IV
Upon returning from Europe, fatigued from touring Catholic cathedrals and German dance halls, Roosevelt was flushed with the ambition of seeing the American West with his own eyes. Smitten with the whole idea of “Go West, young man!” once promulgated by Horace Greeley, he wanted to straddle the Continental Divide clad in buckskin, riding off into the wild Rockies. Roosevelt’s parents, however, preferred the thick woodlands of northernmost New York and Vermont instead of places with names like Dead Man Gulch or Hellville. Proximity, one supposes, played a large role in his parents’ decision about the itinerary. All T.R. could do was nod in acquiescence; at least the Hudson River valley was better than being seasick on another voyage to Europe. During the summers of 1870, 1871, and 1872 the Roosevelt family rented country houses along the Hudson River valley—in Dobbs Ferry (George Washington’s headquarters before the march to Yorktown in 1781) and Spuyten Duyvil (near Riverdale).64 The Hudson enchanted Roosevelt, even though the constant houseboat traffic and train whistles in these commuter towns not far from the city meant he wasn’t having the kind of wilderness experience his imagination craved.
Conscious that he hadn’t toured his homeland west of the Atlantic coast, Roosevelt titled his post-Europe diary “Now My Journal in the United States” (May 25 to September 10, 1870). Spending much of that summer in Spuyten Duyvil, Roosevelt quaintly dated his diary with “country” at the top of each entry. Sounding like a modern-day summer camper, he wrote of swimming, hiking, and shooting a bow and arrow. “We began to build a hut,” he wrote on June 6, “and had a nice time and found a bird’s nest with 3 eggs (but we did not take them).”65
When that particular diary ends abruptly, in September, there is a gap for the next eleven months. In August 1871, when the next journal begins, the awesome natural sites in the Adirondack Park—Mount Marcy, Blake Peak, and Lake Tear-of-the-Clouds (the source of the Hudson River)—animate his writing. Bursting with excitement about the Adirondacks (and the White Mountains), he tramped around, imagining himself in the footsteps of frontiersmen like Ethan Allen and George Rogers Clark. The Adirondacks at this time were very much in vogue. Two years prior to the Roosevelt family’s visit, the Congregationalist minister W. H. H. Murray had published the best-selling Adventures in the Wilderness; Or Camp-Life in the Adirondacks, in which he claimed that the upstate New York “wilderness” helped cure consumption and other lung ailments.66 Owing to the unexpected success of Murray’s book, tourists and health seekers alike came pouring into the Adirondacks, fishing in Lake Placid, hiking up Whiteface Mountain, and simply inhaling the air along the Ma-cIntyre Range.67
Young Theodore counted himself in the front line of the new enthusiasts for the Adirondacks. Like Thomas Jefferson—who in 1791 deemed the thirty-two-mile-long Lake George “without comparison, the most beautiful water I ever saw”68—Roosevelt wanted to explore the shoreline and islands of this natural wonder. In fact, the “Queen of American Lakes” always held a special place in Roosevelt’s heart. “We started on the Minnehaha up Lake George,” he wrote. “We passed innumerable islands on the way up it. At the head or rather tail of this lake, where it is connected with Lake Champlain the mountains were very abrupt and the lake very narrow. The scenery at this point is so wild that you would think that no man had ever set foot there.” 69
In these diary entries from the Adirondacks Roosevelt uses a vivid exactness in describing the the piney woods and incomparable lakes he played in. Satisfied and comfortable, he watched a blue-gray bird with a shaggy crest dive into the lake and quickly identified it as a kingfisher. Careful distinctions were made between coveys of quail and runs of common loons. Strange as it seems, Roosevelt spent an hour just observing a little blue heron with a daggerlike bill that sat on the lake edge sunning itself; the sight was worth 100 Lord’s Prayers. Sometimes it almost seemed that when Roosevelt saw a bird he became the bird for a short spell.
