We're back with another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Dashinski,
culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show
at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on exit fdr LST.
Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts, and of course to the
premium version of our website as well. Today I am joined by Edward F.
O'Keefe. He is the CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, also
the author of the book we're going to talk about today. It's called The
Loves of Theodore Roosevelt The Women, The Women who Created a President ed.
Thank you for joining us, Hey you, of course, so again,
the title here is The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt, The Women who Created a
President. And this is an approach to Teddy Roosevelt that hasn't really been done
before. Obviously, the women in his life were so important. People have
talked about it many times, but in book form, what made you ed
decide this was the time to tell the story about the women behind Teddy Roosevelt.
Well, Emily, I think that's exactly the right question. This was
the right time to tell this story. I think up until now people have
not really been ready to understand Theodore Roosevelt as anything but the product of his
own will. And The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt really looks at his two wives,
his two sisters, and his mother who have been a part of the
story. They were a part of Edman Morris's trilogy, and in particular The
Loves of Theodore Roosevel, excuse me, the Loves of Theodre Roosevelt, The
Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, and of course David McCullough's great book Mornings on Horseback.
But The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt really takes these figures Bammy, Connie,
Mitty, Alice, and Edith out of the shadows into the limelight for the
first time. Now, before we dive too deep into this particular subject,
maybe on the broader subject, and you could tell us a little bit about
why you have focused so much of your career now on petty Roosevelt drew you
to Roosevelt, and maybe even just tell us a little bit about your career
path, because it's been very interesting. Yeah. Sure, Well, I
think I've done my ten thousand hours on tr Now I'm official I've crossed that
threshold, so I'm welcome exactly exactly. So, I grew up in North
Dakota. And when you grow up in North Dakota, you have your choice
of idols, right, Peggy Lee, Lawrence Welk, Roger Marris. Maybe
contemporary North Dakota's could say Phil Jackson or Check Closterman. And then, of
course the icon of them all is Theodore Roosevelt. In North Dakota, you
get your birth certificate and then you get a story of the Rough Riders and
TR's time in the West in nature, finding the resilience and the fortitude to
move forward after the horrific events that propelled him to live the life of a
cowboy and rancher. And you know, I just I don't know. I've
always I went to Red River High School, the home of the Rough Riders,
So I guess this was ordained and destined. But I've always been fascinated
by Theodore Roosevelt's self made presidency. You know, there were no external events
that you could point to. That old kind of adage, is it,
you know, does the time make the person or does the person make the
time? And I think in Theodore Roosevelt's case, he was a person who
certainly suited his time, but he kicked open the door of the American century.
He really, you know, I was listening to one of your prior
Federalists podcasts, and I love Emily eurphrase hyper modernity, right, because Theodore
Roosevelt in a sense, must have felt hyper modern in his moment. He's
born in eighteen fifty eight. There's no electricity, there's no cars, you
know, and he'll become the first president to find an airplane, to go
in a submarine to travel abroad while in office, I mean, he he
and he faces so much of the same as we are facing in our current
society, you know, this, this wave of immigration, challenging cultural identity,
economic changes in that in his case, of course, moving from an
agrarium to an industrial society. And the role of technology again in that hyper
modernity, the technology disrupting societal interaction, and I can only imagine. And
then of course the US place in the world, right isolation versus whether we'd
be globalists, and tr embodies all of this at the same time. He's
a bit of a rorsch Act test. You know. What you see in
Theodore Roosevelt says more about you than it does about tr because he's really the
only one that I've ever heard, you know, Josh Holly and Elizabeth Warren
site fe Roosevelt as their favorite president. He has this ability to bring people
together while at the same time having bits that appeal to everyone, a cloud
across the political spectrum. So I was just I'm fascinated by him and wanted
to know more about how did he come to be and who were the people
in his life that brought him to this great height of the presidency. That's
just incredible and how timely and relevant Teddy Roosevelt is right now. I mean
it's almost underappreciated. We don't talk about it enough. Probably can you tell
us about the two most important women in Teddy Roosevelt's life. You're gonna make
him choose? Oh boy, Well, I focus on five women in the
book, his mother Midty, his two sisters, his older sister Bammy and
his younger sister Connie, as well as his two wives, Alice and Edith.
I think if you had to really choose two of those five that are
in the Loves of Theodore Roosevelt, you'd have to say that it's Bammy,
his older sister, who I say of Bammy, she is what Robert F.
