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Contents. of their stomachs. While on safari, Roosevelt wrote extensively about his African adventure. Scribners magazine was paying him 50,000 for a series of articles, that appeared in 1910 as a book, African Game Trails. This photograph of Roosevelt with a bull elephant was used as an illustration. In March 1910, Roosevelt ended his eleven month African safari and, reunited with his wife, embarked on an extended tour of Europe.

He accepted many invitations from national sovereigns and gave much anticipated lectures at the Sorbonne in Paris and at Oxford University in England. In Norway, he delivered finally his formal acceptance speech for having won the Nobel Peace Prize four years earlier. I am received everywhere, he wrote, with as much wild enthusiasm as if I were on a Presidential tour at home. This cover of Harpers Weekly, June 18, 1910, was one of numerous graphic commentaries celebrating Roosevelts return to the United States.

Supreme Court Justice David J. Brewer used to jest that William Howard Taft was the politest man in Washington, because he was perfectly capable of giving up his seat on a streetcar to three ladies. Tafts amicable disposition it was said that his laugh was one of the great American institutions was the foremost quality that won Roosevelts admiration. I think he has the most lovable personality I have ever come in contact with, said Roosevelt.

As governor general of the Philippines and then as secretary of war, Taft proved to be a troubleshooter in Roosevelts cabinet. His longtime ambition had been to someday sit with Justice Brewer on the bench of the Supreme Court. Taft would ultimately succeed to the Court, but not before Roosevelt pegged him to be his successor. Taft will carry on the work substantially as I have carried it on, predicted Roosevelt. His policies, principles, purposes and ideals are the same as mine. Yet when Taft later proved to be his own person, Roosevelt was distraught.

Taft failed to convey the spirit of progressivism to which Roosevelt was ever leaning. There is no use trying to be William Howard Taft with Roosevelts ways, he bemoaned, our ways are different. Coaxed by his political admirers, and personally dissatisfied with what he considered to be President Tafts lack of leadership, Roosevelt announced early in 1912 that he would run for a historic third presidential term, if the GOP nomination were tendered to him. This was a monumental decision on his part, one he made contrary to his own established beliefs in the tradition of party loyalty, and without the full backing of party leaders.

Roosevelt was counting on winning the support of the people, and was successful in those states that had direct primaries. But in June, at the Republican convention in Chicago, the party machine wrested control of the proceedings and nominated President Taft easily after the Roosevelt delegates had walked out. This was the start of the Progressive Party, in which Roosevelt proudly accepted the nomination.

The press was especially happy to have him back in the running. From the moment he declared, My hat is in the ring, he became the most visible, if not viable, candidate. Ultimately, Roosevelt would beat Taft in the election, but he would lose to the Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson.

This cover of Judge, August 6, 1910, raised the question from early on Can a champion come back Theodore Roosevelt once declared himself to be as strong as a bull moose. The appellation stuck and the moose became the popular symbol for the Progressive Party under Roosevelt. This cartoon depicting the mascots of the major parties appeared in Harpers Weekly, July 20, 1912, just before the Bull Moose convention opened in Chicago. Chronology of the Public Career of Theodore Roosevelt 1882-1884 - New York State Assemblyman 1889-1895 - United States Civil Service Commissioner 1895-1897 - New York City Police Commissioner 1897-1898 - Assistant Secretary of the Navy 1898 - Rough Rider 1899-1900 - Governor of New York 1901- Vice President of the United States 1901-1909 - President of the United States Source 1. www.yahoo.com 2. httpwww.npg.si.eduexhrooseveltindex.htm.