History Versus is a production of I Heart Radio and mental flaws. The carvers stand on the scaffolding hundreds of feet high, clad in overalls and face masks, small pneumatic hammers in hand. The clatter of drills and granite dust fills the air, as they have almost every day of construction on that rushmore for years, these men have worked to sculpture four presidential faces out of the mountain, and now they're about to begin finishing work on the massive sculptures.
Final face work on the face had begun in ninety seven, and it had been dedicated with much fanfare, including a firework show two years later, before it was even close to finished. To get to this point, men called pointers had marked where and how deep to drill powder. Monkeys or workers in charge of the dynamite had dangled from the top of the mountain and carefully placed small charges to precisely blast away rough exterior rock to reveal white,
sparkling granite. Drillers using air powered jackhammers had further removed stone to get to the carving surface, and carvers, many of whom had worked their way up from other jobs in the mountain, had created polka dot as honeycomb grids on the stone, using a hammer and chisel to remove
extra granite. Throughout the process, the features on the sixty foot tall face had slowly slowly emerged and gained definition to eleven foot wide eyes, a twenty foot tall nose, a massive mustache, and the mere suggestion of glasses across the bridge of the nose and the upper cheeks, an illusion which will look like full frames to the spectators below. It's now time for what sculptors call fine finishing. The carvers switch on their neumatic cameras, also known as bumpers.
Each is equipped with four bits of steel that clatter against the rock, removing or bumping it a fraction of an inch at a time. Cautiously, they apply the hammers to the stone, buffing the honeycomb grid it off of Theodore Roosevelt's massive chin. We know that tr was an adventurer, a man who fought corruption and advocated for a square deal for all, the sporting hunter who lent his name to the Teddy Bear, a person who cared deeply about
conserving nature for the next generation. And yeah, the guy in the night at the Museum movies, and I'm aunt Rushmore, but there is so much more to Roosevelt's legacy from mental flaws and I hurt Radio. This is History Versus, a podcast about how your favorite historical figures faced off against their greatest foes. I'm your host, Aaron McCarthy, and for this the final episode of our first season, we're taking a look back at TR's legacy. This episode is
History Versus Theodore Roosevelt. Mount Rushmore is probably one of the things people think of first when they think about Theodore Roosevelt's legacy. The mountain, named for New York lawyer Charles Rushmore in the eighties, is located in the Black Hills of South Dakota, and I head there on a human August Day with the goal of talking to some other visitors abo Theodore Roosevelt, his legacy and why they
think he's on the mountain. I don't know about you, but I hate striking up a conversation with strangers, so I spend a fair amount of time procrastinating. It rains and then it hails, and in the safety of the gift shop, I contemplate buying some tr sox that say speaks softly and carry a big stick, and also giving up on this whole interviewing random people thing. But when I head back outside, some interview subjects find me. They're the Pope's parents, Ben and Sally, and kids, Harry and Alice,
and they're from London. They came here in part because Alice saw Mount Rushmore on an episode of Phineas and ferb Harry's favorite president of the Mountain is Washington, but Alice prefers Roosevelt because he was in Knight at the Museum. So what else do you know about him besides his exploits and Knight at the Museum. He liked to ride horses and he was a cool guy. We wanted to bring them here anyway, but it was a particular wish of Alice's because sheet growing up being that image TV
that's been Harry and Ellis's dad. If you had to guess why he was up on the mountain today, why he was chosen, what would you say, Here's Harry. You've probably made a big commitment to the country and did something that people wanted to remember. Next, I chat with Lane Johnson, who hails from Texas. Lane knows all about tiers trip to the Amazon. So his response when I asked why tr is on the mountain makes sense, I
would say because of his sense of adventure. Sharon Right from Wisconsin says, a lot has changed since the first time she came here. What was it like back then? Very quiet and very serene. What what can you tell me about t R Well, he was kind of the the goal getter for the National Park System, and he really was one to help preserve the outdoors for everybody, to keep it from being everything being commercialized. Although I'd
say this is getting pretty commercialized. It's free to come here, but you have to pay to park, so it's not really free. You used to be able to come here and enjoy it without having to pay to park. Finally, I chat with Aretha Wilson from Ohio of the presidents up on the mountain. She says Roosevelt is her favorite. Roosevelt respects US supporters, no matter how big or small,
so that's a good thing. We're all standing here today thanks to South Dakota state historian Don't Robinson, who wanted to create a tourist destination in the Black Hills so more people would come to South Dakota. Initially, he wanted to carve famous figures from the history of the West into granite spires located nearby. But the artists chosen to create the monument goods On. Borg Lam had a completely
different location and vision in mind the president's. When it came down to which presidents to put in the mountain, most were no brainers. Jefferson was the author of the Declaration of Independence and had expanded the country through the Louisiana Purchase. Washington was the father of the country and allowed Jefferson's ideas to become a reality. Lincoln kept the country together in a time of great strife. The tr Well trra was controversial. Here's Marine McGee, Bollinger Chief of
Interpretation and Public Affairs, and Mount Rushmore National Memorial. The whole carving process that idea begins in Well. Roosevelt had died in nine so most people alive at that point in they knew him, they knew of his politics, they knew of his presidencies, and there were a lot of
people that didn't like him, so he was controversial. But Borgland did like him, and it was Burglan's work of art, and he made the final decision, Theodore Roosevelt will go up there and he'll go up there because of the Panama Canal. Today people look at it and say, well, of course, Theodore Roosevelt's up there, the conservation president. But that's not what Borglan was thinking. Burgo also knew Tier personally. He had campaigned for the bull moose when he ran
for president in nine twelve. Mount Rushmore consists of a fine grained granite called the Harvey Peak granite. The fine grain means the rock holds together well when you carve it, but it also makes it harder to carve. On the plus side, that means it takes a while to a road. The erosion rate of the Harney granite is an inch every ten thousand years. This is tough rock. In other words, people are going to be staring at those faces on the mountain for a long time. Creating Mount Rushmore was
