail child.But sometimes he didn't know where to draw the line, and protecting his family started to look a little territorial.
Just take what happened with his younger brother, Elliot. Elliot Roosevelt was a PR person's worst nightmare, the family black sheep.To be frank, Elliot drank a lot and he was also a womanizer.
And that womanizing got really problematic when one of his mistresses became pregnant. the mistress being one of the chambermaids in his house, the house that he lived in with his wife and children.
Naturally, Teddy knows about it and he's like, listen, this can't continue.We're going to do something about this.And his plan to do something is severe.
He basically tells his brother, I think you should leave your wife and kids and go into a psych ward. Naturally, you can imagine how well this went over with his brother.But he doesn't stop there.
Teddy even goes to court trying to obtain guardianship over Elliot.One newspaper headline ran, Elliot Roosevelt insane.His brother Theodore applies for a writ in lunacy. This all seems a little cruel and also way too late.
According to one historian, by the time Teddy makes a big deal of it, Elliot had his act together.He'd mostly stopped drinking, he was out of the doghouse with his wife, and the family was even happily living together in Europe.
So if it seems like Teddy may just have been protecting his career and gone a little overkill, I don't think you're wrong.
It's possible he slandered his brother out of sheer paranoia, like he was terrified someone would blame him for not stopping Elliot's bad behavior.
In the end, the courts rule that Elliot is sane, but everything pretty much goes up in flames for the younger Roosevelt afterwards. Elliot separates from his wife and kids and eventually dies a few years later.
He had a seizure after jumping from a window, so whether years of prolonged alcoholism contributed to that, we can only guess.So did Teddy's plan work?
Well, I'm guessing you haven't heard of Katie Mann or her son that Elliot fathered, so my guess is yes. For the most part, the chambermaid scandal was kept on the sly throughout Teddy's political career.
Try as he might, though, one family member would never bend to Teddy's expectations.Coming up, Alice Roosevelt is every man's dream and every dad's worst nightmare.Stay with us.And now back to the story.
Alice Lee Roosevelt was named after her mother, Teddy's first wife, Alice Hathaway Lee.Sadly, Alice Sr.died of kidney failure just two days after giving birth to their daughter.
Teddy, who was just 26 years old at the time, was grief-stricken and ended up leaving baby Alice in the care of his sister. He fled to the badlands of South Dakota on what we'll call a journey of self-discovery.
Basically, Teddy hunted bison by himself, read Anna Karenina, and probably had a drink each night until he felt sane enough to head back east. But once Alice Jr.
grew into a young woman, she wasn't interested in going out hunting or hiking, let alone cared that her dad made the Grand Canyon a national park.Alice Roosevelt was a firecracker in a ball gown.
She's all the most dangerous parts of Teddy, cranked up to 11. According to PBS, her favorite daytime activities included smoking in public and flirting with D.C.'s most eligible bachelors.
I mean, obviously, these seem a little tame now, but they were totally taboo for a young woman, let alone the president's daughter back in the day.Once the sun sets, Alice is allegedly playing poker and dancing on the rooftops of millionaires.
You'd hardly catch Alice awake before noon, and once she was dressed, she was often wearing a pet garter snake as an accessory. She isn't exactly trying to keep a low profile for President Dad.In fact, she seems to taunt Teddy a bit.
She even carries around a copy of the Constitution in her purse, just to be a little snarky.And she wastes no time making her mark on Washington. Literally, Alice never stopped moving.
Even if Teddy hadn't been president, there's no way he could have kept an eye on her.The New York Herald reported that in just a year, Alice's social life racked up 407 dinners, 350 balls, 300 parties, and 680 teas.
Basically, Teddy just had to wait for her to tie her out.That's all he can do.It's not like she'll listen to his second wife, Edith, either.I mean, then again, no one could really blame Alice.
Her stepmother, Edith, definitely had some pretty catty comments.Like once, she even told Alice that had her own mother lived, quote, she would have bored Theodore to death. Rude.
So Alice keeps partying, though things do get to the point once or twice that she's briefly banned from the White House.
One time, she thought it might be fun to bury a voodoo doll in the yard, and the voodoo doll was of Secretary of War William Howard Taft's wife, so that obviously did not go over so well. But still, T.R.
seems a bit apathetic to doing more to reprimand her, especially since every teen girl in America idolizes Alice.She even gets married in the White House in early 1906, slicing her wedding cake with a sword.
Teddy knows what he's dealing with, and this is still his baby girl after all, so he just accepts it.He said, I can either run the country or control Alice, but I'll never be able to do both.
And it turns out he was right, since running the country was about to get a whole lot harder at the end of his presidency.See, Teddy isn't doing a bad job in his second term in office, but right after Alice's wedding, the world starts to shudder.
San Francisco gets rocked by a cataclysmic 7.9 earthquake in April of 1906, and tons of money is needed to rebuild the city. Insurers are overrun with claims, things are so desperate that even British companies start underwriting the policies.
This is where it gets a little complicated, but basically, exchange rates get really shaky and less gold is flowing to the US economy, which is really bad news.By May of 1907, the economy is tanking into recession.
And then, just when it seems like things can't get much worse, this huge New York trust crumbles.So here's what happens.The little banks yank their money out of big New York banks, and suddenly, the whole financial system quivers.
