If.

You want to tell the story of Theodore Roosevelt, you got to start at the beginning, which for us means at his birthplace at 28 East 20th Street in Manhattan. And who better to tell that story than one of the nation's premier historians who also did a great book on Theodore Roosevelt, Douglas Frankley. Doug, great to.

See you. Hey, man, good to see you.

You wanted me to meet you.

Here, why? You have to because New York was his lifeblood. He was born in 1858, which tells you, Bryan, a couple of years before the Civil War.

And he grew.

Up in a household where his mother, the Bullocks, were from Georgia, and his father was from New York. So he had a Confederate mom and a Union dad. So T. R. Used to say all these squabbles he heard, he lived in a divided household and as President, he wanted to.

Unify it. And I can't wait to tell this story because even though he was from a family of wealth, his upbringing was anything but easy.

Should we go inside? -yeah, let's.

Do.

It. Born with every advantage a child can have, Theodore Roosevelt Jr, was raised in one of Manhattan's finest Brownstones while simultaneously living through the country's darkest days. America's Civil War was supposed to be over in a few weeks. Instead, the battle for equality and the soul of the Union required every family in the nation to make difficult decisions, including the Roosevelts.

But Theodore Roosevelt's senior did a compromise. His wife did not want him fighting for the Union. So he did what?

He did what a lot of wealthy people did in the North. They paid to have somebody fight. It was the only part of his father that Theodore Roosevelt didn't like. He worshiped his dad. I'm not kidding you. Dad was everything. But the fact that his dad didn't go serve stuck in his crawl, and he rectified that deficiency by becoming a rough rider and a Colonel in the Spanish-American War.

But before Teddy could become a war hero, he had to combat one of the greatest challenges any boy of the 19th century could endure.

So when he was about four or five, it became clear he suffered from asthma. Nowadays, we think of asthma as quite manageable. But those days it was a terrifying disease. And furthermore, he was very nearsighted and nobody knew it. So he had these adversities, some of them life-threatening.

As a child, Tweed used to hear these stories of young Teddy when he visited Sagamore Hill, Roosevelt's final home.

Tweed, if someone said that puny little kid will one day be on the side of a mountain as one of America's finest presidents, who would have predicted that?

Nobody. Most people, including his parents, thought he would die.

Determined to see his eldest son recover, Theodore Roosevelt's senior knew that discipline and rigor could heal his frail child.

His father came to him and said, Look, son, you've got a great mind and a terrible body. Without a strong body, your mind won't go anywhere. And so he started him on a regime and he started working out. And eventually his dad bought him all kinds of exercise equipment and he really lit into it.

Dedicated to this new strenuous life, the young Roosevelt engaged daily in extreme forms of weightlifting, rowing, hiking, climbing, horseback riding, and even became an avid boxer. These habits of physical fitness, which the future President considered to be every citizen's patriotic duty, would stick with him for the rest of his life.

So this sickly kid became an aggressive athlete in college and then becomes an officer in the military and a war hero overcompensating for.

His.

Youth. Absolutely. And it's a great story for young people to read if you're feeling infirmed or sickly, his ability to build yourself physically as well as mentally. He believed always that mind and body worked in sync, and he was open to learning of just about anything.

Teddy's improbable transformation proved to him that nothing was gained without hard work, a quality he later would come to admire in another great leader. However, before the now able-bodied man could become an icon, he had to heal a wound he never could have anticipated. A broken heart.

Theodore Roseveld was in Albany when he got a telegram from his brother, Elliot, that mom is burning up with fever in New York City, and Alice is giving childbirth. He scurried out of Albany, took a train, got into Manhattan, ran into the house on Valentine's Day and went up and down floors looking at his mother, dealing with his wife, mother, wife. And they both died within hours of each other, and the darkness hit him. The Roosevelt family had a history of depression, so T. R. Then famously put the X in the diary. The little baby was given to his sister, and T. R. Took the train all the way from New York City to where it dropped him off in the middle of Dakota Territory.

And hence the legend of Teddy Roosevelt takes off.

It wasn't until he went out west that he saw a different view of what an American is. And he saw that with the cowboys. He saw that with the black cowboys and the Indians.

T. R. Used to say that I found my Eden in the West, that the north had screwed up with too much industrialization. The south had the curse of slavery.

But west of.

The Mississippi River was the New Eden. The west became a big part of his life.

Roosevelt's love for wildlife and the great outdoors would become one of the President's defining characteristics. But before the public fell in love with the conservationists, they were first introduced to the warrior. On February 15th, 1898, the USS Maine battleship exploded in Havana Harbor, killing more than 250 officers. Many were quick to blame Spain, a colonial empire who were committing human rights violations against the freedom seeking residents of Cuba. Although Tiar had become an established writer, a beloved New York City Police Commissioner, and had been recently appointed the assistant secretary of the Navy, the now 40-year-old man yearned to avenge what he considered a dirty act of treachery.

Everybody thought he was crazy. Why would he do this? But he had patriotism in his blood and an interest in war. One of the extraordinary things about his experiences as a rough rider is when that famous charge went up San Juan Heights, not only did he charge up once, he charged up three times. The rough riders did not have their horses, so he was the only person on a horse. There were a lot of observers, papers, higher level in the government. Not one of them thought he was going to make it up the hill. Only the densest of Spanish soldiers wouldn't know the first guy you shoot is the guy on the horse. And in fact, bullets went all around him. People were killed right next to him, but some good luck faced him, and he wasn't killed.

Although history finally remembers Roosevelt and his rough riders, Lieutenant Colonel was quick to compliment the bravery of the Buffalo soldiers who fought under his command. Known for their furosity and tenacity, the All Black Regiment, which consisted of Civil War veterans and ex-slaves, were some of the first soldiers to fight side by side with their fellow white patriot. After the Battle of San Juan Hill was over, Roosevelt declared that no one can tell whether it was the Rough riders or the black men of the ninth cavalry who came forward with the greater courage to offer their lives in the service of their country. Back in New York, the elated metropolis rewarded their hometown hero by electing him the governor of New York in 1899. Two years later, the Grateful Nation selected T. R. As the Vice President of the United States, but as so happened with much of his life, a tragedy would lead Teddy toward his destiny. On September 14th, 1901, President William McKinley was assassinated. Now, a battle-tested Roosevelt needed to once again undergo a rapid transformation in order to serve his beloved country. Coming up, we visit the groundbreaking Tuskegee Institute and immerse ourselves in the story of the honorable Booker by T.

Washington, a former slave who threw his head, hand, and heart, uplifted himself from the worst circumstances imaginable. Later, we learned how two great men forged a partnership that made an indelible impact on the civil rights movement.

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