President Theodore Roosevelt: “I know a good deal about the big animals of the wilderness…I am, I think I may say, to a certain extent an outdoor naturalist”

The second of four children, Roosevelt grew up in a remarkably affectionate and close-knit family, an environment he hoped to pass down to his own children. TR’s love of family was a thread that stretched through his entire life. He often related warm stories of his parents. And some of the great photos taken of Roosevelt also feature his children, from whom he was nearly inseparable. A few years ago, we carried a letter from his trip West to Yellowstone National Park, a letter written to his young son Quentin, sending news of his trip and a drawing of a pack mule. This tender affection was the genuine character of the man. It was acquired by the National Park Service. Roosevelt’s first wife died after the birth of his first child, named after her. And he later married a childhood friend, Edith, with whom he had five children. This family was the love of his life and his purpose. He never forgot the sacrifice his first wife made, even as he built a new and strong family life.

The term “Bully pulpit” comes from Roosevelt, who observed that the White House was a bully pulpit. For Roosevelt, “bully” was an adjective meaning “excellent” or “first-rate” — not the noun “bully” (“a blustering browbeating person”) that’s so common today. Roosevelt was the first President to understand the modern presidency’s power of persuasion, which he recognized gave the incumbent the opportunity to exhort, instruct, or inspire. He took full advantage of his bully pulpit, speaking out about the danger of monopolies, the nation’s growing role as a world power, and other issues important to him.  But what did it mean to him?  What was appropriate and what was not appropriate for a sitting President?

TR was a well-publicized naturalist and nature-enthusiast, known for his life in the American West, his promotion of conservation, and his grand hunting expeditions. No American President is more associated with the outdoor life. Roosevelt had strong views on nature and condemned those popular nature writers whom he felt did not have true knowledge of wildlife and relied on overtly anthropomorphic characteristics.  Such was the case in William Long’s “Northern Trails”, which followed the life of a white wolf named Wayeeses.  It was purportedly a work of non-fiction, drawing on Long’s own observation of this very animal.  Roosevelt, using his own extensive hunting experience, pointed out confidentially to the publisher that many of the acts attributed to Wayeeses could not be true, as wolves did not behave in such a fashion.  At the urging of fellow naturalist John Burroughs, Roosevelt wrote publicly although obliquely on the controversy in 1905 in “Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter”:  “I wish to express my hearty appreciation of your warfare against the sham nature-writers—those whom you have called ‘the yellow journalists of the woods’…. You in your own person have illustrated what can be done by the lover of nature who has trained himself to keen observation, who describes accurately what is thus observed, and who, finally, possesses the additional gift of writing with charm and interest.”  In June 1907, he was quoted in an article discussing these writers, whom he now called “Nature Fakers,” and accused them of writing “unnatural history.”  Long’s books, Roosevelt said, were a “genuine crime” especially against the country’s children, whom he feared would learn them as fact.   The study of nature and wildlife was of particular importance to Roosevelt.  This stirred up Long, who attacked Roosevelt, as a sitting president, for engaging in such attacks.

Writing in the June 8, 1907 issue of the “Outlook”, editor Lawrence Abbot stated that Roosevelt’s desire to become embroiled in such a debate stemmed from his “extraordinary vitality, coupled with his unusual interest in all that concerns human welfare,” making “it very difficult for him to keep silence in the presence of anything which he thinks injurious to his fellow-men.”  Abbott was a friend of TR and the son of Lyman Abbott. He also worked at his father’s publication, “The Outlook”, for which TR himself would later write.

In the early Summer of that year, Lawrence became a father for the first time.  TR was overjoyed at the start of a new young family.  In this letter, among the best of TR we have seen, he extols the value of the family and ties the success of a person to a happy family.  In the letter, you feel TR’s own travails with his first wife, and you see the respect he has for women through motherhood.  That TR felt this way sheds light on his love of his wife and children and the pain he must have felt when his beloved youngest son, Quentin, was later killed in World War I. Moreover, it is a thorough exposition in stark terms of how he would use the Bully Pulpit and even what it means.  That the topic was about nature and wildlife, topics close to his heart, adds much additional interest.

