The Art of Manliness - Episode #24： Becoming Teddy Roosevelt with Andrew Vietze

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast now if you've

00:00:20.980 been reading the art of manliness for a while now you probably know that i'm a big fan of

00:00:24.800 theodore roosevelt the man led an impressive life he was an avid outdoorsman and an adventurer a

00:00:30.800 rancher a rough writer author of several books and a political powerhouse but before he became

00:00:36.400 the larger than life man that we know today he was a and i quote a thin pale youngster with bad eyes

00:00:43.040 and a weak heart end quote that description came from bill sewell a main woodsman who became tr's

00:00:49.280 mentor at a crucial time in roosevelt's life it's been said if you really want to get to know a man

00:00:54.460 you should probably get to know the people who've had an influence on him and bill sewell had a

00:00:59.020 profound influence on a young roosevelt and our guest today has written a book about that

00:01:03.960 that explores the relationship between teddy roosevelt and this quiet new england woodsman

00:01:08.320 named bill sewell his name is andrew veetz and he's the author of the book becoming teddy roosevelt

00:01:13.420 how a main guide inspired america's 26th president andrew welcome to the show thanks very much

00:01:20.360 glad to be here well andrew tell us what inspired you to write this book since it's kind of an

00:01:24.580 interesting subject a lot of people don't there's not a lot of books i imagine about uh this new

00:01:29.960 england woodsman named bill sewell there actually is not now um what inspired me i spend about half

00:01:38.160 of the year working as a ranger up in baxter state park which is a wilderness area up in the northern

00:01:44.080 part of maine which is not far from where bill sewell actually is from and i you know do all the

00:01:51.440 sort of rangerly things that you might expect a ranger to do from rescuing people and putting out

00:01:56.920 forest fires and all those kinds of things and protecting the park from the people and the people

00:02:01.560 from the park and uh but what i never expected to do was be assigned to read a book and one of my

00:02:08.620 supervisors asked me to read legacy of a lifetime which is the book about how baxter park was created

00:02:14.900 and in that book is the tale of theodore roosevelt climbing mount kataden which is the highest mountain

00:02:21.940 in maine and the centerpiece of baxter park and i kind of in the back of my my mind had been aware of

00:02:27.980 this story but for some reason it clicked on that particular day sitting there in my ranger station

00:02:33.860 reading my you know reading the book and i figured i could probably sell that story as a

00:02:40.220 i work as a freelance writer for 12 months and a park ranger for six so i'm always looking for

00:02:45.860 story story ideas and i thought that i could sell that story to down east magazine uh a magazine about

00:02:53.660 the state of maine that i've done a lot of work for and so i did and they bit and they really liked it

00:02:59.020 and the piece won an award for the magazine and for myself and it attracted a lot of interest

00:03:05.600 and just uh theodore roosevelt obviously is a pretty popular character so um in my research i

00:03:14.520 well i was gratified that a lot of people liked it and in my research i kind of uh came across a lot

00:03:20.620 more than i could fit into 2500 words and so i thought you know maybe there's more here and i started

00:03:27.800 doing research research for a book and sure enough i found uh what i needed so that that was that was

00:03:35.100 where the the idea came from well awesome well tell us a little bit more about bill sewell um what

00:03:40.460 make makes him such a unique character and you know how did him and teddy roosevelt meet up

00:03:44.620 well bill sewell is from island falls maine which when roosevelt visited had something like 236 people

00:03:53.240 a really really tiny outpost in the southern part of a rustic county which is a back in that time was a

00:04:00.540 real wilderness area and in fact sewell's parents were the first people in island falls they built the

00:04:07.560 first house in island falls and bill sewell was the first white child born in island falls and

00:04:11.580 as i mentioned in the book it really was as much of a frontier as any of the places that were being

00:04:17.860 opened up out west at the time um and one of the things that attracted me to bill sewell was one

00:04:25.560 of the first descriptions that i read about him was of him uh reciting longfellow while he's cutting

