Andrew Jackson once boldly remarked that “One man with courage makes a majority.”
If there is one man who personified those words, it is Theodore Roosevelt.
Born with a boisterous mind but frail body, “Teedie”, as he was then called, struggled mightily with his health. He wrote in his autobiography of one night when asthma consumed his lungs, making it nearly impossible for him to breathe. “One of my memories is of my father walking up and down the room with me in his arms at night when I was a very small person, and of sitting up in bed gasping, with my father and mother trying to help me.”
When Teddie turned twelve his father discarded his nickname and confidently urged him to take matters into his own hands “THEODORE, you have the mind but you have not the body, and without the help of the body the mind cannot go as far as it should. You must make your body. It is hard drudgery to make one’s body, but I know you will do it.
Not long thereafter, his weakness was exposed yet again, not by loving father, by a few boys his own age.
Theodore writes, “Having an attack of asthma, I was sent off by myself to Moosehead Lake. On the stage-coach ride thither, I encountered a couple of other boys who were about my own age, but very much more competent and also much mischievous … They found that I was a foreordained and predestined victim, and industriously proceeded to make life miserable for me. The worst feature was that when I finally tried to fight them I discovered that either one singly could not only handle me with easy contempt, but handle me so as not to hurt me much and yet prevent my doing any damage whatever in return.”
It was in this moment that he vowed to himself to be a member of “the fellowship of the doers.” He would learn both to receive and give out punishment so this humiliating episode would never plague him again.“Accordingly, with my father’s hearty approval, I started to learn to box.”
Roosevelt would grow up and develop the admirable habit of turning every heartache or setback into a positive. After the agonizing death of both his wife Alice and his mother in the span of but a few hours, he ventured westward to further strengthen his body and mind.
William Roscoe Thayer, who had not seen him for several years, was astonished “to find him with the neck of a Titan and with broad shoulders and stalwart chest.” Thayer prophesied that this magnificent specimen of manhood would have to spend the rest of his life struggling to reconcile the conflicting demands of a powerful mind and an equally powerful body.
But it was Roosevelt’s robust moral compass that fortified his courage. When he believed he held the moral high ground there was nothing short of death that could stop him from righting a wrong.
Roosevelt hated bullies. By happenstance, he ran into one in Nolan’s Hotel in Mingusville, North Dakota. He recounts the encounter in his memoirs…
“I was out after lost horses … It was late in the evening when I reached the place.
I heard one or two shots in the bar-room as I came up, and I disliked going in. But
there was nowhere else to go, and it was a cold night. Inside the room were several men, who, including the bartender, were wearing the kind of smile worn by men who are making believe to like what they don’t like. A shabby individual in a broad hat with a cocked gun in each hand was walking up and down the floor talking with strident profanity. He had evidently been shooting at the clock, which had two or three holes in its face.
… As soon as he saw me he hailed me as “Four Eyes”, in reference to my spectacles, and said, “Four Eyes is going to treat.” I joined in the laugh and got behind the stove and sat down, thinking to escape notice. He followed me, however, and though I tried to pass it off as a jest this merely made him more offensive, and he stood leaning over me, a gun in each hand, using very foul language … In response to his reiterated command that I should set up the drinks, I said, “Well, if I’ve got to, I’ve got to,” and rose, looking past him.
As I rose, I struck quick and hard with my right just to one side of the point of
his jaw, hitting with my left as I straightened out, and then again with my right.
He fired the guns, but I do not know whether this was merely a convulsive action of his hands, or whether he was trying to shoot at me. When he went down he struck the corner of the bar with his head … if he had moved I was about to drop on my knees; but he was senseless. I took away his guns, and the other people in the room, who were now loud in their denunciation of him, hustled him out and put him in the shed.
The chastened bully was heard to have hurriedly left town the next morning.
Roosevelts other feats of courage are legion. The charge up San Juan Hill, for which he would posthumously be awarded the Medal of Honor and being shot in the chest while giving a campaign speech. He continued the speech and went to the hospital after he finished. While president, he dined with Booker T. Washington, which outraged a significant portion of the country. Despite the vitriol, he never backed down. With courage and conviction he undertook to bring about the end of The Russo-Japanese War, for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize.
He also bequeathed to his children his indomitable courage. His son Archie served in WWI with distinction as an officer and was awarded numerous citations for bravery and courage under fire. Roosevelt’s youngest son, Quentin, also served in WWI as a combat pilot. He took on three enemy fighters and was killed near the French Village of Chamery. He remains the only child of a U.S. President to die in combat. Theodore’s namesake and son General Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. was the highest ranking officer to storm the beaches at Normandy. No less than General George Patton called him the “one of the bravest men I ever knew.” Like his father, he was awarded the Medal of Honor.
Even Teddy Roosevelt’s legendary courage had its limits. When asked about his precocious nineteen-year-old daughter Alice, whose public exploits were known the world over, the great man surrendered, “I can do one of two things. I can be President of the United States or I can control Alice Roosevelt.I cannot possibly do both.”
Enjoy your Teddy Roosevelt Cigar! Tomorrow’s virtue is HOPE.
God Bless You All.
