On 3 September 1901, before a strenuous day of shaking a thousand hands and reviewing Minnesota National Guard troops, Vice President Theodore Roosevelt formally opened the annual Minnesota State Fair in Minneapolis with his rousing “National Duties” speech. While “laughter and applause mingled throughout his address in equal proportions,” both the public and the press seemed to miss its significance.1
Toward the middle of his speech, Roosevelt famously stated, “Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.”2 But neither national newspapers nor the local press deemed the remark insightful enough to include in their highlights of Roosevelt’s speech. It would be insightful soon enough. Just four days later in Buffalo, New York, an assassin shot President William McKinley. Nine days after that, Vice President Roosevelt would become President Roosevelt. And his epigrammatic aphorism would shape U.S. foreign policy for the next century.
Champion of a Stronger Navy
Theodore Roosevelt was a major player in a group of U.S. foreign policy makers hereafter referred to as “naval expansionists.” The group’s primary concern was cementing U.S. power and prestige throughout the world through demonstrations of naval strength. According to Roosevelt, if the United States was set on making its mark on the world and becoming the global hegemon, it was foolhardy to believe the nation could “dare anybody to fight, without preparation.”3 Instead, the United States needed “a navy commensurate with [its] rank as a great power.”4 Above all, naval expansionists believed that a modernized, efficient, revitalized, and prepared U.S. Navy was the best way to fulfill the nation’s foreign policy ambitions, spread its global influence, and preserve the peace.5 To put it as pithily as Roosevelt, the Navy should be America’s new “big stick.”
Roosevelt’s belief in the need for a larger and renovated navy played a defining role in the United States’ fin de siècle entrance onto the world stage. Throughout his tenure as Assistant Secretary of the Navy and President, Roosevelt spearheaded efforts to increase the size, technology, capacity, weaponry, operability, and overall efficiency of the Navy’s vessels, along with the skill, training, and education of the sea service’s men. He then routinely deployed this modernized navy to demonstrate U.S. power and reach to both allies and adversaries while achieving his geopolitical objectives.6
Most scholars have separated their analyses of Roosevelt’s relationship with naval power into two questions. First, why did he become interested in the Navy? Second, how did he reach his opinions on the importance of sea power? When attempting to determine the reasons for his interest in naval affairs, biographers have offered a variety of explanations not borne out by the historical record.
David Lemelin argues that because both sides of Roosevelt’s lineage emigrated from 17th-century Great Britain, his enthusiasm for ships was ancestrally predetermined.7 Kathleen Dalton intimates that Roosevelt’s mastery of a diverse array of interests (including ornithology, zoology, paleontology, and taxidermy) meant there was no reason why he also would not be interested in ships and become one of America’s most impactful foreign policy makers.8
Perhaps the most far-fetched claim comes from Donald Wilhelm. He concludes that Roosevelt’s fascination with naval affairs began one “autumn afternoon in his senior year” as he looked among the stacks of a Harvard College library “seeking a subject for a forensic theme.” There, he stumbled across a work on the naval history of the War of 1812 by one of his favorite childhood authors, James Fenimore Cooper.9 His childhood interest in Cooper, Wilhelm suggests, spawned his academic interest in naval affairs.
None of these explanations have been corroborated by the writings of Roosevelt or his close contemporaries.
Roosevelt and Mahan
When analyzing the development of Roosevelt’s ideas on the importance of sea power, many scholars perceive his naval expansionist beliefs as mirroring the writings and opinions of Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, one of the most distinguished and renowned U.S. naval historians. In his seminal 1890 treatise, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783, Mahan attributed Britain’s status as the global superpower to its Royal Navy, thereby correlating naval power with geopolitical supremacy.
After the book’s publication, Roosevelt wrote a review that praised and propounded Mahan’s naval-oriented outlook on world affairs. Consequently, most naval historians (for example, Commander Michael T. Corgan and Harold Sprout) have overlooked Roosevelt’s earlier intellectual development and argued that his frequent praise of Mahan and reliance on him as a presidential adviser meant that “Roosevelt’s ideas about sea power were shaped by the writing and personal influence of Mahan.”10
Only recently have non-military scholars begun to reinterpret the Roosevelt-Mahan relationship. Yet assertions from political biographers, such as Peter Karsten, that Roosevelt “was hoping to influence others with Mahan” or that “Roosevelt ‘used’ Mahan” are as unsubstantiated and one-sided as U.S. Navy Captain Guy Cane’s contention that Mahan had a “powerful and unique influence over Roosevelt.”11 Unfortunately, none of the relevant scholarship has faithfully traced Roosevelt’s intellectual development regarding naval power.
