Roosevelt's religion

Front matter

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. 9,

.V

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

President Harding's Testimony.. facing 10 Leonard Wood's Testimony facing 11

I. Theodore's Childhood Home 19

Chapter I Theodore's Childhood Home

"Then papa and I went for a long roam in the woods and had Sunday school in them. I drew a church, and I am now going to bed." — Theodore Roosevelt.

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. — Prov. '22. 6.

MR. ROOSEVELT'S mixed ancestry made him a notable illustration of a distinctive Christian doctrine — namely, the common brotherhood of all humanity. And he never forgot that suggestive fact. His paternal ancestor came to America as a steerage passenger in 1644 from Holland. He found in the environs of New York four hundred or five hundred people who spoke eighteen different languages : already the land was cosmopolitan. After that for seven generations every son was born on Manhattan Island. Mr. Roosevelt frequently recalled the fact that many nationalities were merged in him. He once said:

I myself represent an instance of fusion of several different stocks, my blood most largely Lowland Scotch, next to that Dutch, with a strain of French Huguenot and of Gaelic, my ancestors having been here for the most part of two centuries. My Dutch forebears kept their blood practically unmixed until the days of my grandfather, and his father was the first in the line to use English as the invariable home tongue.

His ancestors set him an example of public service. A great-uncle of Roosevelt, Nicholas J., shared with Fulton the honor of developing the steamboat. Two ancestors were aldermen in the New York Dutch Village of early days and legislated to open the street which bears their name. Another, Isaac Roosevelt, sat in the constitutional convention with Alexander Hamilton. A Roosevelt started one of the first banks in New York and was its president.

From his mother's side he had Welsh, Irish, and German blood. Her forebears came to Pennsylvania with William Penn, though she herself was born in Georgia.

Mr. Roosevelt himself testifies to the remarkable influence of his Christian father when he tells us that very early the children were taught that girls and boys must have the "same standard of clean living," for what was wrong for a woman was equally culpable for a man. In his Pacific Theological Lectures he says : "If the man preaches and practices a different code of morality for himself than that which he demands his wife shall practice ... he is fundamentally a bad citizen."

In writing to Edward S. Martin on November 20, 1920, Mr. Roosevelt emphasized the masculinity of his father, together with the tenderness and purity of his nature. He recalled the fact that while his father recognized him to be a sickly and timid boy, he did not coddle him but trained him to hold his own with older boys and to be ready to do some of the rough work of the world. His father insisted that if he were "decent" and manly at the same time, the respect for his manliness would keep others from ridiculing his decency. The teaching and character of his father created such a love and respect that he says, "I would have hated and dreaded beyond measure to have him know that I had been guilty of a lie, or of cruelty, or of bullying or of uncleanness or of cowardice."

Mr. Roosevelt's father had a character which commanded a righteous respect. He administered corporal punishment only once to Theodore, who had bitten his sister Anna's arm. He hid first m the yard and then under the kitchen table, hoping thus to avoid the punishment he knew was merited. His father followed him on all fours under the table. The culprit rushed out, flung at his father a handful of dough which he grabbed off the table, and ran for the stairs. But here he was intercepted and received a punishment which he ^^remembered."

Mr. Roosevelt summed up his whole estimate of his father in the words, ^^My father, Theodore Roosevelt, was the best man I ever knew." His father had a remarkable influence on him. Some of Theodore's firm traits and activities are, therefore, understood when one reviews the father's life.

The Rev. Dr. James M. Ludlow, who was the senior Roosevelt's pastor for several years, told me; Mr Roosevelt, Sr., was a very companionable man. He was naturally aristocratic but never snobbish. Mrs. Roosevelt was dignified and retiring, but a very sweet woman who always won her way. The sister, Miss Gracey, was much like her. Mr. Roosevelt was always very active in movements for reform. He was passionate in his attacks on evil He exhibited an easy control except when some notable wrong was called to his attention. He then became a bundle of wrath. He was a prophet of righteousness, and he would not mince matters in going after sinners high or low. His son constantly reminded me of him in this respect.

Mr. Roosevelt was very loyal to the memory of his father. His uncle, R. B. Roosevelt, was nominated as a Presidential elector by the Democrats, to which party he belonged, but he declined to serve, out of regard for his nephew, who was at that time the Republican candidate. Later he was President Roosevelt's guest at his inaugural, and on his return he received a letter from the President, expressing personal gratification that the uncle had attended the inauguration, both for his own sake and also because he so vividly reminded him of his own father. He showed that the presence of his father was never forgotten, for he wrote, "How I wish father could have lived to see it too!"

