Everything that was worth while was of interest to him and everything that he undertook to do was done whole-heartedly and thus made its contribution to his own development. He was an officer in the militia, and learned lessons which became, years afterward, valuable to him as a colonel in the Spanish-American war and later as commander-in-chief of the army by virtue of the Presidential office.
Meanwhile his first literary undertaking was the history of the naval war of 1812, which appeared in 1882, and which will always remain a vital and standard account of our last war with Great Britain, especially from the standpoint of naval strategy and actual operations. Whether taking part himself in the current life of his country and in the making of its history, or whether studying or writing about the part that others have taken in the development of the nation, there has been on Mr. Roosevelt’s part always a singleness of purpose and a harmony of effort. Thus, when he wrote about the War of 1812, as when in later years he wrote the graphic yet accurate and well-poised studies of those Western movements, military and civil, that created the Mississippi Valley (comprised in the series of volumes entitled The Winning of the West), there was on his part just as much a sense of dealing with realities as when in 1899 he wrote out the story of the part played by his regiment of Rough Riders in the Spanish-American war of the year before. This single work, on The Winning of the West, in the opinion of the authorities, justified the honorary degree conferred upon Colonel Roosevelt by the University of Norway on May 6, 1910.
The circumstances which took him to the West in 1884 to become for some years a cattle ranchman, a resident of the great plains, and an exponent of hunting and frontier life, involved in no manner an interruption of the career upon which he had made so propitious an entrance. On the contrary, this was the best possible step that could have been taken for the rounding out and development of the career of a man destined, either in letters or in action, to spend his life in dealing with American affairs from a broad standpoint.
Many of the most marked traits of the American people have been evolved through the process of pioneering. For three centuries our people have been engaged in subduing a continent that they had found a pathless wilderness. No man who has lacked contact with some concrete phases of our pioneering life can ever wholly enter into the spirit of the nation’s historical development, or perfectly understand the inherited qualities of our present day citizenship. Mr. Roosevelt’s Western life supplied that needful element of understanding, while it gave him physical hardihood and a continental breadth of view. It gave him, furthermore, that traditional American readiness with a horse and a gun, and that adaptability to the free life of field and of woods which is the heritage of the average young American, and which made the greater part of the Northern and Southern armies in the Civil War so unequaled, for effectiveness, in all military history.
Through these years of practical life in the West Mr. Roosevelt never lost the studious and literary habit, nor did he lose any of his zest for the public affairs of the country. In due time he returned to the East, took an active part in New York politics again, and was nominated for Mayor. Then he went to Washington, where for a number of years he served as Chairman of the Board of Civil Service Commissioners and became an expert in the field of national administration. After that came his two years as President of the Police Commissioners of New York City—a truly strenuous period that tested every quality of his mind and character. The navy had been at low ebb when Mr. Roosevelt in 1882 wrote his Naval War of 1812, and that book fairly contributed toward the revival of interest which soon set on foot the movement for the creation of our modern fleet. The author of that book had ever afterward been regarded both at home and abroad as an expert student of naval history and of sea power, and he had retained an enthusiastic interest in the whole subject. He was well fitted, therefore, for the post of Assistant Secretary of the Navy, to which President McKinley appointed him at the very time when, more clearly than most others, he foresaw the probability of a war with Spain.
He threw his whole intense energy into the work of fitting our navy for such a test, devoting himself especially to the questions of readiness and efficiency in practical detail. And then came the outbreak of war. With the feeling that he was no longer needed in the naval department, and that it was his duty to respond to the call for volunteer soldiers, he entered the army. The history of that service he has himself told in a fascinating way in the volume entitled The Rough Riders, included in this edition of his works.
The war being ended, he returned to his own State of New York at a moment when his party was casting about for a candidate for Governor. The outlook was not propitious; but Mr. Roosevelt’s recent career had given him a great personal popularity, and he was accordingly nominated and elected. Great questions of administration are always pending in the State of New York, and there are few governmental offices in any country better adapted to train the incumbent for the tasks of practical statesmanship. Mr. Roosevelt took up the work of the Governorship with characteristic industry, and with results that were successful and valuable in many directions. So well had he satisfied the expectations of his party and of the State that his renomination as Governor was assured; and the whole country had its attention fixed upon him as the probable nominee of his party for the Presidency in the year 1904.
A variety of circumstances, however, most of them unexpected and some of them dramatic, led to an overwhelming demand by the Republican National Convention at Philadelphia in 1900 that he forego his prospect of a second term as Governor of New York in order to take the nomination for the Vice-Presidency on the ticket with Mr. McKinley. He was put forward by his party in that summer of 1900 as its most effective campaigner. But it has not been thought by him desirable that any of the speeches made in a hotly contested Presidential electoral campaign should be included in a collection of his public addresses. The tragic death of President McKinley, in September, 1901, occurred only six months after his entrance upon a second term, and thus it happened that Mr. Roosevelt had only a short time to serve in the office of Vice-President.
So remarkable and so rapid a succession of valuable public experiences, all of a kind to give training for the duties of the Presidency, is probably unparalleled in our history, unless in the case of his successor, President Taft. Mr. Roosevelt had been the chief Civil Service Commissioner of this great nation, the head of the police administration of our metropolis, the active official of the naval department, the most energetic volunteer officer in the Spanish-American war, the Governor of New York, and the Vice-President of the United States. The man who had succeeded brilliantly in all these positions, and who had treated every one of them in turn as if it furnished the one great opportunity for rendering public service, could but bring to the Presidency an accumulated knowledge and experience that must make itself felt in every part of the work of that supreme office.
It is this wide range of experience and knowledge that has given Mr. Roosevelt the easy mastery of many subjects exhibited in the addresses and public papers that make up these volumes. Further, it is these speeches and messages, far more than anything else contained in his writings, that show him in his capacity as a practical statesman. They afford the unconscious but inevitable expression of the man in his relation to public affairs.