Category Archives: Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President)

John Purroy Mitchel, 1879-1918

06 Friday Jul 2018

Posted by in John Purroy Mitchel, Leonard Wood (General), Lusitania, Memory, New York City, Preparedness (WW1), Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President), Those we remember, Woodrow Wilson

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Major John Purroy Mitchel in pilot gear, 1918

The have my article up and running over at Roads to the Great War about the life, times, and death of John Purroy Mitchel. New York City’s Boy Mayor was all of thirty-four when he became mayor in 1914. Initially he was an ally of Woodrow Wilson, who in 1913 had appointed him Collector of the Port of New York. Men like Chester Arthur had previously held the collectorship. Mitchel and Wilson soon had a falling out over what the mayor saw as the president’s poor leadership during the war. Soon, Mitchel was very publicly allying with friends like Theodore Roosevelt and Leonard Wood advocating for Preparedness. When he lost his re-election bid, Mitchel became a military aviator. He died in a flight exercise in Louisiana on July 6, 1918, one hundred years ago today.

(image/courtesy of Margaret Maloney via Wikimedia Commons)

 

“Serious but not critical”

06 Tuesday Feb 2018

Posted by in Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President)

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Theodore Roosevelt as he was in 1918. After years of living the strenuous life his health declined precipitously that year and led to his death in January 1919.

While of course no one could have know it at the time Theodore Roosevelt had just eleven months to live as of February 6, 1918. For those watching Roosevelt’s activities however, it was clear that his health was failing. One hundred years ago today he was at Roosevelt Hospital in New York City for surgery to remove accesses on a thigh and in his ears. He had acquired these maladies first in Cuba during the Spanish-American War and later, more seriously, in Brazil in 1913-14 during trip down the River of Doubt. This was Roosevelt’s second procedure in less than a week; surgeons had operated on him in Oyster Bay a few days previously before bringing him into the city for more extensive tests and, ultimately, the additional surgery. There to keep him company in the coming days while he recuperated were daughters Alice and Ethel, wife Ethel, and his sister Corinne. Not present were his four sons, who by now were all in uniform and on active duty. Telegrams of support poured in from Woodrow Wilson, French President Raymond Poincaré, Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, and scores of others.

It was still an active time for Colonel Roosevelt. Remember, he was still just fifty-nine years old. In this period he was writing his columns for the Kansas City Star and speaking his mind on what he saw as the failures of the Wilson Administration in getting the United States up to speed and involved in the Great War. He had had to cancel a number of public talks that very week for the surgery itself. He was in Roosevelt Hospital for nearly a week and suffered a few set back. This is what led his physicians to inform the public that Roosevelt’s condition was “serious but not critical.” He was on the mend, at least temporarily, by mid-February. Some were still optimistic. and there was even public chatter at this time of Roosevelt running for the White House again in 1920.

(image/NYPL)

World War I and the Visual Arts

20 Wednesday Dec 2017

Posted by in Film, Sound, & Photography, Great War centennial, Museums, Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President), Theodore Roosevelt Sr (Father)

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Last night was a special evening: a friend invited me to a group event at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a private reviewing of the World War I and the Visual Arts exhibit currently on display through 7 January 2018. There were about a dozen of us on the tour, which took place after the Met Museum closed. To be in the Metropolitan Museum of Art is always special, and even more so when it is the holidays and the place is empty. We arrived a little before the tour when the museum was emptying out and got to take in the Neapolitan Christmas tree that is on display every year. Here are a few photos from the evening.

Walter Trier color lithograph, “Maps of Europe.” Look closely.

As with the lithograph above, these color postcards are that much more striking in juxtaposition to the black and white images one usually sees from the Great War.

The four helmets are prototypes designed by Met curator Dr. Bashford Dean during the war for the United States military. As you can tell from the bottom two in particular, they are influenced by medieval armor. Here is more, including a letter to Dean from Theodore Roosevelt. President Roosevelt’s father helped found the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Our guide was the exhibition curator, seen here second from the right explaining this series.

Note the plea in the left hand portion asking the AEF to please rush. There were posters in the exhibit from all of the major nations.

It is not every day one sees the galleries empty at the Met. I snapped this one real fast as the group was heading out.

All in all this was a special night. Here is to good friends who think of you when opportunities such as this arise.

 

 

Ethel Roosevelt Derby, 1891-1977

09 Saturday Dec 2017

Posted by in Theodore (Ted) Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace (NPS), Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President), Those we remember, WW1

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They have my article about Ethel Roosevelt Derby up over at Roads to the Great War. Theodore Roosevelt’s younger daughter died on 10 December 1977, forty years ago this week. Ethel was vey much her father’s daughter and lived a long, full life. Of all the pieces I have written, this was one of the most enjoyable and meaningful to write.