Theodore, Sr., was normally a Republican, but he could not stand the rule of the bosses who collected from the corporations and refused to walk uprightly, and he arraigned them vigorously. President Hayes admired his independence and nominated him for collector of the Port of New York, but the bosses, unwilling to see the highest Federal office in the gift of the state held by a man they could not control, kept the Senate from confirming him, and so he never filled the office.

His father did not enter the Civil War as an actual fighter, though he was a Lincoln Republican and heartily backed the Ujiion. He had married a woman heartily in sympathy with the Confederacy and was therefore compelled to exercise rare powers of conciliation and charity. This situation also providentially prepared the son to merge the North and South together. He nevertheless rendered priceless aid to the Union cause, so that in spite of a divided home concerning the war, Theodore grew up in a "loyal" household.

His activities were so eminently ''social" that their influence is recognized in the son's ideals. Mr. Koosevelt, Sr., proposed and carried to success State and national legislation to enable the soldiers to allot part of their salaries to their families so that it would be paid directly to them. He traveled and talked and finally lived for three months in Washington to get the bill passed. Congressmen in those days could not understand how any man should desire legislation without a selfish purpose, and for a time they watched him suspiciously. But his high standing finally removed that suspicion. He was appointed one of the New York State Commissioners and visited the various camps in the State, riding six or eight hours a day on horseback to do so. He then stood in the snow and slush pleading with the soldiers to sign over some of their pay to their starving families. He often found the soldiers hardened into utter listlessness concerning home folk, but he urged in mass meeting and by individual appeal until he secured their signatures. The sutlers, who wanted to get the soldiers' money for rum, opposed him persistently. Theodore, Junior, imbibed an intense patriotism, for his father worked with the

"Loyal Publication Society," which scattered information about the causes of the war and the righteousness of the Union's side. It was badly needed in New York, not always loyal in those days. He was one of the first members of the Union League Club, which club aided in raising and equipping the first Negro regiment.

War charity, as usual, led to vast waste ; he initiated methods to systematize the expenditures and reduce the waste. He called conferences of Jews, Catholics, and Protestants, and finally succeeded in organizing a city and then a State Board of Charities and became its first president.

He was also an active worker on the Advisory Board of the Woman's Central Association of Relief, formed in Cooper Union the latter part of April, 1861, to furnish supplies and nurses to weak, sick, and injured soldiers. This grew into the Sanitary Commission and ultimately into the American Red Cross.

Then too he did much to aid the unemployed and unprotected soldiers in their attempt to get started in civilian life.

Thousands of soldiers had drifted into New York city and could find no way to support themselves. He organized in his own home the "Soldiers' Employment Bureau." This bureau also aided crippled soldiers to find fitting vocations. Many of these soldiers had not received their salaries from the government, and grafting agents were buying their claims and exacting heavy fees. For their protection he helped form the "Protective War Claims Assoelation/' which aided the soldiers without charge and saved them over one million dollars in fees.

He was particularly interested in preventing cruelty to children and to animals and encouraged various organizations working along these lines. He gave much time to the Newsboys' Lodging Houses, which were effective in keeping the boys off the street, where they were prone to learn criminal-making habits. Every Sunday evening he spent at one of these homes. One orphan boy picked up on the street was located on a Western farm with foster parents by Mr. Roosevelt, Sr. The lad, afterward grown into unusual ability, greeted President Roosevelt as Governor Brady, of Alaska, and told him of the father's helpfulness.

The Rev. Dr. Ludlow recounted a characteristic incident of the father to the writer, that reminds one of the President:

A distinguished group of men was being entertained at dinner by Mr. Roosevelt, the father, and I was included as his pastor. He was very orderly and observant of all the nicest customs on such an occasion. His servants were well trained, his bearing was that of an old-school gentleman, and he was very punctilious about such a dignified dinner. The butler with much hesitation appeared and whispered to the host. Mr. Roosevelt grew red in the face but stopped the dinner service and asked to be excused. In about ten minutes he returned and proposed to tell us why he left. We assured him that it was not necessary but he insisted. He said: "You know I am interested in the newsboys' home. I told the boys that if they had any trouble In getting ready for Christmas to come up and see me. I overheard one lad say: 'He's just kidding you. That bloke wouldn't see you at his fine home.' Well, one of the boys came a few moments ago. Though I never leave a dinner party, I had to do so for these lads. I could, if necessary, lose your respect, but I must not lose my grip on these boys."

George Haven Putnam declares : ^'It was to the initiative and unselfish cooperation of Theodore's father and uncle that the city owes the Roosevelt Hospital."