In the Adirondack Park and the White Mountains, Roosevelt also discovered the fiction of James Fenimore Cooper. His father felt that reading a novel like The Last of the Mohicans (1826) while staying in the area where the French and Indian War took place would enrich the literary experience. Cooper’s hero Natty Bumppo (also called Leatherstocking or Hawkeye) was a bold white scout, paddling across Lake Champlain, climbing lofty summits, and wearing a bearskin to gain entrance to a Huron village. Later in life Roosevelt remembered that he read all five of The Leatherstocking Tales in the order in which Cooper had written them. This means that in addition to absorbing The Last of the Mohicans, he read what in retrospect are the two most important American conservationist novels of the nineteenth century, narratives that dealt, in part, with imperative calls to create forest reserves through visionary natural resource management: The Pioneers (1823) and The Prairie (1827). “I put Cooper higher than you do,” Roosevelt would write to the novelist Josephine Dodge Daskam when he was vice president of the United States. “I do not care very much for his Indians, but Leatherstocking and Long Tom Coffin are, as Thackery somewhere said, among the great men in fiction.”70
Before Cooper, forests were viewed as dark, satanic thickets, a regrettable natural obstacle to homesteaders and frontiersmen, something to be clear-cut; streams, were similarly considered dangerous, unpredictable torrents. Cooper overturned this concept of the “haunted” wilderness. To him trees were “jewels” and fishes “treasures.” In The Pioneers, for example, he railed against despoilers of nature for their “wasteful extravagance.” Cooper’s alter ego, Natty Bumppo, firmly believed that the unnecessary slaughter of wildlife was a crime against God. Cooper even anticipated the extermination of the ubiquitous passenger pigeon. “It’s wicked to be shooting into flocks in this wastey manner,” Cooper wrote in The Pioneers. “If a body has a craving for pigeon’s flesh, why, it’s made the same as all other creaturs, for man’s eating; but not to kill twenty and eat one. When I want such a thing, I go into the woods till I find one to my liking, and then I shoot him off the branches without touching the feather of another, though there might be a hundred on the same tree.”71
On that summer’s holiday, stimulated by his evening campfire readings in The Last of the Mohicans, young Theodore did. He had turned explorer, stalking chipmunks burrowed in fallen trees, and spying on woodpeckers making a racket with their beaks like plier claws. Pretending to be Natty Bumppo, he carefully studied salamander markings, finding them hidden under water-soaked logs. To the bafflement of his parents he gathered more than 100 different species of lichens and fungi under rocks and in dense undergrowth. He brought out from caves unusual samplings of moss to scrutinize back home under a magnifying glass. And, of course, there was daily talk of bears. “There is a tame bear here who eats cake like a Christian,” he recorded at White River Junction, “and appears very anxious to come to close quarters with us.”72
V
As these diaries attest, the future president’s father encouraged T.R.’s love of nature. Straitlaced, slightly pious, and a dutiful husband, Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., preferred philanthropy over business and was always ready to aid the poor and needy. An abolitionist before the Civil War, he now—during the Reconstruction era—had an “emancipationist memory” (as the historian David W. Blight called the belief that the federal government should intervene to help the poor and disenfranchised), and a determination to be part of the progressive movements of his day.73 Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., worried that in the thirst for post–Civil War reconciliation, African-Americans were going to be discriminated against. But the main thrust of his philanthropy was to extol natural history and animal protection. Promoting the humane treatment of horses, making sure they weren’t abused, became one of his civic concerns. In An Autobiography, T.R., in fact, goes on for a couple of pages about his father’s prowess with horse reins, bragging that he was a fine four-in-hand carriage driver. A man of medium height, Theodore Sr. was so well proportioned and carried himself with such perfect posture that he seemed much larger. “He was a
big, powerful man, with a leonine face, and his heart filled with gentleness for those who needed help or protection,” Roosevelt recalled, “and with the possibility of much wrath against a bully or an oppressor.” 74
Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., was a founder of the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
Theodore Roosevelt, Sr. (Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History)
Driven to succeed, Theodore Sr. usually dressed in a white neckcloth and a dark suit, forgoing the broad-brimmed high hats favored by his fellow aristocrats. He gave the impression of a groomed man on top of his life’s game. His nephew Emlen Roosevelt, in fact, claimed that he personified “abundant strength and power” in every pursuit he decided to tackle.75 The wellspring of Theodore Sr.’s enthusiasm for living creatures—both wild and domestic—came from his father, Cornelius Van Schaack Roosevelt (T.R.’s grandfather), who was born in 1794. Cornelius dropped out of Columbia College and devoted his full attention to Roosevelt and Son hardware. Before long he had a near-monopoly on American plate glass imports. With money to invest, Cornelius founded Chemical Bank of New York. Basically, the Roosevelt family business, as befitting the urban gentry, was now financial investment.