not easy work. Finishing the sculpture took fourteen years, and Borglum died before it was completed. His son Lincoln took over for him. Tire's face was the last one finished in one according to Rex Allen Smith in his book The Carving of Mount Rushmore. At its dedication in nine twelve, thousand people attended the largest attendance of any of the face dedications. Today, the memorial gets more than two million visitors annually. Here's one funny thing about Tier being on
Mount Rushmore. He probably would have hated it. He didn't want any monument of him, like a statue with him or him on horseback. He hated those kind of monuments. He wanted monuments to be either utilitarian in nature, like naming a building after him, or to be artistic. That's Michael Cullinane, a professor of US history at the University of Roehampton in London and author of Theodore Roosevelt's Ghost,
The History and Memory of an American Icon. Colinane is a presidential historian and a diplomatic historian, and he spent the last ten years looking into Tier's legacy as well as his accomplishments and foreign policies. What's the strangest place you've seen the Roosevelt legacy sort of manifest in pop culture? You know, he shows up in the weirdest places. Miley Cyrus has got a tattoo on her arm of a
quote from Theodore Roosevelt. Miley's tattoo aside or maybe included, colin Nane describes Roosevelt's legacy over the last one hundred years since his death as a roller coaster. When he dies in the right, the first American red Scare is going on, and communism is, you know, is a communist or a boogeyman. And Roosevelt is very much seen as this patriotic American and and also a conservationist in the progressive and all those things as well. But it's almost
like he's a saint. After he dies, that'll change. When historian Henry Pringle published his biography of tr in Ye, Colinane describes Pringle's book as a purposeful revision of Roosevelt that downgraded him from a saint and helped inaugurate what has been called the Crazy Teddy period. That image of Roosevelt as a juvenile guy who made impulsive decisions lasted until the nineteen sixties. There's a reappraisal, but it never really goes back to the Saint Lee version or or
back to that crazy Teddy version. Instead, what we get is a much more moderate version that a nuanced man with his fault you know, warts and all, as some people say, and I think actually that's been good for the tr brand over the last few years, because it means he's this really human character that people can can relate to. So he's not perfect and he's not a demon. He's something in between, which I think most of us are. Tears family was extremely protective of his legacy, especially Edith.
I've always referred to Edith Roosevelt as the gatekeeper of TR's legacy because she was able to pass over documents to historians, she was able to restrict other um other writers from using those documents. In fact, there's some famous incidences in terms of copyright law and which Edith tried to stop people that had letters that Roosevelt wrote to them.
She tried to stop having those published. And so really she acts as the gatekeeper for his memory and his legacy, and throughout her life until she dies in the late forties, she that's her role um and she she really helps the Memorial Association's work towards the image that she wants to see promoted. Tears legacy was so complicated that even his own family couldn't agree on exactly what it was. The Hyde Park Roosevelt's A. K. Franklin and by marriage
Eleanor and the Oyster Bay Roosevelt's Alice, Ted Jr. Etcetera. Famously, but it heads over it because at that point, after TR dies, the legacy becomes the next generation, so they get to shape the legacy of TR. And Alice and Ted are pushing in one direction, and Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt's niece Eleanor, who of course marries Franklin, are pushing in an opposite direction. And that that plays out really up until the sixties, when Eleanor and Franklin and Ted
are are dead. Alice lives on until the nineteen eighties, but by that stage Theodore Roosevelt had kind of become a bipartisan figure um maybe in part because Franklin Roosevelt promoted him as a as as the Square Deal, as being the forerunner to the New Deal. When we talk about TR's legacy, we often talk about how he was
the first modern president. As Kathleen Dalton wrote in Theodore Roosevelt A Strenuous Life, he is heralded as the architect of the modern presidency, as a world leader who boldly reshaped the office to meet the needs of the new century and redefined America's place in the world. When Roosevelt became president, technology was changing rapidly, and so is life for everyday Americans thanks to industrialization. Here's Tyler caliberta education
technician at Sagamore Hill National Historic Site. The country has changed by the time Roosevelt's president, and it's the twentieth century. Roosevelt becomes president in nineteen o one, and all of a sudden, you have the United States operating on a world scale, where previously had been pretty isolation US. Now you have territories in the Pacific. Um. You fought a war with the Spanish and Cuba uh um. Roosevelt begins his presidency in the United States is still occupying the Philippines.
They're building the Panama Canal during his presidency. And you have adjustments in technology. So the presidency, all of a sudden, is kind of a full time job. You can't have a break for the summertime. He was called to be a modern president because of these changes in technology and changes in policy, changes of the United States policy on the world stage. Presidency has changed. In Roosevelt being a young man, um, I think was fit for things to
rapidly change during his presidency. In my opinion, it was also Roosevelt's image control that made him a decidedly modern president. When he got into politics, he started writing posterity letters for historians to study, and he was doing it for the Graham as the kids say, long before social media
was a thing, to cultivate his desired cowboy image. For example, he had a photo snap to himself in a buckskin suit that he had made for his time with the Dakotas, but someone knew him later commented that it was indisputable evidence of the rank tenderfoot. Also, though the photo appeared to have been taken into forest, it was actually taken
in a studio in New York. When he pursued both thieves down the Little Missouri River, Tiara made sure to bring a camera with him and to get a photo of himself watching over the bandits, But it was a reenactment, and according to some the men in the picture weren't even the actual thieves. But there were also sides to Roosevelt that he wouldn't let the public see, like how he wouldn't allow himself to be photographed in his tennis outfit,
just one more example of his image control. For Colinane, it was Roosevelt's use of the bully pulpit as a pr tool that made him the first modern president. I think Rosevelt ability to speak to the average voter and to get across a version of policy that he wants to see take shape. It's really his administration that's the first to do that. He is a public relations um dynamo. He ins to the war in the Philippines as an example. Roosevelt declared the war over in nineteen o two, but
it wasn't over. The war goes on really until nineteen fifteen, but officially the war has ended in nineteen o two, and that public relations perspective is a huge prove The role of president as chief promoter is the one that Roosevelt really takes on and makes that that's what makes the big change in office. Many of TR's actions during his tenure fundamentally changed the office of the president. Like say his decision to get things done via executive order.