In fact, Roosevelt recognized the need for a large, prepared U.S. Navy and the importance of sea power before meeting Mahan or reading his work. Roosevelt’s interest in naval affairs was based on formative family influences and strengthened during his academic pursuit of the War of 1812 at Harvard.
Inspiration at an Early Age
Roosevelt’s fascination with naval affairs originated from his maternal uncles, whose audacious exploits in the Confederate Navy during the Civil War had a profound effect on young Theodore, affectionately dubbed “Teedie” by his family. His mother, Martha “Mittie” Bulloch Roosevelt, was a quintessential Southern belle. Her family, the Bullochs of Georgia, had emigrated from Scotland and personified the pinnacle of Southern aristocracy with their profitable cotton plantation and 31 slaves.12 She married Theodore “Thee” Roosevelt in 1853, and the couple soon moved into their new home on East 20th Street in New York City.
When war broke out in 1861, Mittie’s half-brother, James, and brother, Irvine, turned their mercantile skills toward more allegiant efforts when they joined the Confederate Navy and became accomplished officers. A former U.S. Navy officer, James (“Uncle Jimmy” to Teedie) eventually became a Confederate secret agent in England and the South’s “most dangerous man” in Europe, selling cotton to Britain in exchange for acquiring ships for the Confederate Navy.13 During his time in Liverpool, James arranged for the construction and covert purchase of the commerce raiders CSS Alabama, Florida, and Shenandoah.
The activities of Irvine, James’ younger half-brother, also were noteworthy. After construction of the Alabama, Irvine served on board the cruiser as a midshipman and acting fifth lieutenant. When Roosevelt returned to his mother’s family home in Roswell, Georgia, in 1905, he proudly boasted to the crowd that Irvine had “fired the last gun discharged from [the Alabama’s] batteries in the fight with [the USS] Kearsarge.”14 Irvine later served on board the Shenandoah. The end of the war and the Confederacy in 1865, however, meant the end of James and Irvine’s exploits. After the U.S. government denied their amnesty requests, they relocated to Liverpool, where they lived the remainder of their lives.
Since his father did not serve in uniform, Teedie’s only Civil War adventure tales came from his mother, who would tell the boy “heroic” stories about his uncles.15 Any letter James or Irvine sent to the Roosevelt residence became “a treasure of untold importance.”16 Mittie, a masterful raconteur, would typically summon her children and read aloud her brothers’ tales of daring actions, which were laced with expressions of their convictions. “[T]he life [at sea] is as hard as it is exciting, as painful to be away from home and family as it is pleasant to think I am doing my all for my oppressed country,” Irvine wrote in 1863, when Teedie was four years old.17
In a source neglected by scholars, one of Roosevelt’s closest confidantes, Ferdinand Iglehart, recounted that when Roosevelt was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy, he had said:
My new job is exactly to my liking. From my earliest recollection I have been fed on tales of the sea and of ships. My mother’s brother was an admiral [sic] in the Confederate navy, and her deep interest in the Southern cause and her brother’s calling led her to talk to me as a little shaver about ships, ships, ships, and fighting of ships, till they sank into the depths of my soul.18
Roosevelt’s formative interest in the sea and ships was strengthened when he met his two uncles in person. Thee Roosevelt took his family on yearlong trips to Europe and the Mediterranean when Theodore was 11 and 14 years old, respectively. Both international excursions started and ended in Liverpool with a visit to Mittie’s brothers, which gave Teedie the opportunity to meet and listen to his two heroes. Wide-eyed, he sat next to these near-mythological legends of his childhood as he absorbed firsthand their actions and adventures on water.
As Roosevelt would explain in his autobiography, “It was from the heroes of my favorite stories, from hearing of the feats performed by my southern forefathers . . . [that] I had a great desire to be like them.” James was a valiant and accomplished seaman, but Roosevelt also appreciated his objectivity. “My uncle Jimmy Bulloch . . . could discuss all phases of the Civil War with entire fairness and generosity,” he wrote.19 This affinity for objectivity would stay with Roosevelt when he analyzed the naval engagements of another American war.
Crafting a Naval History Classic
Even though a young Theodore Roosevelt was enraptured by his uncles’ naval exploits, this does not suffice to explain how he developed ideas about the use of sea power to achieve expansionist objectives. However, Roosevelt’s early interest in naval affairs did play a defining role in his decision to write what became one of the definitive, and still widely respected, works on the naval history of the War of 1812, which outlined his presidential geopolitical agenda and strategy.
