In One of His Last Letters from the White House, President Theodore Roosevelt Can Think of Nothing But His Upcoming African Safari

"I start in a fortnight"

When Theodore Roosevelt retired from the presidency in 1909, he was only 50 years old. The youngest former president in American history, he was looking for adventure and for a project that would take him away from Washington, D.C., and politics. A naturalist at heart, he turned, not surprisingly, to his boyhood fascination for natural history. Three weeks after the inauguration of his successor, William Howard Taft, Roosevelt set out for British East Africa to hunt big game.  A man of great energy and character, he went to Africa both to fulfill his long-time safari dream and also to leave the stage to Taft, his successor.

The trip would be vintage Roosevelt: part a naturalist's experience, part hunting, part scientific observation, part adventure.  It would spawn books, articles, and mark the young former president's transition back to citizenship, the next chapter in his prolific life.

The Smithsonian Institution co-sponsored the expedition, and many of the specimens were destined for the new U.S. National Museum, then under construction on the Mall and today known as the National Museum of Natural History.  Roosevelt was accompanied on the trip by his son, Kermit, who served as official photographer, and three representatives from the Smithsonian.

TR had gotten his start in national politics working for the Benjamin Harrison administration, under an appointment by the President himself, and he maintained an affection for his predecessor’s family. He kept in touch periodically with the President’s son, Russell Benjamin Harrison, a colonel in the military who had fought in the Spanish-American War, and who spent life afterward in a series of generally unsuccessful business ventures.

Typed letter signed, on White House letterhead, Washington, March 3, 1909, his final full day in office, to “My Dear Colonel Harrison."  "Let me thank you for your letter.  But now, my dear Colonel, about that investment; there isn't any investment I could consider going into now.  I shall be up to my ears in work getting ready to go to Africa; for I start in a fortnight and it would be a physical impossibility for me to consider anything outside. Sincerely yours, Theodore Roosevelt."

As Roosevelt said, just two weeks later he would set sail from New York for Africa and his great safari.

This letter was acquired directly from the Harrison descendants, who had retained it for over a century.