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Theodore Roosevelt Facts & Worksheets

From September 1901 to 1909, Theodore Roosevelt served as the 26th President of the United States.

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From September 1901 to 1909, Theodore Roosevelt served as the 26th President of the United States. He was elected again in 1904 on his own merits. During his presidency, he set aside around 200 million acres for national forests, reserves, and wildlife refuges. He was a devoted conservationist. Roosevelt took on the violent conflict between business and labor head-on and earned the title of “trust buster” for his tenacious attempts to dismantle industrial alliances in accordance with the Sherman Antitrust Act. In terms of foreign affairs, he concentrated on Central America, where he started work on the Panama Canal. To portray American naval strength, he increased the size of the Navy and took the Great White Fleet on a tour of the globe. He was the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize winner for his effective efforts to mediate the end of the Russo-Japanese War.

Facts & Information

Early Life and Career

  • Theodore Roosevelt was born on October 27, 1858, in New York, and he was the second of four children to Theodore Roosevelt Sr. and Martha Bulloch. His siblings were Anna, Elliott Bullock, and Corinne.
  • Roosevelt married Alice Hathaway Lee and enrolled at Columbia University Law School after earning his degree from Harvard College in 1880. However, he departed after just one year to work in government. He was elected to the New York State Assembly at the age of 23, where he served two terms from 1882 to 1884.
  • The devastated Roosevelt spent the following two years on a ranch he owned in the Badlands of the Dakota Territory, where he hunted big game, drove cattle, and served as a frontier sheriff after losing both his mother and wife on the same day in 1884.
  • He married Edith Kermit Carow, his former sweetheart, after returning to New York. Together, the couple would raise six children, including Alice Roosevelt, the son of Roosevelt’s previous marriage. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., Kermit Roosevelt, Quentin Roosevelt, Ethel Roosevelt Derby, and Archibald Roosevelt were the other children of Edith and Theodore.
  • Roosevelt made an unsuccessful bid to become mayor of New York City in 1886. He received a position in the U.S. Senate two years later as President Benjamin Harrison recognized his assistance to the Republican Party. Grover Cleveland, the successor to Harrison, reappointed him to the Civil Service Commission.
  • Two years after being chosen as the head of the New York City Board of Police Commissioners in 1895, Roosevelt was appointed assistant secretary of the United States by William McKinley in 1897.
  • To lead the First United States Volunteer Cavalry in the Battle of San Juan, Roosevelt resigned from his position as a naval secretary during the Spanish-American War in 1898, making him one of the war’s most well-known heroes.
  • The New York Republican political machine generously contributed to the returning war hero’s campaign, which helped Roosevelt unseat a strong Democratic rival and win the governorship. After winning, Roosevelt demonstrated his innate independence and reluctance to yield to pressure from party leaders.
  • To prevent McKinley from re-election as governor in 1900, the top New York Republican Thomas C. Platt and national party chairman Mark Hanna plotted to have Roosevelt selected as McKinley’s running partner. McKinley and Roosevelt defeated democratic candidates William Jennings Bryan and Adlai E. Stevenson in a landslide.

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Presidency

  • On September 6, 1901, during the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, McKinley was fatally shot by a deranged anarchist named Leon Czolgosz. 
  • Roosevelt was inaugurated as the 26th President eight days after McKinley died. When he took office at 42, he was the country’s youngest president, and his freshness and vigor radically transformed how people saw the post.
  • Roosevelt stated the progressive notion that government should arbitrate between competing forces, including capital and labor, isolationism and expansionism, conservation and growth. To stabilize American society in his First Annual Message to Congress in December 1901. 
  •  Roosevelt’s “Square Deal” domestic policy included a commitment to take on powerful industrial trusts that posed a danger to commerce.
  • In 1902, his administration successfully sued the Northern Securities Company, a railroad alliance created by James J. Hill, E.H. Harriman, and J.P. Morgan, under the Sherman Antitrust Act, which had previously been unsuccessful. He intervened in a protracted coal strike in Pennsylvania that year, employing various bargaining strategies to end the strike and get a small wage raise for the workers.
  • Using his position of power, Roosevelt furthered the cause of conservation. His first notable legislative achievement was the National Reclamation Act, designed to finance major irrigation projects in the American West and signed into law in June 1902. 
  • Almost five times as much land as all of his predecessors combined was also set aside by Roosevelt for national forests, reserves, and wildlife refuges, totaling nearly 200 million acres. In the course of that process, he favored the removal of numerous Native Americans from their ancestral grounds and the addition of about 86 million acres of tribal land to the national forest system.
  • Roosevelt garnered the backing of more conservative Republicans and corporate interests despite his liberalism and his image as a “trustbuster” and defeated the Democrats in a landslide in 1904. As a result of the death of his predecessor, he became the first president to be reelected.

