The successive moments in his rapid rise are generally known. Roosevelt was born in New York in 1858, his father being a prosperous merchant and well-known philanthropist, and a descendant of an old Knickerbocker family. The son was prepared for college and went to Harvard, where he made a special study of history and political economy. After that he travelled in Europe, and when he was still only twenty-four years old, he plunged into politics. He soon obtained a Republican seat in the state legislature of New York, and there commenced his tireless fight for reform in municipal and state administration. In 1889 President Harrison appointed him Commissioner of the Civil Service, but he resigned this position in 1895 in order to become Chief of Police in New York. Only two years later he was once more called from municipal to national duties. He was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy. All this time his administrative duties did not interrupt his literary, historical, and scientific work. He had begun his career as an author with his studies in the history of the navy and his admirable biographies of American statesmen. When he was thirty years old he wrote the first part of his great work, “The Winning of the West,” and often between the publication of his scientific works he published lesser books, describing his adventures as huntsman in the primeval wilderness, and later on volumes in which his social and political essays were collected.
Then the Spanish War arose and the Assistant Secretary could not bear to sit at his desk while others were moving to the field of battle. He gathered about him a volunteer regiment of cavalry, in which the dare-devil cow-punchers of the prairie rode side by side with the adventurous scions of the most distinguished families in Boston and New York. Roosevelt’s friend, Wood, of the regular army, became Colonel in this soon-famous regiment, and Roosevelt himself Lieutenant-Colonel. A few days after they had successfully stormed the hill at San Juan, Wood became General and Roosevelt Colonel.
His native State of New York received him on his home-coming with general rejoicing, and he found himself a few months later Governor of the State. At Albany he showed tremendous energy, put through popular reforms, and fought against the encroachments of the industrial corporations. It had been his personal wish to be Governor for a second year, but this was denied him by the admirable doings of his Eastern enemies and Western admirers at the national convention of June, 1900, held in Pennsylvania, where he was forced to become candidate for the position of Vice-President. On the 14th of September, 1901, in Buffalo, he took the Presidential oath of office.
