Theodore Roosevelt Jr.

Childhood

Roosevelt was the eldest son of President Theodore Roosevelt and First Lady Edith Kermit Carow. He was born at the family estate in Cove Neck on September 13, 1887, Oyster Bay, New York, when his father was resuming his political career after a three-year hiatus. As a son of President Theodore Roosevelt, he has been referred to as "Jr.", but he was actually Theodore III and one of his own sons was Theodore IV. His siblings were brothers Kermit, Archie, and Quentin; sister Ethel; and half-sister Alice. As an Oyster Bay Roosevelt, and through his ancestor Cornelius Van Schaack Jr., Ted was a descendant of the Schuyler family.

Like all the Roosevelt children, Ted was tremendously influenced by his father. In later life, Ted recorded some of these childhood recollections in a series of newspaper articles written around the time of World War I. One day when he was about nine, his father gave him a rifle. When Ted asked if it were real, his father loaded it and shot a bullet into the ceiling.

When Ted was a child, his father initially expected more of him than of his siblings. The burden almost caused him to suffer a nervous breakdown.

In one article, Ted recalled his first time in Washington, "...when father was civil service commissioner I often walked to the office with him. On the way down he would talk history to me—not the dry history of dates and charters, but the history where you yourself in your imagination could assume the role of the principal actors, as every well-constructed boy wishes to do when interested. During every battle we would stop and father would draw out the full plan in the dust in the gutter with the tip of his umbrella. Long before the European war had broken over the world father would discuss with us military training and the necessity for every man being able to take his part."

On June 20, 1910, Roosevelt married Eleanor Butler Alexander (1888–1960), daughter of Henry Addison Alexander and Grace Green. Ted and Eleanor had four children: Grace (1911–1994), Theodore (1914–2001), Cornelius (1915–1991), and Quentin (1919–1948).

After service in World War I, Roosevelt began his political career. Grinning like his father, waving a crumpled hat, and like his father, shouting "bully", he participated in every national campaign that he could, except when he was Governor-General of the Philippines. Elected as a member of the New York State Assembly (Nassau County, 2nd D.) in 1920 and 1921, Roosevelt was one of the few legislators who opposed the expulsion of five Socialist assemblymen in 1920. Anxiety about Socialists was high at the time.

On March 10, 1921, Roosevelt was appointed by President Warren G. Harding as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. He oversaw the transferring of oil leases for federal lands in Wyoming and California from the Navy to the Department of Interior, and ultimately, to private corporations. Established as the Navy's petroleum reserves by President Taft, the properties consisted of three oil fields: Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 3, Teapot Dome Field, Natrona County, Wyoming; and Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 1 at Elk Hills Oil Field and Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 2 Buena Vista Oil Field, both in Kern County, California. In 1922, Albert B. Fall, U.S. Secretary of the Interior, leased the Teapot Dome Field to Harry F. Sinclair of Sinclair Consolidated Oil Company, and the field at Elk Hills, California, to Edward L. Doheny of Pan American Petroleum & Transport Company, both without competitive bidding.

During the transfers, while Roosevelt was Assistant Secretary of the Navy, his brother Archie was vice president of the Union Petroleum Company, the export auxiliary subsidiary of the Sinclair Consolidated Oil. The leasing of government reserves without competitive bidding, plus the close personal and business relationships among the players, led to the deal being called the Teapot Dome scandal. The connection between the Roosevelt brothers could not be ignored.

After Sinclair sailed for Europe to avoid testifying in Congressional hearings, G. D. Wahlberg, Sinclair's private secretary, advised Archibald Roosevelt to resign to save his reputation. The Senate Committee on Public Lands held hearings over a period of six months to investigate the actions of Fall in leasing the public lands without the required competitive bidding. Although both Archibald and Ted Roosevelt were cleared of all charges by the Senate Committee on Public Lands, their images were tarnished.

At the 1924 New York state election, Roosevelt was the Republican nominee for Governor of New York. His cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) spoke out on Ted's "wretched record" as Assistant Secretary of the Navy during the oil scandals. In return, Ted said of FDR: "He's a maverick! He does not wear the brand of our family." Eleanor Roosevelt, more closely related to Ted by blood but married to FDR, had been infuriated by these remarks. She dogged Ted on the New York State campaign trail in a car fitted with a papier-mâché bonnet shaped like a giant teapot that was made to emit simulated steam, and countered his speeches with those of her own, calling him immature.

She would later decry these methods, admitting that they were below her dignity but saying that they had been contrived by Democratic Party "dirty tricksters." Ted's opponent, incumbent governor Alfred E. Smith, defeated him by 105,000 votes. Ted never forgave Eleanor for her stunt, though his elder half-sister Alice did, and resumed their formerly close friendship. These conflicts served to widen the split between the Oyster Bay (TR) and Hyde Park (FDR) wings of the Roosevelt family.