00:04:30.500 down trees and i i doubt there are very many uh of his fellow lumbermen who could or would you know

00:04:38.120 recite uh epic poetry while they're doing their job and so that just struck me that you know here's a guy

00:04:43.680 that's a little bit more a little deeper than uh some of his colleagues um he was a physically huge

00:04:50.040 person i mean he's six four and and he had hands that were you know size of frisbees basically um

00:04:56.540 he was very self-made he never really had much of an education but read constantly um he he got his

00:05:05.500 first gun at age seven and he's guiding by age 12 i mean very precocious much the way that that

00:05:11.340 cedar roosevelt was um and that 16 went into the woods to start cutting trees and and um while all

00:05:19.820 the rest of his peers were sort of drinking away their wages which is what they tended to do

00:05:23.700 um he was really studying the business and by the time he was 20 he had his own crew uh running his own

00:05:30.520 lumber crew which was very rare um but the sewell house which still stands today in iron falls

00:05:38.460 the house that bill sewell built for his parents uh in 1860 is was the sort of the center of island

00:05:46.260 falls and i try to paint a picture of this community um and and everyone that came to island falls as a

00:05:52.640 traveler would stop there and he loved that he loved to get uh uh perspectives of people from from

00:06:00.080 outside you know from outside rustic county people from all over the world actually came by and

00:06:04.520 he was very interested in politics and what was going on all over the world and he just he was uh he

00:06:09.940 was a character and a real life liver much like roosevelt he he had sort of a zeal for life that you

00:06:16.140 know every day he couldn't wait to give it up and put his boots on and see what kind of adventures he

00:06:19.320 could get into so and and when we would when he went out west we would learn that he was never afraid

00:06:26.020 of anyone or anything um he was just a unique fellow okay and so how did tr meet bill sewell what was what

00:06:36.360 happened well yep um roosevelt was uh homeschooled or tutored by a gentleman named arthur cutler who

00:06:46.040 would go on to found a famous school for boys in new york and um roosevelt was his first student and

00:06:54.060 they were very close and cutler was only a few years older than roosevelt and theodore roosevelt

00:06:59.380 senior hired cutler to uh to tutor to uh to get young theodore who never went to public schools

00:07:07.220 his parents didn't want him to uh they just didn't like the idea of him going to public school basically

00:07:13.060 so he was tutored by cutler and cutler was an avid outdoorsman much like roosevelt aspired to be

00:07:19.500 and cutler had been on a on a train in boston with a couple of roosevelt's cousins planning a trip to

00:07:26.940 maine uh and he didn't exactly know where he wanted to go and he bumped into a fellow on the train he

00:07:32.220 said what you really need to do is get up and find bill sewell uh up in a rustic county and so cutler

00:07:37.660 did and this was two years before roosevelt went and he uh he had a wonderful time up there with uh sewell

00:07:45.420 and two roosevelt cousins and when they got back all they could do was talk about bill sewell and

00:07:49.980 island falls and so for two years theodore roosevelt had in the back of his mind that he

00:07:53.980 would really love to get up to uh a rustic county and go hunting with bill sewell um and what happened

00:08:01.100 was roosevelt's father died and roosevelt's father was a huge figure in his in his life kind of a compass

00:08:08.780 you know a moral compass uh he was his guide in life and the person that roosevelt called his best

00:08:14.860 friend and the man that he most admired so when he died he was really despondent and kind of adrift

00:08:21.500 and cutler recognized that and he thought he thought that would be a perfect time for

00:08:27.500 for this trip up north because he thought that bill sewell would be a really great

00:08:31.740 male role model for theodore roosevelt so in 1878 uh roosevelt and cutler and a couple of uh

00:08:40.780 roosevelt's cousins took the train and off they went to go see bill sewell up in island falls

00:08:45.660 and after these two experiences uh with you know these trips with sewell they became lifelong friends