Knickerbocker, the third largest trust in America, collapses.People are panicked.I mean, literally, it's called the Panic of 1907.And who's called in to fix it? Business tycoon J.P.Morgan, the one guy who hated Roosevelt when he first took office.
Meanwhile, what's Teddy doing to help?Well, he's out bear hunting in Louisiana, of course.He's not that worried, but Morgan still wants some federal assurance backing his Band-Aid plan.
So, Teddy heads back to Washington and agrees that in exchange for U.S.Steel bailing out its failing competitor, the federal government won't prosecute it for breaking antitrust laws.
So here we are, our guy who was so excited about trust-busting when he took office backed right off.So the panic was solved, but Roosevelt ultimately takes a ton of flack for this decision.U.S.
Steel becomes a bigger monopoly and many accuse him of going soft on his trust-busting roots. And, just in case this wasn't bad enough, all this goes down right before an election year.
Teddy's reputation loses its steam on top of the fact that he pigeonholed himself back in 1904 by saying he wouldn't run again. T.R.
had been thinking that he might walk that decision back at the last minute had things been going better in 1908, but it wasn't to be.He's an honorable guy, so he sticks to the plan.
He endorses his Secretary of War, William Howard Taft, as the Republican nominee. In November of 1908, Taft is elected.By the following spring, Teddy's out of the White House and off on a political sabbatical of sorts.
For over a year, he crisscrosses Africa and Europe.As politics professor Sidney Milkis pointed out, Roosevelt returned from his safaris with no less than eight elephants, seven hippos, nine lions, and 13 rhinos.
all as his trophies, which neat but also wildly unethical and I hate all of it. But you see, Teddy is still feeling sore that he's not president.
And his old friends keep telling him, hey, it seems like Taft's kind of ruining what you built, which TR can't stand.It's like hearing that all of his hard work is out the door.
So Teddy's like, well, what if I just wait out Taft's presidency and then run again, say, in 1912? And that's exactly what he does.Roosevelt doesn't even care that he doesn't have the Republicans' support.
When Taft gets nominated by the GOP, Teddy just forms his own party.So it's Teddy versus Taft versus New Jersey Governor Democrat Woodrow Wilson, which should be a familiar name.So it seems like it'll be quite a showdown.
But the 1912 election really pales in comparison to what happened just the month before. So I'll leave you with a better story.The time TR was almost assassinated by an amateur poet slash bartender.
See, that October, Teddy is in Milwaukee on the campaign trail.And who shows up but this wild stranger named John Schrenk.
Schrenk is this 30-something guy from New York City whose hobbies include poring over the Constitution and writing poems at night.And for whatever reason, he has this romantic idea that he is going to kill Teddy Roosevelt.Why, you ask?
Well, according to journalist Stan Gores, Schrenk thought it intolerable that any man should serve more than two terms in the White House.
After buying a gun, he stalked Teddy along his campaign stops all the way from New Orleans to Tennessee to Chicago.Schrenk can't get a good angle on him in any of those cities, so he keeps following Roosevelt to Wisconsin.
And finally, he gets his chance.As Teddy is leaving his hotel in Milwaukee one night, Schrenk jumps him before he can get into the waiting car.He pulls his revolver out and shoots Teddy.
Teddy's bodyguard used to play football, though, so he is on this guy like glue.He tackles Shrank, and everyone is, you know, obviously, like, running to Teddy, asking if he's okay, and Teddy just replies, he pinked me.
You see, Teddy had his speech in his breast pocket, right over his heart, and it literally stopped the bullet from going too deep.
He was still bleeding pretty profusely though, so obviously his staff wants to get him to a doctor, but TR says, no way, I'm giving my speech, get in the car, let's go.They get to Milwaukee Auditorium and Teddy starts his speech with a zinger,
telling the audience that he's been shot.I mean, he even opens up his jacket to show them that he's bleeding.And then, playing the role of the martyr like an old pro, Roosevelt tells them, quote, I'm going to ask you to be very quiet.
I'll do the best I can. He stands and gives the 50-page, one-hour behemoth before eventually being rushed to the hospital.He even has to be moved to Chicago for better treatment.
Seven days later, he's finally discharged and heading home to New York, where he proceeds to ignore the advice of his doctors to rest.Instead, he takes the stage at Madison Square Garden and gives another campaign speech before 17,000 people.
Rousing as they were, his speeches didn't win Teddy the election, though.In November, Woodrow Wilson comes out with 435 electoral votes to Roosevelt's 88.
For all his hardiness, America would rather have its Bull Moose candidate out in the wilderness than back in the White House. At the end of the road, Teddy has to accept he's done as president.
And he chooses to temper the loss in his usual style, with an epic expedition, a little salve for his soul.But when friends learned he was heading for Brazil's legendary River of Doubt, they worried.
They knew people vanished on that section of the Amazon, or even died.Yet Teddy just told them, If it is necessary for me to leave my bones in South America, I am quite ready to do so."He didn't have to, by the way.
Teddy survived the trip and even remained active in federal politics.He campaigned for other progressive politicians and wrote an impressive volume of book titles.
He may have been on the tail end of his glory years, but he would fade out with an odd quiet grace. An academic, an adventurer, and a realist.More than we've seen in many presidents since.
So, honestly, thanks for the food regulation and the national parks, TR. Thanks for listening.To hear more stories hosted by me, check out Crime Junkie and all AudioChuck originals.
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