To Rescue the American Spirit
Teddy Roosevelt and the Birth of a Superpower
By Bret Baier
Category: History | Reading Duration: 25 min
About the Book
To Rescue the American Spirit (2025) traces the rise of a political giant who dragged the United States kicking and screaming into the American Century. You’ll discover how Roosevelt’s uncompromising beliefs guided a nation out of its isolation and onto the world stage. By the end, you’ll have seen how character and courage can single-handedly shift the trajectory of a whole nation.
Who Should Read This?
- History junkies fascinated by the Gilded Age
- Anyone interested in political strategy and foreign policy
- Americans hoping to learn of how their nation once overcame adversity and division
What’s in it for me? Discover the remarkable life and political legacy of Theodore Roosevelt.
To this day, Theodore Roosevelt is regularly ranked by historians among the top four U. S. presidents. Perhaps that’s because, unlike many of today’s polarized politicians, he managed to be both conservative and progressive at once.
In many ways, Roosevelt’s era wasn’t so different from our own: geopolitical instability dominated the world stage, and society grappled with how to use the new technologies born of 19th-century capitalism – and who should benefit from them. Born into a wealthy family, Roosevelt spent much of his life fighting against the notion that the United States should be governed by elites. He championed the working and middle classes – those he famously praised as “the man in the arena. ” Even President Donald Trump has voiced admiration for Roosevelt. The two shared a belief in the expansive use of executive power; Roosevelt himself issued more than a thousand executive orders during his presidency. Yet above all, one mission defined his career: elevating the United States to the status of a world power.
In pursuing that goal, Roosevelt helped usher in what became known as the American Century. But this Blink begins long before he coined his famous phrase, “Speak softly and carry a big stick. ” To understand how it all started, we travel back to Manhattan, five years before the Civil War – where Roosevelt’s remarkable story begins.
Chapter 1: The frail boy with an iron will
On October 27, 1858, Theodore Roosevelt entered the world in a four-story brownstone in New York City. His mother Martha – or Mittie for short – lay exhausted in the upstairs bedroom. His aunt Anna moved through the house, attempting to manage the chaos that comes with any birth. Outside, the streets of Manhattan hummed with the hustle and bustle of a rapidly growing city.
The nation was growing – and straining – too. The Civil War was still three years away, but its shadow already stretched across the Roosevelt household. Theodore Senior – “Thee” to his family – was a staunch supporter of Abraham Lincoln and the Union cause. His wife, Mittie, however, remained unreconstructed to her core, loyal to her Southern roots until the day she died. Young “Teedie” thus grew up in a home divided by the very tensions that would soon tear the nation apart. But that was the future.
For now, Teedie was simply a child struggling with severe asthma attacks. They took away his ability to breathe, often in the middle of the night. His father would have to pace up and down the hallway with him, sometimes for an hour at a time, sometimes more, holding Teedie against his chest while the boy gasped for air. Doctors threw all sorts of potential cures at the disease. They even forced the young boy to smoke cigars – and got him to drink disgustingly strong coffee, all in an attempt to frighten the asthma away. But nothing worked, at least, not for long.
Unlike his son, Theodore Senior was blessed with good health, as well as being tall and handsome to boot. He was a man who was passionately devoted to his family, as well as the good of the community. He was also the man who once told his seven-year-old son that although the boy had the mind, he did not have the body – and that without a strong body, his mind would never truly thrive. Young Teedie took up his father’s challenge relentlessly.
He dedicated himself to building physical strength with an obsessive energy that he applied to everything in his life. His father installed a small gym on the back porch of their building, and Teedie didn’t hesitate. He even started boxing his brother Elliott, swinging at each other until their knuckles could take no more. It was around the age of thirteen that it finally became apparent that Teedie could barely see.
Chapter 2: A boy becomes a man
It turned out his terrible eyesight had gone undiagnosed for years. Upon obtaining glasses, the world suddenly revealed itself to him in ways he had never imagined. He could finally hit what he was aiming at with his new rifle. The specimens started arriving soon after.
Teedie established a “Roosevelt Museum of Natural History” in his bedroom, filling it with dead birds, pressed plants, and the bones of small animals. He found the skull of a dead seal at a local market and brought it home to measure and clean, despite the awful smell and mess. His mother tolerated the growing collection with varying degrees of patience. Harvard came next, and with it a kind of freedom. Teedie threw himself into his studies, into boxing, and into the social life of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Then, in February 1878, his father died of a malignant tumor in the stomach.