00:08:52.300 is that correct absolutely yep um literally lifelong uh friends when when roosevelt became president uh

00:09:00.060 sewell went down and visited visited him at the white house a few times and um they exchanged

00:09:05.260 letters i think someone said that that roosevelt wrote 150 000 letters and i'm pretty sure a lot of

00:09:11.500 them went to bill sewell because they had to page through them all they just very uh very uh voluminous

00:09:18.860 uh correspondence back and forth talking about the relationship what was it like because sewell was

00:09:24.860 considerably older than roosevelt and was the relationship more like a father-son thing was it

00:09:29.660 brothers or were they just kind of a teacher student what was it like it's kind of that's a great

00:09:34.780 question because it's it it has a lot of all of those um elements in it he was sewell was 13 years

00:09:44.060 older than bill sewell and um and like i mentioned cut arthur cutler roosevelt's tutor saw sewell as a

00:09:51.260 great father figure type uh uh person in roosevelt's life and but i think that roosevelt himself

00:09:58.780 actually looked up to him more as sort of an older brother um they were extremely close and very good

00:10:04.700 friends but i think that he was uh more more of like an older brother uh or an older brother's friend

00:10:13.020 kind of thing um very much the mentor um as opposed to someone that would like discipline or you know

00:10:20.700 um he he just was a someone that roosevelt really admired and wanted to be like in many ways and um

00:10:28.700 and he he always looked to him even when he was president he would look to him for counsel for

00:10:33.340 for his thoughts on things and one of the reasons for that is because sewell was one of the first people

00:10:38.460 that roosevelt ever met that was sort of a normal everyday guy who was not uh hyper affluent and

00:10:45.580 and very privileged um he gave roosevelt this sort of perspective into the ordinary american's life

00:10:52.780 you know that's sort of a pop that where he kind of got his populism um so more a little bit of

00:10:59.420 everything really yeah is that something you something you just mentioned there how roosevelt

00:11:04.620 aspired to be like sewell that's something i found really interesting in your book uh you do some

00:11:09.420 experts from roosevelt's diaries and you see him constantly comparing himself to sewell or um there

00:11:16.300 was i guess just a stint where they hung out with a bunch of lumbermen and they worked around the

00:11:19.740 lumbermen and roosevelt this young man was comparing them to comparing himself to these you know really

00:11:26.380 strong lumbermen saying i could keep up with them even though roosevelt was still kind of a weakling at

00:11:30.780 this time and you kind of get the sense that roosevelt was insecure about himself and this

00:11:36.140 insecurity drove him to i guess improve himself is that would that be a correct statement yeah i

00:11:43.900 think absolutely that's correct he was he was um kind of pampered as i mentioned and his parents

00:11:50.300 coddled him and sort of indulged him and he didn't get a lot of exposure to people outside his social

00:11:55.660 strata and um and he he you know he never had the schoolyard fights that we had um that a lot of us had

00:12:04.220 anyway um he he didn't ever really get a chance to test himself outside the you know his parents uh

00:12:11.500 sphere of influence until he went to harvard and when he went to harvard he went up to maine

00:12:15.420 um so he did see sewell and and they they had a sewell had a nephew who was closer in age to

00:12:22.380 roosevelt that also guided with him a lot uh wilmot dow and and so roosevelt spent a lot of time

00:12:28.700 comparing himself to both sewell and dow you know you'll see excerpts in the diary you know i didn't shoot

00:12:33.820 anywhere near as well as sewell and dow um or i i hiked just as far as those you know as the

00:12:41.020 mainers did today and i carried my back the whole way and when he climbed mount katahdin he was the

00:12:46.220 only person from uh besides his guys the only one of his uh fellow new yorkers that was able to get up

00:12:53.420 the mountain and so that really was a very huge uh point of pride for him and he talked about it a

00:13:00.140 lot when he was back at harvard um you know i can keep up with the mainers i can i can work just as

