The Progressives and the Environment: the Beginning of the Conservation Movement

As I've already mentioned, there are LOTS of topics that could potentially be studied in a unit on Progressivism. Why pick one over another? I like to spend a couple of days on the environment--a topic less often addressed by teachers, I think--for a few reasons. First, the care of the natural environment is a central concern in our society today and one that students seem to care about a lot. Global warming, the Keystone oil pipeline, fracking and the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico are all in the news today. Two, there are not a lot of other places in the curriculum where the environment comes up. And three, the Progressive Era marks a key "turning point" in American thinking about the environment.

For starters, 1916 marks the passage of the Organic Act, which created the National Park Service (though not the first national park--that was Yellowstone in 1872). According to this law, the goal of the NPS would be:

"....to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations." 

I am hardly the first to point out the inherent contradictions of this statement: does "conserve the scenery" and keeping it "unimpaired for enjoyment of future generations" mean the NPS might have to restrict current public access and "enjoyment"?

The National Parks have been described by environmentalist and writer Wallace Stegner as, "the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst." The creation of the NPS is certainly a milestone moment in American history and worth considering. (See below for links to Ken Burns documentary on National Parks).

The essential question that comes to mind is, why now? Why in the early 20th century do Americans and their government begin talking about the environment in a way that they hadn't before? How did our views about the environment change over time?

One way to begin a lesson on this topic is to have students play around with some key words, considering what they mean, how they are different and their own views:

• environmentalism
• conservation
• preservation
• wilderness
• nature
• green (not the color, obviously)
• reclamation

Another way to begin is to use a few quotations about environmentalism and conservation. Pick a few from any of the websites below. Something from Roosevelt, Henry David Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, John Muir, Wallace Stegner, or Stewart Udall are all good choices.

• goodreads.com/quotes/tag/environment
• quotegarden.com
• brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_environmental

The DBQ I put together and used with students focuses on this question:

How and why did the government's policy toward the use of natural resources change during the Progressive Era?

 To answer the question, obviously students need to understand 3 things:

1. What were American views/govt policies on the environment before the Progressive Era?
2. What influenced the shift? i.e. why did policies change?
3. What were those new policies? i.e. how did they change

To answer these, you can go back to the "beginning"--the period of initial contact between Europeans and Native Americans. William Cronon is the historian who has probably best explained the different points of view in his book Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists and the Ecology of New England. For a brief summary, you can look here. One of his key points is that Europeans viewed land as property, something one owns, versus the New England Indians who were more likely to eschew land ownership in favor of usufruct rights, in which people "owned" only what they use on the land (e.g. hunting and gathering).

But I usually just go back to the nineteenth century, with a simple in class activity in which students look up a few bits of information about the topics below (most textbooks will work for this, and "a few bits" is all they usually have):

• manifest destiny
• Homestead Act of 1862
• Pacific Railway Act and government subsidies
• destruction of the buffalo

Then students consider what implications this has about how the American people and the government thought about land, conservation and the environment. Middle schoolers and high schoolers can do this, though middle schoolers may need either a little prodding, or you can do one of them together. Their ability to do it depends a little bit on what your textbook says about each of these things. If you don't like what your textbook says, find a different one, or write up your own "definitions" of them.

Then it's time to examine the shift. For this part of the lesson, I use two things:

1. maps:  one that depicts the "closing" of the frontier and the extent of settlement (your textbook probably has one). Here are some links to ones you might like: docstoc.com, lib.utexas.edu, and here's a GIF one from the US Census.
2. Frederick Jackson Turner and the "Closing of the Frontier Turner" thesis. Read more here and here or here. Even though it has been discredited, it was considered important at the time. I'm not sure I would use this with middle schoolers. Too theoretical. I think the maps are enough. Here is the document and questions on Turner that I use in class.

Combining the above with the significant droughts of the 1890s, you can start to understand the shift.

And then along come Theodore Roosevelt. My last post has resources where you can find more on his love for the wilderness and experiences with nature that led him to take an interest in preserving the environment just as the time seems to ripe for Americans to take a similar view.

I like to use Roosevelt's 1907 message to Congress as a document with students to understand the evolving view of conservation (vs. the preservationist view of folks like John Muir). Here is my edited version to use with high schoolers, and here is a shorter one to use with middle schoolers or younger/less able readers in HS. Both have the link to the PBS website where I found it.