Teedie was only nineteen. He described the dull sorrow that followed – and the bitter agony of realizing he would never again see his father. The man who had walked up and down with him through those gasping childhood nights was gone. Yet he held to the advice Thee had given him: take care of your morals first, then your health, then your studies. He met Alice Hathaway Lee at a party that fall. She was known as “Sunshine” for her golden blond hair and shining blue eyes.
He went nearly mad during the courtship, fearing constantly that she would reject him. He pursued her with the same relentless energy he brought to boxing, to specimen collecting, to everything. Eventually he settled the matter. They married in October of 1880, on his twenty-second birthday. Then, against his family’s warnings that politics was a dirty business for liquor dealers and “low people,” he entered the New York State Assembly at twenty-three. He intended to be one of the governing class, he said, and he would not quit until he found out if he was too weak to hold his own in the rough and tumble of New York politics.
He quickly made enemies by attacking the wealthy criminal class and corrupt judges. They even hired a thug to beat him. What the conspirators didn’t know was Roosevelt’s background in boxing – he proceeded to land a combination that sent the thug crashing against the bar. On February 12th, 1884, a telegram arrived in Albany announcing the birth of his daughter. Hours later came a second telegram. His wife and mother were both severely ill.
He rushed back to New York. Two days later, tragedy struck twice. First, his mother died of typhoid fever. His wife Alice died of Bright’s disease only hours later. He stood by her bedside as she slipped away. Later, he described the moment as the point when “the light went from my life forever.
Chapter 3: The spoilsmen and the streets
In 1889, Roosevelt returned to the political arena as civil service commissioner. The work was unglamorous. So, he made it his mission to wage war against the corrupt patronage system, where politicians sought office only to enrich themselves and their friends – and not to help their constituents. Roosevelt had no patience for such immoral behavior.
With him at the helm, the Commission became a force to be reckoned with. He was known to storm into offices to ensure laws were being enforced. And he refused any leniency towards the corrupt “spoilsmen” who had become wealthy due to any sort of patronage. Roosevelt even used the newspapers to keep his work in the spotlight. He understood, even then, the power of going viral. Then, in 1895, he became president of the police board of New York City.
The force was a cesspool of vice – and he intended to clean it. He allied with the muckraking journalist Jacob Riis, leaving a note at his office that read simply: “I have come to help. ” Together, they launched legendary midnight raids through the shadows of Lower Manhattan. Roosevelt would don a heavy black cloak and a wide-brimmed hat to disguise himself. They would then proceed to terrify patrolmen who they found asleep – or even gossiping with streetwalkers. Things began to escalate when he decided to enforce the Sunday liquor closing laws – a move that enraged the working class, who wanted their beer on their only day off.
It wasn’t long until he was facing down a procession of thirty thousand Germans marching against his policies through the streets of the city. When a voice cried out “Wo ist der Roosevelt? ”, he laughed and shouted back “Hier bin ich,” waving wildly until the crowd, won over by his sheer audacity, cheered him. By 1897, he had moved on. Henry Cabot Lodge lobbied intensely for his appointment as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. President McKinley hesitated, fearing Roosevelt would be a bull in a china shop.
The prediction proved entirely accurate. Roosevelt had been thinking about naval power for years. His first book, published when he was just twenty-three, was a serious study of the War of 1812 at sea. He believed a rich nation which is slothful was an easy prey, and he intended to make sure America would never be caught unprepared. From his new post, he began quietly positioning the fleet. And what better way to test the new American navy than the brewing crisis in Cuba?
Cuba at the time was still ruled by Spain – a European overlord maintaining its foothold in the New World. But relations between colonizer and colonized had broken down completely. Cuban rebels were fighting for independence, and Spain’s crackdowns were becoming more severe. While newspaper titans pounded the drums for war, Roosevelt insisted that Spain governed on what he called “archaic principles intolerable to the conscience of mankind. ” War was coming.
Chapter 4: The crusader unleashed
The fateful day would be February 15th, 1898. The USS Maine, stationed in Havana Harbor, exploded, killing 268 American sailors. Roosevelt was convinced the explosion was no accident. He declared that the blood of the murdered men called for what he termed “the full measure of atonement” against the Spanish.
Ten days later, Roosevelt’s boss, Secretary of the Navy John D. Long took a day off. Roosevelt seized the moment. Acting as Secretary, he sent a brazen cable to Commodore George Dewey, ordering him to prepare for offensive operations in the Philippines against the Spanish Empire. It wasn’t long until President McKinley, backed into a corner, declared war. Roosevelt resigned his post to fight.