He'd make a call and then leave Congress to debate it. He didn't act impulsively. He thought things through very carefully. I think he had very strong convictions, and he acted very assertively. Maybe that's the word that I would choose
to use. That He is incredibly assertive as a president, and I think every president since him, maybe with the exception of the Republican presidents in the nineteen twenties, but beside those three presidents, more often than not presidents have acted assertively and they said that it's it's their prerogative to act that way. And I mean Roosevelt paved the way for for the presidency to be that kind of
of an instrument of power. Before Roosevelt, no president had hit three hundred executive orders, but Tire signed more than a thousand, and future presidents followed his example. Woodrow Wilson and Calvin Coolidge would each far exceed that amount, and they would all be eclipsed by Roosevelt yet again, when FDR issued three thousand, seven hundred and twenty one executive orders over the course of his twelve years in office,
a record that probably isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Tear's view that he could do anything not expressly forbidden by the Constitution or by law was also a game changer for the presidency. The presidency has sort of gone that way with trs constitutional view, in that the president, if there are non enumerated powers, the president can still execute them. I mean things like going to war is a really
good example. When he sent the Worship to Panama to support them, he was effectively sending American troops into a war zone to support a revolution. And since then it that's happened quite a bit. According to Colinane, Tear's decision to intervene internationally has been one of the most lasting
legacies of his administration. Many other presidents have followed suit Woodrow Wilson did this a lot, but you can think about other interventions later on, from you know, Vietnam to Afghanistan, where the United States president has deployed troops and then Congress has had to respond, and Congress has tried to reign in presidential power and a number of different realms, but perhaps most in war powers, and gave the Passive Warpowers resolution in the seventies to to restrict the amount
of time at the president can send troops abroad, but that's not really been an effective measure to stop the president. Historians today are still debating about some of trs actions on the international stage, including those he took to speed up the Panama Canal, so the Panama Canal and how you feel about the Panama Canal often has a very clear correlation with how you think about American power, more
generally an American imperialism and empire. If you view Roosevelt's decision to take Panama, or to force Panama to have this revolution and then take the canal, then you then you see American power or something that's a benevolent force in the world. But if you see that as an overstretch of American power, then you probably think that Roosevelt was acting beyond, you know, the the norms and the regulations of the Constitution and of what America is supposed
to be. I think, actually the Panama decision strikes an ongoing paradox in American history and particularly about American foreign relations, which is that either the United States is to act as an example for the world, or the United States is to actively set the example for the world. In other words, should America stand passively as an example and hope others follows suit, or should America be more proactive.
I think all foreign policies wind up putting the United States in one of those two roles, and Roosevelt very much, very much saw the United States is acting. Um you know, not just as an example, but setting the example for the world. And so that's that's why he acts the way he does with with Panama. It's one of those things that successive generations of politicians have continued to debate. It's been a flashpoint. It's a really good case study to think about the differences that we have in our
foreign policies. Some of TR's other actions on the global stage perhaps sent the message they meant to at the time, but didn't necessarily change the course of history. I'm talking about tiers display of American naval power, the Great White Fleet. It was showing off and it was an opportunity to show the world that there is this emerging naval force. And there's no question that after nine the United States as a naval force will only grow in stature from
that point on. It's a two ocean naval force. There's only one other country in the world that's a two ocean naval force, and that's Britain, you know, famed at this time for ruling the waves. So this was this was a big pronouncement on the world stage, but didn't really have any effect that it stopped Japan, for example, from taking over colonies in the Pacific and eventually becoming one of the access powers in World War Two. I don't link so um, and it certainly made the Japanese
more deft at how they negotiated. It meant that foreign relations with Britain, say, for example, in the Pacific, became more important, but Roosevelt's fleet didn't actually change the balance of power in the Pacific. We'll be right back. I came into this podcast wanting to show Theodore Roosevelt not as a caricature but as a real person, and no discussion of Theodore Roosevelt's legacy would be complete without talking about his views on race, which we've touched on a
bit in other episodes. Well, r views on race, I had to say, are probably one of the most interesting bits about him, and I don't think we've given enough air time to his views on race. I think like we're living in a kind of sound bite culture where if you can't get your view across very quickly, then you know, no one understands it, or they don't want
to understand it, you know. And I think trs views on race were really quite complicated, and they're presented as effectively white supremacy or um or just playing racist, I guess, but there's so much more to it than that. Colinane is right. I've read a bunch of books about tr for this podcast, and have read that his views of race were complicated, that he had a divided heart on matters of race, and that when it came to African
Americans his attitude was enlightened. Many books seem to only touch on the subject, perhaps because tires thoughts on race are incredibly complex. So with that said, we won't be able to impact all of Tira's views on race here. If after you listen to this you're interested in learning more, i'd wreck have been picking up Thomas Dyer's book, Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race. In previous episodes, we've discussed how tiers thoughts on race impacted how he dealt
with other nations. So in this discussion, we'll be focusing mostly on his attitudes toward African Americans and Native Americans. But before we get into tr specifically, it's important to put his views into context. We all know that tr was a curious guy who thought of himself as a scientist. So what were the quote unquote scientific views of race
at the time. To find out, I called Dr Justine Hill Edwards, an assistant professor of history at the University of Virginia whose focuses on African American history, the history of slavery, and the history of capitalism. There were UM scientists who were then trying to find a scientific research based rationale for UM sex segregation and for white racial superiority.
Really in the late nineteen in the early twentieth centuries, UM there there was a rise in racial science and in particular eugenics, so that UM it kind of provided a more kind of scientific rationale for ideas of white racial purity and why that should be the standard in the ideal. And so it's really finding a scientific way to explain why white superiority was good and why it should be a goal in so social policy making. Why would white people be looking for a scientific reason to
prove that they were superior. Well, I mean, you're talking about a time, especially in the U in the US UH posts of Civil War post re reconstruction, where in particular African Americans are working to really gain their civil rights. You have the increase of immigration from places like Japan, and so in trying to do a little bit, and so you have this kind of increase in kind of racial and ethnic diversity that begins to occur in this period.
