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.
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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.
