ANC - Virtual Visit - Sagamore Hill Lesson

Virtual Visit - Sagamore Hill

Photograph of Sagamore Hill, Home to Theodore Roosevelt

President Theodore (known as "Teddy" or "TR") Roosevelt had a huge impact on American History. He is considered by many to be the first "modern president", as he helped shape the presidency into taking a major role in foreign affairs as well as setting an ambitious domestic agenda. Teddy Roosevelt was the youngest president, taking office at age 42 after William McKinley was assassinated. Among his many accomplishments include: the overseeing of the completion of the Panama Canal, regulating and breaking up trusts, supporting regulation to protect consumers, and conserving natural resources. He was popular among much of the public and was chosen as one of the four presidents whose likeness was carved into Mount Rushmore.

Teddy Roosevelt grew up in New York City. However, from childhood he enjoyed leaving the city and enjoying the less-crowded rural areas of the country. His family visited Long Island in the summers and in the 1880s he began constructing a home, Sagamore Hill, there. Tragically, his first wife Alice died during the home's construction. By 1887 Roosevelt had married his second wife, Edith, and they made their home at Sagamore Hill. Even during his presidency he would enjoy time there as it was known as "the Summer White House" and after leaving office would spend much time at Sagamore Hill, dying there in 1919.

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A Closer Look - Presidential Assassination Attempts

24 LEON F. CZOLGOSZ an anarchist, shot and killed William McKinley in 1901, while McKinley was shaking hands on a reception line at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, because he was against all government and because “I didn’t believe one man should have so much services and another man should have none.” Almost certainly neither Garfield nor McKinley would have died of their wounds if modern medical techniques had been available.25 JOHN F. SCHRANK shot Theodore Roosevelt as TR was leaving a hotel in Milwaukee on his way to make a speech during his Bull Moose campaign in 1912. Though fired at point-blank range, the bullet passed through a folded copy of Roosevelt’s hour-long speech and his glasses case before lodging just short of his lung. (If he had been less prolix, he might well have been killed.) Roosevelt insisted on going ahead with the speech before being taken to a hospital. He also insisted that Schrank was not insane, since he had made the attempted assassination in a state that had no death penalty. “I may gravely question,” TR later wrote an English friend, “if he has a more unsound brain than Senator La Follette or Eugene Debs.”

 

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