Original subtitles

- That's him, isn't it?

[phone ringing]

- It's time, Colonel.

- Is the car here?

- Outside, sir.

- Good.

[light music]

- [Roosevelt] It is not the critic who counts.

Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles.

Or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

The credit belongs to the man

who is actually in the arena.

[crowd cheering]

- How ya feeling, Teddy?

- Fit as a bull moose.

- [Crowd] Teddy, Teddy, Teddy, Teddy, Teddy.

Teddy, Teddy, Teddy, Teddy, Teddy.

Teddy, Teddy, Teddy, Teddy, Teddy.

[crowd cheering]

[gunshot]

[gasping]

- Let's go!

To the hospital.

- [Doris] Everything can change in a moment.

Theodore Roosevelt did everything he could

to be ready for that moment.

- [Edward] Theodore Roosevelt is born into privilege

and of great wealth.

- [Jared] A very sickly child.

So he had to put up his dukes and fight.

- Roosevelt saw himself as the embodiment of America.

- [Doris] He was an exemplar of the strenuous life.

- He suffers loss.

He suffers grief.

- [Stacy] Here's a man who had everything.

Education, wealth, opportunities.

- But he felt all of that must be used

to help the lives of the unfortunate.

- [Leonard] Fairness, justice, equity is what drove him.

- He woke up every day of his life saying, bring it on.

- [Clay] He was the first celebrity President.

- [Edward] There were thousands of people

yelling and screaming.

Like, he's a rockstar.

- He grasped the power of the presidency with both hands.

He had so much energy.

He's always on his feet.

- He gave an 84 minute address bleeding from a chest wound.

- [H.W.] He becomes a folk hero.

- [Clay] On the side of the underdog.

- [Tweed] He was multifaceted.

- He was America as a singular figure.

- [H.W.] He wanted to change the country.

- He makes the United States a global power.

- He's propelling America's best ideas.

- [Richard] He dragged America, kicking and screaming,

into the 20th century.

- [Doris] He was always moving forward to change things.

To make his mark on the world.

[dramatic music]

[drumming]

[bells chiming]

After Abraham Lincoln's assassination in 1865,

a train carried his body home to Springfield.

The cortege stopped in

major cities along the way.

In New York, 100,000

people lined the streets.

An enormous crowd at that time.

They were drawn together in disbelief

that the leader who had carried them

through the Civil War had been shot.

They sang, they held hands, they wept.

They carried signs.

One placard said, mankind has lost a friend.

- If you look closely at the second floor of this mansion,

you see two little faces peering above the window sill.

That was TR and his brother Elliott.

TR was six, almost seven, and his brother was five.

- Here we have our future 26th President

looking down at the casket

of our 16th President, Abraham Lincoln.

The man that Theodore Roosevelt would revere

the rest of his life.

What an uncanny and symbolic moment.

- Teddy Roosevelt comes of age

in one of the most tumultuous times

in American history.

There was no way to be part

of the United States in the early 1860s

without understanding the existential threat

posed by the Civil War itself.

- Theodore was a son of privilege.

The Roosevelt family stood at the very top

of New York society.

His grandfather was one of the five wealthiest people

in the city of New York.

- Theodore's father believes very firmly

that to be a real citizen, to be a man,

to be a Christian meant

that you could enjoy wealth and privilege,

but you had to use your wealth

and your talent to help the lives of the unfortunate.

And he's gonna instill that in young Theodore.

He'll take Theodore with him to visit

the orphan boys and the vulnerable

and to see the underside of the city

and really constantly instruct him that

as you grow up, this is something you must carry on.

- His father was a hero that he really admired.

He said his father was his best friend, his companion.

The greatest man he ever knew.

But his father worried about his beloved son.

- [Clay] TD, as he was called, TD is sickly,

he is underweight, he's frail.

- He had terrible asthma and really seemed

to be one of those children that was destined

to not reach adulthood.

And so, as a consequence, he was kept at home.

He was in many ways babied by the family

in order to kind of protect him

from the infirmities he suffered from.

[coughing]

- [Roosevelt] Some of my earliest remembrances

are of nights when he would walk up

and down with me in his arms.

When I was a wretched mite.

- Easy, easy.

- TR was very aware of how sick he was.

When he had those asthma attacks he would feel

like he was suffocating or drowning.

And then he heard his parents say

that they were worried that he might not live.

Just imagine what that's like for a little kid,

to hear that he might die.

- Because TR couldn't go to school

and couldn't do what other children do,

couldn't play outside much, he became bookish.

He began to read books about boys

that go off into the frontier and do great things

and kill a buffalo and save pioneer families.

- He actually put himself into the adventures

of the people that he was reading about,

the explorers and the deer slayers.

And then he got into collecting birds and insects.

His shelves in his room were so filled

with dead objects that poor Elliott begged

to have another room.

- Theodore Roosevelt didn't have a lot

of friends when he was a kid,

because he was mostly house bound.

And so his father was his confidant.

He was his model.

He was the one who urged Theodore Roosevelt

to make himself strong.

And so it really was this model

that Theodore Roosevelt tried to live up to.

- And his father goes to him and challenges him.

- You've got a strong mind, TD.

But not the body to go with it.

Your mind can only take you so far.

You can do it, TD.

You can do anything.

[heavy breathing]

Hey.

- No, I can do it.

- [Clay] This need to prove himself through sheer will power

is one of the principle motivating forces

in the entire life of Theodore Roosevelt.

- [Doris] He took up that challenge

with every bone of his body.

He just said, I'll make my body.

And by god, did he.

He was in that gym that his father provided

for him day after day.

And it becomes the challenge for the rest of his life.

[triumphant music]

- [H.W.] Roosevelt entered Harvard

because his family was well connected.

- Come on, get him!

- He wanted to be a big man on campus.

He could box, he could wrestle,

but he was not well coordinated.

He had terrible eyesight.

[cheering]

But he was determined.

- When TR entered Harvard he was not very cool.

He had these side whiskers,

these bright red cheeks, those metal rim glasses.

And he was pretty awkward.

He had been home schooled,

so he wasn't used to being with other kids.

And then in his room he had

the dead lizards and the dead snakes.

And the smell of formaldehyde

followed him everywhere he went.

- He doesn't drink, he doesn't smoke,

he doesn't swear.

He finds out that many of his fellow classmates

are heading off to Boston's brothels

and gambling dens.

And he was really appalled at what he sees

as this immoral lot.

So he doesn't make many friends with that attitude.

- He was loud.

He could be obnoxious.

He was opinionated.

But he was interested in excelling.

He worked hard at every class.

He got A's and embraced political science and history.

- No matter how strange he might have seemed

at the start, there was something about his warmth,

his curiosity, his irrepressible energy

that just won people over.

He became one of them.

And he became quite popular at Harvard.

- While he was at Harvard he saw,

across the crowded room, Alice Hathaway Lee,

this beautiful Boston debutant.

- And she made quite an impression on him

because he came home and wrote in his diary,

I'm gonna marry that woman.

- [Doris] No sooner does he meet Alice Lee

then he launches a crusade

to make this young woman his wife.

[crowd cheering]

- Why won't he stop?

- You know what he's like, Alice.

[grunting]

[bell ringing]

- Alice.

- You don't quit, do you?

- Roosevelt, got a telegram for ya.

[somber music]

- [Doris] He gets a telegram saying

that his father is dying and he rushes home.

But by the time he gets there his father

is already dead.

He was only 46 years old.

- His father had been suffering from stomach cancer.

And they'd really kind of kept it from Roosevelt.

- Flags are at half mast throughout the city.

They talked about him as one of the greatest

philanthropists that New York had ever known.

And the rich and the poor followed him to the grave.

- [Roosevelt] I shall never forget

these terrible moments of sharp, bitter agony.

When I realized he would never again greet me.

How I wish I could ever do something

to keep up his name.

- [Doris] It was a terrible, terrible time for him.

He said that if he had too much time

on his hands he would literally go crazy.

- Roosevelt's only 19 and it's really

the first body blow that life deals Theodore Roosevelt.

And he does what's gonna be characteristic

in the other dark moments and big challenges in his life.

And engages in intense physical activity.

- In the months after his father's death he went to Maine

where he'd be out in the woods.

He'd be kept busy day after day.

Two guides in Maine, Bill Sewell and Will Dow

take him under their wing.

And the extraordinary thing

is they know he's fragile, but he actually has

an asthma attack while he's there with them

and it doesn't stop him one bit.

Every night he's bunking with the woodsmen.

And these are people who may not have been able

to write their own name,

but he loved listening to their stories.

And Sewell said you could see that night

that wherever he went, he got connected with the people.