Mrs. Robinson talked to me about Mr. Roosevelt, Sr., and his good-Samaritan work and teaching :

My sister Anna (afterward Mrs. Cowles, the wife of the Admiral) suffered from spinal trouble. There was then little hope for one thus afflicted. Usually the patients must lie still in bed until frequently they lost the use of their limbs. But father became interested in a young doctor, Charles Fayette Taylor, who proposed the modern treatment with braces. Father tried to found a hospital for this kind of treatment but failed to secure financial support, until he gave a reception at our home. He had the little sufferers brought and laid on the dining room table so that the braces could be seen and the curative effects be established. My father placed me by the table to show and explain the method. Mrs. John Jacob Astor was thus convinced and promised aid. Others did the same. And thus my father was able to get the first orthopaedic hospital started.

The suffering of his own child gave him such sympathy for others that he opened the door of help to the afflicted ones.

He further aided a movement to provide quarters for lunatics in city hospitals, and another to secure systematic care for dependent orphans and delinquent children, and others to provide for decent care for vagrants and protective tenement-house laws.

He was indeed "full" of good works. He was also a loyal and hopeful supporter of the Y. M. C. A. All of these movements he explained to Theodore, Jr., for the boy was his close associate and often accompanied him to the meetings and missions where the various subjects were discussed. Such a life of helpfulness, backed by an earnest Christian faith, could not fail to impress the son. It was not to be wondered that the "son" later fathered the "Progressive" party social program.

The father died while still in his prime at fortysix; Theodore was only nineteen. A eulogy at the time described him as a "man of untiring energy and of prodigious industry, the most valiant fighter of his day for the right, and the winner of his fights. He was a tireless helper of the helpless." A set of resolutions adopted by the Union League Club said : "His life was a stirring summons to the men of wealth, of culture, and of leisure in the community to a more active participation in public affairs."

Mr. Roosevelt said that his mother was "a sweet, gracious, beautiful Southern woman, a delightful companion and beloved by everybody. She was entirely 'unreconstructed' to the day of her death." She was never reconciled to the defeat of the Confederacy.

Her father's house was in the line of Sherman's march to the sea, and everything portable was carried away. While he was in the White House an old soldier sent Mr. Roosevelt a book which had been taken from the grandfather's library during that raid.

Theodore early understood the divided loyalty in his home during the Civil War and recalled a time when he aroused his mother by praying for the success of the Union. He describes the incident when "I attempted a partial vengeance by praying with loud fervor for the success of the Union armies when we all came to say our prayers before my mother in the evening." His mother, while loyal to the cause, also had a strong sense of humor and did not punish him, but warned him that the next time his father would be informed and that meant serious punishment; he did not repeat the offense. The ''father'' felt keenly his wife's attitude but was lovingly patient about it and illustrated to his children the possibility of harmony amidst diverse views.

The old-fashioned home out of which have come the stalwart soldiers of righteousness and the prophetic leaders in America had in it a definite worship of a personal God. The modern home without a vital religion in it is much less influential than the old kind, even if its theological conceptions were somewhat crude.

Mrs. Robinson in a happy interview described the joyful "family prayer" hour which was observed :

Father always had family prayer just before breakfast every morning. It was a joy to us all and never a burden. He would call cheerily, "Come to prayers." Each one of the children would then endeavor to be the first one to call out, "I speak for you and the cubby hole too." The first one to call this secured the seat of honor, which was located between the head of the old-fashioned sofa and father. Here he or she sat while he read the morning lesson from the Bible. He had a religion of brightness and gayety. It gave cheer. It was never black nor did it have any sympathy with depressing and fearful forebodings. In fact, father attended Dr. Adams' church in the early days because he preached a God of love; he talked much about heaven and omitted the current doctrine of hell. He described a Christ who came to make mankind happy. God was very real and near to my father.

The spiritual life was a very normal thing in this home. Bible-reading was a regular and reverential practice. Religious questions were treated as any others that might come up. Even a Sunday school could be held while on a "tramp," as is shown by a reference in Theodore's diary quoted by Mr. Hagedorn while touring Europe and during a stop in Vienna : "Then papa and I went for a long roam through the woods and had Sunday school in them. I drew a church and I am now going to bed."

W. Emlen Roosevelt told me that this intelligent interest in the Bible began with Theodore's grandfather :

I can vividly remember our (Theodore's and my) grandfather. He too had retired from business. In his later years he did not attend church very regularly but spent much time in his room alone with the Bible. He would talk with various types of people about Scripture passages. He read religious papers and was constantly studying religion in its broader aspects.

