Theodore Roosevelt: Youngest U.S. President & Nobel Peace Prize Winner | Mini Bio | BIO

Theodore Roosevelt was the 26th and youngest president of the United States. He forever changed what it meant to be president. Theodore Roosevelt was the first truly modern American president. He expanded the power of the presidency dramatically. He used executive orders and presidential proclamations in ways that had never been done before. Theodore Roosevelt Jr. was born on October 27, 1858 in New York City to an affluent family. As a youth, he was homeschooled due to chronic illness, but compensated through strenuous exercise. He graduated from Harvard in 1880, studied at Columbia Law School, and married Alice Lee. Theodore Roosevelt dropped out of law school and entered politics, joining the New York Assembly, but soon thereafter lost his mother and his wife on the same day. Utterly devastated, Roosevelt left his young daughter with his sister and left for the badlands of North Dakota to start anew. In 1886, Roosevelt returned to New York and unsuccessfully ran for mayor. During this time, he married his second wife, Edith Kermit Carrow, with whom he had five children. In 1897, he was appointed U.S. Navy Assistant Secretary under President William McKinley. In 1898, at the start of the Spanish-American War, Roosevelt resigned his position and formed and equipped a cavalry unit known as the Rough Riders. Roosevelt led the unit in Cuba and gained fame for his attack up Kettle Hill during the Battle of San Juan Hill. Returning home a national war hero, Roosevelt was elected Governor of New York in 1898 and in 1900 became Vice President of the United States under President McKinley, whose assassination less than a year later ushered Roosevelt into the presidency. Theodore Roosevelt had a domestic policy proposal known as the Square Deal. He wanted to offer consumer protections. He wanted to protect the middle class. He was the first president to use the power of the Sherman Antitrust Act to break up monopolies. In 1904, Roosevelt was elected president in his own right. He beefed up the U.S. Navy, completed the Panama Canal, and received the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the end of the Russo-Japanese War in 1906. President Roosevelt announced the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, that the United States could intervene in the affairs of Central and South American countries. Roosevelt would often say that the government needed to, what he called, carry a big stick, which meant the threat of force in order to make sure that things worked well in terms of foreign policy. He was always in motion, always doing something. He had tremendous energy. He is the first president to be known for bringing his children into the White House and interrupting affairs, playing with children. Teddy Roosevelt was one of the founders of the modern environmental movement. Because of him, something like 200 million acres of land is still wilderness today. Roosevelt left office in 1909 and went on safari in Africa for two years. Upon his return, unhappy with President Taft, the man he had groomed for the office, Roosevelt ran against him in 1912, forming a third political party to do so. The popular election was close, but he lost. Following his departure from politics, Theodore Roosevelt wrote books, traveled the world, and when World War I broke out, offered to raise a division to go to Europe and was turned down by President Wilson. Theodore Roosevelt died in his sleep on January 6, 1919, at his Long Island estate, Sagamore Hill. He was 60 years old. Theodore Roosevelt and the course that he set for the country helped catapult the nation to the forefront of the great powers of the world.