He enjoyed listening to them,

empathizing with them, learning their stories,

and make some sort of connection

that will last for the rest of his life

with many of these people.

- It's one of the things that's really remarkable about him.

Despite being a wealthy gentleman from New York City,

he can mix with anybody.

He never tries to be someone that he's not

and his authenticity makes him quite relatable

to people who he really has nothing in common.

- He comes back to Harvard.

He's stronger, more confident,

even more passionate about Alice Lee.

And they announce their engagement

on Saint Valentine's Day.

- [Edward] They're married on Roosevelt's 22nd birthday.

They go back to New York City.

- Initially, Theodore was thinking

that he would follow in his father's footsteps.

That he would get involved in the philanthropic boards

that his father had been so important in.

He began to realize that if he got into government,

that government could take care of some

of the underlying problems

that the philanthropic world had addressed.

He decided, my mission is gonna be

the betterment of New York City's government.

- At the time, the poverty and the wealth

were so extreme in New York.

It was a gilded age.

The millionaires, the JP Morgan and Vanderbilt.

The size of their mansions just extraordinary on 5th Avenue.

And then you go down to the Lower East Side

and see such, just brutal poverty.

Full of so many new immigrants.

More than two thirds of the city

was either foreign born or first generation.

- [Stacy] Immigrants were taken advantage of

because they didn't speak the language

by capitalists who were looking to make a profit.

- [Richard] And there was no safety net.

There is no minimum wage.

There is no social security.

People starved to death in New York City.

- Theodore Roosevelt was attracted

to the Republican Party because it was

his father's party and it was the party

of Abraham Lincoln.

- In those days, to break into a party,

you had to belong almost to a club.

So you had to find where the headquarters were.

And they were in a big room above a saloon, Morton Hall.

So he just started going there

and hoped that he would be accepted

as part of the Republican Party.

[murmuring]

- There's horses dead four deep on Broadway.

I mean, I had three die on me in the last month.

- Horses? Pass.

[chuckling]

- That's why we need a sanitation bill.

To make Tammany Hall responsible for street cleaning.

- Shove off, swill.

- Excuse me?

- He said, shove off.

- Gentleman, I'm a Republican, just like you.

- No, not just like us, I'd say.

- All right lads, that'll do.

- Sure, Joe.

- The name's Joe Murray.

What's yours?

- Theodore Roosevelt.

- Roosevelt, that's quite a name.

Do you happen to be a relation to the great man?

- My father.

- A great loss to the city, the passing of your dad.

- Mr. Murray, what is it that you do around here?

- I get Republicans elected.

- I'm interested in government.

- Watching it or doing it?

- I'm a doer, Mr. Murray.

This is what I wanna do.

[dramatic music]

- Theodore Roosevelt is elected

to the New York State Assembly.

TR shows up in Albany as a 23 year old

freshman state assemblyman.

Of course, he's got his own outfit.

Custom tailored for the experience.

- Black and white photos of the state legislature

might show a lot of people wearing jackets and ties

but it's a rough place filled

with rough, heavy drinking, tough people.

And along comes this silk stocking, elitist.

He just seems ripe for a bully

to come along and pick on him.

And that's precisely what happens.

And so Roosevelt realizes that he can't

just simply be moral.

He just can't simply be brilliant.

He actually has to get in the ring.

If the situation required it,

he had to put up his dukes and fight.

- He makes headlines and he suddenly becomes

the most famous assemblyman.

He regards politics as a fight between good and evil.

So he gets on the floor and he yells

at his Democratic opponents.

He says, they're rotten, they're corrupt.

And he makes lots of enemies doing this.

After awhile the Republicans even begin

to get irritated with him.

He had risen like a rocket in New York.

Of course they love those fiery speeches

but then he realized he was crashing like a rocket.

And he finally realizes that he's alienated everybody

and he can't get anything done.

And the good thing was he understood

that he had a swelled head.

He tones down his rhetoric,

he reaches across the aisle to the Democrats.

He makes friends again with his fellow Republicans

and he really becomes an effective legislator

because he grew on the job.

- When he was new to the New York legislature,

it was assumed that he would vote

as his social class voted.

In all bills and these bills would favor the wealthy.

- There was a cigars reform bill

that was gonna prohibit the manufacture

of cigars in private houses, in tenement houses.

- Cigars at that time were made in people's homes.

Horrible, squalid, small, dark, awful places

where usually immigrants labored.

Almost around the clock.

If cigars were made at home,

then cigar companies made a lot of money.

- When the cigar bill first comes

to the floor he gives a passionate speech against it.

All of his life's learning had taught him

that the government had no right

to interfere with the rights of private property.

In fact, he had voted against minimum wage bills,

working condition changes

on that very philosophical understanding.

- [Stacy] And Roosevelt assumed that the home manufacture

of cigars was just fine.

- That cigar bill will not pass

as long as I have a vote.

- I heard your speech, Mr. Roosevelt.

Samuel Gompers with Cigar Makers Union.

- You didn't approve of it, then.

- It seems to me anybody who's got an opinion

should know the facts.

Even if that person's bought by the Republican Party.

- I'm my own man.

- Prove it.

- When Samuel Gompers, who went on to become

an extremely important labor leader said, look,

come with me on a little inspection tour.

Roosevelt didn't say, no, or I'll send an aide

or give me a report.

He said, of course.

- He takes up Gompers' challenge.

But also, it's his native curiosity.

The same curiosity that made him want

to understand what it was like for the woodsmen

to live in the woods all their lives.

Now he wants to see what is life like

for these people living in the tenement.

And what he sees stuns him.

[baby crying]

[coughing]

- They work from dawn to midnight.

It pays a dollar a day.

- Each?

- No, my whole family.

And the owner he takes the rent out of it.

[coughing]

- Hello, young fellow.

[light music]

- Roosevelt would recount that it really

had an impression on him.

This was in his home city.

This is where the bulk of New Yorkers are living.

- They lived under conditions where

plaster was falling off the walls.

The ceilings were a constant wet puddle.

There was mold and brownness and dirt smudged

in every corner of the room.

They might live in windowless, confined dwellings

with tuberculosis and other contagious diseases.

- They're absolutely desperate

and they'll do whatever it takes

to put a tin of food on the table for their children.

They can't protect their own value as laborers.

And Roosevelt underwent

a kind of conversion experience over this.

He gained, I think, a sense that he was

on the side of the underdog.

- And that first hand experience

is a thing he will crave the rest of his life.

To see conditions the way they really are.

To feel empathy and understand how other people are living

and then he's able to say, I'm gonna make this difference.

- This is the first inkling that he gets

that his father's style of public duty is not enough.

The only way this problem is gonna be fixed

is not through philanthropy.

The problem of exploited workers

is gonna be fixed by law.

- Roosevelt came out in favor

of the cigar reform bill and he went

to the Democratic governor at the time, Grover Cleveland,

who was skeptical of the bill,

to lobby for this with the governor.

- I thought you opposed this union bill?

- I did.

But I've seen in person the conditions

of these tenement factories.

- I know Mr. Gompers.

- Governor.

- And who is your friend?

- Governor Cleveland, this is Mr. Politiski.

I met him the other day in his home.

- What do you have to say?

- I wish for Mr. Roosevelt to speak for my family.

- Why him?

- He came and he saw, with his own eyes.

- All right, Mr. Roosevelt, talk.

I hear you're good at that.

- Governor, what I saw was not a home

you'd ever recognize.

Two families living in just two rooms

and children working where they should sleep.

It's unsanitary, it's outrageous!

[dramatic music]

- [Doris] The bill passes.

Roosevelt was so excited knowing

that it would change the conditions of life

for the people who were in those tenement houses.

- This is just the first example, really,

of Roosevelt betraying his class.

Of Roosevelt looking out for the poor.

- [Doris] And then, in short order,

the bill got overturned by the courts.

- He thought, well what does it mean

when you finally get a legislative body

to do the right thing, only to have it

vetoed by unelected court justices.

- He was shocked at what he saw in Albany.

The graft, the corruption.

These people who are getting the bribes,

insisting on the bribes, paying off judges.

- [Edward] He starts investigating corruption.

Newspapers couldn't get enough of it.

- Even from his first days in the Assembly,

he understood the power of the press

and he made friends with the people

who were covering the Assembly.

- Roosevelt becomes a very savvy politico

about how to get things done, who to align with,

and how to get the public on your side.

Increasingly, people are making decisions

about politicians based on what they would read

in the newspapers.

- By the time he's reached that second term

in his legislature, he's championing

a series of reform bills.

And he really feels like he's become a leader.

And he has the reigns in his hand.

- Back in New York City at the time,

his new wife Alice was pregnant.

They were about to have their first child.

When he received a telegram telling him

that his wife had produced a baby girl.