And then lastly (this would not all be on the same day, mind you), I like to use the story about the debate over damming the Hetch Hetchy valley in Yosemite to provide a water source for the city of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake. It is a fascinating story and marks "the first time that competing claims of wilderness and civilization were put to the test before a national audience." (That's from my notes, but I'm sure it came from a book. Perhaps it's from the classic book on wilderness, Roderick Nash's Wilderness and the American Mind, now in its fourth edition. There's a whole chapter on Hetch Hetchy.)

The anti-dam folks, led by preservationist John Muir, made arguments that the pro-dam folks were putting commercial interests ahead of wilderness. Muir had been the driving force behind getting Yosemite turned into a national park in 1890 and had been camping with Roosevelt there in 1903. Muir was adamant about the importance of preserving the valley as it was:

"Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people's cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man."

Muir's friend and ally in the fight, Robert Underwood Johnson claimed, "this is a fight between the sordid commercialism on the one hand and the higher interests of the whole people on the other."

But the really interesting thing about the debate over Hetch Hetchy is that the proponents of the damn were not anti-wilderness. In fact, many arguments were made that putting a dam in would make the wilderness more beautiful. Read no further than the first few statements by U.S. Chief Forester Gifford Pinchot in response to California Congressman John Raker to get a sense of the argument.

You have several options for how to teach about this. You could construct an elaborate debate like this one that I found online, or use some of the many materials there to construct something simpler (and shorter). Other resources you can use to create your own debate or historical inquiry or even just a short lecture that dramatizes the events are below:

• testimony about the Hetch Hetchy debate
• hetch hetchy info from the Sierra club
• primary sources about Hetch Hetchy from National Archives
• John Muir on Hetch Hetchy
• Gifford Pinchot's testimony on Hetch Hetchy

Ken Burns has taken Wallace Stegner's statement about the national parks idea and turned it into one of his outstanding documentaries, The National Parks: America's Best Idea. For an overview of this documentary, click here and for the episode by episode synopsis, click here.

The last section of Episode 2 focuses on the debate over Hetch Hetchy. Read more here (midway on the page). Earlier in Episode 2, the three main characters of the debate are introduced: Gifford Pinchot and John Muir, as well as Theodore Roosevelt.

A few more resources:

• The Evolution of the Conservation Movement - from the Library of Congress's American Memory collection
• If you'd like to see the DBQ I created, you can email me and I will send you the link.
• Current news about Hetch Hetchy and more here.

"A Steam Engine in Trousers:" Teaching about Theodore Roosevelt

I bet if you polled U.S. history teachers about their favorite presidents--not necessarily the ones they thought was the best, but their favorite--Theodore Roosevelt would top the list. He is not as great as Lincoln or as noble as Washington, or maybe even as successful as his cousin and biggest fan, FDR, but when it comes to the power of personality, he has to win the prize. The title of this post comes from a quotation I heard on Ken Burns's recent and marvelous documentary, The Roosevelts. I couldn't figure out who actually said it, but it is a brilliant metaphor for our most energetic and strong-willed presidents who had tremendous influence on the Progressive Era. A question worth pondering, would the Progressive Era have become what it did without the impact of such a powerful personality in the White House?

Roosevelt is one of the most colorful presidents we have had, and the examples of interesting facts and anecdotes is long.

• He was the youngest president to assume office (but not the youngest elected; that was JFK)
• He is the first to be known by his initials.
• He is the first president to have ridden in an automobile and an airplane. 
• The first president to have visited a foreign country while in office--the newly-independent Panama to inspect the Panama Canal. (The story about how the U.S. got control over the Panama Canal is fascinating--and controversial. I would include it in a unit about late 19th century imperialism. I will do some posts on that in the future, so more on TR and the Panama Canal later.) 
• He was a prolific writer. Click here for the list of books he wrote. 
• He was the first American and the first American president to receive the Nobel peace prize. Read his acceptance speech here. 
• He was a big-time family man. Interesting info about his children in the White House available here and here. Middle-schoolers will find this especially interesting.
• He was a witness to Abraham Lincoln's funeral. 
• Prominent Republican Mark Hanna's quip on TR being chosen for McKinley's Vice-Presidential running mate: "There's only one life between that madman and the Presidency."
• Many students know that TR and FDR are related, but they don't usually understand how, nor do they always know about Eleanor. This family tree will help explain that. And what they also don't know is that what seems like a rather distant relationship to us (how many of you know your 5th cousins?) was not so distant in the Roosevelt family. Long before FDR married TR's niece, Eleanor, he knew and greatly admired his 5th cousin. The Oyster Bay Roosevelts (TR) and the Hyde Park Roosevelts (FDR) traveled in the same social circles and were together on many occasions, which is how FDR met Eleanor in the first place. They had known each other since childhood.

