Editing Theodore Roosevelt (section)

==Early life==
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. was born on October 27, 1858, at [[Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site|28 East 20th Street]] in [[Manhattan]].{{sfn|Morris|1979|p=3}} His parents were [[Martha Bulloch Roosevelt|Martha Stewart Bulloch]] and businessman [[Theodore Roosevelt Sr.]] He had an older sister named Anna (called [[Bamie Roosevelt|Bamie]]), a younger brother named [[Elliott Roosevelt (socialite)|Elliott]], and a younger sister named [[Corinne Roosevelt Robinson|Corinne]].<ref>{{Cite web|title=Anna Roosevelt – Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site (U.S. National Park Service)|url=https://www.nps.gov/thrb/learn/historyculture/annaroosevelt.htm|access-date=April 4, 2021|publisher=National Park Service|archive-date=May 17, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210517084507/https://www.nps.gov/thrb/learn/historyculture/annaroosevelt.htm|url-status=live}}</ref>

Roosevelt's youth was shaped by his poor health and debilitating asthma attacks, which terrified him and his parents. Doctors had no cure.{{Sfn|McCullough|1981|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=nuzmvrqPvdIC&pg=PA93 93–108]}} Nevertheless, he was energetic and mischievously inquisitive.{{Sfn|Putnam|1958|pp=23–27}} His lifelong interest in [[zoology]] began at age seven when he saw a dead [[Pinniped|seal]] at a market; after obtaining the seal's head, Roosevelt and cousins formed the "Roosevelt Museum of Natural History". Having learned the rudiments of [[taxidermy]], he filled his makeshift museum with animals he killed or caught. Aged nine, he recorded his observations in a paper entitled "The Natural History of Insects".<ref name="environment">{{Cite web | publisher = PBS | url = https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/tr/envir.html | title = TR's Legacy — The Environment | access-date = March 6, 2006 | archive-date = December 24, 2008 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20081224215129/http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/tr/envir.html }}</ref>
[[File:TR Age 11 Paris.jpg|thumb|left|upright=.8|Roosevelt aged 11]]

Family trips, including tours of Europe in 1869 and 1870, and [[Khedivate of Egypt|Egypt]] in 1872, shaped his cosmopolitan perspective.{{Sfn|Roosevelt|1913|p=13}} Hiking with his family in the [[Alps]] in 1869, Roosevelt discovered the benefits of physical exertion to minimize his asthma and bolster his spirits.{{Sfn|Putnam|1958|pp=63–70}} Roosevelt began a heavy regimen of exercise. After being manhandled by older boys on the way to a camping trip, he found a boxing coach to train him.{{Sfn|Testi|1995|pp=1516–1517}}{{Sfn|Roosevelt|1913|pp=32–33}}

===Education===
Roosevelt was homeschooled. Biographer [[H. W. Brands]] wrote that, "The most obvious drawback...was uneven coverage of...various areas of...knowledge."<ref>{{cite book|author=Brands|title=T.R.: The Last Romantic|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=J7jMw0bwRy8C&pg=PA49|year=1998|page=49|publisher=Basic Books |isbn=978-0-465-06959-0|access-date=April 15, 2017|archive-date=April 15, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170415214921/https://books.google.com/books?id=J7jMw0bwRy8C&pg=PA49|url-status=live}}</ref> He was solid in geography and bright in history, biology, French, and German; however, he struggled in mathematics and the classical languages.

In September 1876, he entered [[Harvard College]]. His father instructed him to, "take care of your morals first, your health next, and finally your studies."<ref>{{cite book|first=Edward P.|last=Kohn|title=Heir to the Empire City: New York and the Making of Theodore Roosevelt|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EcZWAAAAQBAJ&pg=PT26|year=2013|page=26|publisher=Basic Books |isbn=978-0-465-06975-0|access-date=April 15, 2017|archive-date=April 15, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170415213639/https://books.google.com/books?id=EcZWAAAAQBAJ&pg=PT26|url-status=live}}</ref> His father's sudden death in 1878 devastated Roosevelt.{{Sfn|Miller|1992|pp=80–82}} He inherited $60,000 (equivalent to ${{Format price|{{Inflation|US-GDP|60,000|1878|r=-4}}}} in {{Inflation/year|US-GDP}}), enough on which he could live comfortably for the rest of his life.<ref name=NYT14>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/times-insider/2014/07/18/1878-theodore-roosevelt-inherits-a-fortune/|title=First Glimpses: 1878: Theodore Roosevelt Inherits a Fortune|date=July 18, 2014|first=Mark|last=Bulik|newspaper=[[The New York Times]]|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201222113116/https://www.nytimes.com/times-insider/2014/07/18/1878-theodore-roosevelt-inherits-a-fortune/|access-date=December 22, 2020|archive-date=December 22, 2020}}</ref>
[[File:Teddy Roosevelt in sculling gear while an undergraduate at Harvard, circa 1877.jpg|thumb|Theodore Roosevelt as an undergraduate at [[Harvard University]] {{Circa|1877}}]]
His father, a devout [[Presbyterianism|Presbyterian]], regularly led the family in prayers. Young adult Theodore emulated him by teaching Sunday School for more than three years at [[Christ Church (Cambridge, Massachusetts)|Christ Church]] in [[Cambridge, Massachusetts]] while at Harvard. When the minister at Christ Church, which was Episcopal, insisted he become an Episcopalian to continue teaching, Roosevelt declined, and began teaching a mission class in a poor section of Cambridge.<ref>{{cite book |last=McCullough |first=David |author-link=David McCullough |title=[[Mornings on Horseback]]: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt |publisher=Simon & Schuster |year=1982 |isbn=978-0-6714-4754-0 }}</ref> 