Theodore'fi father made it a practice to set apart one day every week to be spent in visiting and cheering the poor and less fortunate. He would normally allow no day to pass without some act of kindness to his credit. He withdrew more and more from

30 KOOSEVELT'S EELIGION

business until he was entirely out of it so that he could and did give all of his time to helping folks. Theodore said of his father :

I remember seeing him going down Broadway, staid and respectable business man as he was, with a poor little sick kitten in his pocket, a waif which he had picked up in the street.

Mrs. Robinson told me about her father's success in distributing tracts :

My father took great satisfaction in circulating tracts or pamphlets on religious subjects. They were much in vogue in that day. He would follow them up. I recall a case where he persuaded a boy to read one of these tracts. He then followed it up with a call on the boy, who lived in an obscure tenement house. Father saw that the boy had read the tract to his mother. He then talked with the family about religion and persuaded the whole family to attend church, and they became regular too.

The animal spirits of childhood were guided, not suppressed, and so goodness was nurtured by a happy home life. In the winter time the Roosevelt family lived at 28 East Twentieth Street. The old home is now being restored to its original condition by an organization of patriotic women. In the summer the whole family went to the country, where they had as pets cats, dogs, rabbits, a raccoon, and a Shetland pony called "General Grant," for whom the President's Children thirty years afterward named their pony. On Christmas Eve each child borrowed the largest stocking in the house and hung it near the chimney. Early next morning they trooped into their parents' room and emptied their stockings on the bed. After breakfast the larger presents were viewed in the drawing room. Mr. Roosevelt once said, "I never knew anyone else have what seemed to me such attractive Christmases, and in the next generation I tried to reproduce them exactly for my own children."

It was the product of a real Christian home.

Dr. Ludlow related an incident which explains Mr. Roosevelt's early interest in the Police Department, and which enforces the fact that he early found the representatives of religion congenial :

Theodore frequently visited me in my study. One morning, when he was about sixteen, a woman asked me to call on her dying mother. When I proposed going immediately, she urged delay until three p. m. That aroused suspicion that there was a frame-up to blackmail me, and so I asked Theodore if he would accompany me, and we made the call at once. There was no sickness. The people were crooked and hoped to extort money. When Theodore learned this fact, he said, "1 wish I were a policeman, so that I could hit this." While President he told Governor Fort that this first gave him a desire to enter the Police Department, which bore full fruit when he accepted the commissionership. Even as a boy he was tremendously energetic when answering a call of duty.

It is related that Theodore's father was once congratulated by his pastor upon the meaning of his son's name — ''gift of God." "Suppose we change it a little, and call it a gift to God?" said the father. He accepted fatherhood as a serious responsibility.

Mrs. Robinson recalled for me the home customs which gave religious training to the children:

Each child bowed at mother's knee to say the "Now I lay me" prayer and the "Our Father." My grandmother Bulloch was also at our house during a part of our childhood and joined "Aunt Gracey" in giving us religious training. Aunt Gracey started to teach Theodore his letters at three years of age and at the same time led him to begin memorizing hymns and psalms. Our father went farther and taught us the meaning of various verses in the Bible. At the five o'clock Sunday hour [detailed in another chapter] we described the sermon we had heard in the morning. This helped us to listen for the purpose of repeating, to seek the best method of expression, and to love the Bible. We each read aloud out of our own Bible. What our father there taught us was worked into our life afterward.

The first notable book which impressed and influenced Theodore as a little lad was Livingstone's Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa, This account of the courageous apostle of Christ who was a naturalist and a missionary and explorer in Africa, and who was found by Henry M. Stanley, and who later died on the shore of Lake Bangweolo, having slipped away while on his knees in prayer, awakened Theodore's imagination and lifted his ideals. His sisters delighted in telling how he went about carrying a big volume of Livingstone's works, asking everyone he met to explain to him about ^'foraging ants." Finally the little fellow attracted attention, and they found that Livingstone had referred merely to "foregoing ants."

He evidently was guided in his reading, for he paid high praise to the influence of a certain periodical called "Our Young Folks," which he said "instilled the individual virtues" and enforced the fact that "character" was the chief requisite for success. He then affirmed that all the modern moralizations and the wisdom of men could not change this fact, for a worthy citizen, above everything else, must have the right traits in himself, such as "self-reliance, energy, courage, the power of insisting on his own rights, and the sympathy which makes him regardful of the rights of others." This, he said, he was taught by his reading at home and at Harvard.

Mr. Roosevelt, Sr., regularly attended, during the holiday season, a dinner at the Newsboys' Lodging House and often Miss Satterj^'s Night School for Little Italians. He took Theodore and the other children to these meetings and to various Christian missions, and required them to help in a hearty way that might remove any air of superiority. These associations gave them an intimate view of the poor, which, when added to their knowledge of the rich, gave them breadth.

