Accession to the Presidency
On September 6 1901 President McKinley was attending the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, when he was shot twice by an anarchist named Leon Czolgosz. When it at first appeared that the President may recover Roosevelt left for a camping vacation in the Adirondacks (there was at the time no law which allowed for presidential succession in the event the president was disabled). However, unknown to the doctor’s treating McKinley the gangrene which would kill him and which the doctors had no means of fighting had already set in, and the President died on September 14. Interestingly, his assassin was tried and sentenced to death before the end of the month and was executed by the end of October.
The new 26th President was and is the youngest man to take the oath of office, being just 42 years of age. It was not long before youthful vigor was a hallmark of his administration. Roosevelt sought to improve the lot of the average citizen and he did so throughout the remainder of his first term and through his second. He carried two big sticks, in international affairs it was the US Navy and in domestic affairs it was the Constitution of the United States. Special interest groups, monopolies, trusts, and other entities harmful to the common man one by one encountered the president and his policies, and one by one they lost.
Roosevelt protected the consumer and the nation’s health through the Pure Food and Drug Act and established federal standards for meat. Federal regulations of big businesses were enacted and enforced. His Justice Department broke up monopolies wherever they were found to be against the common interest, or were in violation of the law. Political graft and patronage was rooted out and exposed. He decided that just because the French couldn’t build a canal across the Isthmus of Panama was no reason the Americans couldn’t and started the process which would lead to its completion.
To demonstrate to the world the rising power of the United States Roosevelt dispatched a fleet of sixteen modern battleships on an eleven month round the world cruise, all of them with their hulls painted white, giving the endeavor the name the Great White Fleet. The considerable logistics difficulties presented by the cruise helped the US Navy develop a global means of fueling and maintaining their ship’s during extended deployments. It also demonstrated to the Congress the strategic value of the Panama Canal.
Roosevelt became the first president to intervene to settle a labor dispute when he brokered an agreement resolving the Coal strike of 1902. He expanded the power of the Interstate Commerce Commission in response to complaints of gouging by some railroads. He summed up all of his policies and his philosophy in a term far less remembered than his big stick. Roosevelt believed in any dispute between reasonable parties, all parties are deserving of a fair shake. He called it the Square Deal.