- It's a moment of great celebration.

Cigars and congratulations all around.

And then a second telegram arrives.

You must come home at once.

Your wife is dying and your mother is dying too.

It was incomprehensible.

His mother had contracted typhoid fever

just in the week that she came there

to help take care of Alice who was dying

from complications of child birth.

- [Clay] So he got on the train

and inched his way down to the city.

It was the longest train journey of his life.

- [Tweed] By the time he got to New York it was

in the middle of the night.

- [Doris] His brother Elliott meets him at the door

and says to him, there's a curse on this household.

- And so, on Valentine's Day, 1884,

Roosevelt sat by his mother's bed and she died.

And then a few hours later he held

his young wife Alice in his arms and she died too.

- The two most important women of his life

have died in the same house, on the same day

within hours of each other.

[cracking thunder]

[somber music]

- [Roosevelt] The light,

has gone out of my life.

[somber music]

- [Clay] He thought that his life was effectively over.

He was stoic through the funeral.

- He became totally despondent.

And it's only his sister who came to him and said,

Theodore, get out of New York City.

- She agreed to take the child, temporarily at least.

And then he went to the Little Missouri River Valley

in Dakota Territory, the Badlands.

The starkness and the ruggedness.

The drama of it had a deep appeal to him.

He really believed that there was nothing

further for him in New York City.

And so he went there thinking that he might never return.

[triumphant music]

- [Roosevelt] It was a land of vast, silent spaces.

Of lonely rivers and plains.

Where the wild game stared at the passing horseman.

It was still the Wild West in those days,

the West of the Indian, the buffalo hunter,

the soldier, and the cow puncher.

- [Tweed] After Alice dies, TR is devastated.

So he decides to start

a whole new existence in North Dakota.

- [Clay] It was a perfect place for him.

To read, to write, to reflect, to grieve,

to hunt, and to seek adventure.

- Roosevelt called it a grim fairy land

because it was a real darkly romantic landscape.

- The wide open West just captured his spirit.

He had come to believe that the frontier

was the test of the American character.

- People on the frontier had to contend

with wild animals and weather events

and Native Americans.

So those people had to demonstrate their strength.

And that's why for him, the frontier myth

was America's story.

- When Roosevelt thought of the West,

he thought of what we would call manifest destiny.

That the West was where America was gonna achieve

its initial phase of greatness.

If you want to sum it up into a single image

it's that John Gast painting, "American Progress."

Shows westward migration.

It shows an angel of democracy, floating

above settlers and miners and ranchers all heading west.

And Native Americans are fleeing off the scene

because they're no match for what's coming.

What is coming is not just these people

but also technologies.

- White Americans in the 19th century

did not believe that indigenous people have land rights.

They also believed that they were just going

to kind of disappear into the future.

They were going to die off.

Unless, they converted to civilization.

- Like a lot of Americans of the late 19th century,

Roosevelt is of two minds regarding Native Americans.

He sees Native Americans as savages

that are in the way of progress,

but also paragons of nobility and strength.

- He also said, and I hate to quote it

because it's so awful, but he said,

I won't say that the only good Indian is a dead Indian

when it's true nine times out of 10

and I wouldn't be too certain about the 10th.

- So while he was castigating Native Americans

for their savagery and subhuman behavior,

almost in the same sentence,

he'd write about, well they sometimes

were pushed to it by whites.

So you could see him trying to do this

sort of even handed account of the slaughter

that was going on, on the frontier, on both sides.

- So, Roosevelt's views about Native Americans were,

to put it very kindly, complicated.

[horses cantering]

[horse whinnying]

[ominous music]

- [Clay] He would go out alone

for days at a time to test himself.

He would just take a teabag and a biscuit and a rifle.

He was like, I'll live off the land.

I'm gonna prove that I can do this.

- [Doris] It's a constant flight from sadness

to go to the next stage.

He's asked Bill Sewell and Will Dow,

the two guides from his expedition to Maine

to come out to help him build a ranch.

And Sewell said that Roosevelt seemed

to have nothing to live for.

- Glad to see you brought dinner.

- Ran into some Lakota.

- What were they doing around here?

- I didn't ask.

- Hey I picked up the mail.

It's from your sister back East.

[light music]

- My daughter will never know me.

She's better off with my sister.

- That's foolish talk.

No child is better off without a father.

- I've got a lot of work to do.

- Right.

I sent a string of ponies ahead for the round up.

- We leave at first light.

- He's not just playing cowboy,

he actually becomes a cowboy.

He participates in the roundups.

He wants to prove that he can stay

in the saddle as long as the cowboys can

and he wants to prove it to them,

but maybe also to himself as well.

- Each rancher would send a string

of horses and a couple of men.

And they would all spend a month or six weeks together

moving slowly through the territory,

rounding up all the strays.

And Roosevelt loved it, I mean he absolutely loved it.

And it was very difficult, somewhat dangerous work.

In one of the stampedes his horse threw him.

He broke the point of his shoulder,

which is a very painful thing.

And he couldn't leave the roundup.

So he just dealt with it.

He just lived with this excruciating pain.

- But he was looked upon askance.

Here was this eastern dude,

who had a penchant to dress up in fancy

sort of faux cowboy clothing.

The fringe jackets and the like.

- [Jared] The Badlands was no place

for a gentleman from New York.

This was a rough, rough place.

- [Patron] Give me another bottle.

Put it on my tab.

- [Bartender] You ain't got a tab, mister.

- You don't think I'm good for it?

How about you, greenhorn?

You got a name?

- Roosevelt.

- Well, give me another bottle.

Put it on Rosy's tab.

Is that gonna be a problem?

I said, is that gonna be a problem, four eyes?

- Of course not.

[ominous music]

[smacking]

- He didn't shelter himself.

He worked hard to get them to admire him.

He said, what's it gonna take for you

to respect and admire me?

And then he did that.

- [Tweed] TR was assigned sort of informal deputy Sheriff.

He was asked to do various duties,

mostly going and arresting somebody

and bringing them back.

- He's no longer that eastern dude.

He's this hybrid American.

At that time in America there was such

a gap between the western people and the east.

Between the country and the city.

Between the rich and the poor.

And he's beginning to bridge those gaps

by all of his experiences.

- He also has an intellectual transformation.

You know, he starts writing about winning the West.

And he becomes enchanted by the idea of conservation.

- The natural world has touched

a deep cord within him and he says

that the romance of his life has begun.

He changes physically.

He gains 30 pounds.

And it's all bone and muscle and grit.

And his voice, which had been a falsetto voice

is now strong enough to drive oxen.

So it's a huge change in his physical demeanor.

There's also a change in his emotional demeanor.

Somehow being out there began to heal him.

He began to look forward to the future again.

And then he comes back to the east after two years.

He rekindles his relationship with Edith Kermit Carow.

- Edith and Theodore were sweethearts

when they were quite young.

Edith had been sort of a member of the Roosevelt family.

The two bonded over books and a love of nature.

- The family thought that they might get married

but TR went off to college

and then he met Alice and he married Alice,

but Edith hung in there.

They were a very good fit.

- [Doris] When they first got married,

he's offered a rather low level job

to be on the Civil Service Commission.

And so he and Edith move to Washington.

- He's an out sized personality for the job.

But it stokes the flame of reform

that his father had seeded with him.

- For Roosevelt, Civil Service Reform

guided his life.

It's the basic idea that positions in government

should not be based on how much money

you paid for your position.

They should be based on your merit.

- So there was a fundamental fairness involved here.

He said he wanted the farmer's son

and the mechanic's son to have the same chance

as a son of privilege.

And he fought to establish that civil service

and make it rooted in our understanding

of how a government should work.

It was in Washington that Roosevelt met

William Howard Taft.

And the two of them became really good friends.

It was a really pleasant time.

He's there for six years.

They have a big family by then.

Alice, of course, is there.

And then they have Theodore, Kermit,

Ethel, and they have Archie.

Washington is one of the happier experiences

of Edith's life.

[laughing]

- What's next for you, Theodore?

- Good question.

What do you think, Edith?

- Theodore would clean up the whole country if he could.

[chuckling]

No one could stop him.

Now they want him to clean up New York.

- You're leaving Washington?

- Mayor Strong asked me to head up

the Sanitation Commission in New York.

I turned him down.

- As well you should have.

You're far too talented for that.

- But New York could do with a damned good scrubbing.

Hm?

Greed in the papers.

Bribery in the police force.

Paying for jobs.

- You know what that city needs

is someone who can whip 'em into shape.

Right up your alley, actually.

- Oh, there's no chance of that.

We love it here, don't we Theodore?

- What if I've done all I can in Washington?

