022 - Teddy Roosevelt's Third Term, Part IX

11/13/21 • 14 min

As had become his practice after, shall we say, NOT winning a presidential election, Theodore Roosevelt left the country. He didn’t trust himself to stay quiet while Woodrow Wilson did things he didn’t approve of: removing African-Americans from the federal bureaucracy, passing a pro-business tariff, and developing an isolationist and pacifist foreign policy.

Like his African trip in 1909, Teddy’s journey to South America had a number of items on the agenda: scientific study of flora and fauna, the usual slaughter of native beasts for sport, and a way for him to make some money. He told his wife that he “expected to clear $20,000 over the next six months.”

And, like his African trip, Teddy was putting himself firmly in harm’s way. It’s not inconceivable that somewhere in his subconscious was the notion that he might end his life, which now seemed without purpose, in the midst of the kind of action that made him feel most alive.

Theodore Roosevelt did not think he should die in his sleep. He nearly got his wish on this post-election trip south of the equator.

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Theodore Roosevelt did not think he should die in his sleep. He nearly got his wish on this post-election trip south of the equator.

Thanks for listening and click here to support of the History's Trainwrecks Podcast.

https://www.historystrainwrecks.com/

Subscribe to History's Trainwrecks

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/historys-trainwrecks.

Help keep trainwrecks on the tracks. Become a supporter at https://plus.acast.com/s/historys-trainwrecks.

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Previous Episode

021 - Stubborn Nags of Ancient Rome, Part III

It's 81 BC, and ancient Rome is under the control of the drunken bloodthirsty dictatorship of Cornelius Sulla. There were three things you could do - be on Sulla's side and live, oppose him and get exiled, or oppose him and get your head stuck on a pike in the Forum. Cato the Younger, fourteen years old, was taken under Sulla's wing for a front-row seat to the bloodbath.

Rome's problems didn't end when the dictator drank himself to death.

Spartacus, a former slave and legionnaire, raised a huge rebel army in the city's back yard, the renegade general Sertorius had essentially taken over Spain, and annoying old Mithridates was taking a third swing at the Roman pinata.

Cato the Younger found plenty of opportunity for career advancement in these tense times.

But so did Julius Caesar. The two of them were now on a collision course.

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Next Episode

023 - Tractors For Fidel Castro

The Bay of Pigs invasion was, to coin a phrase, a train wreck.

Fidel Castro had come to power in Cuba in 1959, planting a Communist country right on America’s back porch. Having a Soviet satellite ninety miles away from American soil was, shall we say, troubling.

The Eisenhower Administration approved a CIA plan to train Cuban exiles and provide them with weapons and air support for an invasion of the island. The expectation was that the Cuban people would rise up in rebellion and topple the Castro regime.

The train went off the tracks pretty early. Despite efforts to keep the mission a secret, the invasion plan was widely known among the Cuban community in Miami. Castro’s intelligence service found out about the training camps the CIA had set up in Guatemala, and some of the details of the plans made it into the press.

Fidel Castro was not going to be surprised.

President John F. Kennedy authorized the invasion, which was a massive failure that resulted in 1200 prisoners ending up in Castro's hands. He would let them go free, if the United States sent him five hundred heavy-duty tractors.

This was about to get interesting.

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