00:13:05.340 hard as the mainers um so yeah he he always was comparing himself and a lot of men of roosevelt's

00:13:13.740 age when i say age in time period uh way from that era were worried about becoming losing the sort of

00:13:22.700 rugged individualism that made america great in the early days they were worried that they were becoming

00:13:27.820 too soft and too europeanized and i think roosevelt felt that personally very strongly because he did

00:13:33.740 come from a he was a very small child he was pampered he was sickly and so he really really wanted to uh

00:13:41.580 prove his mettle and then he used the sewell and dow as the measuring sticks for a time there

00:13:48.700 we're gonna take a quick break for a word from our sponsors and now back to the show yeah and what

00:13:54.780 ways do you think sewell um specifically had an influence on tr well i think uh wills about when

00:14:04.220 when he was a boy was very interested in um adventure stories you know he was fascinated by

00:14:09.980 rogers rain rogers rangers daniel boone davy crockett and maddie bumpo and all these rugged outdoorsmen

00:14:16.540 um adventurers and pioneers and when he came up to maine here here he meets a guy that that he thought

00:14:25.580 you know could have stepped right out of the pages of one of those books um bill sewell and he

00:14:31.980 basically i think it was it was just uh i can't say anything specifically like uh sewell said you know

00:14:37.820 you need to hope to hold your gun this way or or whatnot i don't have that kind of deep data but what i do

00:14:43.500 have is that that as we mentioned that he was always comparing himself he was always striving to be

00:14:49.500 equal to bill sewell and willow whether it was shooting or hiking or climbing he he always wanted

00:14:55.740 to uh to do as well so that was that's as specific as i can get really yeah on that really on a related

00:15:02.940 note do you think sewell had anything to do with roosevelt you know directing roosevelt in the public

00:15:07.820 service because this was a time in roosevelt's life when he was trying to figure out what he's

00:15:11.580 going to do with the rest of his life he was thinking about being a natural historian something

00:15:14.860 he's been doing since he was a boy and he was thinking about maybe doing public service um do

00:15:19.660 you think sewell had anything to do with kind of nudging roosevelt into the area of uh becoming a

00:15:25.020 politician or a statesman yeah he certainly encouraged it um i think probably that roosevelt was leaning

00:15:31.420 that way anyway but um i in the book i mentioned a couple of incidents where they talked specifically

00:15:37.420 about that um on the on the first one they were on their roosevelt's third trip to uh a rustic county

00:15:44.060 and they were exploring the rustic river and um they were pushing their boat up up the uh the river

00:15:52.220 which it was it was in the late summer so there wasn't a whole lot of water and they ended up

00:15:57.260 having to portage a lot and to physically heave the boat up the up the river over beaver dams and

00:16:02.860 it was a really really rugged trip um and at night what they would do is build a shelter beside the

00:16:08.700 river and sit and talk just and there was just the two of them and they had a lot of heart-to-hearts

00:16:14.300 and roosevelt uh talks later about on one of those heart-to-hearts he was talking to sewell about how

00:16:21.740 he'd kind of come to this point in his life where he no longer thought he wanted to be a naturalist

00:16:26.780 which is what he had always wanted to be um because when he got to harvard he found that

00:16:31.660 being a naturalist meant that you'd work in a lab with a white coat on and what he wanted to do was

00:16:36.220 be the adventurer in the field kind of naturalist and so he's starting to decide that maybe that

00:16:42.700 wasn't for him and he started to think about law and politics and sewell told him right there beside

00:16:49.500 the rustic river that the world could use more good men like him in public service um he said you

00:16:56.060 know there was very specific um conversation about it and they had much the same conversation when

00:17:01.500 they were going their separate ways uh out in the badlands um sewell ran roosevelt's cattle ranch

00:17:08.780 when when roosevelt decided to go out and uh be a cowboy and they found out that the ranch wasn't gonna

00:17:17.660 wasn't gonna fly for a variety of reasons and they decided to to uh to uh shut shut it down and they had