[ominous music]

- [H.W.] By the time Roosevelt returned in 1895,

New York City had changed enormously.

- [Edward] New York City was a growing city,

bursting at the seams.

Huge infrastructure projects.

Millions of dollars being spent.

- It had more than doubled in population.

It was the industrial center of the country.

12,000 factories, half a million factory workers.

It had Wall Street, it had 100 live theater companies.

New York was the Las Vegas of the 1890s.

Men came to New York to have a good time.

They drank too much.

They drank all night.

There were dance clubs.

There were maybe 40,000 prostitutes.

There was gambling.

There were casinos.

It was an unbelievably bustling,

dynamic, crowded place.

- What New York was going through

and the pressures on New York

is what was happening all throughout the United States.

The rapid urbanization.

Vast numbers of immigrants coming.

Industrialization.

America becoming an economic power.

- The great wealth of the robber barons

and the railroads and the fossil fuel industry

and the John Rockefeller and Standard Oil.

All that money ended up in New York City

one way or the other.

And the abject poverty of those at the bottom

of this economy was such a vivid display of inequality.

- [Richard] So in 1895 Roosevelt accepts

an appointment as commissioner

of the New York City Police Department.

- It's a challenge.

He wants to take it on.

And it's the right time and the right moment

for his kind of leadership.

- In 1895 the report of the Lexow Commission

comes out and it is full of lurid details

about kidnapping schemes where people

are jailed with no cause until

they sell their store and give the money to the police.

Witnesses are brought in front

of the investigating committee beaten half to death.

One of them with their eye hanging out of their socket.

- Remember, Roosevelt's image

of public service is that one that's instilled

in him by his father, that public service is noble

and you only go into public service

as a policeman or as a mayor to do good.

To make the community better.

And here is an institution that rotten to the core.

- The patrolman on the beat took a bribe

to let the pushcarts stay in place more than 15 minutes.

He took a bribe to let the saloon owner

stay open after 1:00 in the morning.

Brothels were unbelievably lucrative.

It was 50 dollars a month.

One district on the Lower East Side had 50 brothels.

2,500 dollars back then was 75,000 in modern,

times 12 months, you're looking at a million dollars.

And this was all shared among

the captains, the inspectors, and the local politicians.

- [Edward] When Theodore Roosevelt steps into

the police commission, Thomas Byrnes

is the utterly corrupt chief of police.

The tip of the pyramid

of this giant organized crime syndicate.

- So Byrnes is almost untouchable.

He's powerful, he's connected to Tammany Hall.

And yet, Roosevelt takes him on.

And says, this guy has got to go.

- It was an early indicator of a man

who was willing to take on power and influence

by using the kind of muscular position

of public authority for the purposes

of putting down the kind of illicit corruption

of which the police department was central to.

- But it's one thing for TR to believe

that he can take on the boxing champion at Harvard.

It's quite another to take on the most dangerous,

powerful man in New York.

- Byrnes is quite ruthless in dealing

with his adversaries.

In terms of doing them in, creating scandal around them,

or you know, physically harming them.

And so Roosevelt has all of these things to fear.

And so it's very much like the bully

he confronts in the bar out West.

He had learned that even if he, deep down inside,

was afraid of someone, that if he acted like

he wasn't afraid and sort of willed himself

not to be afraid, that he wouldn't be afraid.

And to stand up to the bully,

to stand up to the corrupt person,

to stand up to the evil doer and triumph.

- Chief Byrnes.

- Ah, Commissioner.

It's an honor.

Sit, please.

A drink?

- I won't.

- Of course not.

Finally.

A reform minded commissioner.

Do you know that I'm a reformer myself?

- Is that right?

- Well, we'll uh, brook no corruption in my force.

Send out the word.

No swearing at the citizenry.

No soliciting or bribes.

I've already launched an investigation into

one of our captains taking payoffs.

Nasty business.

- It's quite a change of heart you've had.

- Well, uh.

This job can break you, Mr. Commissioner.

We can work together.

- How long have you served this city, Chief Byrnes?

- 32 years.

- Well I suppose after a career like that

you might think about retiring.

[chuckling]

- The city needs me.

I'm not going anywhere.

- Neither am I.

- So Roosevelt threatened to prosecute Byrnes

over corruption and taking bribes

from some of the wealthiest people in New York City.

Roosevelt wanted to achieve the impossible here.

He wanted to clean up the dirtiest, loudest,

roughest city in the United States.

And Byrnes decides to resign.

- [Edward] When Theodore Roosevelt

becomes the police commissioner, he makes big changes.

He forces the police chief to resign from office.

- [Doris] And once he had changed the top leadership

then he knew he had to change the entire culture

because it really was a way of life

in the police department.

And that meant understanding the policemen

on the beat at night in New York.

So what he decides is that he's gotta have

his own firsthand information.

- [Edward] He immediately contacts his friend, Jacob Riis,

who has become nationally famous in recent years

for writing an expose of ills of urban life

and tenement life called, "How the Other Half Lives."

And Roosevelt knows that Riis got a lot

of his material by prowling the city after midnight.

- [Edward Kohn] Jacob Riis knew

the backstreets and tenements

of New York City better than anybody else.

And he matched that with a new technology

of flash photography.

So he could go into the darkest of the stale beer dives.

He could go into the underground flop houses.

He could go into the basement tenements

and catch a literal snapshot of how

the other half lives.

- [Doris] So he does these famous midnight rambles.

Where he and Riis go out between midnight and 5:00 A.M.

He'll put a floppy hat on his head.

He'll have a long coat on.

He'll walk unbeknownst among the people

so then he can see what's actually

happening on the street.

- And they find policemen that are sleeping at their posts.

They find policemen that are drinking in bars

and carousing with prostitutes.

And are just outraged and he decides

to do something about it.

[dog barking]

[murmuring]

- Officer Brody?

- Yeah?

- Shouldn't you be at your post?

- Take a hike.

Beat it.

- I'd be careful.

- Who's this?

- Whoever he is, I'm about to knock some sense into him.

- Wait.

It's Roosevelt.

- That's not.

- It is, I swear.

I've seen him in the papers.

- It's him all right.

Now, Mr. Roosevelt, I only stopped here--

- Thank you both for a most illuminating evening.

I shall see you in my office tomorrow.

[dog barking]

- Policemen are fired.

People are reassigned.

And there's immediately a sense

that Roosevelt is cleaning up the town.

Like that kind of Western Sheriff

that he so admired.

The good guys, the white hats are in town

and there's gonna be a new way of doing business.

- This is a mixture of the enforcement part

of being police commissioner

and playing the theatrics.

But the theatrics were not superficial.

He had this tremendous sense of right and wrong.

- Here's this five foot, eight inch guy

standing up to these massive Irish cops.

And the public loved it.

- All of a sudden there are cartoons

in papers all across the country showing

policemen cowering at the image of these big teeth

and the mustache and the whiskers.

And again, he becomes a romantic figure

fighting corruption in New York

just as he had become in the Badlands being a cowboy.

So he's becoming, as one of the newspaper reporters

said at the time, the most interesting man in America.

- This is the moment where TR reaches

a new milestone in his political savvy.

Because he realizes that the press finds him fascinating.

- He sees that the police department itself

needs to be professionalized and modernized.

He created the first police academy

where officers were trained.

He standardized the uniforms and the gun training

and the guns they could have.

- He brings typewriters in.

He brings in a fingerprint crew.

The first women secretaries in the police department.

- Part of what TR enjoys about being

the police commissioner is he gets

to play the role of enforcer.

He played the role of legislator.

Played the role of cowboy.

Now he had an opportunity to go out and enforce reform.

Any law that's written on the book,

he believes needs to be enforced.

- At the time in New York City

there's something called the Sunday Excise Law.

You could not sell liquor.

You could not have your saloon open on a Sunday.

- The problem with the Sunday Closing Law

was that it was not being enforced all together.

They weren't all being closed down.

If you wanted to keep your saloon open,

you could bribe the police and the politicians.

If you couldn't afford the bribe,

you were forced to be closed.

Or if you tried to open you'd be arrested.

So he saw that this was really the tap root of corruption.

- So Roosevelt decides that he will actually

enforce the law.

And the backlash is unbelievable.

People are absolutely furious.

Back then, New Yorkers worked six days a week.

The one day off they had was Sunday.

- And they would go to their local tavern

which was kind of a community center.

And they would eat and relax a little

and spend time with their families and their friends.

It was actually an important social institution

in the city of New York.

- [Edward] I don't think he quite understood

the role that saloons played in the lives

and cultures of working class immigrants.

- [Roosevelt] I have now run up against an ugly snag.

The Sunday Excise Law.

It is all together too strict but I have no honorable

alternative, save to enforce it.