Kennedy was to John F. Kennedy, this intimate political advisor who at
every step along the way is not only giving political and personal advice, but
knows who's who tr should meet and why. And just an example of that
in the he left his role as the police commissioner in New York and he's
kind of flailing about for what to do next. He hadn't held elected office
in almost a decade. And it is Bamy who says, you know,
you should meet this congressman who's very close with William McKinley. And if you
do have that meeting, I think you ought to. I think you,
honestly you ought to become Assistant Secretary of the Navy. That wasn't Theodore Roosevelt's
idea. That was Bamy's idea. Her home in Washington, d C.
Is known as the Little White House. When McKinley was assassinated, they actually
held the first Roosevelt administration cabinet meetings in her home at seventeen thirty three.
Industry, that's how influential Bamy was. And then I think you have to
say Edith, I mean Edith. Theodore and Edith know one another from the
time that Edith is three years old, so they will know each other for
fifty seven years of Theodore's sixty years on earth. She is the first modern
first lady. She has the first social secretary, Belle Hagner. That becomes
the precedent that every successor will follow to this day. She literally redesigns the
White House to create an executive function and a residential function. What will become
the East and West wings. And that's you know, that's not just architecture.
She understands that you need to project the power of the executive mansion of
the President of the United States and also create a residence in which a family
can live in too. When he ascends to the White House. And she
just said so many different I mean, she reads four to five newspapers a
day. She's the first person to brief him in the mornings, she's the
last person to talk to him at night. Everyone universally says that Edith has
better judgment than Theodore himself will say, whenever I go against Edith's judgment,
I regret it. Okay, So this is one of the things I wanted
to ask you about how aware and when you look at as you're going through
the book, some quotes like that one is one of the most you know,
I think one of the most interesting because it raises this question of how
aware is Theodore Roosevelt that he's being heavily influenced by the women around him.
How aware is he that he's sort of being molded by the women around him.
Is it something that's front and center on his mind? Is it something
he sees as you know, maybe incidental? How does he see it?
I think that's a great question because it's Franklin D. Roosevelt, the future
president, who will observe later that Edith managed tr very cleverly without his being
conscious of it. No slight achievement does anyone will conceivee FDR says, So,
I think you know, in FDR's estimation, Edith was the hidden hand
that was was really moving every decision that tr made, but he wasn't always
conscious of it. Actually, Archibald, but who will serve as an aid
to both make excuse me both to Roosevelt and to tax So he crosses over
both administrations, and he will later write a letter to his sister in which
he observes how you know it was really it was Edith who could soothe the
tempestuous nature of Tr. Tr was very impulsive, and that impulse did not
always serve him well. Edith was the one who would kind of step back,
think about things, look at the larger chess board of the political game
in Washington, and know where and how to make the right moves. So
I think that tr was very consciously aware of the influence of his sisters,
particularly Bammy and Connie. You know, Eleanor Roosevelt would later say that you
went to Bammy, TR's older sister for advice, and you went to Connie,
TR's younger sister for sympathy. So he knew how his sisters would or
operate in his life. And he certainly knew, of course, how his
mother operated in his life. But I think Edith sometimes was very overt in
the influence she had over him, and sometimes was more covert, like FDR
said, doing it without him being entirely conscious of the way. She was
subtly moving him in the right direction. And you know he's right whenever she
whenever he didn't follow her advice, he made mistakes I mean, Edith is
the only person who said to tr before nineteen twelve, put it out of
your mind, Theodore, you will never be president of the United States again.
She was right, I mean it politically, she was right. It
didn't mean that he shouldn't run necessarily, but she was She had assessed the
situation with a cold hearted pragmatism that he couldn't quite see. Okay, this
is going to be a slight tangent archable. Butts you just quoted Day on
the Titanic. Yes, yes, he did. You learned this recently,
and I think that I think that's the same archable does. It's insane.
I'm telling you, I'm eagerly awaiting the adaptation of the Loves of Theodore Roosevelt
because could you imagine a more dramatic if we If we wrote this out and
submitted the screenplay, it would get rejected because the stories are too fanciful.
The key military aid to both William Howard Aft and Theodore Roosevelt crosses over both
administrations. Not only does he know, so, he's the reason he goes.
