Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents

Compilation of the Messages and
Papers of the Presidents

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Title: Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents
Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt,
Supplement
Author: Theodore Roosevelt
Release Date: October 29, 2004 [EBook #13891]
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A COMPILATION OF THE MESSAGES AND PAPERS OF THE

PRESIDENTS
BY JAMES D. RICHARDSON

Theodore Roosevelt
September 14, 1901
* * * * *
Messages, Proclamations, and Executive Orders to the end of the
Fifty-seventh Congress, First Session
* * * * *

Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt, the twenty-seventh President of the United States,
was born in the city of New York, October 27, 1858. His ancestors on
the paternal side were of an old Knickerbocker family, and on the
maternal side of Scotch-Irish descent. He was educated at home under
private tuition and prepared for matriculation into Harvard, where he
was graduated in 1880. He spent the year of 1881 in study and travel.
During the years 1882-1884 he was an assemblyman in the legislature
of New York. During this term of service he introduced the first civil
service bill in the legislature in 1883, and its passage was almost
simultaneous with the passage of the Civil Service Bill through
Congress. In 1884 he was the Chairman of the delegation from New
York to the National Republican Convention. He received the
nomination for mayor of the city of New York in 1886 as an
Independent, but was defeated. He was made Civil Service
Commissioner by President Harrison in 1889 and served as president of
the board until May, 1895. He resigned to become President of the New
York Board of Police Commissioners in May, 1895. This position, in
which the arduous duties were discharged with remarkable vigor and
fearlessness, he resigned in 1897 to become Assistant Secretary of the
Navy. On the breaking out of the Spanish-American War in 1898, he
resigned on May 6, and, entering the army, organized the First United
States Volunteer ("Rough Rider") Regiment of Cavalry, recommending
Col. L.G. Wood to the command, and taking for himself the
second-in-command as lieutenant-colonel. He had gained his military
experience as a member of the Eighth Regiment of N.Y.N.G. from

1884-1888, during which time he rose to the rank of captain. The
Rough Riders were embarked at Tampa, Fla., with the advance of
Shafter's invading army, and sailed for Cuba on June 15, 1898. They
participated in every engagement preceding the fall of Santiago.
Theodore Roosevelt led the desperate charge of the Ninth Cavalry and
the Rough Riders at the Battle of San Juan Hill on July 1. He was made
a colonel on July 11. He received the nomination on September 27,
1898, for Governor of the State of New York, obtaining 753 votes,
against 218 for Gov. Frank S. Black. At the election Theodore
Roosevelt was supported by a majority of the Independent Republicans
and many Democrats, and defeated the Democratic candidate, Judge
Augustus Van Wyck, by a plurality of 18,079. At the Republican
Convention, held at Philadelphia in June, 1900, he was nominated for
Vice-President, upon which he resigned the governorship of New York.
Was elected Vice-President in November, 1900, and took the oath of
office March 4, 1901. President McKinley was shot September 6, 1901,
and died September 14. His Cabinet announced his death to the
Vice-President, who took the oath of President at the residence of Mr.
Ansley Wilcox in Buffalo, before Judge John R. Hazel, of the United
States District Court, on September 14.

VICE-PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT'S INAUGURAL ADDRESS AS
VICE-PRESIDENT.
The history of free government is in large part the history of those
representative legislative bodies in which, from the earliest times, free
government has found its loftiest expression. They must ever hold a
peculiar and exalted position in the record which tells how the great
nations of the world have endeavored to achieve and preserve orderly
freedom. No man can render to his fellows greater service than is
rendered by him who, with fearlessness and honesty, with sanity and
disinterestedness, does his life work as a member of such a body.
Especially is this the case when the legislature in which the service is
rendered is a vital part in the governmental machinery of one of those
world