And so, and interestingly, it's not just in this this period where where you you have kind of white Americans in many ways publicly struggling with the fear in the the idea that they're kind of losing ground to racial
and ethnic minorities. Direy writes that t R grew up in an atmosphere of Victorian privilege, was bombarded from early childhood with ideas that stressed the superiority of the white race and the inferiority of non whites, and his privilege undoubtedly shaped his views of race now interestingly enough, because he was born in New York City, because he was born in the North and not in the South like
in South Carolina and Georgia. Um, he probably held, um, what we would consider more progressive or what his contemporaries would probably consider more progressive thoughts about race. But um, but let's not kind of conflate his progressivism with ideas of that he was in favor of racial equality, because surely he was not. Growing up, Tierra's mother had told him stories about her childhood in the South, which painted slaves as childish dependence and ignored the horrors of slavery.
The tales must have had some influence on his views. He also read a lot. Dire writes that Roosevelt gloried and longfellow Saga of King Olaf, which celebrated the Nordic tradition, a key ingredient in nineteenth century theories of white supremacy, and that he was also influenced by the Teutonic myth Nieba lunga Lead, which he read during his time living with a German family when he was a teenager. Dyer says that its influence can clearly be seen in Roosevelt's
winning of the West. Main reads books and the magazine Are Young Folks were among Tira's favorite things to read, and they contained ugly racial stereotypes about Native Americans and African Americans. Darwin's theory of evolution was also an influence, as were some of Roosevelt's professors at Harvard. Tier continued to read voraciously after his college career and also corresponded
with a number of scientists of his era. According to Dier, you can see all of these influences in Tier's views and writings about race, which he viewed both in terms of nationality and in terms of skin color. Roosevelt believed that the white English speaking race was the most advanced race, but he was also a proponent of neo lamarchianism. The idea came from a French scientist named Jean Baptiste Lamarck, who predated Darwin and believed that certain traits could be
cultivated and passed to later generations. While Darwin, for example, thought about a natural solution, Lamarck's idea more had to do with the idea that species could in some some way choose which traits to pass along to their offspring. This doesn't mean that one day you decide you want your future child to be a genius, and then bam,
they're a genius. There are differences between Lamarckian and neo Lamarckian belief but a neo Lamarkian lecture from the eight nineties discusses the idea a Darwinist would look at the children of pianists and say that they might inherit dexterity or a good ear, but they won't inherit piano skills. They all need to learn the piano the same way their parents did, and Neo Lamarkian would counter that the child must inherit piano skills, otherwise humanity would have the
same level of piano skills forever. As an example, they say that gymnasts have been getting steadily better. This is the result, according to the lecture of lifelong training of the children of acrobats and of their children. The improvement in gymnastics, therefore, is largely due to the transmission of
the qualities directly acquired by training. This kind of thinking, according to Edwards, allowed people to feel more in control of their destinies, as opposed to Darwinism, where characteristics are hardwired into your DNA, changing only by mutation. And it wasn't just white people of that time who held these
ideas about determinism. The famed thinker A. W. E. V. D. Boys had this idea not in a scientific way, but in a so social way of the talented tent that the top ten percent about African Americans in terms of intelligence would lead the race out of um kind of the misery of being black Americans and so dia has permantations. Part of Roosevelt's Neola Markianism was the concept of equipotentiality.
Historian Kathleen Dalton writes that Lamarckians tended to accept the idea that all human capacity, including racial potential, was plastic and could be changed. Here's Michael Cullen in again. Really, what that means is that Roosevelt believed that within a generation we could remake ourselves, not completely, say, but that we could effectively learn from the mistakes of past generations.
And that's that's remarkable because mean it means that we are not just beholden to reproduction in order to progress civilization or progress that you know, our gene pool, but that actually we can learn from history, which of course he was a student of history. We can learn from history and make changes within a generation that have an
impact upon ourselves and in a wider sense, civilization. So that to me always struck me as an anti racist idea because in its essence it means that anyone, regardless of skin color or anything really where you were born or who you were born too, can can reach the heights that that tr saws, the heights of civilization and the heights of personal greatness. Now the reality is, though, is that he didn't believe that a lot of different
races would get there. He you know, he does talk about African Americans as being far behind white Anglo Saxon's or English speaking people's white English speaking people. So there's a capacity in his thinking for equality, but it doesn't always present itself in how he views the world. We've covered Roosevelt's theory of the stages of development before, but here's a quick refresher. Tire believed that all races, nationalities,
and civilizations went through certain stages. The lowest stage was savage is um, which was marked by chaos, next barbarism, during which Indire's words, military virtues were developed. Then came social efficiency, which blended military virtues with a love of order. It was followed by a stage where Dire writes, the great virile virtues diminished and were replaced by a love of ease, softness, willful sterility, and too much stress upon
material possessions. And then finally the stage of decadence or death. This thinking informed his views on race both at home and abroad. Edwards Trs experienced fighting in the Spanish American War Transformative. After that war, of course, the US was seated Guam and Puerto Rico and got sovereignty of the Philippines.