He's so conflicted about what to do when tr decides to run again,
So Taff comes up with an excuse for But to travel abroad. He says,
I need a message to deliver to the Pope, So he goes to
Europe. He delivers a message to the Pope. He has a message that
he's going to be returning to Taft, and of course his return trip is
on the Titanic. And as soon as Taft hears of the Titanic, he
he is overcome with emotion, knowing full well that there is no way that
Archie but has made his way off. He would he would be the last
person off the Titanic, and indeed he perishes. All right, Today's episode
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that's actually not a bad segue because there's something so symbolic about, you know,
the Gilded Age coming to an end as people maybe even saw it at
the time or eternalized it at the time. In this the excesses of the
Victorian West crashing quite literally into an iceberg, and figures like Taddy Roosevelt,
figures like Taft sort of reckoning with the new world, the new economy that's
been created in the wake of all of this. And some of the history
in this book that I wasn't totally familiar with and I found so interesting was
of women's suffrage and Edith's role in women's suffrage and actually how some of these
big sweeping globalization, economic changes, technological changes are bringing this to the forefront
of politics. Can you talk to us a little bit about people should go
buy the book, but how Edith even you know, you're just we're describing
here as pragmatic. That's part of this. Talk to us a little bit
about how Teddy Roosevelt ends up becoming sort of a champion in this space.
Well. Interestingly, t R's relationship with suffrage and women's rights will begin in
eighteen eighty with his first wife, Alice so. Alice is a Boston Brahmin
progressive. She's a reform minded individual because of the influence of her family.
And Theodore comes into this family after the death of his father, and he's
talking politics, he's talking literature, he's talked in reform with the people who
will become his in laws. And it's really Alice that influences TR's senior thesis
that becomes a treatise on equal rights, and he endorses equal rights and equal
pay for women. He says that women shouldn't necessarily take their husband's name upon
marriage. He says that women should own property, they should be doctors and
lawyers and judges and professional work. So it's I mean, that's eighteen eighty
that's forty years before the passage of the nineteenth Amendment. And then sadly Alice
dies, so that kind of progressive, reform minded overt influence disappears from TR's
life. In eighteen eighty four, Edith is one of the few of the
Roosevelt family who actually endorses suffrage. You know, it was interesting that,
you know, of that level of society, it was believed that one the
male head of household would so carry the family vote. And of course,
if you were that wealthy, what goods the vote I mean, you have
influence over society in so many other profound ways that a vote would seem almost
quaint in terms of its influence over national events. But Edith is pro suffrage.
She's there encouraging Theodore behind the scenes. There are only four states that
have suffrage during his presidency. By the time that tr runs again in nineteen
twelve, with Edith's influence, he'll become the first major party candidate to adopt
suffrage as a part of his party platform. His nomination will be seconded for
the first time by a woman at that convention, and eventually his sister Carinn
will become the first woman to address a major party convention in nineteen twenty after
TR's death. But nonetheless a pretty profound and impactful legacy for the Roosevelt family
on that progression towards women's rights and the right to vote. Yeah, I
was curious because it did seem to me, like, in reading this book,
just reminds me that kind of nobless oblige sense among as you were mentioning,
like the Boston Brahmins, where they're building these coalitions with legitimately with working
class women, immigrant women, all of that. At the same time,
so much of it, not unlike abolition, did really spring forth from people
of means who developed this like very strong sense of social responsibility. And it
seems to me that actually was the culture that Teddy Roosevelt grew up in and
around. And that's where I don't know what you're I'm curious what you think
of this. His his willingness to listen to the women in his life and
to take guidance from the women of his life, that seems to me like
it may have even been unusual for people around him. Oh one, absolutely,
Emily. I think that's you've hit upon one of the themes in the
Loves of Theodore Roosevelt that I found most intriguing. Theodore Roosevelt listened to and
respected women's opinions, and not just in his family. You know, he
was a frequent correspondent with Edith Wharton, you know, core extraordinary writer,
an observer of class in her time. You know, he would he took
an audience with Susan B. Anthony. She didn't go as far as he
as she wanted him to. During his presidency, it was a little late
in coming to the power that he had to push the cause of suffrage when
he was president. But then again, you know, as far as he
did in nineteen twelve and beyond. I think that's that's the key, is
that if you were if you had a if you had an argument, if