Entering Harvard in the fall of 1876, Roosevelt thrived in the intellectually rich environment, which allowed him to pursue interests ranging from natural history to political science. Toward the end of his junior year, he was invited to write an honors thesis as a prerequisite to graduating magna cum laude. When perusing the library of the Porcellian Club, an all-male final club for aristocrats Roosevelt had joined, he stumbled across British historian William James’ Naval History of Great Britain. Roosevelt considered the six-volume work “invaluable . . . written with fullness and care” but also “a piece of special pleading by a bitter and not over-scrupulous partisan.” Roosevelt was irked that most of James’ work was “taken up with a succession of acrid soliloquies on the moral defects of the American character.”20
The author’s pro-British bias was countered by James Fenimore Cooper’s The History of the Navy of the United States, which Roosevelt found “very inexact” because it “pa[id] no attention to the British side of the question.” He was disturbed that “each writer naturally so colored the affair as to have it appear favorable to his own side.” Embodying James Bulloch’s objectivity, Roosevelt set out to write a naval history of the War of 1812 that was “full, accurate, and unprejudiced.”21 With Uncle Jimmy’s captivating stories and venerable impartiality as inspiration, he began his first serious study of naval power.
Roosevelt knew little more about his subject than any other Harvard undergraduate with scant training in historical scholarship. Yet keeping in line with the rigor of nearly all his other pursuits, he researched and wrote his book with zeal. He poured over a plethora of unpublished or unaccessed primary sources, including “official letters, log-books, original contracts, [and] muster-rolls.”22 He relied on dozens of credible authorities—fellow historians or contemporary military practitioners—to substantiate and verify his historical narrative, analyses, and conclusions.
To grasp the precise progression of a certain naval engagement, Roosevelt even re-created two- and three-dimensional ships. His close friend Owen Wister recounted numerous instances when Roosevelt was alone in his library, standing with one leg on the bookcase, sketching a diagram for his book in excruciating detail.23
After graduating from Harvard, Roosevelt finished the book’s first two technical-heavy chapters, which he considered “so dry that they . . . made a dictionary light reading.”24 After traveling to Europe on his honeymoon and meeting with Uncle Jimmy to overcome the modern-day equivalent of writer’s block, Roosevelt returned home in October 1881 and had submitted the manuscript for publication by Christmas.
Ever since Roosevelt published The Naval War of 1812 in 1882 at the age of 24, it has been a revered and definitive operational history of the naval aspects of the conflict. His rigorous research and obsession with objectivity paid off when critics on both sides of the Atlantic lauded the book as “the most accurate . . . cool and impartial . . . account that has yet appeared of the naval actions of the war of 1812.”25
Reversing a Downward Trend
Roosevelt recognized that only by writing a “scrupulously thorough, accurate, fair” history could he rationalize and justify his predominant geopolitical objective: rebuilding, modernizing, and preparing the U.S. Navy for future expansionist efforts.26 His skill was not just in providing readers with a blow-by-blow account of each naval engagement, replete with tables analyzing the “absolute and relative strengths” of every ship and crew involved. Rather, it was in analyzing these events, deducing generalized historical conclusions about the importance of sea power from the events, and applying those conclusions to the contemporary political and military situation.
By gathering all the available facts and judiciously assessing each engagement, Roosevelt laid the appropriate foundation and crafted a historical justification for a policy of naval expansionism through preparedness and modernization. When the book was published, the author explained, “the navy had reached its nadir” in terms of capabilities and resources and was “utterly incompetent to fight Spain or any other power that had a navy at all.”27 Thus, the purpose of The Naval War of 1812 was to reverse this downward trend by “draw[ing] attention to the need for a stronger navy, so the nation could play a significant role on the world’s stage.”28
By praising the U.S. Navy’s success in the War of 1812, Roosevelt intimated that the United States was ill-equipped in 1882 to fight and beat any European power and would remain so unless it began upgrading its navy. Moreover, Roosevelt recognized that if the country wanted to fulfill its imperial dream of becoming a world power, it had to adopt the principles of naval expansionism. These explications of strategic lessons intertwined with an operational analysis of naval engagements demonstrate Roosevelt’s early and adept understanding of naval strategy and power.
Through its reliance on historical precedent, The Naval War of 1812 articulated and popularized the policy of naval expansionism. Many of Roosevelt’s contemporaries, including influential foreign policy makers Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and House Speaker Thomas Brackett Reed, believed Roosevelt’s book was the predominant catalyst for the Navy’s rapid buildup in the 1890s.29 In writing the book, Roosevelt hoped to vanquish the “ignorance” of Democratic leaders in Congress, who refused to appropriate more funds for military expenditures.