(image/Library of Congress)

“against Hearst, Hylan, and the Hohenzollerns”

01 Sunday Oct 2017

Posted by in John Purroy Mitchel, Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President)

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Charles Evans Hughes (left foreground), Theodore Roosevelt, and Henry Morgenthau (bow tie) endorse John P. Mitchel (light suit), 1 October 1917

New York City mayor John Purroy Mitchel lost the Republican primary to William M. Bennett in his re-election bid in 1917. Unbowed, Mitchel decided to run as an independent. He had some strong supporters in his corner. Theodore Roosevelt, former Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes, and Henry Morgenthau among others turned out at City Hall Park on 1 October 1917 to “nominate” the incumbent in what they were calling a “popular convention.” Ten thousand people turned out that Monday to see the speakers, which turned out to be something of a detriment to Mitchel; some observers noted that many in the crowd were there more to see Colonel Roosevelt than the mayor. In his own address to the crowd Mayor Mitchel vowed that he would “make the fight one against Hearst, Hylan, and the Hohenzollerns. I will make the fight against Murphy, Cohalan, and O’Leary.” Mitchel’s quote was a reference to John Francis Hylan, the Tammany-backed Brooklyn Democrat supported by William Randolph Hearst and his newspapers.

Mitchel, Hughes (behind Mitchel) Roosevelt, and former U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in the Wilson Administration Henry Morgenthau, City Hall Park, 1 October 1917

The 1917 mayoral election would turn out to be a bruising four-way campaign between the Mitchel, Hylan, Republican William M. Bennett, and Socialist Morris Hillquit. The race was a microcosm of America itself in Fall 1917. Over the course of the next five weeks the four mayoral candidates would argue the themes that Americans were hashing out around the country. That very day of the Treasury Secretary (and Wilson son-in-law) William G. McAdoo announced the opening of the second Liberty Loan Drive that would eventually raise nearly $4 billion. For the bond drive there was a big parade in Manhattan. Against American involvement in the war, Hillquit came out against the drive. The race was on until the election in early November.

(images/Doris A. and Lawrence H. Budner Collection on Theodore Roosevelt, SMU Central University Libraries)

 

 

“We should feel even sterner indignation”

24 Sunday Sep 2017

Posted by in Base Hospital No. 9, Ernest Hemingway, Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President)

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First Lieutenant (Dr.) William T. Fitzsimons was an Army surgeon and the first American Army officer killed in the Great War. He died in a German air raid near Pas-de-Calais on 4 September 1917.

In March 2015 I wrote a piece about Theodore Roosevelt and Ernest Hemingway both beginning their careers with the Kansas City Star in October 1917. Colonel Roosevelt’s contract with the Star began on 1 October but he pounded out a few editorials, the first of nearly 120 weekly contributions until his death in January 1919, prior to his official start date. The first Roosevelt article was about Dr. William T. Fitzsimons, a first lieutenant in the Army Medical Reserve Corps killed in France on 4 September 1917. Dr. Fitzsimons was the first United States Army officer killed in the Great War.

I have been writing during the centennial about the career of Dr. Robert D. Schrock, a surgeon with Base Hospital No. 9. Lieutenant Fitzsimons was part of this same desire that many physicians had to tend the wounded. Like Schrock, Fitzsimons was from the Midwest, graduated from medical school just prior to the war, trained as a young doctor in New York City in the early 1910s (in Fitzsimon’s case at Roosevelt Hospital), and sought his way to contribute to the effort. Fitzsimons sailed to Europe on a Red Cross transport ship from Brooklyn’s Bush Terminal in early September 1914 and began working in a hospital in England on 1 October as a civilian volunteer. Dr. Fitzsimons returned to the United States after his stint, taught medicine at the University of Kansas for a time, and joined the military on 27 March 1917, about ten days prior to Congress’s declaration of war. He was sent to France right away.

First Lieutenant William T. Fitzsimons (seated far left) in England, circa 1915. On 4 September 1917, the same day that Fitzsimons happened to be killed, the Kansas City Star announced that Theodore Roosevelt was joining its editorial staff. Roosevelt’s first piece was about Fitzsimons and published on 17 September, two weeks before his contract officially began.