you had a perspective, if you had a point of view, t R
was willing to hear it. He's a really interesting example of somebody who you
know, starts in one place in his life and evolves, I mean,
and the arc of his life inevitably bends towards justice. I mean, the
last speech will switch from women's rights to equal rights. The last speech so
TR ever gives in his life is November two, nineteen eighteen, at Carnegie
Hall. W. E. B. Du Bois is on stage. It's
a mixed race audience. He's spoken in front of a lot of mixed race
audiences. Of course. He famously has Booker T. Washington to the White
House, the first black man to dine at the White House with he and
Edith. And in this last speech in nineteen eighteen, tr extols the virtue
of equal rights between black and white. He is saying things that had he
been elected in nineteen twenty, he could have put a sake in the heart
of Jim Crow forty five years before the Civil Rights Act. I mean,
that's how progressive his viewpoint has come over the course of his lifetime. And
of course he didn't always believe that. I mean, Theodore Roosevelt shows an
extraordinary ability to change his mind, to evolve on an issue, and to
not be afraid to say I was wrong about that. And I now feel
differently. You addressed the famous the light has gone out of My life quote,
because how could you not in a book like this. But you know,
I'm sure a lot of Freudian analysts, I'm sure analysts will have a
lot of fun with the fodder in the book about Theodre Roosevelt's relationship with his
mother, and you know, maybe even without getting to Freudian unless you want
to it. But just tell me about that, a little bit about you
know, I mean, it is really it's it's fertile ground, that's for
sure. But if you could tell us a little bit about Theodore Roosevelt's relationship
with his mother and how that culminated in what's now a very famous moment in
his life American history, with the Light has Gone out of My life twin
tragedies is how you describe it in the book, which I thought was lovely.
Could you tell us about that? Sure? So, Midy Bullock Roosevelt
is a she's born in Connecticut that actually lives a majority of her life in
Georgia, and she is her two brothers fight for the Confederacy during the Civil
War. She moves from her home in Roswell, Georgia when she marries the
Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt's father, to New York, and at the outset of
the Civil War, her mother and her sister come join her in New York.
So right there you have three Southern women living in the heart of New
York City, raising two girls and two boys while the father is mostly away.
She forbids many forbids her husband from fighting in the Civil War for the
Union cause, so he doesn't take up arms, but he does work with
President Lincoln to pass an allotment bill, and he'll go around trying to convince
soldiers to send part of their pay back home so they can help with the
families they left behind while they're fighting for the war. So you know,
Theodore Roosevelt and his sisters are really raised by a countra of women, and
Mitti has been completely written off in history, I mean as having absolutely no
effect on him. But Mitti is vivacious. She's got this incredibly strong willed
personality. In fact, her husband, Theodore Roosevelt's father, will will say,
do not become a strong minded woman. Well, she's born a strong
minded woman. I mean she has no choice, right, And she has
these Coi turns of phrase. He is the one who introduces her son to
the idea of nervous Nelly's and the African proverb speaks softly and carry a big
sick You know. Really, his mother is the source of his exuberant personality.
She's the engaging one in the family. In fact, her brother in
law will say, of Midi and Fee, the father and mother. Between
Mindy's liveliness and your solemnity, you make an even pair. Right, opposites
attract so interestingly throughout the freighting part is, you know, throughout his childhood,
Theodore Roosevelt is a sickly child. He's got horribly bad asthma, so
bad that with these racking coughs and fevers that Mitty would often have to massage
his chests until the blood would come out. He has these horrible nightmares in
which he thinks the devil is coming to take his breath away in the middle
of the night, and it's Mitty who is there, mothering him, taking
care of him, being the one who's really you know, it's his father
that will say, Theodore, you have the mind, but you do not
have the body. You must make your body in order for your mind to
go as far as it can. He's the one who embraces muscular Christianity,
the rise of the Ymca, and this idea no bless obleege right to whom
much is given, much is required, and the strenuous athleticism. So in
a way, when Theodore is a teenager, he rejects his mother and really
embraces his father's outlook. And then his father will die when tr is twenty
years old, and that only takes his father from the pedestal that he was
on to the heights of heaven. I mean, he couldn't possibly have looked
upon his father as a stronger example, and that in turn kind of diminishes
his mother's importance. But you're talking, of course about February fourteenth, eighteen
eighty four, this infamous state in history, Theodore is up in Albany.
He has just received word that his wife, Alice has had their first child,
whom they will name Alice. And then he gets a second telegram.
