During Cattle Drives, He Worked Right Along Beside the Cowboys

Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt was small and weak when he was a boy. His eyesight was bad, and he suffered from asthma. With the help of his father, he was able to overcome his weakness. He lifted weights and practiced gymnastics every day. He also rode horseback, swam, hiked, and studied wrestling, boxing and judo.
The hard work paid off. He overcame his asthma and became well and strong. During the time when he was ill, he had to spend a lot of time in bed. He loved to read, and continued to love reading all his life.
Roosevelt liked a challenge. He left his home in New York and went to North Dakota to become a rancher. He read everything he could about ranching, and hired people who could teach him about cattle.
He didn't let anything stand in the way of duty. Once when he was running for president, someone shot him in the chest. He insisted on giving his speech before he had his wound treated. He said, "I have a message to deliver, and I will deliver it as long as there is life in my body."
He only slept 4 or 5 hours a night. He would sit up and read or work while his family slept.

He was a military man. His motto was, "Speak softly and carry a big stick." Once in a battle in the Spanish-American war, he led his cavalry soldiers * (called Rough Riders) straight up San Juan Hill, even though he feared that he or his soldiers might be wounded.

He was also very concerned about America's natural resources; the land, forests, and rivers. He agreed to protect 150 million acres of wilderness land.

During cattle drives, he worked right along beside the cowboys.

He went into politics because he decided he needed to serve the public. He was honest, and expected others to be honest, also.

He served as the 26th president of the United States from 1901 to 1909. He helped to bring about the construction of the Panama Canal.

Alfred Thayer Mahan

Alfred Thayer Mahan was born in West Point, New York, in 1840, educated at the U.S. Naval Academy and served as a Union naval officer during the Civil War. He was a lecturer at the Newport War College, where he prepared ideas that would later appear in his highly influential writings. Mahan served twice as president of the college, 1886 to 1889 and 1892 to 1893.

The Influence of Sea Power upon History appeared in 1890 and The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire in 1892. These works made Alfred Thayer Mahan one of the leading spokesmen for the age of imperialism. He downplayed the philanthropic side of overseas involvement and concentrated on harsh political realities. According to his analysis of history, the great powers were those that maintained strong navies and merchant marines. He urged the United States forward in its naval building programs.

Alfred Thayer Mahan also argued that modern navies needed repair and coaling stations. Those facilities would not be dependable if controlled by other nations. This reasoning inferred a rationale for American acquisition of port facilities throughout the world.

Alfred Thayer Mahan wrote at the time of a great international arms race. He exerted a major impact on Theodore Roosevelt, as well as upon leaders in Britain, Japan and Germany.

Josiah Strong

Josiah Strong (1847-1916) was an American Protestant clergyman, missionary leader and author. He was a leader of the Third Great Awakening and a founder of the Social Gospel movement that sought to apply Protestant religious principles to solve the social ills brought on by industrialization, urbanization and immigration. He served as General Secretary (1886-1898) of the Evangelical Alliance for the United States, a coalition of Protestant missionary groups. After being forced out he set up his own group, the League for Social Service (1898-1916), and edited its magazine The Gospel of the Kingdom.

His most well-known and influential work was Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis (1885), intended to promote domestic missionary activity in the American West. Historians suggest it may have encouraged support for imperialistic American foreign policies among American Protestants. He pleaded as well for more missionary work in the nation's cities, and for reconciliation to end racial conflict. He was one of the first to warn that Protestants (most of whom lived in rural areas or small towns) were ignoring the problems of the cities and the working classes.

He believed that all races could be improved and uplifted and thereby brought to Christ. In the "Possible Future" portion of Our Country, Strong argued that the superior Anglo-Saxon race (that is, the British and American peoples) had a responsibility to "civilize and Christianize" the world. The "Crisis" portion of the text described the grave "perils" that America faced – Mormonism, Socialism, intemperance, excessive wealth, Popery (the Roman Catholic Church), boss-ridden large cities, and unassimilated immigrants. Conservative Protestants rejected his Social Gospel and argued that missionaries should spend their time preaching the Gospel; they allowed for charitable activity, but argued it did not actually save souls.