The son of the exceedingly rich Cornelius Roosevelt, Theodore Sr., a leisured gentleman, born into the Dutch aristocracy of New York, never experienced poverty. Still, he had compassion for the underprivileged. (So did his son Theodore Jr., the future president.) Theodore Sr. mixed easily with both rich and poor. Among his many civic-minded good deeds was his cofounding of the Newsboys’ Lodging Home and New York’s Children’s Aid Society. Calm, cheerful, deeply thoughtful, and a devoted Dutch Reform Protestant, Roosevelt was determined that his children—Anna (nicknamed Bamie), Theodore Jr. (Teedie), Elliott (Nell or Ellie), and Corinne (Conie)—would have an ideal childhood. Studying the natural world, he insisted, would be a big part of their education. Summers spent in the fresh air of upstate New York and New England helped fulfill this desire. Trips abroad were always structured for maximum educational uplift. Although not a naturalist, the elder Theodore Roosevelt was known throughout Manhattan as a devotee of the Hudson River valley. It’s little wonder that he became a founder and trustee of the American Museum of Natural History. To be a civilized person, Theodore Sr. believed, meant honoring the biological history of On the Origin of Species, the most revolutionary book of the nineteenth century.
Now a New York landmark and a national treasure, the museum began when Dr. Albert S. Bickmore, who had been a student of the zoologist Louis Agassiz at Harvard, arrived in Manhattan. Fresh from collecting species throughout the East Indian archipelago, Bickmore began telling colleagues of a dream he had of founding a museum of natural history. They all agreed it would take a lot of money. So Bickmore was directed to 28 East Twentieth Street, where Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., resided. The elder Roosevelt had an abiding philanthropic interest in promoting nature education and was friendly with the leading Darwinian scientists in America. Although his reputation for good works was renowned, he wasn’t a pushover. If Theodore Sr. didn’t like a sales pitch, he’d give a firm, definitive no, even if his directness bruised sensibilities. Theodore Jr. wrote in An Autobiography that his father was the “best man” he ever knew but “the only man of whom I was ever really afraid.”76
The courteous and knowledgeable Bickmore, however, received a warm welcome. Hours of fine conversation ensued, with Bickmore’s dream coming into realistic focus by the time the teapot was emptied. “Professor,” the elder Roosevelt told his guest, “New York wants a museum of natural history and it shall have one, and if you will stay here and cooperate with us, you shall be its first head.”77
This was not idle encouragement. Applying his Dutch fortitude and beneficence, the elder Roosevelt helped spearhead the nascent effort to build a world-class nature museum in Manhattan. Vouching for Bickmore with his rich friends, he envisioned the museum as an educational place to offer schoolchildren and working people a chance to study stuffed elephants, desert dioramas, birds’ nests, and porcupine quills. A few months later, on April 8, 1869, the charter for the American Museum of Natural History was approved in the front parlor of the Roosevelt brownstone. Two days later, Governor John Thompson Hoffman of New York signed a bill establishing the museum. The elder Roosevelt’s partners in this grand philanthropic endeavor included the future U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom Joseph Choate, the finance magnate J. Pierpont Morgan, and the U.S. congressman William E. Dodge, Jr.78
Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., was one of eighteen Manhattanites who signed a letter to the commissioner of Central Park requesting a building site on the Upper West Side for the new museum. The spot chosen was Manhattan Square, which ran along Central Park West from Seventy-Seventh to Eighty-First Street. The New York Times singled out the elder Roosevelt as being “deeply interested in the enterprise” from the moment Bickmore had knocked on his door.79 President Ulysses S. Grant laid the museum’s cornerstone in 1874. As was to be expected, ideas regarding the mandate and magnitude of the new museum collided. Early bickering, for example, centered on whether dinosaur fossils should be displayed. The elder Roosevelt—a trustee—was for displaying them; paleontology, after all, as the French scientist Georges Cuvier had dramatically proved, was an exhilarating part of natural history. (Critics of fossils, however, believed they were a Darwinist ploy to somehow discredit what would become Creationism.) At Theodore Sr.’s request a delegation was sent to France to study Cuvier’s dinosaur bones and acquire outstanding taxidermy by Jules Verreaux.80