And I am enforcing it.

To the furious rage of the saloon keepers.

And of many good people too, for which I am sorry.

- Roosevelt, always a bit moralistic.

Always taking the high ground.

Always a bit impetuous.

Always doing what's right and darn the consequences,

and he got one of his close friends, Henry Cabot Lodge

saying, you know, Roosevelt you have

to be a little careful about the fights you pick.

You don't want to end your career.

- [Protestors] Where is Roosevelt?

Where is Roosevelt?

Where is Roosevelt?

[crowd jeering]

- Well, Theodore.

You made everyone in the whole city mad

and they all seem to be outside.

- Damn it, I know the law's not right.

It's the root of every problem in the city.

- Let them have their Sunday beer.

You wouldn't be the first to look the other way.

- Huh.

[crowd jeering]

- They will eat you alive.

- Well, I'm not gonna hide.

Are you coming?

[crowd jeering]

- [Richard] When Roosevelt decides that he will shut

the saloons on Sunday, people are so frustrated.

- There were death threats.

A bomb was sent to headquarters on Mulberry Street.

- But Theodore Roosevelt is unique.

He woke up every day of his life saying, bring it on.

- Well, here I am!

Here's Roosevelt!

- Why can't we get a drink on Sundays?

- I'm merely enforcing the law, sir.

- Yeah, well it's easy for you to say!

- Sunday's our only day off!

- Yeah, I bet he drinks whenever he wants at the Union Club.

- What you may not see, gentlemen,

is that we are doing this for the good of the city.

- Well nobody asked you!

- Go back to your 5th Avenue mansion.

- Well, it's actually Madison Avenue.

If you're gonna insult me at least get my address right.

[crowd chuckling]

[jeering]

[laughing]

Spitting image.

Bully for you!

[crowd cheering]

- The crowd changes its feeling toward him.

So it's a great capacity where

self deprecating humor can win you over

and make people realize he's doing something we don't like.

Maybe he's doing it for his reasons, but he's okay.

- But still, between 12 and 15,000 saloons

in New York were shut on Sundays.

And in the next city elections,

the Republicans go down and they lose hard

and they blame one person for that,

and that's Theodore Roosevelt.

- This was a failure, he had failed.

He recognized that he had failed

because he had not gotten the people behind him.

- [Jared] His career in New York City

is absolutely finished.

- He needs to find a graceful way out

so he goes to campaign for McKinley,

who's running for President,

in the hopes perhaps he can be given

a job in the new administration.

- TR always longed for more.

He was endlessly ambitious.

- He was an explosive campaigner, a force of energy.

They jammed the aisles to come to hear him speak.

This was where his compulsion

to be the center of attention really works for him.

Because there's a magnetic field that people come

and want to be in his presence.

Alice had always said that he wanted

to be the baby at the baptism,

the bride at the wedding, and the corpse at funeral.

He so loved being the center of attention.

- McKinley was a little suspicious

because he viewed TR

as a bull in the china shop, as they say.

A man who broke a lot of glasses.

- [Doris] McKinley wins the election.

And he finally, under pressure, gives him the job

of Assistant Secretary of the Navy.

And it's exactly what TR wants.

- Roosevelt is a scholar of military history.

And a person who believes that America

needs to project its strength abroad.

And he argues essentially, that all great powers

in history have always been strengthened by

a powerful naval force.

- TR looked at the American Navy and was aghast

to see how far down, I think we were like

the ninth largest navy in the world

after somewhere like Peru or Ecuador.

So he did everything he could to build it up.

Particularly in battleships.

- [Roosevelt] There comes a time

in the life of a nation, as in the life of an individual,

when it must face great responsibilities.

We have now reached that time.

Our flag is a proud flag.

And it stands for liberty and civilization.

- America has a long standing notion of isolationism,

of staying out of world affairs.

But Roosevelt thought, we had to be isolationist

back in the 1790s.

But now in the 1890s we are the strongest

economic power in the world.

We have an obligation to help others.

We can't be weak.

We can't be an invalid nation.

We have to project that power.

- [Clay] The game changing event

is the Spanish-American war.

- [H.W.] Spain is one of the oldest European powers

to have possessions in the new world.

Cuba is by far the most important possession

Spain has in the Caribbean.

- There was a rebellion for independence

that had gone on for over a decade.

And it was incredibly brutal.

- There were concentration camps

and there were torture and rapes

and disappearances and near starvation and so on.

- Newspapers report wildly on

the conditions down in Cuba.

This is an era of yellow journalism

and they would compete for readership

with exaggerated headlines.

- Roosevelt believed that this was

an oppressed people that we needed to go help.

But also, this was an opportunity

to pick a fight with a European power.

- And Roosevelt was always looking to pick a fight.

- [Roosevelt] The revolt in Cuba

had dragged its weary length

until conditions in the island had

become so dreadful as to be a standing disgrace to us

for permitting them to exist.

I became convinced that the war would come.

- But McKinley didn't want war.

McKinley had been a major in the Civil War.

He had seen mayhem.

- McKinley and TR's boss,

Secretary of the Navy, John Long, urged restraint.

But you have TR going rogue

and agitating towards war.

- He believed that America needs a war

to kind of tone us up and to restore

our masculine values and to take the effeminacy,

as he called it, out of our character.

Fortunately for Roosevelt,

his chief, John Long, was kind of lazy.

Took long periods away.

- TR could do what he wanted while Long was away.

And these wonderful stream of letters

that he writes to Long saying,

I know you were thinking of coming back

but it's really, really hot here in Washington.

Just stay where you are.

Everything's fine here.

- What we see is Theodore Roosevelt giving speeches

where he talks about the United States should go to war.

He engages with senators and congressmen

and he's putting the idea that we should go to war.

- He's seeing weakness coming out

of the McKinley administration.

He even says, my boss, William McKinley,

has the spine of a chocolate eclair.

- Excuse me, Cavenward.

I'd like a word with Mr. Roosevelt.

Secretary Long tells me that you've been quite busy.

- Well, there's so much to be done, sir.

- You've been shouting war from the rooftops

at every opportunity.

But you have had an influence.

Secretary Long has asked me to send a battleship

to Havana to protect American citizens there.

I might just do that.

- That would be a wise choice, sir.

- I've also read your war plan.

- I am honored, sir.

Now I fer--

- You're a young man, Mr. Roosevelt.

Tell me, where were you in September of 1862?

- I was just a boy.

- I was in the Battle of Antietam.

You may get your war, Mr. Roosevelt.

But I wouldn't be in such a hurry.

[ominous music]

- McKinley tried to force Spain

to the negotiating table.

So he sends a new battleship, the USS Maine, to Cuba.

It was the best the United States had.

- It will show up in Havana Harbor in January

and it's a very tense situation when it first shows up.

[dramatic music]

And then tensions start to ease.

And this will be the case all the way until

the 15th of February.

When Captain Charles Sigsbee is sitting there on the Maine.

It's night time, it's a hot and sultry evening.

He is writing the Assistant Secretary of the Navy,

Theodore Roosevelt.

He sets down his pen about 9:15 to hear

the last notes of "Taps" echo off the corners of the harbor.

["Taps" playing]

[ominous music]

Within a few minutes the Maine

will settle into the mud of Havana harbor.

The United States will suffer

over 260 casualties that evening.

- It was, at the time, the worst naval disaster

in American history.

It sent shock waves through the country.

[ominous music]

People assumed that the Spanish

had blown up the Maine.

- [Clay] Roosevelt immediately jumped on that narrative

whether it was true or not.

- [Edward] There's chants of,

"Remember the Maine, to hell with Spain."

- [Clay] The groundswell of Roosevelt and others pushing

and pushing and pushing for war finally became too much.

- [Doug] On the 25th of April, 1898 the United States

would declare war against Spain.

- [Roosevelt] In a crisis, the man worth his salt

is the man who meets the needs of the situation

in whatever way is necessary.

[dramatic music]

- Theodore.

What's this?

- How are you feeling?

- Well, what is it?

You're not in the habit of bringing me tea.

- The 1st US Volunteer Cavalry.

I got it!

[chuckling]

I told them they should make Leonard Wood

regimental colonel, I shall be lieutenant colonel.

I have no doubt I'll be able to train the men,

but Leonard with his experience,

he'll be able to equip us.

Give us the very best of everything.

- So, it's done.

You've got it all worked out.

What about them?

[children playing]

- Edith, I intend to explain to my children

why I did take part in a just war.

Not why I did not take part in one.

It's what my father had to do.

Explain to us why he hired a man

to fight his war for him.

A just war that he whole heartedly believed in.

A man ought to make his words good by his deeds.

- Stop.

You've convinced yourself.