William McKinley

McKinley served from 1861 until 1865 in the Twenty-third Ohio Volunteer Infantry. He saw action at Antietam where he was promoted to second lieutenant for valor. He eventually rose the level of brevet major. After the war he began practicing law. In 1887 he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. He served until 1883 and again from 1885-91. In 1892, he was elected to be Governor of Ohio where he served until he became president.

During McKinley's time in office, Hawaii was annexed. This would be the first step towards statehood for the island territory. In 1898, the Spanish-American War began with the Maine incident. On February 15, the U.S. battleship Maine which was stationed in Havana harbor in Cuba exploded and sank. 266 of the crew were killed. The cause of the explosion is not known to this day. However, the press led by newspapers such as that published by William Randolph Hearst wrote as though Spanish mines had destroyed the ship. "Remember the Maine!" became the rallying cry.

On April 25, 1898, war was declared against Spain. Commodore George Dewey destroyed Spains' Pacific fleet while Admiral William Sampson destroyed the Atlantic fleet. U.S. troops then captured Manila and took possession of the Philippines. In Cuba, Santiago was captured. The U.S. also captured Puerto Rico before Spain asked for peace. On December 10, 1898, the Paris Peace Treaty was created which had Spain give up its claim to Cuba and give Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippine Islands in exchange for $20 million.

In 1899, Secretary of State John Hay created the Open Door policy where the U.S. asked for China to make it so that all nations would be able to trade equally in China. However, in June 1900 the Boxer Rebellion occurred in China which targetted Western missionaries and foreign communities. The Americans joined forces with Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and Japan to stop the rebellion.

One final important act during McKinley's time in office was the Godl Standard Act where by the U.S. was officially placed on the gold standard.

McKinley was shot two times by anarchist Leon Czolgosz while the president was visiting the Pan-American Exhibit in Buffalo, New York on September 6, 1901. He died on September 14, 1901. Czolgosz stated that he shot McKinley because he was an enemy of working people. He was convicted of the murder and electrocuted on October 29, 1901.

Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorn Clemens, otherwise known as Mark Twain, was born in Florida, Missouri in 1835. He spent most of his boyhood years in Hannibal, Missouri, a port on the Mississippi River which later became the setting for some of his most famous stories.

In 1862 Clemens became a reporter on the Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City, Nevada after giving up on silver mining. The following year, he began using the pen name, "Mark Twain" which was a phrase that he picked up off the Mississippi River meaning “two fathoms deep.” Twain’s books were often influenced by his own personal travels and experiences. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer delivers us to his childhood town on the Mississippi. Readers travel with him on the Mississippi River in Life on the Mississippi (1883) as Clemens relives his life as a pilot when he returns to the river ten years later and discovers the changes that occurred while he was away. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, written in 1884, displayed the cruelty and hypocrisy of people and their ideas from the eyes of a young boy helping a runaway slave get to freedom.

At beginning of the Spanish-American War, Twain was residing in Europe and for the most part was in support of the conflict with Spain and the Philippines. The Treaty of Paris, which gave control of Cuba, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines to the U.S. quickly changed his opinion on the matter. Twain was disgusted by the fact that a war which had been meant to give freedom was really only a pretext for further expansion for the U.S.

Twain’s return to the United States in 1900 was widely publicized, as were his strong views on imperialism. Soon after he joined the Anti-Imperialist League. After sending his condemnation of imperialism, “A Salutation Speech From the Nineteenth Century to the Twentieth” to both the League and the New York Herald, Twain was asked to take the position as vice-president of the League. Although he declined to work on customary tasks he would continue to write and speak in support of anti-imperialism.

Mark Twain strongly believed that the U.S. could not be an empire and a republic at the same time. He condemned the racism against the Filipinos and argued that the Filipinos were perfectly able to govern themselves. Because the Spanish concentration camps in Cuba had given the U.S. extra incentive to support Cuban freedom, Twain especially spoke out against similar U.S. camps in the Philippines.

In 1901, Twain published “To the Person Sitting in Darkness” which criticized war in the Philippines and the missionary activities in China following the Boxer Rebellion. This was to become the League’s most popular publication.