Typed letter signed, marked personal, Oyster Bay, on White House letter, July 8, 1907, to Lawrence Abbott of “The Outlook” magazine, stressing that he intends to use the Bully Pulpit and that he will not shrink from it regardless of opposition. He insists upon truth, and will fight lies from the White House. He also lays out his warm feelings about motherhood, and his strong feelings as a naturalist.

“My Dear Abbott:  Three cheers for Mr. Abbott and the boy: I am as pleased as possible.  I earnestly hope that Mrs. Abbott is doing well.  When she can receive them, pray extend to her my heartiest congratulations.  The pains of childbirth render all men the debtors of all women, and the one person whom I sincerely put above even the best type of soldier is the best type of mother.  As for the “success” of which we hear so much, the real success is open to every man and woman, from the President and his wife to the day laborer and his wife, if they have the right stuff in them; for the real success is for the man to be able to keep his family as they should be kept, for the woman to bear her part within the household and for both to have, together with their children, the kind of family life that all of us ought to have.

“I think you are right in regretting that I went into this nature-faker fight.  This is another way of saying that a President ought not to get into anything outside of his work as President; that he ought not to do as Gladstone did and take an interest in outside studies of any kind.  But it is a rather a hard proposition to live up to.  For instance, in the Outlook I reviewed Robinson’s poems because I felt that he merited more consideration than he received and that my position as President gave the chance to call attention to him.  In the same way, I wrote an article on the Irish sagas because it seemed to me that intelligent laymen should take a greater interest in them.  So in the same way I have written articles on hunting and outdoor life.  (I do not know whether in what I have said on race suicide and on various labor and social questions I ought to be held as going outside of my proper position or not; but you must remember that, as President Pritchett says, the by-products of the Presidency are important, and I aim mighty glad to have had the chance to say my say on certain big moral matters.)  But I will not write in praise if I do not write, where necessary, in blame. Most certainly the President never should condemn any man unless the offense is flagrant and unless the facts are absolutely undoubted.   I condemn Long simply because he is so impudent and so shameless an impostor, and has such  real ability of its kind, that I felt he was in danger of discrediting nature study generally.  Scientific observers feel very strongly about Long.  I am, I think I may say, to a certain extent an outdoor naturalist.  For instance, today I have gotten and am sending to the New York Museum of Natural History a warbler, the Dominican, which is practically new to this part of the country.  I know a good deal about the big animals of the wilderness.  Mr. Long’s preposterous falsehoods give me precisely the feeling that an archaeologist would have if Rider Haggard solemnly produced “She” not as a novel but as a genuine archaeological and ethnological discovery in Central Africa.  As a novel, “She” is an excellent book of adventure, and I enjoyed reading it.  I suppose it has gone out of fashion now, or I would be pleased to have my children read it; but if it were produced as a genuine bit of contemporary history, a study of Africa today, and as such were put in school, and I was the only person prominent enough from my position to call attention to the preposterous nature of what was being done, I should feel obliged to thus call attention to it.  Having started the content, I shall now see it thru, and shall publish in Everybody’s Magazine an article which will be my last contribution to the matter.”

“I send you herewith clippings that have been sent me, which will give you the views of two New York naturalists whom you can at any time see, and will also give you the view of a country observer in Ohio, who has to deal with Mr. Long’s fictions, not about any big wild beasts, but about as common a little animal as a red squirrel. I also enclose you a long letter written to me by one of our very best and most accurate outdoor observers, Mr. George Shiras, the son of Justice Shiras of the Supreme Court, now retired.  Shiras did not know whether to be most indignant at Long or most amused at anyone believing him.  He said he would write about him in a jocose spirit.  He has sent the article to me, but I haven’t the slightest idea what to do with it and I do not suppose anyone would wish to print it.  Will you return all the enclosures to me when you have read them?”

After this letter, Roosevelt responded to Long in the fall of 1907. His article, which was written under his own name and simply titled “Nature Fakers”, was published in the September issue of “Everybody’s Magazine”.   He wrote: “Our quarrel is not with these men, but with those who give them their chance. We who believe in the study of nature feel that a real knowledge and appreciation of wild things, of trees, flowers, birds, and of the grim and crafty creatures of the wilderness, give an added beauty and health to life. Therefore we abhor deliberate or reckless untruth in this study as much as in any other; and therefore we feel that a grave wrong is committed by all who, holding a position that entitles them to respect, yet condone and encourage such untruth.”  This ended the controversy in Roosevelt’s favor.