00:17:25.180 a heart to heart out on the plains one night just the two of them and at that time sewell actually

00:17:31.100 said explicitly if if you go into politics and live your chance of being president one day is good

00:17:37.260 so i think he really did encourage that because he did see he really as much as uh roosevelt admired

00:17:43.180 sewell sewell admired roosevelt he he would say that he'd never met anybody quite like him and he

00:17:48.700 thought the world needed um you know uh someone as good and smart and talented as he in public

00:17:57.020 service and so i do think yeah he really encouraged it wow and you just mentioned about the sewell's

00:18:03.260 experience in the the badlands and the dakotas with tr tell us a little bit about that because

00:18:08.540 that really was kind of a fish out of water experience for sewell i mean he came from this lush

00:18:13.740 new england green uh you know hills um and mountains of maine to uh this really desert of

00:18:21.180 the badlands um what was that experience like for sewell well it's funny he um essentially stepped

00:18:28.460 off the train and gets to um gets to the badlands and turns and says to roosevelt this is not much of

00:18:34.860 a cattle country and roosevelt was of course aghast because he just spent all this money and and was

00:18:41.260 trying to build a you know real ranching venture and here sewell was already putting it down

00:18:46.780 but um he didn't have much use for the badlands and he used to like to quip that whoever called

00:18:52.220 them the badlands had it about right um they were too hot for him and they were too dry for him

00:18:57.420 especially and too cold frankly i mean it was a real extreme temperature that that up in maine here

00:19:04.460 we don't usually see because we have the mitigating influence of the ocean um so he was not very

00:19:11.420 comfortable out there and uh he um he was never too comfortable riding horses um he uh he used to

00:19:21.820 say that the only experience that he had in an equestrian sort of way was when he rode logs and uh

00:19:28.140 he didn't he didn't really caught into that much what he really did enjoy though was exploring and

00:19:33.980 getting to see this part of the country because that was the farthest west he'd ever been um he'd

00:19:39.740 been to new york and he'd been to illinois and whatnot but he'd never been quite that far west and

00:19:44.380 he just enjoyed they did some trips through montana and wyoming doing that roundup uh cattle roundups and

00:19:51.260 he really enjoyed that aspect of it just getting to see what the country looked like and he also really

00:19:58.300 enjoyed meeting all the people that he met that he came across and he thought that the ranch hands from

00:20:04.380 from the west were much like the the men that he felt comfortable with the lumbermen of maine you

00:20:09.740 know sort of the same same guy just different job basically yeah well it sounds like sewell did you

00:20:15.980 know went out west kind of as loyalty to roosevelt in a sense he did i mean i think i think maybe he

00:20:22.140 thought he would like it more than he did and he certainly wanted to uh to hang out with roosevelt

00:20:27.020 some more and uh and to help him make this venture succeed um but when he got there uh it wasn't long

00:20:34.700 before he was writing home saying you know this is not the place for me he would tell his brother

00:20:39.500 who was a little bit jealous you know you don't have anything to be jealous about because

00:20:43.100 you have a we have it much nicer there i don't fall than they have it out here

00:20:46.460 so uh it was kind of oh go ahead oh go ahead no go ahead i was just going to say it was kind of

00:20:53.660 the wild west at that time still and and they had a lot of um discussions with with neighbors over

00:21:00.300 gun barrels and uh i think sewell found that kind of you know exciting um so i think that element kind

00:21:08.940 of appealed to him too but ultimately he said that when he got home he was he was never happier to be

00:21:15.020 home and then when he returned from that trip now why do you think bill sewell doesn't get as much

00:21:21.020 attention um today i mean in your book you talk about how he became this very public figure when

00:21:25.820 roosevelt was elected i mean he was um pitching you know even products uh outdoors products you know as

00:21:32.700 the the the guide and the mentor of theater president president theodore roosevelt um and then it just

