Theodore Roosevelt and the Divided Character of American Nationalism

Gary Gerstle

Any examination of American nationalism must, sooner or later, contend with its contradictory character. On the one hand, it offers a civic creed promising all Americans the same individual rights irrespective of color, religion, or sex. That creed has strongly influenced American politics and society, imparting social cohesion to a sprawling, heterogeneous population and inspiring countless democratic movements. On the other hand, American nationalism has long harbored racial ideologies that define the United States and its mission in ethnoracial ways and have sought to prove American racial superiority through economic might and military conquest. As Rogers Smith, Matthew Jacobson, and others have shown, racialized constructions of American nationalism were present from the early days of the Republic: in the Constitution itself, which legalized slavery, and in a 1790 law declaring that naturalization would be limited to those individuals who were free and white. And such constructions persisted well into the twentieth century.1	1
This essay explores the contradictory character of American nationalism. It does so not by identifying groups, such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), espousing one principle or the other, but by examining how both principles often coexisted in the minds of single individuals. No individual better illustrates this phenomenon than Theodore Roosevelt, historian, dude rancher, civil service commissioner, police commissioner, governor, soldier, president, explorer. Few figures of any age have matched his devotion to the American nation or his influence on the form and content of American nationalism. Regardless of the task Roosevelt was carrying out, the office he had assumed, or the adventure he had undertaken, he was always looking for ways to strengthen the American nation and intensify the nationalist ardor of the American people.	2
Roosevelt's nationalism expressed itself as a combative and unapologetic racial ideology that thrived on aggression and the vanquishing of savage and barbaric peoples. From the perspective of that ideology, it was vital that "Americans" cultivate their racial superiority and expel or subordinate the racial inferiors in their midst. Yet, Roosevelt also located within American nationalism a powerful civic tradition that celebrated the United States as a place that welcomed all people, irrespective of their nationality, race, and religious practice, as long as they were willing to devote themselves to the nation and obey its laws. Moreover, Roosevelt loved the idea of America as a melting pot—a "crucible"—in which a hybrid race of many strains would be forged. Mixing of this sort, Roosevelt believed, had created and would sustain American racial superiority. His affection for the melting pot expressed, too, the personal delight he took in crossing social boundaries and meeting diverse groups of people.	3
Most of the time, Roosevelt found ways to reconcile his commitments to the racial and civic traditions of American nationalism. He disciplined his celebration of hybridity by insisting that certain kinds of boundary crossing would damage the racially superior character of the American nation, and he expended much effort to explain why blacks, in particular, could not participate in America's great melting pot. But Roosevelt's efforts at reconciliation were not always successful. In particular, his commitment to the civic tradition sometimes filled him with anxiety and uncertainty about America's racial order and caused him to violate that order in sensational and politically damaging ways. The civic and racial traditions, in other words, sometimes pulled Roosevelt in such different directions that he could not easily encase them both within the national identity he was laboring so hard to create. Building the American nation from such contradictory materials turns out to have been exceptionally difficult political and personal work.	. . .