Theodore's father always taught a class in a mission Sunday school. On the way to this work he would stop and leave his own children at the Sunday school connected with Dr. Adams' Presbyterian Church on Madison Square. Afterward this church had as pastor the vigorous opponent of Tammany, Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst.

Roosevelt gave his father's example as the occasion for his own activity as a Sunday-school teacher in a Mission where he worked for three years until going to Harvard. In Cambridge he first taught a class in an Episcopal and then in a Congregational school. He declared, "I do not think I made much of a success of the 7 years work." But this he admitted was disproved when he recognized a Taxi driver as a former member of his class who informed him that he ^'was an ardent Bull Mooser."

Piety and activity in the church during the days of Mr. Roosevelt's youth were only expected of the effeminate or those anticipating an early death. He probably noticed this feeling, for he remembered the conditions then prevalent as late as 1900, when he explained that it was uncommon for college men in his day to teach a Sunday-school class. They also looked down upon one who did, so he determined to offset this false estimate by being a ^'corking" boxer, a good runner, and a genial member of the Porcelain Club. He affirmed that while he enjoyed them as sports, yet his deepest purpose was to be so furnished that no one should ''laugh at me with impunity because I was decent."

Jacob A. Riis relates that one Sunday while at Harvard Theodore noticed that a boy in his Sunday-school class had a black eye. On inquiring he found that the lad had received it in giving punishment to a boy who had been ugly to his sister. Mr. Roosevelt commended him and gave him a dollar bill as a reward. The minister of the church reproved the teacher for thus encouraging fighting and asked for his resignation. He acquiesced, but, like a good soldier and unlike some weak slackers in church work who would have relaxed into idleness with ''hurt" feelings, Theodore went to another church and there asked for and taught another class.

Mr. Roosevelt put high value on the training he received in his own home, for he affirmed, "I left college and entered the big world, owing more than I can express to the training I had received, especially in my home.''

Mr. Thayer, who was his schoolmate and close friend at Harvard and later his biographer, also testified to the moral stability thus insured :

The quiet but firm teaching of his parents bore fruit in him- he came to college with a body of rational moral principles which he made no parade of. but obeyed instinctively. And so, where many young fellows are thrown off their balance on first acquiring the freedom which college life gives or are dazed and distracted on first hearing the babel of strange philosophies or novel doctrines, he walked straight, held himself erect, and was not fooled into mistaking novelty for truth, or libertinism for manliness.

Dean Lewis wrote me : ^'Unquestionably his adult ideals were essentially the ideals of his mother and

father."

Dr. Alexander Lambert, who while his physician for twenty years was also his intimate friend, and who himself is a member of the Brick Presbyterian Church, New York, said to me:

Theodore received his ideals from his father, who was a deeply religious man. His father transmitted to him the full Christian doctrine of righteousness, and Theodore followed it through his whole life in word and deed.

Mrs. Kobinson affirmed her father to be an inspired man in his influence on Theodore :

My father was more than a religious man, he was an inspired man. He gave my brother all the big things of his character and added to that the inculcation of a patient persistency built on absolute confidence in the outcome.

In an address at the old home site she said :

When this home has been restored I will place in the bedroom the suite which my father and mother used. Into this room my brother came every night to say his prayers at my mother's knee.

Then she added : '^Those of you who have helped to restore this home will some day be as proud of it as were those in later years who helped restore Mount Vernon."

Why will they be proud ? Because it is to be made a center of Americanization work. That will naturally lead to recollections of the methods employed to build this towering American. Then they must remember that those methods were inseparably wrapped up in a Christian home, and that every night the boy came into the bedroom to say his prayers at his mother's knee, and that every morning the family gathered for "prayers," and that the Bible and church attendance were never neglected in that household.

Religious education is indispensable to the building of such Americans as Theodore Roosevelt.

Chapter II His Own An Ideal Home

"I ask you men and women to act in all relations of life ... as you hope to see your sons and daughters act if you have brought them up rightly." — Theodore Roosevelt.

For I know him that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord.— Gen. 18. 19.

MB. ROOSEVELT'S Letters to His Children alone present conclusive evidence of an ideal and Christian home life. The Rev. C. L. Slattery, D.D., rector of Grace Church, New York,

These letters reveal a beautiful picture of American family life at its best. For parents who think themselves too busy (chiefly with their own pleasure) to give any special attention to their children, delegating them uninterruptedly to nurses, governesses, and schoolmasters, it must be startling to read what the most active President of the United States was able to do for and with his children while he lived in the White House.