Dates in Office: 1901-1909
Important Information:
- Roosevelt was an American author, naturalist, explorer, historian and politician.
- He was the leader of the Republican Party and founded the Progressive Party.
- President Roosevelt was known for his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity as well as his leadership in the Progressive Movement.
- Roosevelt took over office after the McKinley assassination.
- He was reelected in a landslide election in 1904 over Alton Brooks Parker.
- His policy was a "Square Deal" which promised a fair deal to average citizens while breaking apart monopolistic corporations, kept down railroad rates and guaranteed pure food and drugs.
- His foreign policy focused on the Caribbean, where he built the Panama Canal.
- He expanded the Navy to be the Great White Fleet.
- Roosevelt negotiated an end to the Russo-Japanese War and received the Nobel Peace Prize for doing so.
- At the end of his second term, he supported William Howard Taft but changed his mind after leaving office and because of Taft's issues of progressivism.