With his role in the Spanish American War and then his ascendancy as President UM, he presided over the not just the expansion of kind of US ideas of the democracy and military presence, but it reinforced the the idea that the native inhabitants of these new territories were somehow racially in inferior and not fully prepared to participate in the democratic project. And this kind of relays two ideas of kind of the stages of development and how he
thought about international diplomacy. He believed that certain people in certain nations were not prepared to participate in democracy, um were not so socially and culturally prepared for that type of citizenship in participation. According to Dire, Roosevelt believed that certain members of other races had evolved to the point where they could participate, even if there are races as
a whole hadn't gotten there yet. Dire writes that what Roosevelt said in public and in private suggests that he believed that the black was largely incapable of assuming the role of citizen, and that that opinion grew stronger after his presidency. Roosevelt remained convinced that blacks would become full citizens only very slowly dire rites. In the meantime, full citizenship would go only to those good, privileged blacks like
Booker T. Washington, William Crum, and Mini Cox. Cox was a college educated black woman who had been appointed to a postmaster position in Indianola, Mississippi, by Benjamin Harrison. Her time in office was quiet until a white man decided he wanted her job, and a local politician began criticizing the town for the fact that they had accepted her
in that role. The harassment got so bad that she resigned her post, but Roosevelt refused to accept her resignation and actually suspended the post office in Indianola for a time. He would not fire her or not let her reads resign, and so his standing up for her significant as well. And so and so I think think it proves that his ideas on race were complex at best, and perhaps
unpredictable in many ways. Unfortunately, it never got safe enough for Cox to return to work, and after she and other black leaders told Roosevelt it would be impossible for any black person to serve in Indianola, he reopened the post office and appointed a white person. Dr Crumb was a physician whom Tier attempted to appoint to head up the customs House in Charleston, South Carolina. The controversy over
the appointment lasted for years. Direy writes that Roosevelt hoped to enhance his standing with black Republicans in South Carolina and in the North, and that he achieved those ends. Still, dire notes it would be erroneous to suggest that Trs administration had developed a policy intended to promote the cause of black civil rights. The incident stands as another example of Roosevelt's commitment to the advancement of individual blacks when
political advantage coincided with ideology. Tira's presidency also coincided with an increase in violence against African Americans. While he was horrified by and publicly denounced lynching, he didn't do anything to stop the violence. Minus these bigger, more public moments with a book or Tief Washington and Mini Cox. He was fairly passive on UM intervention in the real sidences
of racial violence that African Americans were experiencing. UM in the early century, and so the increased incidents of lynching um that many black journalists and writers and intellectuals were trying to publicize in really important ways, and he wasn't their advocate in this way. Race was also a factor in what many today considered to be the biggest mistake of Roosevelt's presidency, the Brownsville Affair. In August, a white man was killed and a police officer wounded in a
riot in Brownsville, Texas. One hundred and sixty seven black soldiers at a nearby military base were blamed for the incident, but they all proclaimed their innocence. Roosevelt demanded that the perpetrators be brought forward. When no one confessed or implicated a colleague, Roosevelt dishonorably discharged them all. He did not discharge the white soldiers these in the three men were
essentially kicked out of the military. This left them without military benefits or pensions, which was a big deal because some of the members of the unit had had for about two decades and kind of lost all of their military benefits. Though some tried to get him to walk back his decision, Roosevelt refused. He would not admit that he had been wrong. It wasn't until about five decades later, during the Civil Rights movement movement that activists rallied foreign
pressured members of Congress to consider Roosevelt's decision. There were Congressional hearings and um and it led to the military revoking the discharge and the soul survivors received renumeration for his service. But this was too late, of course. Outside the American Museum of Natural History as a statue of tr on horseback. Next to him on the ground are two figures, one African, one Native American. The statue is controversial today because it presents those two figures as submissive
to Roosevelt, a clear picture of racial hierarchy. The museum is addressing that and Roosevelt's views on race in an exhibition called Addressing the Statue. Some of what he wrote about Native American people that African people make your teeth hurt today. That's David Hurst Thomas, a curator of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History, and he is right. Roosevelt believed that Native Americans, according to his stages of development theory, were at the savage level, and he did
not hold back in horribly and falsely maligning them. He wrote that Native Americans had an inhuman love of cruelty for cruelty's sake, and would torture men, women, children, and even animals. He also indulged in stereotypes of Native Americans as drunkards. In six Roosevelt gave a lecture in which he said, I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every ten are, and I shouldn't like to inquire too closely into the case of
the tenth. The most vicious cowboy has more moral principle than the average in Indian. The fact that white men were pushing Native Americans out of their homelands didn't bother Roosevelt in the least. In his view, it was destiny for the white race to take over the continent, and it wasn't surprising that the superior white race had conquered the savage Indian race. Here's edwards, they were inhabiting land
that was meant for white Americans. He's kind of inheriting a legacy from his presidential predecessors, the fact that they believe that Native American lands were not for Native Americans. As President, Roosevelt supported the allotment system, which broke up reservations and forced Native peoples onto smaller, individually owned lots,
with the goal of assimilating them into white society. He also said that programs like Pennsylvania's Carlisle Indian Industrial School, established in eighteen seventy nine, do a special and peculiar work of great importance. At these schools, which were located far from reservations, students were given new names and quite often baptized. They all so weren't allowed to speak their
native languages. In his second Address to Congress, Roosevelt wrote that in dealing with the Indians, our aims should be their ultimate absorption into the body of our people. But again Roosevelt's views were complicated. He admired the ferocity of Native American fighters and condemned white brutality against Native Americans that he had witnessed, and according to his biographer Herman Hagedorn, he treated individual Native Americans with respect despite his detestation
of the race as a whole. In nineteen o five, six Native Americans rode on horseback in Theodore Roosevelt's inaugural parade a bid, according to Gilbert King at Smithsonian, who cites a contemporary newspaper to show that they had buried the hatchet forever. One of those Native Americans was Geronimo.
Though tales about him were exaggerated, the Apache's reputation meant that he was the tale parents in the American West told their children to get them to behave, but he had surrendered in six He and his men had agreed to an act style of two years. They were shuttled to Florida, and while they were there, hundreds of Apachee children were relocated to the Carlisle Industrial School in Pennsylvania. The prisoners of war were eventually reunited with their families
in Alabama, but their journey wasn't over. The Apaches ended up in Oklahoma, where the captives were allowed to live around Fort Sill. By the time Geronimo met with Theodore Roosevelt on that March day, he had been a prisoner of war for almost nineteen years. King writes that the warrior begged Roosevelt to send him and the rest of the Apaches back to Arizona, saying, take the ropes from our hands, but Roosevelt told Geronimo that he had a
bad heart. You killed many of my people, You burned villages, and were not good Indians. He said he would wait and see how you and your people act. Commissioner of Indian Affairs Francis Luke remarked, it is just as well for Geronimo that he is not allowed to return to Arizona. If he went back there, he'd be very likely to find a rope awaiting him. He was safer in Oklahoma.