Roosevelt did well in science, philosophy, and rhetoric courses but struggled in Latin and Greek. He studied biology intently and was already an accomplished naturalist and a published [[Ornithology|ornithologist]]. He read prodigiously with an almost photographic memory.{{Sfn|Brands|1997|p=62}} Roosevelt participated in rowing and [[Harvard Boxing Club|boxing]], and was a member of the [[Alpha Delta Phi]] literary society, the [[Delta Kappa Epsilon]] fraternity, and the prestigious [[Porcellian Club]]. In 1880, Roosevelt graduated [[Phi Beta Kappa]] (22nd of 177) with an [[Bachelors of Arts|A.B.]] ''[[magna cum laude]]''. [[Henry F. Pringle]] wrote:
{{blockquote|Roosevelt, attempting to analyze his college career and weigh the benefits he had received, felt that he had obtained little from Harvard. He had been depressed by the formalistic treatment of many subjects, by the rigidity, the attention to minutiae that were important in themselves, but which somehow were never linked up with the whole.{{sfn|Pringle|1931|p=27}}}}

Roosevelt gave up his plan of studying natural science and attended [[Columbia Law School]], moving back into his family's home in New York. Although Roosevelt was an able student, he found law to be irrational.{{Sfn|Brands|1997|pp=110–112, 123–133. quote p. 126}} Determined to enter politics, Roosevelt began attending meetings at Morton Hall, the headquarters of New York's 21st District Republican Association. Though Roosevelt's father had been a prominent member of the [[History of the Republican Party (United States)|Republican Party]], Roosevelt made an unorthodox career choice for someone of his class, as most of Roosevelt's peers refrained from becoming too closely involved in politics. Roosevelt found allies in the local Republican Party and defeated a Republican state assemblyman tied to the political machine of Senator [[Roscoe Conkling]] closely. After his election victory, Roosevelt dropped out of law school, later saying, "I intended to be one of the governing class."{{Sfn|Brands|1997|pp=110–112, 123–133. quote p. 126}}

===Naval history and strategy===
While at Harvard, Roosevelt began a systematic study of the role played by the [[United States Navy]] in the [[War of 1812]].{{Sfn|Roosevelt|1913|p=35}}{{Sfn|Morris|1979|p=565}} He ultimately published ''[[The Naval War of 1812]]'' in 1882. The book included comparisons of British and American leadership down to the ship-to-ship level. It was praised for its scholarship and style, and remains a standard study of the war.<ref name="mjcrawford1">{{cite journal|last1=Crawford|first1=Michael J.|title=The Lasting Influence of Theodore Roosevelt's Naval War of 1812|journal=International Journal of Naval History|date=April 2002|volume=1|issue=1|url=http://www.ijnhonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/pdf_crawford.pdf|access-date=October 6, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180713113248/http://www.ijnhonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/pdf_crawford.pdf|archive-date=July 13, 2018}}</ref>

With the 1890 publication of ''[[The Influence of Sea Power upon History]],'' [[Alfred Thayer Mahan]] was hailed as the world's outstanding naval theorist by European leaders. Mahan popularized a concept that only nations with significant naval power had been able to influence history, dominate oceans, exert their diplomacy to the fullest, and defend their borders.<ref>{{Cite journal |jstor = 2711707|title = The Nature of "Influence": Roosevelt, Mahan and the Concept of Sea Power|journal = American Quarterly|volume = 23|issue = 4|pages = 585–600|last1 = Karsten|first1 = Peter|year = 1971|doi = 10.2307/2711707 |issn=0003-0678 }}</ref><ref>Richard W. Turk, ''The Ambiguous Relationship: Theodore Roosevelt and Alfred Thayer Mahan'' (1987) [https://www.questia.com/library/2008464/the-ambiguous-relationship-theodore-roosevelt-and online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160611162223/https://www.questia.com/library/2008464/the-ambiguous-relationship-theodore-roosevelt-and |date=June 11, 2016 }}</ref> It has been believed Roosevelt's naval ideas were derived from Mahan's book, but naval historian Nicholas Danby felt Roosevelt's ideas predated Mahan's book.<ref>{{Cite magazine | last = Danby | first = Nicholas | title = The Roots of Roosevelt's Navalism| magazine = [[Naval History]] | date = February 2021 | url = https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2021/february/roots-roosevelts-navalism}}</ref>

=== First marriage and widowerhood ===
In 1880, Roosevelt married socialite [[Alice Hathaway Lee Roosevelt|Alice Hathaway Lee]].{{sfn|Miller|1992|p=104}} Their daughter, [[Alice Roosevelt Longworth|Alice Lee Roosevelt]], was born on February 12, 1884. Two days later, the new mother died of undiagnosed [[kidney failure]], on the same day as Roosevelt's mother Martha died of [[typhoid fever]]. In his diary, Roosevelt wrote a large "X" on the page and then, "The light has gone out of my life." Distraught, Roosevelt left baby Alice in the care of his sister Bamie while he grieved; he assumed custody of Alice when she was three.{{sfn|Miller|1992|pp=154–158}}

After the deaths of his wife and mother, Roosevelt focused on his work, specifically by re-energizing a legislative investigation into corruption of the [[New York City government]], which arose from a bill proposing power be centralized in the mayor's office.{{sfn|Brands|1997|p=166}} For the rest of his life, he rarely spoke about his wife Alice and did not write about her in his autobiography.{{Sfn|Morris|1979|p=232}}