His scholarly efforts paid off. Lodge noted that Roosevelt’s “brilliant history” had “stimulat[ed] public opinion to support the ‘New Navy’ we were just then beginning to build.”30 In March 1883, a year after the book’s publication, this plebiscitary appeal motivated Congress to allocate more than $1.3 million for the construction of new, innovative warships and the creation of the “New Navy.”31 Even Roosevelt admitted that his book made people “realize that it is folly for the great English-speaking Republic to rely for defence upon a navy composed partly of antiquated hulks, and party of new vessels rather more worthless than the old.”32
Lobbying for a Modernized Fleet
Roosevelt’s book also advanced his own reputation as both a scholar and practitioner because it gave voice to a growing number of civilian and military officials who were trying to persuade Congress and the White House about the great obstacles the United States would face on the road to global expansion if it did not prepare, improve, and use its Navy. One such policy maker was Rear Admiral Stephen B. Luce, president of the Naval War College, who read The Naval War of 1812 and told Roosevelt: “Your work must be our textbook.”33 By 1888, the Navy Department required every vessel to carry a copy of the book.34 The Naval War of 1812 not only precipitated the advent of the New Navy, it also established Roosevelt’s qualifications as a foreign policy maker and naval expert.
Up until his appointment as Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1897, Roosevelt continued to write books, lecture, and deliver speeches stressing that if the United States wanted to become a “Great Power,” it needed a modernized fleet it was prepared to use.35 It was not until 1890, after Roosevelt had dedicated eight years to this “naval effort,” that Alfred Thayer Mahan published his first book, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783. When The Atlantic Monthly wanted a naval scholar to review Mahan’s book, it selected Roosevelt, and he enthusiastically accepted.
While praising Mahan’s historical scholarship, Roosevelt spent most of the review using The Influence of Sea Power to advance his own opinions: “We need a large navy . . . containing also a full proportion of powerful battle-ships, able to meet those of any other nation. It is not economy—it is niggardly and foolish short-sightedness—to cramp our naval expenditures.”36 Roosevelt’s panegyric review gave him the opportunity to reaffirm his established convictions and bolstered Mahan’s career and credibility. It also led to a synergetic relationship, where both men benefited from each other’s writings and actions in promoting naval preparedness and an expansionist U.S. foreign policy.
A Self-Made Naval Expansionist
No scholar doubts that Roosevelt entered the Navy Department in 1897 with a fervent adherence to naval expansionism. Some historians, however, believe he reached these convictions after reading Mahan’s books and interacting with him. The historical record defies those claims. With his seafaring uncles as early inspirations, Roosevelt wrote The Naval War of 1812 and repeatedly advocated the need for a modernized and prepared navy to defend U.S. interests abroad, ensure national security, and expand the nation’s role on the world stage long before Mahan became renowned.
In fact, when the 24-year-old Roosevelt sent his manuscript for publication, Mahan was a 41-year-old undistinguished Navy lieutenant commander. Furthermore, Mahan’s concepts in The Influence of Sea Power were the same ideas Roosevelt conceived in The Naval War of 1812:
the importance of naval power and the need for a strong, modernized, and prepared U.S. Navy. Yet Roosevelt devised these ideas six years before meeting Mahan and
eight years before reading Mahan. Consequently, Roosevelt’s review of Mahan’s book was laudatory not because he had never considered these ideas, but because he had found himself another partner in the crusade for naval expansionism. Mahan was not Roosevelt’s teacher; he was his equal.
This revised assessment of Roosevelt’s development as a naval thinker should redefine how scholars consider the naval expansion movement at the turn of the 20th century. By understanding how policy makers and leaders develop their convictions, historians can deduce how their formative influences and early efforts inevitably shaped their professional actions and policies. It also attempts to give credit to the thinkers for ideas that shaped U.S. foreign policy, especially when history typically accredits the leader who implemented such ideas.
Historical scholarship has been unfair to Roosevelt’s contributions. While historians credit him for implementing naval expansionism as President, they fail to recognize that Roosevelt played a demonstrable role in formulating the rationale for this expansionism. In more ways than one, Roosevelt made history when he wrote The Naval War of 1812.
1. “Col. Roosevelt Talks To The Minnesotans,” The New York Times, 3 September 1901.