The First United States Volunteer Cavalry – the Rough Riders, as they became known – drew a splendid set of men ranging from Ivy League quarterbacks to wild riders and riflemen of the Rockies who possessed hardy qualities of body and mind. At the San Antonio fairgrounds, millionaire recruits from Harvard and Yale mingled with cowboys named Tough Ike and The Dude. Roosevelt was charmed to see them bonding. The embarkation at Tampa was chaos. Roosevelt described the transport ship Yucatan as “a floating Black Hole of Calcutta,” where men spent days cooking under the semitropical sun in their wool uniforms. Finally, they landed at Daiquiri, a small village in southern Cuba.
Horses were thrown overboard to swim for it. When Roosevelt’s horse Rain-in-the-Face drowned, he launched into a series of expletives for the entire regiment to hear. Then, the fateful day arrived. On July 1st, 1898, Roosevelt, mounted on his new horse Texas and wearing a sombrero, ordered the charge up San Juan Hill. He found himself alone ahead of the line as others hesitated. They moved up the hill in a slow movement through the long grass, creeping ever higher until they overran the Spanish blockhouse.
Afterward, in the trenches, he buried his dead friends. Roosevelt later wrote that in victory, he felt he now had something to leave his children, a legacy that would serve, in his words, “as an apology for my having existed. ” Word of his epic victory at San Juan had spread like wildfire. As the smoke cleared over Santiago, the political wheels in New York were already turning, calculating how to handle Roosevelt’s newfound popularity. Political actors hoped they could harness his fame to save a faltering governorship. Little did they know that Roosevelt was a force that could not be tamed.
Chapter 5: A cowboy in the White House
Victory in Cuba was still fresh when talk turned to Roosevelt running for governor. But to get there, he had to deal with Thomas Collier Platt, the powerful boss of New York’s Republicans. Platt could barely hide his resentment for Roosevelt, and his intention to block him from seeking nomination. But the Republican Party was in tough shape – and needed a winner.
The hero of Santiago was untouchable. So, Platt deferred to the judgment of his advisors – Roosevelt was the only man who could be elected to save the party. Once nominated, Roosevelt went storming through the state on a train dubbed the “Roosevelt Special,” accompanied by a contingent of Rough Riders in uniform to draw the crowds. His vigorous campaign worked. The public voted for the war hero. But being governor brought its own troubles.
Roosevelt annoyed the party machine by forcing through a progressive agenda, so Platt began plotting his removal by attempting to nominate him for the vice presidency. Roosevelt feared the office was a figurehead role, but at the convention the delegates erupted in shouts of “We want Teddy! ” Others were less enthusiastic, with one senator remarking that there would only be “one life between this madman and the presidency. ” The McKinley-Roosevelt ticket won a decisive victory. Then, barely six months later, McKinley was shot by a militant anarchist. News reached Roosevelt that McKinley was dying.
It wasn’t long until fate took its turn. Roosevelt took the oath of office, vowing to continue the policy of “peace and honor. ” The White House under President Roosevelt moved fast to confront the unlimited capitalism that was plaguing the nation. He shocked the business world by suing Northern Securities, a massive railroad monopoly. The charge? Antitrust violations.
When the financier J. P. Morgan came to the White House with the hope to strike a backroom deal, Roosevelt replied that that can’t be done. “We don’t want to fix it up,” he said. “We want to stop it. ” Then, with a winter fuel famine looking on, he dragged the owners of the largest mining companies to Washington, threatening to seize the mines to give the people coal.
When the owners refused to accept a labor leader on the arbitration commission, but agreed to “a man of prominence,” Roosevelt appointed a labor leader anyway by simply branding him as “an eminent sociologist. ” The deal was struck before the owners learnt of Roosevelt’s trickery. He even went as far to invite the Black leader Booker T. Washington to dinner, the first Black guest to share a meal with a sitting president.
This sparked outrage across the South – many there equated eating together with intermarriage, leading one furious Southerner to call the president a “blank scoundrel. ” But no matter. In 1904, he was reelected to a second term, declaring “I am no longer a political accident. ” With the domestic front secured, the president turned his attention to a thin strip of land in Central America.
Chapter 6: The world builder
Roosevelt had been dreaming of building a canal in Panama for some time. He saw it as what he called the “indispensable path” to America’s global destiny. By joining the two oceans together, he would expand America’s global footprint. But it was a tall order to say the least.
The French had tried. But the jungle swallowed their workers by the thousands. Yellow fever and malaria moved through the labor camps like a scythe. The machinery rusted in the rain. By 1889 the whole enterprise had collapsed into bankruptcy and scandal, leaving behind a muddy, half-dug trench. Roosevelt wanted it anyway – and he wanted it badly enough to take bold, even questionable, action.
