Finished reading my biography on Teddy Roosevelt...

And it's changed a lot of my thinking on Republicans, from Why Elephants Lie!

The bio is by Mills and Harvard scholar Kathleen Dalton, and is entitled: Theodore Roosevelt--A Strenous Life.  I hadn't realize that Republicans have purged humanists twice, not once in the past.  Heretofore, I had always spoken only about the Goldwater revolution, and the evolution of the hard-core Orange County conservatives at and around 1964.  I had always seen Lee Atwater and the rise of racist Republicans (in the Southern Strategy) as an offshoot of this.

I still view the Southern Strategy as a classic miscalculation of the conservatives, but this bio taught me that the Progressive movement was far more significant than I'd realized.  During the administration of Taft they broke off and started the Bull Moose party, formally known as the National Progressive Party.  It was this that purged (or attracted) the anti-slavery sympathizers away from the Republican Party.

I now feel that the progressives became the left-most party back in 1912, even more so than the Democrats.  Indeed, the Democrats have been catching up and we only now have the confrontation between Hillary and Sanders right before our eyes, as the latest iteration of the dialectic.  The marginalization of progressives in 1912 has a lot to do with why you Brits say we Americans are more conservative.  I have always hypothesized that America missed the period of late-Victorian socialism as a result of the endless frontier, and our unlimited options.  Now, I am becoming convinced it was merely isolated and put on the shelf for another day.

This is living history.  Great stuff!

When I read the title of the thread I thought you meant you had written it.

Syl wrote:When I read the title of the thread I thought you meant you had written it.

I wish!  It's a great book.  But those who know me are aware that my specialty is early modern British intellectual history.  I only got into American history later, almost as a hobby.  

As I am writing now on the intellectual origins of the Republican Party (perhaps an oxymoron--lol) I have gone into the post-Civil War and turn-of-the-century Republicans more and more...hence, my interest in Theodore Roosevelt.

Syl wrote:When I read the title of the thread I thought you meant you had written it.

There. I changed the thread title to be more accurate.

Original Quill wrote:

Syl wrote:When I read the title of the thread I thought you meant you had written it.

There.  I changed the thread title to be more accurate.

Lol....I think it was me not you Quill. (That sounds like we are breaking up)

Syl wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

There.  I changed the thread title to be more accurate.

Lol....I think it was me not you Quill. (That sounds like we are breaking up)

xx

Original Quill wrote:

Syl wrote:When I read the title of the thread I thought you meant you had written it.

  I wish!  It's a great book.  But those who know me are aware that my specialty is early modern British intellectual history.  I only got into American history later, almost as a hobby.  

As I am writing now on the intellectual origins of the Republican Party (perhaps an oxymoron--lol) I have gone into the post-Civil War and turn-of-the-century Republicans more and more...hence, my interest in Theodore Roosevelt.

Fascinating reading...did you ever watch that special on PBS?

3 Roosevelt's Come Alive In PBS Documentary, Ken Burns ...
.npr.org/2014/09/10/347276638
Sep 11, 2014 · That puts a lot of extra weight on Burns and his collaborators in this documentary miniseries, which launches Sunday on PBS. Since Theodore Roosevelt …

I've always been a huge admirer of Eleanor and all that she did for her family with little to no notoriety; just pure back bone and shear will determination!
Are you working your way through the past presidents or just the Republican side of our political system?  
I got hooked back in grade school, when we had to do a book report on someone that lead a charge/battle during the civil war!  Stonewall Jackson and his bio got me hooked on history and then splintered off on to reading more about our presidents and all of those 'naughty-naughty' behind the scenes mistresses that so many of them had!  

I think I did see that documentary one time.

That documentary links the Hyde Park Republicans (FDR), who were Democrats, with the New York City Republicans (Teddy), who were Republicans, and later National Progressives.

Franklin, the Democrat, married the daughter of Teddy's brother, Elliot, and she became the famous (Eleanor) Roosevelt running around with progressive ideas and cures for America.  Franklin was a staunch Democrat, so that doesn't help me in my overriding interest: the Republican Party.

I think Burns packaged them together merely for the connection.  There's quite a difference between the Hyde Park Roosevelts and the New York City Roosevelts.

Oh, I've watched the mini-series twice and found something new both times: Eleanor felt very betrayed by Teddy Roosevelt and his lack of supporting her husbands run for office. And Franklin really was more of a standard bearer for humanitarian issues then any other among his Republican Party...he'd be more apt to be a Democrat by todays standard. IMHO
But it was a good mini-series nonetheless.

Just finished the book Hissing Cousins about Eleanor and Alice, Teddy's daughter. Good read.

aspca4ever wrote:Oh, I've watched the mini-series twice and found something new both times: Eleanor felt very betrayed by Teddy Roosevelt and his lack of supporting her husbands run for office.  And Franklin really was more of a standard bearer for humanitarian issues then any other among his Republican Party...he'd be more apt to be a Democrat by todays standard. IMHO
But it was a good mini-series nonetheless.  

