Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914). Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. 1904.
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| years, the recollection of Mr. Roosevelt’s simple courtesy was a potent force in one man’s life. |
| With such ties of love binding the home together, the whirlwind of anger and passion that swept over the country in the years of the war had no power to break or to embitter, even though the mother was of the South, with roots that held, while his life and work were given to the Union cause as few men’s were. Rather, it laid the foundations broad and deep of that abiding Americanism that is today Theodore Roosevelt’s most distinguishing trait. It is no empty speech of his that caresses the thought of the men who wore the blue and those who wore the gray standing at last shoulder to shoulder. It was an uncle of Theodore Roosevelt who built the privateer Alabama, and another uncle, Irwin S. Bulloch, who fired the last gun aboard her when she went down before the fire of the Kearsarge, shifting it from one side of the ship to the other as she sank, to let it have the last word. The while at home his father raised and equipped regiments and sent them to the war, saw to it that they were fed and cared for and that those they left |