2. Theodore Roosevelt, “National Duties,” speech, 1901 Minnesota State Fair, Minneapolis, MN, 3 September 1901, startribune.com/sept-3-1901-roosevelt-big-stick-speech-at-state-fair/273586721/.
3. Theodore Roosevelt, “The Need of a Navy,” Grunton’s Magazine, December 1897, 1–4.
4. Theodore Roosevelt, “Our Need of a Navy. Captain’s Mahan’s New Book, ‘The Interest of America in Sea-Power,’” The American Monthly Review of Reviews 17 (January–June 1898): 71–72.
5. Carl Schurz, “Armed or Unarmed Peace,” Harper’s Weekly, 19 June 1897, in Speeches, Correspondence and Political Papers of Carl Schurz, vol. 5, ed. Frederic Bancroft (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1913), 398–403.
6. Harold Sprout, The Rise of American Naval Power, 1776–1918 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1939), 251–71.
7. David Lemelin, “Theodore Roosevelt as Assistant Secretary of the Navy,” History Matters (April 2011): 13–34, historymatters.appstate.edu/sites/historymatters.appstate.edu/files/David%20Lemelin%20Final_0.pdf.
8. Kathleen Dalton, Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life (New York: Vintage, 2007), 43.
9. Donald Wilhelm, Theodore Roosevelt: As an Undergraduate (Boston: John W. Luce and Company, 1910), 37.
10. CDR Michael T. Corgan, USN, “Review Article—Mahan and Theodore Roosevelt: The Assessment of Influence,” Naval War College Review 33, no. 6 (1980): 90. Roosevelt scholars are no less generous to Mahan (46). William Braisted, The United States Navy in the Pacific, 1897–1909 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971), went so far to suggest that Roosevelt was “a convinced follower of Mahan” before becoming president (10). Henry F. Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt: A Biography (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1931), argued that Mahan was “the naval authority whose views influenced Roosevelt profoundly” (171).
11. Peter Karsten, “The Nature of ‘Influence’: Roosevelt, Mahan and the Concept of Sea Power,” American Quarterly 23, no. 4 (1971): 598; CAPT Guy Cane, USN, “Sea Power—Teddy’s Big Stick,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 102, no. 8 (August 1966): 41.
12. Walter E. Wilson, The Bulloch Belles: Three First Ladies, a Spy, a President’s Mother and Other Women of a 19th Century Georgia Family (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2015), 25.
13. Walter E. Wilson and Gary L. McKay, James D. Bulloch: Secret Agent and Mastermind of the Confederate Navy (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2012), 47.
14. Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1922), 26.
15. Roosevelt, An Autobiography, 26.
16. David McCullough, Mornings on Horseback (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981), 55.
17. Martha Stewart Bulloch to Susan West, 10 February 1863, quoted in McCullough, Mornings on Horseback, 56.
18. Ferdinand C. Iglehart, Theodore Roosevelt: The Man as I Knew Him (New York: The Christian Herald, 1919), 121–22. James’ highest rank was commander and Irvine’s lieutenant.
19. Roosevelt, An Autobiography, 27, 12.
20. Theodore Roosevelt, The Naval War of 1812, 3rd ed. (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1910), iv, 145.
21. Roosevelt, The Naval War of 1812, 145, 11–12, iv.
22. Roosevelt, xxiv.
23. Owen Wister, Theodore Roosevelt: The Story of Friendship, 1880–1919 (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1930), 24.
24. Roosevelt, An Autobiography, 22.
25. “Review of Theodore Roosevelt’s The Naval War of 1812,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, November 1882, 964.
26. McCullough, Mornings on Horseback, 255.
27. Roosevelt, Autobiography, 205.
28. William S. Dudley, “Mahan on the War of 1812” in The Influence of History on Mahan, John B. Hattendorf, ed., (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 1991), 147.
29. Warren Zimmerman, First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made Their Country a World Power (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2004), 195–240.
30. Henry Cabot Lodge, Theodore Roosevelt (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1919), 16.
31. John Lehman, On Seas of Glory: Heroic Men, Great Ships, and Epic Battles of the American Navy (New York: Touchstone, 2001), 202.
32. Roosevelt, The Naval War of 1812, xxiii.
33. Karsten, “Nature of Influence,” 588.
34. Zimmerman, First Great Triumph, 197.
35. Some examples include Roosevelt’s biographies, Gouvernor Morris and Thomas Hart Benton along with his speeches, including his 1888 Union League Club Address.
36. Theodore Roosevelt, “Book Review of The Influence of Seapower upon History,” The Atlantic Monthly (October 1890), 565.