Lieutenant Fitzsimons was on staff at Base Hospital No. 5 in near Calais by late August. On the evening of 4 September 1917 he was killed in a German air raid. Roosevelt’s tribute, his first article for the Kansas City Star, appeared on 17 September. Roosevelt hammered away at the two themes that would consume him in the coming months: German brutality and American unpreparedness. Fitzsimons was the first American Army officer to be killed in the First World War. Roosevelt’s tribute one of the first but not the last. Army Hospital 21 in Denver became Fitzsimons Army Hospital in 1920. Ten years after that the young doctor’s mother, Catherine Fitzsimons, traveled from Kansas City to the military cemetery at the Somme to see her son’s resting place. In 1955 First Lady Mamie Eisenhower dedicated an oil painting of Fitzsimons at the Colorado hospital named for him twenty-five years previously. Five years after that author A. A. Hochling published The Fierce Lambs, a history/biography of Lieutenant William T. Fitzsimons, Corporal James Bethel Cresham, Private Thomas F. Enright and Private Merle Hay. The latter three of whom were killed later that fall, the first Americans killed in actual combat. Today some of the personal effects found on Dr. Fitzsimons when he was killed are on display at the National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City.

(image/top, Department of Defense; bottom, unknown)

 

Remembering the Camp Logan riot

23 Wednesday Aug 2017

Posted by in John J. Pershing (General), Newton D. Baker, Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President), Woodrow Wilson

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24th U.S. Infantry Regiment, Philippine Islands 1902

On the afternoon of Thursday 23 August 1917 Private Alonzo Edwards, Company L, Third Battalion, Twenty-Fourth Infantry Regiment, was arrested for interceding with two white police officers in the arrest of Houston resident Sara Travers. That incident triggered a series of events culminating in a night of spectacular violence that would leave almost twenty people dead and many more wounded, some of them mortally. It led to three trials over the next seven months that gripped Americans and challenged assumptions about race and Jim Crow segregation. It required the attention of local law enforcement officials, military authorities, the Secretary of War, and ultimately President Woodrow Wilson himself. Finally, it led to the hanging deaths of nineteen African-American soldiers and life sentences for scores of others. I wrote this piece in different form for a class almost fifteen years ago and wanted to share it on the anniversary of one of worst days in American history.

The Twenty-Fourth Infantry Regiment

The Twenty-Fourth’s baseball team in an undated photograph

The Twenty-Fourth Infantry Regiment had a long history of service. In the decades after the Civil War these Buffalo Soldiers protected communication and supply lines during the Indian Campaigns, and in 1898 went up San Juan Heights with Theodore Roosevelt. They fought in the Philippine Insurrection and in 1916 were stationed in New Mexico under the leadership of Brigadier General John J. Pershing, protecting supply lines between Columbus, New Mexico and Ojo Federico, Mexico. The Third Battalion of the Twenty-Fourth arrived in Houston on 28 July 1917. Things got off to a bad start. The Twenty-Fourth had less than half the officers assigned to a full regiment, and two of its companies were commanded by first lieutenants, not captains. The quality of this leadership was poor, as many white officers did not want a commission leading negro troops. Conditions were spartan and the soldiers were camped on the outskirts of town between the city limits and a more established base for whites called Camp Logan, where the men pulled guard duty. Cramped conditions in a hot and humid Southern city, far away from the action in Europe was bad enough. Dealing with the Jim Crow restrictions was worse. Relations between the soldiers and the local civilians were tense. The presence of the Twenty-Fourth, however, raised expectations in the local African-American community.

The Riot

In action prior to the transfer to Houston

Tensions simmered for weeks in the summer heat and when the riot came it happened quickly. In the early afternoon of 23 August Private Edwards asked two police officers why they were arresting Ms. Travers and for this was himself detained. A few hours later Corporal Charles Baltimore of the Twenty-Fourth’s Third Battalion went to police headquarters in his capacity as a military policeman to check on Private Edwards’ status. A scuffle ensued in which Baltimore was shot at, apprehended, beaten, and taken into custody. A rumor spread quickly to the base that Baltimore had been killed. By nightfall a contingent of 125-150 soldiers of the Twenty-Fourth had amassed and began marching from their camp into Houston. In the succeeding hours, the armed soldiers killed four policemen and eleven residents, wounded an additional dozen, and caused intense panic in the city. Four men from the Twenty-Fourth Regiment lost their lives.