Geronimo had converted to Christianity in nineteen o three, joining the Dutch Reformed Church, likely in part to influence Roosevelt, but Roosevelt never changed his mind. Later, after promising to confer with the Commissioner of Indian Affairs and Secretary of War about his case, he told Geronimo that there was no hope of letting him return to Arizona. It would only lead to more war. Tierra apologized, saying that he had no feeling against Geronimo. Geronimo never returned to Arizona.
He died still a pow in nineteen o nine. According to David Hurst Thomas, Roosevelt's views toward Native Americans may have changed, however, slightly towards the end of his life, thanks him part to a trip taken out to the Four Corners. In my interest, of course is American Indians. So I looked at what he did to Indian people while he was president, and I have some real problems with that, with the Indian schools and cutting off their hair and they can't speak to language, and kill the
Indian to save the hand. All this argument, he went out to the Four Corners and took a trail ride with one of his kids, and they ended up going to Hopie Country, and he wrote three pieces about that. Roosevelt observed the Hopie snake dance complex ritual that includes elements of handling rattlesnakes, But it was the ordinary lives of the Hopie that really had an impact on him. He called them a reasonably advanced and still advancing semi civilization,
not savagery at all. He noted that there was big room for improvement, but so there is among whites. What he comes out of it saying is, you know, he didn't say he was wrong, but he says, now I can see there are things in these other cultures that
deserved to be preserved. He still wanted the hopie to be gradually assimilated to the life of the best whites, he said, but now he wanted that assimilation to be shaped as to preserve and develop the very real element of native culture possessed by the Native Americans, which he said, in the end may become an important contribution to American cultural life. He hoped they would be absorbed into the
white population on a full equality. In Roosevelt's for volume, The Winning of the West, he writes not just about Native Americans, but also about slavery, and just a warning, this section includes terms that some might find offensive. Slaveholders, he wrote, were the worst foes not only of humanity and civilization, but especially of the white race in America. The Negro, unlike so many of the inferior races, does not dwindle away in the presence of the white man.
He holds his own. Indeed, under the conditions of American slavery, he increased faster than the white threatening to supplant him. And it gets even worse from there. He actually has supplanted him. In certain of the West Indian Islands, where the sin of the white and enslaving the black has been visited upon the head of the wrong doer by
his victim with a dramatically terrible completeness of revenge. Slavery is ethically abhorrent to all right minded men, that it is to be condemned without stint on this ground alone from the standpoint of the master cast. It is to be condemned even more strongly because it invariably, in the end threatens the very existence of that master cast. From this point of view, the presence of the negro is the real problem. The slavery is merely the worst possible
method of solving the problem. He opposed slavery because he believed that um the way that it evolved in the US, it meant that the United States was not created for anybody who wasn't white. And so he believed that when the British brought brought African slaves to the colonies that became the nation, it kind of marked the history of the United States in a negative way, because from that that point on, black people then had claims to their rights and their citizenships in a nation that was by
and large created for whites. And so he was opposed to slavery, not on moral grounds, but really in many ways on white sub supremacist grounds. If he believed fundamentally that um that slavery was a stain on the Republic because the Republic was created for white white men, it means that ideas of kind of the West, of Americans dominating and teaming the wild West about really ideas of manifest destiny, even um those those ideas were created by
and for whites white men in particular. Did tr ever change his views on African American and Native Americans, particularly with Native Americans and African Americans, I don't think that his his views evolved that that much. Um. While they may may have changed for him, that didn't translate into meaning political change for people of color. For someone who really admires Roosevelt, it can be hard to square these
views and philosophies with his incredible life and accomplishments. But two gloss over this would have left us with a two dimensional view of Roosevelt and an incomplete picture of our own history. Given the many ways other historians have characterized Here's views on race, I asked Edwards how she would describe his views. First and foremost, I think he believed in white supremacy. I would hesitate to say that
he's a white supremacist. I think that he harbored and articulated and expressed certain white supremacist agendas that translated to how he governed as president, particularly on shoes of race. Um and Yes. At the same same time, I do think that he was a man of his time and
was influenced by his surroundings. But I also think it's important to to evaluate, well, were there people around him or were there contemporaries who are expressing more progressive ideas on race and race relations, and the answers of resounding yes, right, um, he just calling him a racist, I think is the easy way out. I think it's more interesting and more
important to interrogate, well, why and how. It's easy for for us to categorize historical figures in binary terms, good or bad in terms of our moral perceptions of them.
But I also think it's it's it's true that you know, understanding the time in which in which Roosevelt lives, in understanding the ways in which race relations were horrible at that that time, is important to understanding who he was as the president, who he was as a person, and really um, getting a fuller understanding of his so called progressivism because he may have been progressive in terms of his m his thoughts on the economy, you know, trustbusting,
he may have been progressive in certain other policy ways, but on race, he wasn't. That's an important part of understanding our political figures. Right. We live in a country that from the very beginning has been polarized along choose of race. And so, yes, it is important to understand our public figures and political figures perspectives on race because it's such an important part in my my mind of what it means to be American thinking about these questions,
because it's an indelible part of the American story. The fact that um, he did amazing things for um idealizing and realizing the beauty of America's natural landscapes, right or four ideas of conservation, that's really important, um. And we don't have to denigrate that legacy with his problematic legacy on race. And so, you know, I think that I think it's important to view historical figures as they were.