- Oh my goodness! Oh!

[shouting]

- One of the reasons that he wants

to go to war is while he believes his father

is the greatest man he ever met,

the only thing that tinges him of uncertainty

with regard to his father is that he did not fight

in the American Civil War.

- His father was certainly on the Union side.

And would have liked to go to war, but he didn't

because TR's mother was a Confederate

and her brothers were actually officers

in the Confederate Navy.

So some agreement was made that his father

would not go to war because that would actually create

war within the family itself.

So he did what many other wealthy people did.

He bought proxies to go fight on his behalf.

- Roosevelt's generation grew up hearing

stories from their uncles, from their fathers

about the Civil War.

And they only hear the stories of glory.

Not the stories of tragedy.

And so, when the Spanish American War was declared

a million men volunteered.

It's one of the great ironies of war

that it both repels and attracts.

- But for Roosevelt, his father did not

go off to serve when a generation

of American sons and husbands did do that.

And so that was something that kind of was

a shadow over Roosevelt's view of the war.

- So, it informs his own view of things

that I'm gonna be a guy who goes for it.

I'm not gonna let this opportunity pass.

I'm going to seize the moment

because it may never come again.

- [Roosevelt] It was my one chance

to do something for my country and for my family.

And my one chance to cut my little notch

on the stick that stands as a measuring rod

in every family.

- [Clay] John Long, the Secretary of the Navy

said, no, your duty is to stay at your desk.

Twice President McKinley called him to the White House

and asked him not to resign and go to war.

But Roosevelt resigned his commission

as the Assistant Secretary of the Navy

and he rounded up what he called a harem, scare 'em

group of rough riders.

- Right away he starts to demonstrate

a very sophisticated appreciation

for what it means to be a leader.

Roosevelt was perfectly willing to say,

I don't know the answer.

I don't know what to do here.

He had a willingness to defer

to people who knew more than he did.

- He realized that he didn't have a background

in military leadership.

So he talked his old friend from the frontier,

Colonel Wood, to take the role as colonel

and he was second in command.

- [Clay] People come out of the woodwork

as soon as they know that Roosevelt's on the hunt.

- And because 23,000 applications came in,

he had the cream of the crop.

- Roosevelt got in touch with the football coach at Harvard.

And with police officers from New York.

- He wanted people from out west

that were used to hardship, living outside,

firearms, riding on horses.

- [Clay] Harvard tennis players and Yale yachtsmen,

and swells of the aristocracy.

- The number one and the number two tennis players

in the country quit tennis to become Rough Riders.

- As these grim frontier boys,

who probably have never been very far from Wyoming.

- [Edward] Native Americans would be part of this.

Southerners, northerners, rich, poor.

It's a remarkable amalgam of the American people.

- [Roosevelt] In my regiment nine tenths

of the men were better horsemen than I was,

and two thirds better shots than I was.

While on the average they were certainly more hardier

and enduring, yet after I had them a very short while

they all knew, and I knew too,

that nobody else could command them as I could.

- Well, here we are boys!

Your rifles have arrived.

These, the very same the regulars use.

Colonel Wood saw to it that you would have the best!

- [Soldiers] Yeah!

[cheering]

- Hi.

- Good setup.

- My pops taught me how to use one of these.

- [Roosevelt] These were the men who made up the regiment

and who gave it, it's peculiar character.

- My, my, my.

- [Roosevelt] In all the world,

there could be no better material

for soldiers than these wild Rough Riders.

- Most of the men who were there had heard

these stories about Roosevelt.

He's this towering figure.

They had maybe heard some of the stories

of his life on a ranch.

But he arrives and he's not as tall

as they thought he would be.

He was wearing glasses.

He had gone out and bought a uniform at Brooks Brothers.

- One can only imagine that they were

a little bit nervous about him.

- [Clay] And yet, he's out there every morning for drills.

12 mile marches in triple digit heat.

At night he would pour through cavalry manuals

and combat manuals.

And the men love it.

- Once he gets them in the training grounds,

he has to meld them together to become a unified team.

And that's where he excels.

Understanding that people from different parts

of life have to be able to have a common purpose

and here their common purpose is to be a Rough Rider.

Then he becomes a leader.

He becomes one of them.

Sometimes he got too close to them.

After they had done a good job one day

in the training camp he decided,

you can have all the liquor you want tonight.

It's all on me.

- Come on, Captain, you've got the mean cyclone.

[soldiers chatting]

- Here he comes.

- Get him, Captain!

Come on, Captain!

[groaning]

- What's going on here, Colonel Roosevelt?

- Well, I think O'Neil's about to, ha, ha.

All right, that's enough, break it up.

Attention!

Back to your tents!

- I don't know what to think about

an officer who allows drinking and gambling among his men.

- Colonel Wood, I feel like the biggest ass in 10 miles.

- I'm sure it won't happen again.

- No.

- This came for you.

[dramatic music]

- My brother-in-law is in the Navy.

He sent me this.

- Well, you're gonna need it.

We ship out in the morning.

[dramatic music]

- The Rough Riders will eventually

be ordered on the 29th of May to leave

San Antonio and head to Tampa.

When they get there, there's hardly any organization.

Nobody's there to greet them.

Leonard Wood probably characterizes this

the best when he says, confusion, confusion, confusion.

- But it's a real rush job.

There's a lot of snafus as the military would say.

But even with all of those problems,

Roosevelt is not one to lack confidence.

He believes that he understands what needs to be done.

- [Roosevelt] Tampa was the scene

of the wildest confusion.

There was no semblance of order.

We had to shove and huffle for ourselves as best we could.

- It's all chaos.

America hasn't fought a war for a long time.

- [Clay] Troops everywhere.

Miles and miles of supply trains.

- Rail cars stacked up from Tampa

to Columbia, South Carolina 500 miles away.

- [Clay] The army has a problem.

They have more than 20,000 soldiers in Tampa

and they're only able to get enough ships

to carry about 16,000 men.

- Every unit is required to cut.

This is an extremely heart wrenching moment

for both Leonard Wood and Theodore Roosevelt

to figure out which members of the Rough Riders will not go.

Ultimately they will take about 560 of their men.

Most of the horses will be left behind.

- They could only afford to bring the horses

for the officers.

The Rough Riders had been designed as a cavalry regiment.

- They are now gonna walk on their feet

and they're gonna be employed just like infantry.

So their role changes.

Whatever they got in their training

in San Antonio, largely thrown out the window as well.

When the order is given to board the ships,

the Rough Riders are waiting for their ship.

They go hunt down the quartermaster to go,

hey, what boat are we supposed to go on?

In that chaos, the quartermaster says, hey,

why don't you take the Yucatan?

In the meantime they learn two other regiments

were already assigned to that ship

and Theodore Roosevelt wants to make sure

his Rough Riders are on there first.

- You're still not only my list, I've told you twice.

Next, here, move it, go!

- Wood found us a boat, the Yucatan.

But we've gotta get past that guard.

Keep the men ready.

If we're going to Cuba, it's now or never.

- [Davis] Colonel Roosevelt.

- Mr. Davis, Mr. Marshall.

Are you looking for a story?

- Got room for two reporters?

- Ha, ha, not yet.

But I might.

Give me a piece of paper.

Thank you.

[clearing throat]

Orders from General Shafter.

This vessel is reserved for the 1st Volunteer Cavalry.

We'll be boarding immediately, Sergeant.

- Sir, I was told the 2nd Infantry is

gonna board this ship.

- Well, these orders are from the commanding general.

- Can I see them, sir?

- Are you questioning me, Sergeant?

- No, sir, I.

- The Yucatan is ours!

Captain O'Neil!

Move the men out, now!

- 1st Volunteers, columns of two.

Move up!

Quick march!

- Double quick!

Better hurry.

Good, good.

[ship horn blowing]

- What the hell is going on?

Your men are boarding my boat.

I'm the 2nd Infantry.

I'm supposed to have the Yucatan.

- I have orders for this vessel.

- So you're the famous Rough Riders.

Get your men off immediately.

We're regular army.

We've got priority.

- My volunteers are the best regiment in this army, Colonel.

And you're late.

- I'm reporting this to General Shafter.

- Oh, ho, ho!

You do that, Colonel!

Meanwhile, we'll be in Cuba.

[dramatic music]

- Hey, possession is nine tenths of the law.

We're already here.

That's how he ensures that his Rough Riders

will go to Cuba.

- [Roosevelt] We sailed for Cuba.

That is, eight troops dismounted.

We do not like needing to leave the remainder

and having to leave our horses.

But we would rather crawl on all fours than not go.

- The landing site is

a little fishing village called Daiquiri.

And the landing does not go smoothly.

The seas are rough.