The Aftermath

Generals Pershing and Bliss inspect the 24th camp during the Punitive Expedition, 1916

News spread rapidly throughout the country of the Houston incident. The New York Times had a small article, way below the fold, on page one of the 24 August edition sketching out the still-hazy details. A day later the newspaper had a significantly larger article, this time above the fold. Over the seven months there were no less than three trials relating to the Houston riot. The first court-martial was in November 1917 and led to the hanging of thirteen soldiers and life sentences for forty-one others. The next two trials concluded in December 1917 and March 1918. The punishment called for a total of sixteen death sentences and prison sentences of varying lengths for thirty-six other individuals. This time the government’s position was more cautious. Secretary of War Newton Baker wrote to President Wilson counseling that the number of death sentences in the two cases be reduced to six, with the remaining commuted to life sentences. Wilson acted on Baker’s recommendations.

(images/Baseball & Old Mexico, NYPL; Philippine Islands & Pershing/Bliss, LOC)

 

Two Roosevelts crossing the Atlantic

24 Saturday Jun 2017

Posted by in Archibald (Archie) Roosevelt, Governors Island, J. Franklin Bell (General), Theodore (Ted) Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President)

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Archibald and Theodore (Ted) Roosevelt Jr. left for France on 20 June 1917.

Theodore Roosevelt spoke from the pulpit of the Oyster Bay Reformed Church at Brookville on Sunday 24 June 1917 on behalf of the Red Cross. Raising funds and awareness for that relief organization was not his only reason to take to the podium however; with sons Archibald and Theodore now crossing the Atlantic aboard the Chicago to join Pershing’s nascent forces, he could announce that the boys had indeed left American soil. By June it apparent that the Wilson Administration, wisely, was not going to let Roosevelt command a division in France. The Colonel was committed, quite publicly, to sending his sons, so much so that he pulled all the strings he could get his sons to Europe as quickly as possible.

That became a reality when the Chicago left New York for Bordeaux on Wednesday 20 June. The late spring of 1917 had entailed a great deal of back and forth for Archive and Ted. They had spent the past several weeks getting in some final training in Plattsburg before traveling ceaselessly between New York City, Washington, and Oyster Bay as their fate was being decided. Eventually the War Department sent secret orders directing them to report to General J. Franklin Bell on Governors Island. It was there at the Department of the East that they received their final instructions. They had a few more days to pass before the passage of the Chicago and so went back to Long Island to say their final goodbyes to their families. Then it was back to New York. The waiting to go overseas was finally over.

Theodore Roosevelt had been an advocate for American involvement in the Great War since 1914. When he spoke at the Oyster Bay reformed Church one hundred years ago today, he had a personal stake in the conflict that was not there even one week prior.

(image/New York Times)

The ETO turns 75

08 Thursday Jun 2017

Posted by in Dwight D. Eisenhower, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, George C. Marshall, George S. Patton (General), John J. Pershing (General), Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President), William McKinley

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Colonel N.A. Ryan, acting chief of transportation, U.S. Army European theater of operations, and Major General D.J. McMullen, D.S.O., C.B.E., director of transportation, British Army, Great Britain circa 1942

General Pershing’s arrival in first England and then France one hundred years ago this week is often understood to mark a turning point in American-European relations. The coming of the A.E.F. certainly signaled the arrival of the United States on the world stage, a process that had begun almost two decades earlier during the Spanish-American War. The evolving American relationship with Europe dates back to then too; it was John Hay, Secretary of State in the McKinley and Roosevelt Administration from 1898-1905 and, just prior to that, Ambassador to the Court of St. James, who had done so much to build the “special relationship” with Great Britain. Hay and Pershing laid the groundwork diplomatically and militarily for the Allied victory in the Second World War. Pershing’s protégés included George Marshall, George Patton, and Dwight Eisenhower. Today, 8 June 2017, marks another significant moment: the War Department created the European Theater of Operations on this date in 1942.

Dwight Eisenhower, at fifty-one now a major general, took over at director of the European Theater of Operations (ETO) in London on June 24. Joseph Stalin had been pressing for a second European front for some time, and now it appeared he would get that some time in 1942. That of course did not come to pass. Roosevelt and his planners decided to make North Africa the first Atlantic offensive. Two years later came the invasion of Normandy and V-E Day less than on year after that. Ike was now a hero and came home to assume the presidency of Columbia University. He was back in Europe as the head of NATO in 1950. For the past three quarters of a century we have taken the work of the U.S. Army in the European Theater of Operations granted. It was in Germany as part of the ETO where Elvis was stationed after getting drafted in the late 1950s.

We would do well to remember in our current moment that building alliances is much more arduous and time consuming than tearing them apart. Diplomacy is a funny thing: when done well one does not see it; when done poorly it is all one sees. I only saw one reference to the creation of the European Theater of Operations today. Here is to remembering the work that Roosevelt, Marshall, Eisenhower, and millions of anonymous American uniformed service persons have done over the past seventy-five years.

(image/Library of Congress)