There are also a number of interesting events/aspects of his young life that I think are worth sharing with students because of the influence they may have had on some of his future decisions as president and for becoming helping him become president in the first place. The items below also help humanize this out-sized historical figure. And making the past seem alive and full of real human beings is what helps students relate to history.

1. His family, like so many others, was split by the Civil War. His mother, "Mittie" (Martha) Bulloch, was from Roswell, Georgia. She grew up in a large plantation, Bulloch Hall, as a member of Georgia's planter class. The family owned slaves, and Mittie herself has a personal slave, Lavinia. The main reason Theodore Sr. (TR's father) hired a replacement rather than fight in the Civil War was to avoid having to fight a war against Mittie's family. But his failure to fight for his country was something that would always bother TR about his father, whom he otherwise worshipped. This partly explains his determination to fight in the Spanish-American War and his organization of the Rough Riders. Mittie herself was a colorful and lively woman, and it has been suggested that the character of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind may have been inspired by her.

2. It is well known that young Theodore suffered terribly from asthma. There are accounts of his beloved father walking with him in his arms throughout the night, or taking him outside for a ride in the night air. Theodore Sr. devoted enormous attention to helping his son with this terrible affliction. He told his son that he would have to "remake his body," which he did. And this slight, sickly little boy became the toughest, most macho president we've ever had.

3. Young Theodore loved the outdoors, nature and was profoundly curious. He collected all kinds of animals and other specimens, some of which were donated to the American Museum of Natural History (well-known to your students because of the hit movie, A Night at the Museum). Read about it here. He also made donations to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington. See this article.

4. I also like to share with students the profoundly tragic experience of losing his beloved young wife, Alice, and his mother on the same day, February 14, 1884. His wife died two days following the birth of a daughter, also named Alice, which was hours before the death of Theodore's mother. For an excellent account which also shows a picture of Roosevelt's diary entry for that day, see this post from RareHistoricalPhotos.com (could be very useful for lots of other topics--see the list of categories/topics on right). The post also has an excerpt from a tribute wrote about Alice and mentions that he never spoke of her again. I like to tell the story because its poignancy humanizes Roosevelt. It also adds to our picture of Roosevelt as someone who overcame personal tragedy and setbacks. And finally, it helps explain the significant role of wilderness in his life, which led him to become so engaged in the beginning of the conservation movement.

5. Roosevelt's experiences out west also brought him into contact with people and a life very much outside of his upper class New York world. This certainly would have influenced his ability as president to connect with a wide variety of people. You can read here about his experiences in North Dakota. The Ken Burns series (see below) also has a good, brief section in Episode One about this transformative experienc.

None of the above is to suggest that Roosevelt is without criticism. As many others as pointed out, he often took liberties with the Constitution. (See this lesson from the Bill of Rights Institute). Many conservatives and Republicans of his day saw him as a traitor to his social class and business interests. His involvement with the revolution that created an independent Panama is a prime example of U.S. imperialist. In fact, TR was an imperialist. I think it is critical, when presenting material on "heroic" and well-liked presidents, to point out these flaws to students. You don't have to do it on day one, but our students should be made cognizant of the flaws of our greatest men and women. The point is not to "take 'em down," or to present an overly critical view of history (as history teachers are so often accused of doing by conservative politicians). The point is to help students understand that real people and real events in history are messy and complicated. And today's lionized presidents--even Lincoln--may have been roundly disliked and criticized by people of their day and from our perspective today.