At that point, Panama was just a lowly province of Colombia, the rulers of which opposed the project on the grounds that the financial reward for them was simply too low. So, Roosevelt circumvented their approval entirely, and decided to lend support to Panama’s independence movement. It wasn’t long until the bloodless revolution succeeded, all under the careful watch of American warships. The newspapers howled. His critics called it theft, imperialism, even a betrayal of everything America was meant to stand for. Roosevelt ignored them.
It was time to end the country’s isolation, he declared. With the Spanish defeated, America had shown the world it was a great nation – and great nations need to act the part. Then, in November 1906, he went to see the results of his labor for himself. He chose the rainy season on purpose, when the mud would be at its worst, all for spectacle’s sake. His critics called his trip reckless – but Roosevelt called it necessary. No sitting president had set foot on foreign soil in over a century, they said.
He went anyway. The newspapers back at home published photographs of the president slogging through the mud toward an enormous steam shovel, and then climbing into the operator’s seat. The front pages would show the president in a white suit, completely soaked and filthy, but grinning as he worked the levers. America’s isolation seemed officially over when in 1907, Roosevelt sent the Great White Fleet around the world. Sixteen battleships with pearly white hulls steamed out of Hampton Roads. The impressive sight accomplished its goals.
Public opinion swelled with pride. And it was now clear to possible adversaries that the American navy was not a force to be crossed. The fleet returned in February 1909. Roosevelt was nearly done.
Chapter 7: When a Bull Moose slows down
Roosevelt’s presidency ended on March 4th, 1909. At fifty years old, he was America’s youngest former president. He was anxious to take a break from politics and give William Taft – his anointed successor – space to govern. So, ever the naturalist, he decided to go on an African safari sponsored by the Smithsonian.
Upon his return a year later, Roosevelt found that Taft’s policies had grown increasingly conservative. It wasn’t long until his misgivings spilled out into acrimony. When Taft used the Sherman Anti-Trust Act to sue U. S. Steel for an action that President Roosevelt had explicitly approved, outrage commenced. So, in February 1912, Roosevelt announced his challenge for the Republican nomination.
Even though he won all but one of thirteen state primaries, the party bosses nominated Taft anyway at the convention. Roosevelt denounced them as thieves, and led his delegates out the door as fistfights erupted on the convention floor. He formed a new party – the Progressive Party – to contest the election. Then, in Milwaukee, on October 14th, the anarchist John Flammang Schrank shot Roosevelt in the chest. The bullet passed through a steel glasses case and a fifty-page manuscript folded in half. Roosevelt refused medical care, telling the crowd “it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.
” He continued to speak for ninety minutes before accepting medical attention. The bullet remained lodged in his ribs for the rest of his life. With Roosevelt and Taft dividing the Republican vote, Woodrow Wilson won the presidency. Defeated and needing to conquer depression, the man who had once been that frail little boy sought out what would be his last feat of strength. This would be an expedition to an uncharted area of the Amazon that no outsider had ever navigated. Roosevelt dismissed warnings of danger – after all, he had already lived and enjoyed as much of life as anyone, and was prepared even to die on the trip.
In February 1914, he set off into the jungle. Swarms of bees and termites plagued the party. One man even drowned. But it was when Roosevelt slashed his shin on a sharp rock that things really started to go downhill. He developed a severe bacterial infection. Weeks later, he finally returned to New York, having lost fifty-five pounds and leaning heavily on a cane.
When the Great War came, he raged against the administration’s lack of action. The tragedy struck home when his son Quentin was shot down. Roosevelt and his wife Edith walked into the woods together, his arm around her, to mourn where no one could see them. “We must not weep,” he declared.
But his son’s death took the fight from him. His health continued to deteriorate over the next six months. Then, on January 6th, 1919, he was found dead, his jaw closed tight – and his face perfectly at peace. The Bull Moose, after a life lived to its fullest, had gone to meet his maker.
Final summary
In this Blink to To Rescue the American Spirit by Bret Baier, you’ve learned that Theodore Roosevelt – that frail boy who became a force of nature – lived more in his sixty years than most could in several lifetimes. Born in 1858 to a house divided by the coming Civil War, Roosevelt suffered from severe asthma. However, this didn’t stop him from dedicating himself to building physical strength with obsessive energy. After studying at Harvard, he entered the New York State Assembly at twenty-three.
Tragically, he lost both his wife and mother on the same day. His political career spanned waging war against corrupt politicians, charged up San Juan Hill with his Rough Riders, and then becoming president when McKinley was shot. He sued monopolies, built the Panama Canal, and sent the Great White Fleet around the world. Okay, that’s it for this Blink.
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About the Author
Bret Baier is the chief political anchor for Fox News and the executive editor of Special Report with Bret Baier. He is also the author of the bestselling Three Days in Moscow and To Rescue the Constitution.