The Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 1900-1912

George Mowry provides a masterful introduction to this period of American history with a sympathetic but also critical analysis of Theodore Roosevelt’s role as its central figure. A patrician who was sensitive to the growing disparity between rich and poor, a practical and effective politician who wanted to pass progressive legislation through a conservative Congress and a competitive campaigner who decided not to run for a third term in 1908, Roosevelt was a complicated man whose political career was full of conflicts. His domestic achievements included using the Sherman Act to break up trusts (although he would have preferred to regulate large companies rather than break them up), regulation of the railroads (Hepburn Act), show more implementing conservation policies and the establishment of the Department of Commerce. He rejected isolationism in favor of America’s taking a more interventionist and indeed imperial role in the world, both to protect its own interests and to guarantee the balance of power that hitherto Great Britain had maintained. In addition to supporting Panama’s independence to facilitate the construction of the Panama Canal, he expanded the US role in Latin America (the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine), sought to protect American commercial interests in the Far East including brokering the peace between Japan and Russia and, at the invitation of the Kaiser, arranging a settlement of the French and German competition for Morocco (in favor of the French). He selected William Howard Taft as his successor for the election in 1908, but Taft, while succeeding in enacting further progressive reforms (more regulation of the railroads, more trust busting cases than Roosevelt had initiated, establishment of a postal savings bank) was at bottom a conservative who split with the growing Midwestern and Western progressive wing of the party. Dissatisfied with Taft, Roosevelt ran again for president in 1912 under the banner of his slogan, the New Nationalism, which laid out ambitious progressive goals. Splitting the Republican vote, both Roosevelt and Taft lost to Wilson. The book is careful to emphasize the middle class nature of the progressive movement and its opposition to both right and left, i.e., conservative business interests and labor unions and socialism.

Mowry’s coverage of the Brownsville affair is surprisingly inadequate. He notes that Roosevelt dismissed the black soldiers in the unit based outside of Brownsville, Texas because none of them came forward to identify the specific soldiers involved in a murderous incident in Brownsville. What he does not note was the assertion of the unit’s commander that none of his men had been present in Brownsville at the time of the violence. This affair was finally reviewed by the federal government in the 1970s and all the soldiers had their dishonorable discharges changed to honorable discharge. Among other developments, this event contributed to African-Americans beginning to shift their voting loyalty to the Democrats. show less