There are no landing ships.

They only have one large barge

to bring things unto the beach.

- Trying to get the officer's horses ashore,

a lot of them start swimming the wrong way.

One of Roosevelt's horses got sucked under.

Two men drowned.

- But, it's an unopposed landing.

That's probably the only thing that really saves them.

- [Clay] The immediate plan

is to secure the path to Santiago.

A port city on the southeast coast.

They have neutralized the Spanish fleet

which is bottled up in the harbor at Santiago.

And the Rough Riders are sent along

a range of hills just to the west.

It's rougher going.

There isn't really much of a trail.

The Americans didn't really have maps.

There was no real sense

of what the territory looked like.

- [Doug] They can't cover a lot of ground.

The only horses there are for senior officers.

So the reconnaissance mission

that would normally be done by horses

is not being done.

There are two reporters with them

to make sure the story gets told.

- [Roosevelt] It was a mountainous country,

covered with thick jungle.

A most confusing country.

[dramatic music]

- Where are we, Colonel?

- Cuba, Mr. Marshall.

[dramatic music]

- There's a dead Cuban fighter, Colonel.

- The Spanish must be close,

pass the word, silence in the ranks.

Show me.

[ominous music]

- Where are they?

[ominous music]

- They're signaling.

[gunshot]

Help him!

[gunfire]

- What are your orders?

- We've gotta get through that fence

and past the clearing to get at them.

Head down.

[guns firing]

Troopers, formation!

Company, forward double quick!

- Come on, double quick.

Faster, faster!

Move!

- For most of the men, this is their first combat.

Roosevelt included, but Roosevelt takes

to it very quickly.

- Roosevelt comes across a person

who imagined himself a soldier

but wasn't really a soldier.

He could have easily been one of those guys

who held back and all, but he was not.

He was a person that said,

I'm the real deal and I know that means

I have to put my body on the line and he does.

- As the Rough Riders advance along the road

to Santiago, Roosevelt's role is to connect up

with the US regulars to attack Las Guasimos.

The first Spanish line of defense.

- [Clay] The fighting goes on for a couple of hours

until finally the Americans rush the Spanish.

- It's their first victory.

And those reporters make sure this gets reported

in the US press.

But after the battle of Las Gausimas,

there is a delay.

The roads are bad.

They're in the rainy season.

Supplies go bad.

- Which gives the Spanish a lot of time to prepare.

Over the next several days the Spanish dug in a line

of trenches and machine gun posts all along

this range of hills that's

called San Juan Heights.

- [Doug] The Rough Riders need

to attack San Juan Heights,

the principle defense guarding

the approach to Santiago.

- There's no way to retreat,

so if this doesn't work they're going to be massacred.

- The day started with a lot of confusion.

Orders weren't coming down.

It wasn't clear who was actually in charge.

- Theodore Roosevelt is now regimental commander.

Because Leonard Wood has been bumped up

to be brigade commander.

Roosevelt is chomping at the bit to go.

Ready to go at 11:20.

12 o'clock, one o'clock.

And yet, there they sit.

Within range of the Spanish who start to fire at 'em.

They're taking casualties.

[gunfire]

- I need orders from General Sumner

if I'm gonna get us up that hill.

Just keep the men ready!

- Hold tight!

Brush 'em off, keep it tight.

- Captain, get down!

[dramatic music]

[gunfire]

- [Roosevelt] The instant I received the order

my crowded hour began.

The man in command must take all the risks

he asks his men to take.

On the day of the big fight,

the only way to get them to do it

in the way it had to be done was to lead them myself.

- You all know what to do, men.

Follow me!

[soldiers shouting]

- This is the moment for showing that he is without fear.

This is the peak he has been climbing

for so long in his life.

[gunfire]

- For the Spanish shooting down the slope,

the Americans are very vulnerable

and there's nobody who's more vulnerable

than Theodore Roosevelt.

He's a big target.

He's on a horse and if you're

a Spanish soldier you know that a person

on a horse is an officer.

And so he had a lot of heavy fire coming his way.

Roosevelt has bullets nick off of his clothing,

nick off of his boots.

His life could have ended right there.

- This is the image and the reporting

that made him a national hero.

A reporter said that nobody who saw him

take that ride expected that he would finish it alive.

[soldiers shouting]

- [Roosevelt] All men who feel joy in battle

know what it is like.

When the wolf rises in the heart.

[soldiers shouting]

[automatic gunfire]

[men shouting]

[gunshot]

[heavy breathing]

[ethereal music]

- They get to the top.

They overrun the Spanish trenches.

After nine days in Cuba, they've conquered San Juan Hill.

- TR called it his crowded hour.

This was such a pivotal moment in his life

and all crammed into just one hour out of a lifetime.

- [Clay] After this battle,

the Americans lay siege to Santiago.

The Spanish sue for peace.

- Are you all right, Colonel?

Your arm.

- Eh, it's nothing.

A lot of the boys are worse off than me.

I'd have gladly taken a bullet just

to be part of this.

[chuckling]

- He eventually wrote a book about it.

Of course, he always writes a book.

It's called "The Rough Riders."

Published in 1899.

The great Chicago writer Finley Peter Dunne

loved to tease the Roosevelt myths.

He wrote a review of the book.

And he said the only problem

with the book, "The Rough Riders"

is that it's misnamed.

- He said that Roosevelt made himself the center

of every moment of every action of the war.

That he should have called the book Alone in Cuba.

The whole country is laughing about this

and what does Roosevelt do?

He writes a letter to Finley Dunne and he says,

I regret to tell you that my wife

and my most intimate friends are absolutely delighted

with your review of my book.

Now you owe me one.

I'd like you to visit me

the next time you come to Washington.

He relished that ability to make fun of himself

and he knew it endeared him to his critics.

It's again a mark of his maturity as a leader.

- So he was able to kind of narrate his own story

and not only is there a great exaltation

that the US forces have achieved victories,

but that there's a hero.

There's a person that embodies this triumph

and his name is Theodore Roosevelt.

[triumphant music]

- [Reporter] The war weary, but triumphant veterans

just returned from their Cuban campaign

and received the acclaim of a frenzied nation.

- With the ultimate surrender of Spain

at the end of the Spanish-American War

they will give up Cuba.

This doesn't become a United States possession.

But what the United States does get out of this

is Puerto Rico.

It also gets Guam.

And gives the United States control of the Philippines.

The United States becomes

an imperialistic world power in eight months.

- The Spanish-American War happens

at a time when America was,

in so many ways, at a crossroads.

It was coming out of a depression ridden

by sectional tensions between the North and the South.

Labor tensions, ethnic tensions.

And the world is looking at America going,

what is its role going to be as a major power?

And the Spanish-American War comes along

and it solves so many of those conundrums.

It unifies different parts of the country

behind a common purpose and against a common enemy.

And it gave America a purpose.

It allowed it to say, this is what we do with our power.

We go and we help other people.

It allowed America to tell itself a certain story

about why America needs to be in the world.

- TR returns from Cuba the most famous man in America.

- He is perceived as a hero.

And there was a cult of personality

that had developed around him.

He's been in all these different parts of the country.

Meeting people from different parts of life.

And yet he could connect with them

as if he were part of them.

And that's the important thing.

He absorbs different areas of America's life into himself

and becomes this much larger person.

So he represented a mosaic of American life.

- In the aftermath of the Spanish-American War,

Roosevelt has to decide what he's gonna do next.

And very quickly he's encouraged to run for governor.

And he seizes that opportunity.

He's already been involved in New York State politics

so he feels like he knows that scene.

Also, we need to remember in the late 19th century,

governors of New York were almost

automatically considered viable Presidential candidates.

- New York was the commercial center.

It was the wholesale center.

New York Harbor was the largest harbor

in the Western hemisphere.

It was the import-export center of the United States.

- In New York the Republican Party represented big business

and Theodore Roosevelt was always a part

of the reformer wing.

- And so the party bosses

are not so sure about him being governor.

They don't want a reformer in that job.

- But as much as the Republican boss

in New York, Thomas Platt, can't stand him,

he realizes the only chance they have

of the Republicans holding on to the gubernatorial seat

is if they have a sure thing run for governor.

- They figured it was better to win the election

with TR than to lose the election.

So they backed him.

- So Roosevelt just barnstorms.

Tirelessly goes around the state by train.

- [Roosevelt] After being nominated,

I made a hard and aggressive campaign through the state.

Making my appeal as directly

and as emphatically as I knew how.

To the mass of voters themselves.

To the people.

- [Jared] He does the whistle stops.

Travels to more towns, cities,

parts of the state than anyone.

- [Clay] Giving speech after speech after speech.

- [Jared] TR is really the first modern campaigner.

