title: Theodore Roosevelt: The American Presidents Series: The 26th President, 1901-1909
author:  Louis Auchincloss 
description: Theodore Roosevelt was a man of contradictions: a warrior who won the Nobel Peace prize, a wealthy man who battled corporate greed, a thinker who prized action more than words (but who wrote fine books himself).
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  # PROLOGUE:  
  14–16 September 1901
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## _Saturday_
  
  
  [](Morr_9780307777812_epub_nts1_r1_split_000_split_001.htm#prl-nts1)THEODORE
  ROOSEVELT became President of the United States without knowing it, at 2:15 in
  the morning of 14 September 1901.
  [](Morr_9780307777812_epub_nts1_r1_split_000_split_001.htm#prl-nts2)He was
  bouncing in a buckboard down the rainswept slopes of Mount Marcy, in the
  Adirondacks. Constitutionally, not so much as a heartbeat impeded the flow of
  power from his assassinated predecessor to himself. Practically, more than
  four hundred miles of mud and rails still separated him from William
  McKinley’s death chamber in Buffalo, where preparations for an emergency
  inauguration were already under way.
  
  
  For all Roosevelt knew, he was still Vice President, ye