Theodore Roosevelt’s Foreign Policy

  • Roosevelt, like McKinley, intended to break the United States’ isolationism and fulfill its role as a world power. In foreign affairs, he felt that America should “talk softly and carry a big stick” and that its president should be ready to employ force to back up his diplomatic efforts. This big-stick strategy was evident in Roosevelt’s interactions with Latin America.
  • He aided Panama in its separation from Colombia in order to speed the commencement of the Panama Canal construction in 1903, which he later considered his greatest achievement as president. 
  • The following year, Roosevelt announced a “corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, declaring that the US would prevent foreign involvement in Latin America and intervene to police the region, ensuring that governments fulfilled their international debts. This arose when numerous European countries attempted to recover debts owed by Latin American countries through coercion.
  • Roosevelt planned to strengthen the country’s defenses to prepare it for a larger role in the international arena, and the country had undergone a great shift by the time he took office. 
  • The Navy has grown to prominence as a key international maritime power.  He also secured an arrangement with Japan, exchanging diplomatic recognition for Japan’s support for the US’s continued presence in the Philippines.
  • During the Russian–Japanese War, Theodore Roosevelt acted as the mediator. Russia and Japan met in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on September 5, 1905, to sign the Portsmouth Treaty, and as a result, in December 1906, Roosevelt won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the war.
  • Roosevelt reluctantly prepared to keep his campaign promise from 1904 not to run for reelection in the 1908 election and backed Secretary of War William Howard Taft. Roosevelt departed for a 10-month safari in Africa and a tour of Europe as soon as he left office in early 1909, earning him international renown. 
  • Upon his return, Roosevelt discovered President Taft had abandoned the progressive changes he had pledged and sided with the more reactionary part of the Republican Party.

Death & Legacy

The “Bull Moose Party” and the election of 1912

  • Outraged, Roosevelt fought Taft for the Republican nomination in 1912, but when he was unsuccessful, he and his followers fled and founded the Progressive Party, sometimes known as the Bull Moose Party. Roosevelt once described himself as “as powerful as a bull moose” in a letter.
  • While running for office in Milwaukee, Roosevelt was wounded in the chest by a fanatic, but he made a quick recovery. Due to the division within the Republican Party, Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, won the election with 435 electoral votes to Roosevelt’s 88, and Taft received just eight votes. 
  • Despite his defeat, Roosevelt’s campaign was the most successful third-party effort in American history. Many of Wilson’s progressive programs during the following eight years were modeled after Roosevelt’s 1912 program.
  • When World War I, which began in Europe in 1914, first broke out, Roosevelt was a major proponent of the United States joining the conflict and harshly attacked Wilson’s initial stance of neutrality. 
  • All four of Roosevelt’s sons volunteered to serve once the United States entered the war in 1917; however, his adored youngest son, Quentin, was shot down and died while flying a mission over Germany.
  • At age 60, Roosevelt passed away from a pulmonary embolism in his sleep at his family’s home in Oyster Bay, New York, while continuing to be politically and physically active. He is interred in Oyster Bay Cove’s Youngs Memorial Cemetery.
  • For his contributions to the American conservation movement, Theodore Roosevelt is honored. Eleanor Roosevelt, his niece, would later serve as First Lady of the United States under the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt were distant fifth cousins.
  • Roosevelt was a statesman, a hunter, a naturalist, a biographer, a historian, and an orator. Twenty-six books, more than a thousand magazine pieces, tens of thousands of lectures, and countless correspondence make up his immense work. 
  • Sculptor Gutzon Borglum and hundreds of workers sculpted the colossal figures of US Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln into the face of Mount Rushmore. Borglum chose the four presidents to represent 130 years of American History because of their contributions to preserving the Federal Republic.
  • Several sites were dedicated to him, such as the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site in Buffalo, New York, and the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site in Manhattan, New York City, administered by the National Park Service.
  • Abraham Lincoln received the highest rating as one of the best Presidents of the United States. At the same time, George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Theodore Roosevelt have consistently rated in the top five, while James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, and Franklin Pierce received the lowest ratings.

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Theodore Roosevelt Worksheets

This bundle contains 11 ready-to-use Theodore Roosevelt Worksheets that are perfect for students who want to learn more about Theodore Roosevelt who was the 26th President of the United States and he was in office from 1901 – 1909. He was a Nobel Peace Prize winner due to his role in the Russian-Japanese War. His administration was known for the creation of the Panama Canal, the Antiquities Act, the Pure Food and Drug Act, the Forest Service and the Great White Fleet.

Download includes the following worksheets:

  • Theodore Roosevelt Facts
  • Theodore Roosevelt Word Search
  • Is It True?
  • What am I?
  • Odd One Out
  • Theodore Roosevelt’s Timeline
  • In My Opinion
  • Teddy Bear
  • Mount Rushmore
  • Theodore Roosevelt’s Legacy
  • Theodore Roosevelt Acrostic

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Theodore Roosevelt most famous for?

Theodore Roosevelt was most famous for the following: In terms of foreign affairs, he concentrated on Central America, where he started work on the Panama Canal. To portray American naval strength, he increased the size of the Navy and took the Great White Fleet on a tour of the globe. He was also a 1906 Nobel Peace Prize winner for his effective efforts to mediate the end of the Russo-Japanese War.

Why did Theodore Roosevelt win the Nobel Peace Prize?

Due to his efforts to broker a settlement to the Russo-Japanese War in 1904-5, Theodore Roosevelt, the President of the United States, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In accordance with the peace movement’s advice, he also employed arbitration to resolve a dispute with Mexico.

What did Theodore Roosevelt do to change the world?

Using his position of power, Roosevelt furthered the cause of conservation. Almost five times as much land as all of his predecessors combined was set aside by Roosevelt for national forests, reserves, and wildlife refuges, totaling nearly 200 million acres. In the course of that process, he favored the removal of numerous Native Americans from their ancestral grounds and the addition of about 86 million acres of tribal land to the national forest system.

Who was the youngest president ever?

Theodore Roosevelt was inaugurated as the 26th President and the youngest to be elected in the United States at 42.

Who was the best president of the United States?

Abraham Lincoln received the highest rating as one of the best Presidents of the United States. At the same time, George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Theodore Roosevelt have consistently rated in the top five, while James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, and Franklin Pierce received the lowest ratings.

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