Another interesting negative point about TR: Roosevelt was the first American president to invite a black man--Booker T. Washington--to a formal dinner at the White House. He was strongly criticized. Though he would meet with Washington again, and invite other black officials to White House receptions, he never again invited a black man (or woman) to dinner again. Read about it here. I don't think this means that Roosevelt was racist, but it certainly reflects the racism of the time, and Roosevelt's recognition of the importance of this symbolic action. Raising these sorts of controversies and inconsistencies with students further helps their ability to recognize the complexity of historical analysis.

And another: our greatest "conservationist president" was a big-time hunter. Students often find this inconsistent. But there are even more interesting issues raised during Roosevelt's presidency about conservation during the debate about Hetch Hetchy. More on that in another post.


Ken Burns's epic recent series, The Roosevelts: An Intimate History, is a wonderful resource to share with students, or for background material for yourself. There is a page with resources specific to teachers here. If you go to this page, you can filter the videos by person (TR, FDR and ER) and then click on the one, "Theodore Roosevelt's Personality." It's a 3 1/2 minute clip with amusing anecdotes that shed light on Roosevelt's immense personality. If you want more, you could precede this with another clip, "Theodore Roosevelt Early Years," is also about 3 1/2 minutes and describes TR's experience at Harvard and his marriage to Alice Lee (but doesn't go on to her death).

One idea you could try, instead of just showing some of the many cool video clips out there in order to tell them about interesting TR is, is to let students watch them individually (e.g. in your computer lab, if you have one, or at home if they have access) and ask them to comment on which aspect of TR's personality or time in his life do they think most shaped who he became as president. (I suppose you might have to do this after they learn about his presidency. But you could show the videos first, have them think about the question in advance, and then go back to the videos afterwards.) In addition to Ken Burns's film, there are lots more out there on youtube and elsewhere.

As you would expect, there are a number of resources on the internet for learning more about TR.

There are all the usual places:

whitehouse.gov

history.com

biography.com

millercenter.org (see the links to all the brief essays on right)

Library of Congress/American Memory

and here are the more specialized ones:

theodorerooseveltcenter.org - digital library project to collect a variety of resources. Also has useful virtual exhibits, including detailed timelines of his life and experiences, famous quotations, an encyclopedia that is organized around major themes of his life and presidency, and links to other library collections such as Harvard's and the Library of Congress.

theodoreroosevelt.org - has a brief biography and links on the left to other aspects of his life, e.g. TR the hunter, the family man, the conservationist, etc. and an article about how the teddy bear came to be named for TR.

www.theodore-roosevelt.com - I cannot seem to find who/what organization sponsors this website, but it seems to have links to EVERYTHING Theodore Roosevelt ever did, said or wrote and every other website and author that has mentioned Roosevelt. If you can't find what you're looking for from the links I have provided, you will find it here. 

Things named for Theodore Roosevelt:

• Two major parks (and probably countless minor ones, including a little known one in Chicago's South Loop where my kids used to play; are named in his honor because of it's location adjacent to Roosevelt Road and because Roosevelt praised Chicago's south neighborhood park system) -- Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota and Roosevelt Island in Washington, D.C.
• A species of elk found in the Pacific Northwest--the Roosevelt Elk--is named after TR. 
• And, for Chicago folk: Roosevelt Road (goes all the way from the lakefront to the town of Geneva, IL) was named for TR in 1919, after his death. (Roosevelt University was named for FDR). I'm sure that plenty of other towns, cities and states have things named for TR, but of course you have to check and see which Roosevelt.

About Mount Rushmore, a site not without some controversy:

You can read "official" info about why TR is included on it here, from the National Park Service. But I think this response from the Straight Dope is a little more enlightening.

The list of outstanding biographies of TR is also long. I have a mild obsession with all the Roosevelts. Just a few of my favorites are at right. Two off the beaten track ones: If you haven't read it, The River of Doubt: Theodore 

Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice Millard is a great summer read. Tells the hard-to-believe-it's-even-true story of the poorly planned post-presidency trip down the River of Doubt in the Amazon with his son, Kermit. Also, The Roosevelt Women: A Portrait in Five Generations by Betty Boyd Caroli is a great resource for learning more not only about the usual suspects--TR's wife, Edith, and his niece, Eleanor--but also about his mother and influential sisters. Some have argued that, but for her gender, Roosevelt's sister, Bamie, would have been the obvious choice for the presidency. I learned so much about TR from reading about his family, but the book also serves as a powerful reminder about the role women (albeit in this case, elite women) have played in history.