From the time it opened its doors in 1877, the American Museum of Natural History was a marvelous ticket-taking success. Visitors streamed en masse to see the new architectural wonder looming over a largely underdeveloped neighborhood. The original neo-Gothic building anchored the area, then home to squatters and goats. Huge turrets, conical roofs with heraldic eagles, and granite walls all added to its baronial elegance. At nighttime the illuminated museum could be seen from New Jersey, across the Hudson River.81 The interior decor was heavy with black walnut and ash. The museum attracted nearly as much press attention as the opening of the Empire State Building eventually would; even President Rutherford B. Hayes was on hand for the formal opening late in 1877.82 The inaugural displays focused on the glory of Darwinism (even though On the Origin of Species had been published eighteen years earlier, its impact in America was just being felt), scientific achievement, geographical discovery, and the natural sciences. An extraordinary collection of fossil invertebrates—purchased for $65,000 from the official New York state geologist—attracted the longest lines.83
Young Theodore came home from Harvard University to attend the museum’s opening and marveled at the seashells, beetles, and bird skins. He had donated twelve mice, a turtle, four bird eggs, and a red squirrel skull to the collection.84 Respectfully, he listened to President C. W. Eliot of Harvard, a dull blade on the podium, extol the “divinity” of the natural sciences. He was particularly drawn to the second floor of the main hall, which showcased Professor Daniel Elliot’s collection of North American birds. A stuffed dodo, a mummified crocodile, and a huge badger all apparently fascinated him no end.85
Nobody could have guessed that Theodore Jr., running around the museum excited about a mammoth tooth and a badger claw, would decades later have a wing of the museum dedicated in his honor for his efforts on behalf of U.S. conservation. Other great presidents—like Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson—have beautiful memorials in Washington, D.C., along the Potomac River tidal basin, to celebrate their statesmanship. The New York museum, by contrast, fittingly became the New York state shrine to Roosevelt (along with a nature preserve called Roosevelt Island in the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., and Theodore Roosevelt National Park in the badlands of North Dakota). The Upper West Side museum was rededicated after Roosevelt’s death to honor the “scientific, educational, outdoor and exploration aspects” of his life—not the political aspects. And while it’s true that sag
acious conservationist sayings of his were carved on the marble walls—“The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased; and not impaired in value” might be the best—they were undercut by some of his most strident imperialist maxims.86
But the museum was a repository for dead wildlife only, whereas the elder Roosevelt—like young Theodore—also cared deeply about live animals. Wandering down the corridors of the museum lacked the domestic intimacy of mousing with a cat, let alone the thrill of hearing a cougar snort. So Theodore Sr., teaching his four children another lesson, brought the family into the animal protection movement.
CHAPTER TWO
ANIMAL RIGHTS AND EVOLUTION
I
Cruelty to animals infuriated Theodore Roosevelt even when he was a child. The mere sight of a horse being flogged or dog kicked made him sick at heart. Overcrowded poultry cages and bounties for shooting cats, for no clear-cut scientific reason bothered him. After the Civil War, companion animals like dogs and cats were seen by society at large as a quirk of sophisticates. Working-class people, worried about rabies and flea infestation, thought of such animals mainly as disease vectors.1 (Roosevelt himself, as a college student, shot a mad dog that was menacing his horse on Long Island.2) To the Roosevelt family, however, a domesticated dog or cat was part of the family. During the Victorian era one’s obligation to a pet included making sure it didn’t suffer undue pain. No less a person than Darwin decided not to be a physician (even though his father and grandfather were physicians) because he couldn’t stomach watching hideous premodern surgical procedures (such as amputations) performed without anesthetics. Morphine and ether would not come into medical practice until the 1850s. “When the concern about pain was combined with the changing understanding of similarities between humans and animals, it became obvious that animals were also capable of suffering and feeling pain,” the historian Stephen Zawistowski has explained in Companion Animals in Society. “Thinking on this had come full circle from the Cartesian assertion that animals were automations incapable of feeling pain.”3
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