And the second telegram we don't know the contents. All we know is Theodore
Roosevelt's reaction. His face went ashen white, and he ran to the station
in Albany. He caught the train that would have normally taken two and a
half hours. Because of this thick, dense fog descending over New York City,
it took five and a half hours, excruciating. He gets home to
six West fifty seventh Street and his brother Elliot, the future father of Eleanor
Roosevelt, says, there is a curse on this house. Alice is dying
and mother is dying too. So tr runs up to the third floor of
the house. He grasps Alice, his wife, in his arms, until
two thirty in the morning, when the family says, you need to come
down to the second floor, Midi, our mother is dying. He goes
to the second floor that the family gathers around her bedside, and she dies
of typhoid fever eleven hours later. After he runs back upstairs holding Alice in
his arms for the entirety of the night. Alice too dies of a kidney
disease at around two thirty in the afternoon February fourteenth, eighteen eighty four,
puts a large X in his diary and says, the light has gone out
of my life. And you mentioned this is both literal and symbolic. His
wife, Alice has been nicknamed Sunshine. So vibrant is her personality, so
magnetic is her presence, that she is the sunshine of Theodore Roosevelt's life,
and the light has gone out forever? How does he react to And actually,
you make a very interesting point in the aftermath. I think it's like,
right as you're opening the next chapter, how does he react to this?
I'm trying not to use the technical term deficit, but really this deficit
of wisdom and love that suddenly opens up this hole in his life. He
turns to another woman, right, he does? He does first? He
flees first. You know. The one of the common themes here that I
think goes unexplored and other wonderful biographies of tr is that while he was physically
courageous, he was emotionally very distant. When emotional pain approached, his tendency
was to run, you know, and so he did, for good reason,
go to the bad lands of North Dakota, and for the better part
of two years lived the life of a rancher and cowboy, to live what
he'd later called the strenuous life, and to recover in nature. I mean,
nature was always Theodore's healer, the place where he could get back in
touch with this salubrious air and live a life that he had always only read
about in books. But then, as you say, Emily, love is
what brought Theodore out to the bad lands, and love is what brings him
back. Edith is his long lost love. They had suffered a rupturous split
a few years earlier. Only a couple of months after that rupturous slit does
Theodore meet Alice and Mary her. So it seems like Edith might be on
the outs forever. I mean, she may have lost her opportunity to marry
Theodore Roosevelt. But suddenly these twin tragedies remarkably allow Edith to come back into
the picture. And you could not really find two more different women on the
face of the earth than Alice Hathaway Lee and Edith Kurmit Carow, two women
who became Theodore Roosevelt's first and second wives. I like to say that,
you know, Edith was his first love and second wife. They were sort
of almost destined to be together, and the fact that they do come back
together really not only changes the course of their personal lives, but it changes
the course of American history. And this is a big question that I mean,
it's really the big picture of the book. But if you could talk
to us maybe a little bit about how Teddy Roosevelt maybe to find, whether
intentionally otherwise, masculinity and femininity. You know, what did the sort of
ying and yang of masculine and feminine look like to Teddy Roosevelt. Well,
I think it goes back to that idea that was instilled upon him by his
father, and that he rejects his mother in part not an entirely uncommon progression
in childhood into adolescence and adulthood, you know, in that particular time.
It goes back to the idea that, as we talked about right at the
beginning of the podcast, that an agrarian society was shifting to an industrial society.
The wealthiest of this Gilded Age had to find new ways to prove their
manhood right. Manhood was not was not proven by the physical feats of physical
strength any longer it was it was monetary or it was societal rank, which
doesn't necessarily connotake strength. And so this rise of muscular Christianity begins, and
you begin to see even depictions of Jesus Christ seeing beefier, bigger. All
right, this is the beginning of seeing a very muscular Christ and sound mind,
sound body really takes root, and it's fascinating. I explore this relationship
that Theodore has with his college his best friend in college, Henry Davis Maynott,
and Henry Davis Maynutt is a bit of a psychological mirror for TR.
There's this excruciating letter that Henry Davis Maynott writes to a doctor saying, I
have want of being manly, but I don't know how to do it.
I don't know how to accomplish it. And literally the doctor never sees the
letter. It goes unopened, and Henry leaves Harvard and is completely at a
loss, but he's very close with TR. And I think that there's these
psychological mirrors throughout TR's life, like Henry Davis Maynott, like his brother Elliott.