When you say "Franklin really was more of a standard bearer for humanitarian issues than any other among his Republican Party...", I think you mean Teddy.  He was the Republican.  Franklin was a Democrat.

The NYC Roosevelts always had a kind of patriarchal, benevolent approach to civic life, starting with Teddy's father, Thee, and ending up steering Teddy waaaaay to the left.  Teddy ended up being close to what you Brits became...almost socialist.  He backed women's suffrage, labor against the mining and railroad interests, and to a degree, opposed black peonage.  During his presidency he broke up trusts and today Bernie Sanders would love that part of him.  

Republicans have always linked politics to economic self-interest, and so they saw nothing wrong with making money by peddling offices and favors. For Republicans, it's the capitalist version of free enterprise, applied to civic life.  Teddy was always in that part of the Republican Party that opposed graft and patronage and eventually parted political company with his long-time friend, Henry Cabot Lodge. He was following in the footsteps of his father.

This is what I mean about how the Republicans repeatedly purged their own left, correspondingly moving themselves to the right.  Concordantly, they repeatedly purged their own humanitarian side, opting for graft over reform.  When Taft showed tendencies of returning to this side, Teddy left the Republicans and started his National Progressive Party.  

This habit pattern of Republicanism led eventually to the clown show we have today...and why I am interested in them. I want to know what social themes have led this, the younger-brother party, to so stray from the moral path.

When you say "Franklin really was more of a standard bearer for humanitarian issues than any other among his Republican Party...", I think you mean Teddy. He was the Republican. Franklin was a Democrat.

Quite right...I didn't type in "among his Republican Party FAMILY"...my error!
The dynamics between the slender/unassuming/introvert that was Franklins persona and the robust/out spoken/bully boy persona of Teddy were quite polar opposites!

aspca4ever wrote:

When you say "Franklin really was more of a standard bearer for humanitarian issues than any other among his Republican Party...", I think you mean Teddy.  He was the Republican.  Franklin was a Democrat.

Quite right...I didn't type in "among his Republican Party FAMILY"...my error!  
The dynamics between the slender/unassuming/introvert that was Franklins persona and the robust/out spoken/bully boy persona of Teddy were quite polar opposites!  

I figured it was just a typo or mental lapse. I do that a lot when I'm swimming in names and ideas, which is what history is all about.

Cass wrote:Just finished the book Hissing Cousins about Eleanor and Alice, Teddy's daughter. Good read.

Ahhh...poor, gorgeous Alice.  I think I would have fallen for this tragic, beautiful girl.  I have an affinity with her, more than with any other of Teddy's children.

Teddy's first marriage was to her mother, Alice Lee.  The Lees were Boston Brahmins, the elite of the elitist of cities.  New Yorkers had their 'Kinckerbockers", probably more wealthy, and certainly more active and aggressive, but never so genteel.  Remember the old poem:

"I'm from good old Boston,
The home of the bean and the cod,
Where the Cabots speak only to the Lowells,
And the Lowells speak only with God."

Sweet Alice, the mother, Teddy's first wife, was raised in that company.  A beautiful woman.  Boston to the core.  Unfortunately, she was a centerpiece on the dinner table, lost in the aggressive, busy New York life of the political Roosevelts.  

She died in childbirth, giving life to her equally beautiful daughter Alice--the subject of your book...sometimes called Baby Lee.

Teddy went into a slump when he lost his beautiful bride.  He left NYC and lived for a while on his ranch in South Dakota.  What must Baby Lee have thought in her lonely moments?



For a while Baby Alice Lee was raised by Teddy's sister, Bamie.  Money was no problem.  Love and lonliness perhaps...but she was raised in Bamie's home in Manhattan, and later on Teddy's home "out on the island."  (Sagamore Hill estate was built on a hill overlooking Oyster Bay, on the north side of Long Island.)  Alices' problem was that she was "hot"--in today's vernacular--and somewhat lost.  She was simply, like her mother, a classically gorgeous woman.  Men sought her.  She could have whatever she wanted, but what I think she really wanted was the warmth and core of a lost mother, and the attention of her overactive father.



Teddy remarried his childhood friend, Edith, and Edith did everything she could to include Alice, but it was always more of a grafting than an embracing.  As a result, Alice became a party girl, as she cast about for a station in life.

She later became serious and worked hard to help her father in his new-founded National Progressive Party.  But she was Boston, Boston, Boston...and a Brahmin after all, just like her mother.  That would never sit right with Eleanor, who had her own problems and was busy trying to make up for her father's alcoholism by mothering the world.  Lol.

That's another story.