There complex people with complex inner workings of their lives and and and it's just important to understand that human complexity. And on that note, we'll take a quick break. I don't know about you, guys, but I think about alternate histories or parallel universe is a lot. This might have something to do with my obsession with the TV show Lost, but I digress. I've been thinking about them a lot
during this podcast too. We live in a timeline where Theodore Roosevelt became president, but there's probably a timeline out there where he was a successful rancher or pursued natural history, or perhaps a timeline where he never dropped out of law school and instead became a lawyer. In another, he was focused on writing, and in another Theodore Roosevelt was never even born. So what does the world look like in these universes? Our country would have been a lot
less conservation minded. That's full Shaffroth of the National Park Foundation, who notes that in addition to creating wildlife Refugees, which protected the nation's wildlife, and greatly expanding the National Forest System, which set aside millions of acres for preservation, tier also planted the seeds for the National Park Service. President Roosevelt really saw these public lands that were being set aside
for their scientific value. The future was part of his motivation for this, and and that I think also very forward thinking and recognizing the sort of a place of humility I think for him as a human being, see that we're just here now, but there's so much we need to learn from what happened before to inform how we live in the future, which is pretty powerful I think.
Here's David Hurst Thomas. If you look at presidential actions over the last couple of centuries, what Roosevelt did with the landscape in wilderness is the most important thing that any president did between the Civil War and World War One. He was able to take those brief years of his presidency from nineteen o one to nineteen o nine and make a lasting impression on this country that it's hard to even imagine what it would have been like had he not done that. But of course, Roosevelt did more
than just preserve lands. He quite literally changed the international landscape by helping to make sure the Panama Canal got built. Here's Clay Jenkinson. We would have gotten the canal, that it was inevitable that there was going to be a canal, States would have almost certainly had to build it. But um, you know, there's something like a strong person to cut the Guardian nod and cut through all the diplomacy and
nonsense and b s some the lobbying and so on. It. Without tr it probably would have just taken longer, a lot longer. There would have been political implications too. If tr had never been president. Here's Michael collinan I reckoned the Republican Party would have gone on to win elections until the Great Depression. There would have never been Woodrow Wilson. I think the United States probably would have intervened in World War One sooner because the Republicans were much more
they were more pro allied than Wilson was. I think we probably could have had a short World War One. And can you imagine if World War One ended sooner and the Germans law sooner, it would have been millions of lives would have been saved. But yeah, it's it's a fun question. If Roosevelt wasn't president, would we have all these lands preserved? Like you know, do we have national parks the way we have today? I very much
doubt that. Without his really remarkable ability to push the Antiquities Act and then successive executive orders preserving these lands, we probably don't have places like the Grand Canyon preserved or the vast woodlands of the North Pacific. And there's one other big thing that probably wouldn't have happened if TR had never been president. Do you think we get an FDR without TR? I mean, if we're doing counter
factuals on FDR, I can probably not. He's got this ideological connection to Theodore Roosevelt, and if the Roosevelt hadn't been president, I can't imagine how FDR would have developed his own his own ideology. And I mean, obviously the only reason why he gets to run as vice president is because he's got that name. And there's loads of evidence about that from the Democratic National Committee saying that you know, he's he's okay, but he's got the right name.
Which one of his accomplishments or policies had the biggest positive impact. Well, I don't think it was just conservation that was a major positive impact, although that's that's got to count as one of the big ones. But I think his ability to manage the big businesses and labor relations of his time really kicks off the progressive error. The capital and labor question was the biggest question of
his time. It's what defines the Gilded Age. Um it's it's it's why we have a progressive error is because you know, the role of government is becoming greater and greater, and Roosevelt is really the key figure at the helm of that movement, even if, of course there's a lot of activists and grassroots um movements that are moving in the United States towards it. And which of his accomplishments or policies do you think had the biggest negative impact.
I think Roosevelt could have done more for equality, um, more for equality of the sexes, and more for equality among races. I think having book or ke Washington to to the White House for dinner it is a good thing. But I think other policies were we're far far worse, you know, uh, discriminatory. And I mean that in terms of immigration, I mean that in terms of Native Americans. I mean that in terms of African Americans. There's a lot more than he could have done around inequality on
the sexes. It's interesting that there's this um cultural feeling even within his own family that women really they're not It's not that they're not picked to vote, it's just the sort of like lingering tradition that women don't vote I mean, Roosevelt wrote an undergraduate thesis about women and suffrage, and I think actually had progressive views and voices those progressive views in nineteen twelve and he's running president, but
he never really sees these through while he while he's president, or you know, when he's you know, planning to when he's a Republican. When I suppose he takes on suffrage in nineteen twelve because it's politically expedient, it's not something that he has this passion bour. And I think one of the things that he could have done better we would have been to work for greater equality amongst the sexes,
the races. We live in the timeline where Tier was president, where his mug ended up on Mount Rushmore bully for us. After visiting that site, I pick up Tyler Klang, one of the producers on this podcast, and we drive from Rapid City straight up into Madura, North Dakota, where Tire retreated after the deaths of his wife and mother. When Tire came here from New York, he was clearly an outsider, A dude in a buckskin suit with a knife from Tiffany in my all black ensemble, I too, feel a
little bit like a dude. When we roll into Medora. Population one D and twelve described Medora for the listening audience, Madura is madurable. I would say, show myself out. Um. It looks like, you know, your typical little wild West town. There's like those storefronts or like the fronts of the buildings that are like really flat and and square, and there's just like these beautiful buttes rock formations or something. I don't know what they're talking to call just like
around the town. Medora has made much of its association with tr Tyler and I are staying in the historic wing at the Rough Riders Hotel, which has little teddy bears dressed up as rough Riders on the beds. There's a statue of Tire as a rough rider, a one man tr show starring Joe Wigan, to whose voice you've heard in this podcast, and a burger place called the Maltese Burger after Tiers Ranch Maltese Cross, and of course, Theodore Roosevelt National Park is here with the actual Maltese
Cross cabin. Roosevelt also plays a role in the Medora musical, which is described as the rootness tutinous boots scoutinous show in all the Midwest. Before the show, Tyler and I attend a cowboy cook out during which steaks are cooked on pitchforks. They are literally stacked on pitchforks and stuck into a grill, and it is wild. Then we settle in for the musical, which is a variety show that features Medora's famous and infamous characters with a healthy dose
of musical theater belting. It is extremely my thing. We see trs arrival in Medora and the charge up Kettle Hill to the White House. It is here that the romance of my life began. I would never have become president had it not been for my time spent in the West. If he had won one memory of his life that he would meet with him, what would it be my time? And then the show ends with TR
belting out a song from the Greatest Showman. Afterwards, we chat with Ken Quericone, one of the Burning Hill singers who plays tr. Queer Cone has been with the show for eight seasons, but has only played Tr since last year. We're so lucky to have at presence when he was and he was time as a conservationist, as a president, so awesome that we had, We had that person that loves the land, love the love the people who use.