- He is perfectly primed for the new kind

of politics which emphasizes a public persona.

Which emphasizes romanticism,

which emphasizes celebrity.

- [Jared] He campaigns with the Rough Riders.

He has them stump for him.

He has them introduce him.

- I'm Sergeant Buck Taylor of the 1st Cavalry Volunteers.

And today I want to tell you about my colonel.

[cheering]

Colonel Roosevelt--

- [Tweed] But it was a very close race.

- [Roosevelt] I don't know in the least

what my chances are for governor.

- [Doris] Joe Murray, the political boss

from New York City

is helping him on the campaign trail.

- Another great crowd.

- You're going to win by 100,000 votes.

You will be the next governor of New York.

- It's gonna be closer than that.

If we win at all.

- He's right.

Half of them out there are women and children.

I prefer actual living, breathing voters.

- Plenty of eligible voters here.

- From what I hear, the Democrats

are spreading buckets of cash around the precincts.

It'll be close, all right.

[knocking]

- Beg your pardon, Colonel.

Well, I'm the driver of this train.

Well, I just wanted to meet ya.

- Delighted!

Tell me your name.

- I'm Barnabas Sullivan, sir.

- Barnabas Sullivan, the honor is all mine.

I tell you, I'd rather meet you than

a whole welcoming committee of aldermen.

Ha, ha, no doubt about it.

Real working man, Joe.

So, Barnabas Sullivan,

what's it like driving this iron steed, huh?

All that power at your fingertips.

- Holding the reigns of 1,000 horses all at once!

[chuckling]

- I bet it is.

I'd like to try it someday, I really would.

- Me and my friends are voting for you, Colonel.

Are you gonna win?

- Well, it's gonna be tough.

It's a tough fight.

But I'm not known to shy away from a fight, am I?

Plus.

I got something the other side doesn't have.

Tell you what, do me a favor, Barnabas Sullivan.

Just stand by the doorway.

Thank you.

- And here he is, the greatest Rough Rider of them all,

your next governor, Theodore Roosevelt!

[crowd cheering]

- Thank you.

Thank you folks for coming.

Thank you.

Thank you.

My fellow citizens of New York.

I came here today to tell you

that I could not have charged up that hill

if I didn't have these great men next to me.

Just like I can't win tomorrow

without all of you.

Now, Buck here says I'm pretty good in a fight.

But I'm here to show you exactly who

we're fighting for in this election.

I wanna introduce you to someone.

Let me introduce to you, my friend, Barnabas Sullivan.

He is who we're fighting for in this election.

The American working man!

Yeah!

[crowd cheering]

- [Jared] At the time that TR becomes governor

he's a larger than life figure.

- He's called the boy governor.

He's only 41 years old and he brings

his young family with him to Albany.

So there's life and there's energy

in that governor's mansion.

He meets with people all day long.

He's on his feet.

He never sits behind his desk.

And he starts getting things done.

Roosevelt had been arguing for years, actually,

that social welfare and human rights

were more important than property rights.

A big thing to say at that time.

- Reformers argued that as stewards

of the public trust, we have to make sure

that poor people live under much more improved conditions.

By holding the city and state accountable

rather than those individuals.

- TR as governor knows that he doesn't command

either the loyalty or the control

of the Republican Party bosses.

And so once again he turns to the press as his ally.

- He knew when to call his journalists together.

He knew when the most important headlines were released.

- [Jared] And so he fights

legislative battles through the press.

He leaks things to the press.

He pushes his progressive agenda through the press.

- TR was quite effective.

He achieved a lot as governor.

- [Doris] Making conditions of work better.

An eight hour day.

Protections for women and children

who were working in factories.

And factory inspectors.

Then he also set aside land for conservation.

- He was always going, always busy,

always full of ideas.

And certain in what he was gonna do.

- Through all the different parts of his career

there's a sense of urgency to get things done.

He said, if you're thinking at every moment

where am I now and how am I bettering myself

for the future, you're gonna be too cautious.

You're gonna be too worried about yourself.

Instead, you give everything to that job.

Because everything can change in a moment.

So he goes for the kill.

Which is a tax on businesses who own

franchises in public spheres.

Electric railroads, telephone lines.

Here were these huge franchises making

millions of dollars in profits

and they weren't paying any taxes to the state.

And he thought that was essential,

that they pay their fair share.

- The New York State Republican boss, Tom Platt,

thought that this was a terrible idea.

This smacked of socialism.

- And the tax thing is what really got

to the Republican leaders.

So they do not want him to have a second term.

Because he's too much of a reformer

for the political bosses.

- Thomas Platt was figuring, okay,

so what am I gonna do here?

How am I gonna get rid of this guy?

- [Jared] Less than a year before

the Presidential Election of 1900

McKinley's Vice President, Garret Hobart, dies in office.

- [Doris] So the bosses devise what they think

is the perfect solution.

- He thought, I know what I'm gonna do.

I'm gonna make him Vice President of the United States.

- This great scheme hatched by the power brokers

in the Republican Party that will kick Roosevelt upstairs.

They'll promote him into oblivion.

That he will become McKinley's Vice President

and essentially never heard from again.

- It's a perfectly dignified,

but perfectly useless position.

And at the same time, he will not be governor.

- [Roosevelt] The Vice Presidency is an utterly

anomalous office.

And one which, I think, ought to be abolished.

The man who occupies it may, at any moment, be everything.

But meanwhile, he is practically nothing.

- So this was a job that nobody liked.

One Vice President famously said,

being Vice President is worth a bucket of warm spit.

- It's a really interesting question

why Roosevelt accepts the Vice Presidency.

In some ways it's a reflection

of his own self confidence to say,

I know other Vice Presidents have failed

to go on to the Presidency, but I'm different.

I think he also had a sense

that it was an opportunity he couldn't refuse.

- In steps Henry Cabot Lodge who says

that this is the position you need to be in

to set yourself up for a presidential run in four years.

Take the Vice Presidency, sit on your hands for four years

and you will have the ultimate prize in 1904.

- Of course, immediately once he takes that job

he begins to regret it.

And begins to realize, this is not much fun.

He's a great advocate of the strenuous life,

but he finds out very quickly that

the opposite of the strenuous life

is to be Vice President of the United States.

- Mark Hanna, who is one of McKinley's closest advisors

thinks TR is an absolute maniac.

And so when McKinley and Roosevelt win the election

Mark Hanna says to McKinley, you're only responsibility

these next four years is to make sure that you live.

So that mad man doesn't become President.

[dramatic music]

- What is it, Papa?

[dramatic music]

- I thought you'd be too busy to come, Papa.

- Oh Kermit, I'm not too busy.

- TR hates being Vice President.

McKinley gives him no responsibilities,

asks no advice, and he feels perfectly worthless.

He's in a position that is so boring for him

that he's even considering going to law school.

- In the fall of 1901 America is riding high.

McKinley has just presided over a splendid little war

which has greatly increased the reach

and the footprint of the United States globally.

The economy is booming.

The Republican Party is strong and doing well.

There is a palpable sense of progress

and of technological achievement.

At that moment something called

the automobile is being invented.

People are seeing them on the streets.

This self-propelling vehicle.

Which at the time was simply mind blowing.

And there are people experimenting with flight.

Electricity is now everywhere.

In middle class homes, it's illuminating streets of cities.

And so McKinley decides to go

to the Buffalo Pan-American Exposition.

This event showcases technology.

Showcases the progress and his final event

is a meet and greet.

It's gonna be a big crowd.

His security staff is worried

but McKinley shrugs off all their concerns

and he goes and he begins pumping the flesh

and meeting lots and lots of people.

- [Jared] McKinley insists on doing a receiving line.

He wants to get his glory moment.

- Sir.

- And meanwhile, TR is deeply, deeply worried

that he's a political exile as Vice President.

This was where he had politically gone to die.

- We made it to the top.

- Of course we did.

If you start the climb,

you can't stop until you reach the top.

Remember, Kermit, you can do anything.

Work hard, be ready.

You ready?

[dramatic music]

[crowd murmuring]

[ominous music]

- Mr. Vice President.

[ominous music]

- What is it, Papa?

[ominous music]

[gunshots]

[ethereal music]

- The President's been shot.

[dramatic music]

- [Roosevelt] We are face to face

with our destiny.

And we must meet it.

With a high and resolute courage.

[dramatic music]

- It's been confirmed.

President McKinley died this morning at 2:15 A.M.

- I should take the oath at once.

- Congratulations, Mr. President.

- Do you intend

going after my steel company next?

- We will never accept the proposal

with the union at the table.

- You must.

All I'm asking is a square deal

for every man.

[crowd cheering]

[heavy breathing]

[ominous music]