Elliott, the father of Eleanor Roosevelt, will become a severe alcoholic and
die at age thirty four, leaving Ellen and her brother abandoned, orphaned before
they're ten years old. And I think he sees these people in his life
as sort of the way he doesn't want to be. And he accomplishes these
physical feats of strength to sort of project the manliness that he believes he needs
to project in order to be strong in the world. And obviously this becomes
a big part of his political identity. You know, he's from the East,
but his identity in politics will also include the West. He has a
northern father and a Southern mother. I mean, in a way, he
is the quintessentially perfect American to kick open the twentieth century because he embodies everything
that the United States was and everything that the United States could be. And
did he enforce any sort of sexual strictures on the women in his life?
Did he ever, you know, enforce the role of the woman even you
know, I guess it's technically not that long ago, but long long enough
ago, several generations ago. When we're talking about the opening of the twenty
first century of the twentieth century, I should say, so does he do
any of that? Is he is he at all pushing you with the woman
in his life, or he's not very He's not very happy when his older
sister Bammy decides to get engaged at forty years old and have a child at
forty two, because she was marrying a man that they knew very little about
and he had been divorce and so she thought, you know, he thought
this was scandalous and writes these letters that you know, seem like the world
could potentially fall in, that you are ruining your reputation and taking this enormous
risk, and Bammy is sort of like, let's take it easy here,
Theodore. I don't think it's quite that bad. What was really going on,
of course, is that if Bammy was marrying someone anyone, that she
wouldn't pay as much attention to him. You know, you know, I
think he's he's definitely It's interesting Emily, after the death of his mother and
wife on the same day in the same house, he begins to talk about
the protection of women with an emotional intensity that he had not had before,
and he says a lot of things about motherhood and the duty of motherhood,
and you know, it's got he's kind of got this interesting diametric viewpoint.
If you decide to be a mother, there is the there's no more there
is no other more noble path in the world than being a mother. But
if you decide not to be, then you need to go full tilt into
your career, and you deserve equal access to every single right that you possibly
could right. So they kind of seem almost diametrically opposite, but in a
strange way. I think in his mind again, with that experience of losing
his mother and losing his wife, there was no more brave and noble calling
than motherhood because you could quite literally die in the service of bringing new generations
into the world. But if that wasn't the choice you made, he would
respect it and say, now you need to go full tilt into a professional
career. You know, he's prepare for a world of contradictions when it comes
to Theodore Roosevelt. They you just have to get rid of for that.
But even just thinking of like the North South dichotomy in his own upbringing,
and as you said that, it's sort of fascinating to think how those different
cultures sort of blended in one person and maybe translated into different perspectives or that
diametrical opposition as you mentioned, ed, I think he can hold to,
you know, two things to be true at the same time in the mind
of Theodore Roosevelt, right, you could be I think this is why he
evolved on issues like race, or why he saw issues. I mean,
he can endorse suffrage in eighteen eighty and yet he can say that the most
noble pursuit is of womanhood is motherhood in the nineteen hundreds. I mean he
had two different opposing outlooks because he was constantly listening to differing viewpoints. I
mean, I think that's the interest, you know, that's kind of he's
That's why I think he's a bit of that Rorschach test, because he's ingesting
information. If you come to him with facts, if you come to him
with a sound argument, he's going to hear you out and not immediately.
He might not always agree, you know, it doesn't mean he's going to
follow what you say. I mean, we talked about his relationship in the
Gilded Age with you know, some of these titans and tycoons of industry,
JP Morgan is a fascinating relationship when he comes to power. It's said that
JP Morgan said, I fear Theodore Roosevelt because I don't know what he'll do,
and Theodore Roosevelt shot back, he fears me because he knows exactly what
I'll do. I mean. He was a trader to his class in many
ways. Right there were these wealthy New Yorkers and again titans of industry and
economy that were sort of looking at him as what are you doing? I
mean, why are you regulate? What is? What are these regulations that
you're putting in place? I mean the Food and Drug Act, the antitrust
suits, the idea of you know, again, equal pay for equal work,
or even a work day, I mean having established work hours and work
safety measures. These were things that got a lot of pushback in their time,
and tr saw them as as issues of fundamental fairness. I think if
you had to boil his philosophy down to one word, it would be fair.
You know, he wanted to see an even playing field, and sometimes
he felt like he needed to put his thumb on the scale of one side
or the other in order to even it out. My last question is a
technical one, but I think it's relevant because I think one of the big
challenges in history studying men's relationship, very important men's relationship with women is sometimes
it seems like researchers historians will have a really hard time coming up with a
commensurate amount of information about the women. But one thing in this book,
just the volume of letters in particular, I mean letters go and flying back
and forth all of the time. Can you doctor says a little bit about
you know how maybe because of the time period and because they were relatively wealthy,
affluent, it was was it easier to put some of the pieces together?
