Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917

From his childhood Theodore Roosevelt was fascinated with animal biology, the natural world, and the stories of adventurers taming the Wild West. Born into significant privilege as the son of a prominent New York family, Roosevelt spent much of his childhood unwell, and when he was first elected as an assemblyman at age 23 he received criticism of his appearance and physical presence, which touched upon a soft and feminine impression. Sensitive to this critique, Roosevelt was determined to remake himself and his image to combat that characterization. Purchasing a ranch in South Dakota, Roosevelt immersed himself in the cowboy lifestyle and began penning a series of books about his experiences, extolling the virtues of this uniquely and intrinsically American way of life and the responsibilities he felt white Americans had toward civilizing the landscape and eradicating the threat of Indigenous peoples. Roosevelt simultaneously aligned his values with those of the emblematic rugged, adventurous, daring Indian fighter of the American West and those of his father. Like Theodore Sr., Roosevelt embraced Victorian ideals of civilized masculinity. In Hunting Trips of a Ranchman and Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail, Roosevelt autobiographically brought to life the exciting experiences of his life on the frontier, though his personal experiences were a bit exaggerated. His several volumes of The Winning of the West stressed his beliefs that white men were imbued with the power to triumph in violent racial wars through which they could, and should, defeat Indigenous peoples so that white Americans might occupy every corner of the nation and fulfill their destiny of exerting control over all of the territory that would one day collectively become the United States. Roosevelt believed the American destiny was to subdue Indigenous peoples, eradicate them, and populate the nation by creating white footholds throughout the country. He thought that once the Indigenous Americans had been conquered, Americans should proceed to pursue imperialism in other parts of the world. Roosevelt thought that war was inevitable whenever civilized white men and more primitive, savage elements or entities interacted. This clash, in his mind, was a test of superiority and fortitude. Like many of his contemporaries, Roosevelt thought that Americans had become overly decadent, leisurely, and complacent, and he advocated for “The Strenuous Life,” a philosophy through which men would remain rugged and committed to the insatiable pursuit of finding more land and space to conquer once the whole of the United States had been subdued under white control. This imperialism was a racial obligation, and in the midst of his political career Roosevelt elected to serve in the military during the Spanish American war to solidify and illustrate his commitment to this notion that he so vocally endorsed.

Roosevelt volunteered to serve in the Army and lead a volunteer cavalry unit bound for Cuba. His famous victory at the battle of San Juan Hill solidified him as a hero in the eyes of the American public. Roosevelt hand-picked the recruits who accompanied him, selecting men who typified the rugged Western heroes he had celebrated in his writing and admired since his boyhood. He intentionally included a slew of Ivy League graduates to encompass the high, elevated realm of accomplishment possible for the white American man. He also recruited members of the press to ensure thorough coverage of his heroics. Roosevelt saw himself as the embodiment of American manliness, and his subsequent ascendency to the office of the presidency he thought to be a natural progression.

After his term as president concluded, Roosevelt went on safari, ostensibly on a mission for the Smithsonian Institute to collect animal specimens for display at the then new National Museum of Natural History. Bederman asserts that while this venture was indeed officially sponsored and sanctioned by the Smithsonian Institute, Roosevelt was also engaging in a kind of self-serving pseudo imperialist tourism expedition, able to engage in the kind of conquering of a wild place he so enthusiastically participated in as a young man in South Dakota. Porters were employed to ensure that Roosevelt enjoyed every physical and material comfort he desired, and Roosevelt himself shot over 250 animals to be brought back to the United States for display. He considered the Indigenous people he met to be childlike and intellectually inferior. He was charmed by their sycophantic reactions to him but frustrated and insulted on occasions when they would not honor his requests.

In his later years, Roosevelt emphatically supported reproduction among desirable white families, chastising women who elected not to have children along with men who were effeminate as being complicit in what he termed “race suicide.” At the turn of the 20th century, significant anxiety had arisen over the falling birth rate among middle-class Anglo-Saxon families. Advocates for white supremacy and evolutionary and racial mastery over the destiny of the United States feared the most desirable of the population would soon be outnumbered by the less desirable, and their ability to maintain control over the nation’s trajectory would be in jeopardy. Roosevelt became celebrated for his habits of congratulating large white families with an abundance of children and advocating for a high birth rate among these individuals.