Theodore Roosevelt: President of the United States, 1901-1908
Marcus Cunliffe re-estimates a big man in several respects, of a scale that the American presidency demands and does not always get.
Theodore Roosevelt died in January 1919. His followers felt that America had lost a truly great man: indeed, “the first citizen of the world,” as one had called him. A few weeks after his death, Roosevelt’s former Secretary of State, Elihu Root, declared that:
He continually attacked abuse... His voice reached the minds and hearts of the people of the United States as no other voice ever had... So just was his judgment of fundamentals, so manifest the sincerity of his purpose, so tremendous the power of his personality, that everywhere dim and vague feelings that something was wrong and uneasy dissatisfaction over unwilling acquiescence in what was wrong, hailed him as a leader...
Against this awkward panegyric may be set the crisp comment of Oliver Wendell Holmes, justice of the Supreme Court, who told Sir Frederick Pollock in 1921:
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