THEODORE ROOSEVELT: AFTER THE WHITE

THEODORE ROOSEVELT: AFTER THE WHITE HOUSE
As the 1908 election approached, Roosevelt prepared grudgingly to fulfill the campaign pledge he had made in 1904 not to seek another term, and threw his support behind Secretary of War William Howard Taft. Immediately after leaving office in early 1909, Roosevelt left for a 10-month African safari and a tour of Europe, where he enjoyed international acclaim. Upon his return, Roosevelt found that President Taft had failed to follow through on the promised program of progressive reforms, instead siding with the more conservative wing of the Republican Party. Incensed, Roosevelt campaigned against Taft for the Republican nomination in 1912; when that effort failed, he and his supporters bolted to form the Progressive Party, popularly known as the Bull Moose Party. (Roosevelt had once referred to himself in a letter as being “as strong as a bull moose.”)

While campaigning in Milwaukee, Roosevelt was shot in the chest by a fanatic, but soon recovered. With the Republican Party split, Democrat Woodrow Wilson took the White House, winning 435 electoral votes to Roosevelt’s 88 (Taft received only eight). Despite the loss, Roosevelt’s run marked the most successful third-party effort in American history, and many of Wilson’s progressive reforms over the next eight years would echo Roosevelt’s 1912 platform. Roosevelt was an early advocate of American entry into World War I, which broke out in Europe in 1914, and strongly criticized Wilson’s early policy of neutrality. Once the United States entered the war in 1917, all four of Roosevelt’s sons volunteered to fight; his beloved youngest son, Quentin, was shot down and killed while flying a mission over Germany. Politically and physically active until the end, Roosevelt died in his sleep on January 6, 1919, at his family home in Oyster Bay, New York, at the age of 60.