Is cool that he used the land properly. Yeah, So he is truly one of my favorite presidents for that, and it's very humbling and it's awesome that I get to do it on stage every night. It's pretty cool. We only had a couple of days here in North Dakota before we have to turn around and make the trek back to the Rapid City Airport. Beyond visiting the Elkhorn site, we didn't have time to journey into the park, which is a bumber because we're both really really hoping
to see a bison. We opt against getting up at six am to drive through the park and decide instead to make a quick stop at the Painted Canyon on the way out of town. Maybe I tell Tyler, we'll see a bison there. It's hard to describe Painted Canyon, but I'm going to try. In some other timeline, it's possible that this landscape would be dotted with oil Derrick's
or a machine means digging out the coal. But in this one, the one where theater Roosevelt prioritize saving lands like these, there are mounds of various sizes as far as the eye can see. The mounds have been worn away by erosion to reveal colorful layers. The brown and tan layers are sandstone, siltstone, and mudstone. The blue gray layers are bent tonite clay a k A the stuff that's used in some brands of kitty litter, which was
created by the ash from volcanic eruptions. Black is a layer of coal, and red is clinker, which is created when the layers of coal catch fire and cook the layer above it. And also a word I will never get tired of saying. Some faces of the mountains are covered in grass and trees. The sky above is full of gray clouds, and I can see distant rain. It is breathtaking. We turn around to head back to the car,
and it's a basis. The bison is across the road from the visitor center, head down, grazing on grass, his tail flipping away flies. Male bison can wave up to two thousand pounds and stand six ft tall, and this guy is huge. In Theodore Roosevelt wrote, the extermination of the buffalo has been a veritable tragedy of the animal world. At that point, less than a thousand of the animals existed.
Twenty years later, as president, he became one of the founding members of the American Bison Society, which used bison from the Bronxoo in New York to bolster wild herds. The bison we're looking at is a very physical symbol of Roosevelt's legacy. So is the undisturbed beauty of the Grand Canyon, the Sequoias in Yosemite, the hills of Painted Canyon.
As I've wrapped up work on this podcast, I've been thinking a lot about something Michael Colline and said about how we can never really know what t would do situations today, or who heats supper politically, or even who he really was. The reality is that he's lost to the past, and the past is different from history we get to make up history. The past is something that we can never recreate perfectly, and that is that's a good thing. It means that we can learn a lot
about ourselves through how we understand the past. And it's why the Roosevelt legacy is all over the place from the nine twenties, because in different generations people remember him differently. What do you think is trs ultimate legacy. It's whatever we wanted to be Tomorrow, you know, everything might change and we might have a completely different view on Roosevelt and whatever it is at that moment, is is whatever we're interested in. And right now it's about the environment,
it's about conservation. Twenty years ago it was about um about a hero. I mean ed Marris's book comes out, I think it's seventy nine, The Rise of the Roosevelt, and that was at a time when you know, Watergate has happened, Jimmy Carter be very popular. America wanted a hero, so Edan Mars provides this book about a hero. I think, you know, we don't know what's going to come up in the next year, two years, twenty years, but whatever does come up, ro Rosalt remains popular and we will
extract from his legacy what we want. Theotore. Roosevelt's legacy might be malleable. We might never be able to really know who he was, but standing in these places he helped preserve, staring at a species he helped save, maybe we can tap into how they made him feel and why he felt it was so important to save them, and ultimately how lucky we are that he did so. This is it the final regular episode of the first season of History Versus. I have had so much fun
making this podcast. This has been my passion project, but it wasn't us to me who brought it to life. Behind every podcast host is a great team helping to make it happen. This project wouldn't have been possible without the Mental Flast staff who helped me write scripts as well as supplemental TR content on mental flaw dot com slash History Versus, or without the support of the people
at our parent company, Minute Media. And I really couldn't have done this without the incredible production team at iHeart Radio, who very patiently walked me through this process and made these episodes sound so amazing. Finally, I want to thank the experts who very generously gave so much of their time to this project, and I want to thank you, yes you for listening. If you have any questions for me about TR or just want to see picks of all the TR stuff on my desk, you can find
me on Twitter at Aaron ce McCarthy. We'll be dropping bonus episodes from time to time, and our second season will come out later on this year. Until then, Speak softly and carry a big stick. History Versus is hosted by Me Aeron McCarthy. This episode was written by Me, with fact checking by Austin Thompson, field recording by John Mayer. Joe Wigan voiced Theodore Roosevelt in this episode. The executive producers are Aaron McCarthy, Julie Douglas, and Tyler Clang. The
supervising producer is Dylan Fagan. The show is edited by Dylan Fagan and Loll Berlante. Special thanks to the popes Lane Johnson, Sharon Wright, Aretha Wilson, Justine Hill Edwards, Michael Collinane, Tyler Caliberta Clay Jenkinson, Will Shaffroth, Marine McGee, Bollinger, and David Hurst Thomas. To learn more about this episode and Theodore Roosevelt's check out our website at Mental flaws dot com, slash History Versus. That's Mental flaws dot com. Slash h I S t R y vs. History Versus is a
production of I Heart Radio and Mental Floss. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.