THEODORE ROOSEVELT TIME OUT WEST FREE

The American experiment teetered on the brink of disaster.īut again, America emerged from the crisis with a new and stronger identity. As the delegates to the Constitutional Convention gathered at Independence Hall in the summer of 1787, Connecticut and New Jersey were making plans for a concerted attack on New York. Virginia and Maryland fought a brief war over oysters. This confederation soon proved inadequate. Under the Articles of Confederation, the nation organized itself into a loose league that respected the sovereignty of the states. But independence came easier than durable unity.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT TIME OUT WEST FREE

It transformed thirteen rebellious colonies into free and independent, but united, states.Īcting together, the new states prevailed against the British. The Declaration created a new American identity. As it was read out to the public for the first time in the yard of Independence Hall, a large British army stood poised to seize New York.

It started in Philadelphia, in Independence Hall: the place where our Founders drafted both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.īy 1776, when the Declaration was written, the thirteen colonies had been at war with Great Britain for a year. Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletterĪmerica has gone through the same sort of transformation and reforging of identity that Theodore Roosevelt experienced in the Dakotas, the same process of reinvention. When he returned East, he was a different man: stronger and unafraid. When thieves stole his riverboat, he chased them miles up the Little Missouri, captured them and brought them back for trial. “Black care,” he wrote, “rarely sits behind a rider whose pace is fast enough.” He stopped stampedes he knocked out a drunken cowboy who mocked his spectacles. The endless plains were a place to lose himself and escape his grief. There he rounded up cattle, hunted grizzly bears and slowly began to heal. Instead, he went West, to the Badlands of North Dakota. Back in Albany, he worked frantically for the rest of the year but refused to stand for another term.

Theodore stayed long enough to see his daughter christened Alice, then deposited her in the care of his sister. Theodore wrote a black X in his diary, then a single sentence: “The light has gone out of my life.” It was Valentine’s Day. He went from one bedside to another as they succumbed, eleven hours apart. “There is a curse on this house.” Alice was dying, and Theodore’s mother too. His brother Elliott met him at the door, ashen. Struggling through dense fog, Theodore made it home near midnight. A second telegram turned those plans to a panicked rush.

Theodore roosevelt time out west