[376] His friend, historian Henry Adams, proclaimed: "Roosevelt, more than any other man... showed the singular primitive quality that belongs to ultimate matter—the quality that medieval theology assigned to God—he was pure act."[377]
Roosevelt's biographers have stressed his personality. Henry F. Pringle, who won the Pulitzer Prize in biography for his Theodore Roosevelt (1931) stated: "The Theodore Roosevelt of later years was the most adolescent of men... Failure to receive the Medal of Honor for his exploits [in Cuba] had been a grief as real as any of those which swamp childhood in despair. 'You must always remember,' wrote Cecil Spring Rice in 1904, 'that the President is about six.'"[378]
Cooper compared him with Woodrow Wilson and argued that both of them played the roles of warrior and priest.[379] Dalton stressed Roosevelt's strenuous life.[380] Sarah Watts examined the desires of the "Rough Rider in the White House".[381] Brands calls Roosevelt "the last romantic", arguing that his romantic concept of life emerged from his belief that "physical bravery was the highest virtue and war the ultimate test of bravery".[382]
Roosevelt as the exemplar of American masculinity has become a major theme.