#156 Theodore Roosevelt

**David Senra** (0:00)
On the morning of April 11th, 1886, a young physician named Victor Stickney had come out of his office about noon on his way home to lunch when he saw the most bedwaggled figure I'd ever seen come limping down the street. The man was covered with mud, his clothes were in shreds.
He was all teeth and eyes. He was scratched, bruised, and hungry, but gritty and determined as a bulldog. As I approached him, he stopped me with a gesture, asking me whether I could direct him to a doctor's office. I was struck by the way he bit off his words and showed his teeth. I told him that I was the only practicing physician in the whole surrounding country.
By George, he said emphatically, then you're exactly the man I want to see. My feet are blistered so badly that I can hardly walk. I want you to fix me up.
I took him into my office, and while I was bandaging his feet, which were in pretty bad shape, he told me the story. The story, one Theodore was to tell many times, and one that was to be told about him for years after he'd left the Badlands, was of his last and biggest adventure in the West, and may be summarized briefly as follows.
It has the ring of the adventure stories he had loved so much as a boy, but it also happened just as he said. Earlier in March, Theodore was informed by Seawall that a boat that they'd kept on the river had been stolen in the night by someone who had obviously taken off with it downstream. They suspected the culprit was a man named Finnegan, who lived upriver with two cronies of equally bad reputation. So in the next few days, Seawall and Dow put together a makeshift boat, and after waiting for a blizzard to pass, the three of them took off in pursuit, pushing into the icy current on March 30th.
It was a matter of principle, Theodore later said. To submit tamely and meekly to theft or to any other injury is to invite almost certain repetition of the offense.
They were three days on the river before catching up with the thieves.
Theodore had brought along some books to read and his camera, expecting there might be a magazine article in the adventure. Each man had his rifle. The second night, the temperature dropped below zero. The next day, they spotted the missing boat and going ashore, they found Finnegan and his partners, who surrendered without a fight. We simply crept noiselessly up and covered them with cocked rifles.
From there, they spent another six days moving on down the river, making little headway now because of ice jams and taking turns at night guarding the prisoners.
Food ran low and the cold and biting winds continued.
But not the least extraordinary part of the story is that during these same six days after catching the thieves, Theodore, in odd moments, read the whole of Anna Karenian. At a remote cow camp, Theodore was able to borrow a horse and ride another 15 miles to the main ranch where he got supplies and hired a team, a wagon and a driver. And then came the roughest part of the escapade. It was agreed that Seawall and Dow would continue downstream with the two boats and that he, Theodore, would go with the three captives over land, heading due south some 45 miles to Dickinson where he could turn them over to the sheriff. The captives rode in the wagon with the driver. Theodore walked behind, keeping guard with his trusty Winchester rifle. So by the time Dr. Stickney saw him, he had walked 45 miles in something less than two days with no sleep and had at last deposited his prisoners in jail. When Stickney asked why he had not simply shot or hang the thieves when he first found them and saved himself all the trouble, Theodore answered that the thought had never occurred to him.
He impressed me and puzzled me, wrote Stickney. And when I went home to lunch an hour later, I told my wife that I had met the most peculiar and at the same time the most wonderful man I had ever come to know. I could see that he was a man of brilliant ability, and I could not understand why he was out there on the frontier.
That was an excerpt from the book that I'm gonna talk to you about today, which is Mornings on Horseback. The story of an extraordinary family, a vanished way of life, and the unique child who became Theodore Roosevelt and is written by David McCullough. Before I get into the book, and I'm gonna start telling you where the author tells us why he actually wrote the book, I wanna tell you why I'm reading the book. So Theodore Roosevelt has been a supporting character in a lot of the biographies that I've read for this podcast, especially recently. It started with Back on Founders number 135 when I was reading the biography of Joseph Policer. Theodore Roosevelt was at war of sorts with Policer. Then when I read The House of Morgan, the biography of the Morgan family on Founders number 139, he's a main character in that book. When I read The House of Morgan, that made me look for a book, I actually stumbled on a book called The Hour of Fate, and that was Founders number 142 And that podcast was all about the rivalry and the temporary partnership between JP Morgan and Teddy Roosevelt. And the author of that book does a great job of comparing and contrasting the two individuals. And though JP Morgan might be, I wouldn't say he's more well known actually, Teddy Roosevelt's probably more famous. I mean, he's based on Mount Rushmore, for God's sake. But I just found Teddy Roosevelt to be the far more interesting person. He lived a far more interesting life than JP Morgan did, in my opinion. And then finally on Founders number 145, I read the biography of William Randolph Hearst. And again, that's another person Teddy Roosevelt went to war with.