Theodore Roosevelt spouse Alice Hathaway Lee Roosevelt
First marriage and widowerhood
In 1880, Roosevelt married socialite Alice Hathaway Lee. Their daughter, Alice Lee Roosevelt, was born on February 12, 1884. Two days later, the new mother died of undiagnosed kidney failure that the pregnancy masked. In his diary, Roosevelt wrote a large "X" on the page and then, "The light has gone out of my life." His mother, Martha, had died of typhoid fever eleven hours earlier at 3:00 a.m., in the same house on 57th Street in Manhattan. Distraught, Roosevelt left baby Alice in the care of his sister Bamie while he grieved; he assumed custody of Alice when she was three.After the deaths of his wife and mother, Roosevelt focused on his work, specifically by re-energizing a legislative investigation into corruption of the New York City government, which arose from a concurrent bill proposing that power be centralized in the mayor's office. For the rest of his life, he rarely spoke about his wife Alice and did not write about her in his autobiography.The Progressive ("Bull Moose") Party
Once his defeat at the Republican convention appeared probable, Roosevelt announced that he would "accept the progressive nomination on a progressive platform and I shall fight to the end, win or lose". At the same time, Roosevelt prophetically said, "My feeling is that the Democrats will probably win if they nominate a progressive".Roosevelt left the Republican Party and created the Progressive Party, structuring it as a permanent organization that would field complete tickets at the presidential and state level. The new party included many reformers, including Jane Addams. Although many Republican politicians had announced for Roosevelt before Taft won the nomination, he was stunned to discover that very few incumbent politicians followed him into the new party. The main exception was California, where the Progressive faction took control of the Republican Party. Loyalty to the old party was a powerful factor for incumbents; only five senators now supported Roosevelt. Roosevelt's daughter Alice had a White House marriage to Congressman Nicholas Longworth, who represented Taft's base in Cincinnati. Roosevelt reassured him in 1912 that of course he had to endorse Taft. However, Alice was her father's biggest cheerleader—the public conflict between spouses ruined the marriage.
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