Here? What was it like actually having a really big, important man
and then the women in his life, what was it like sort of put
piecing together their roles? Just from the perspective of being a historian, Well,
the challenge was that each of these five women either a didn't know that
they were communicating with a great historical figure, right like his mother obviously died
in eighteen eighty four, long before he was President of the United States.
Much as she loved him, I don't think that she could have necessarily predicted
that her son was going to be President of the United States, as all
mothers obviously expect their sons or daughters to be. And b they didn't want
the world to know that Theodore Roosevelt was anything but the product of his own
will. So in several cases, particularly Bammy and Edith, they did everything
they could to obscure their role. And that makes it hard for the historian
to knit this story together. You have a lot of Theodore Roosevelt's letters going
to them, you don't have as much of what they said back. And
you know, Edith was a historian's nightmare. I mean, as much as
I love her and feel like she had such an incredible role, you know,
she burned a lot of the correspondents that she sent to tr we don't
know as much about their interior emotional life because she had seen people like Robert
Browning, the poet, pass away and all of the letters come out between
you know, Elizabeth and Robert Browning, and thought, that's not going to
happen to me. We're going to make sure these are gone. And her
children actually struggled for many years about what to do, since they knew the
express wishes of Edith were to not have some of these letters revealed. So
slowly, but surely the letters have come out. I mean during unbelievably,
during the research and writing of the Loves of Theodore Roosevelt, there eleven letters
that had been locked in a safe since nineteen fifty four, and just by
sheer coincidence and happenstance, Greg Wynn, the president of the Theodore Roosevelt Association,
opened that safe, found those letters, and they came to light for
the first time. It's Harvard called those eleven letters the single greatest discovery since
Roosevelt's death in nineteen nineteen. So it just tells you that, you know,
the longer you wait, I mean what I think it's longer you wait
that the more history reveals itself. And I feel like sometimes it's just a
matter of history really is whatever view that generation or that moment of that historian
is taking on those events. You know, the Loves of Theodore Roosevelt have
always been there in the story. You know, Midy, Bammy, Connie,
Alison, Edith have always been characters surrounding Theodore Roosevelt. But now feels
like the first time we can take a look at them and fully appreciate their
role. Because it doesn't diminish Theodore Roosevelt for us to say there were others
that helped him. We all have brothers, sisters, wives, cousins,
colleagues, friends who pick us up and push us forward if we're fortunate,
you know when we're down, and that doesn't take away from the myth that
has been and lore that has built up around tr So, you know,
just from a technical standpoint, I think these letters come to view over time
because one, of course they're not really the central historical figure, and two
people in multiple generations down become more comfortable with the idea of saying, wait,
if it's known that he had doubt, or that he made the wrong
decision, or that he listened to somebody outside of his own mind, that
doesn't mean he's any les that's great than he was. In fact, I
think it makes the story only more intriguing to know the context in which those
decisions were made. No hard to argue with that. I'm so glad I
asked that last question because your answer I think that I think that was one
of the most interesting things that you said in this entire conversation, and so
I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for giving us that answer,
and thank you a reminder again. So the book is called Theodore, Well,
let me make sure I have it pulled up in front of me.
The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt, the women who create created a president, and
it's if it's a fascinating book, it's really worth your time. I recommend
it. Edward O'Keefe dot com, right, ed to get all the information
about the work that you're doing about this particular book. Everything's right there,
Edward F. O'keef dot com. My mother would want monum me make sure
get that middle initial in there Okee dot com. Great, okay, I'm
glad I asked that too. And you just if the Chuck Klosterman Presidential Library
ever opens up in North Dakota, make sure you let us know. I
will check if you're out there. We know you're from North Dakota. If
you want to be a part of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library effort, just
give me a call. I forgot you guys could claim Chuck Closterman. Yeah,
exactly, we've got it all. We've got it going on. We
got to going on in North Dakota. Tr and Chuck Closterman. It's a
wide array, Edward F. O'Keefe dot com, The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt,
the women who created a President Edward O'Keefe, thank you so much for
joining us. Good to be with you, Emilin appreciate it again, So
Edward F. O'Keefe dot com. That's going to be in the description of
the episode. I'm Emily Dashenski, culture editor here at The Federalist. We'll
be back soon with more. Until then, be lovers of freedom and anxious
for the Frank