00:21:38.380 seems like he kind of got forgotten in history why do you think that happened well he really was a

00:21:43.900 celebrity for a while there and and he was well known enough that they you know that he would be

00:21:48.300 in the newspaper and they would just have to say bill sewell they didn't have to say the president's

00:21:51.420 guy they wouldn't have to say anything it was just bill sewell he became a a known commodity and um

00:21:56.860 in a few of the very early roosevelt biographies he was he loomed very large in fact uh i quote uh

00:22:03.900 herman hagedorn as he was one of the first biographers of roosevelt then when when roosevelt

00:22:09.820 was at the end of his life hagedorn asked him you know who should i speak to and he said you need

00:22:14.620 to speak to bill sewell of island falls he knows me better than anybody else um and yet he he does

00:22:21.020 he does kind of disappear and then but it's really just it's from like about the 50s through the 90s

00:22:27.900 or so that he disappears um because right now there's another book out um you've probably heard

00:22:32.460 heard of wilderness warrior by douglas brinkley and there's a uh there's a fairly decent chunk

00:22:38.780 on sewell in that book and um brinkley says that uh maine was a place where and under sewell's

00:22:46.220 guidance where roosevelt first found his true self or became his true self um so it's really only

00:22:52.300 the the recent biographies but they were the biggest biographies so you know the best sellers

00:22:56.140 like uh warnings on horseback and stuff you'll find sewell in there but he's a very minor character

00:23:00.700 yeah um so i i guess it's because those books had certain um things that they wanted to focus on

00:23:09.100 the mornings on horseback was focused on the uh through the milieu that created theodore roosevelt

00:23:15.900 and you know new york and his family um and they weren't really as much into the outdoors i guess

00:23:24.220 yeah um and they weren't written by a crowd named guide maybe there you go well

00:23:30.460 last question andrew um what lessons do you think men today can take take from bill sewell

00:23:36.700 on becoming better men because this bill sewell sounded like he was an upstanding guy what can

00:23:41.580 we learn from him he definitely was an upstanding guy um one he believed in very hard work and he

00:23:48.780 believed in treating people or he would say using people in the right way um he was very honest he was

00:23:55.980 he was very um he always like theodore roosevelt he was always aspiring to better himself and his

00:24:03.020 community um for example he used to make loans out of his own pocket to people in island falls that he

00:24:09.340 thought were doing something that would help the community of island falls um he's extremely loyal as a

00:24:15.180 friend uh which i think is pretty obvious with his relationship with roosevelt and he really believed in what he

00:24:21.900 called duty um and an example of that would be that he was invited by some friends to move out to minnesota

00:24:29.980 where they were just starting to lumbering operations and he could have made a mint being uh like an overseer

00:24:38.140 sort of keep uh i guess an overseer is the best way to put it um helping set up the minnesota lumbering industry

00:24:45.900 and he didn't because his parents were were their health was failing and he thought he had a duty to

00:24:51.180 be there to to take care of them um so you know duty would be very one of his uh nicer attributes he

00:25:00.780 was just a really decent human um i i can't find a whole lot bad to say about him really and that's pretty

00:25:08.300 pretty sad because you think there would be really dark aspects to his personality or something but

00:25:12.700 the only thing that that was that i can see that you know he had he had an attitude towards women and

00:25:19.100 his his children that was um of the time i guess you know he didn't think too much of leaving his wife

00:25:26.860 to go live in the badlands for a year and a half or two years leaving her with a brand new baby so some

00:25:32.300 people might think that was not the kind of thing to do but he really was a a gentleman and a fine human

00:25:40.860 being really well andrew thank you for your time it's been a pleasure well i i really appreciate

00:25:46.780 it brett i i like your site and i don't know if you know but andrew um comes from the old greek for

00:25:52.700 manly that's right that's right you got a manly name there well thanks again andrew thank you very

00:25:59.500 much our guest today was andrew vietz andrew's the author of the book becoming teddy roosevelt how a

00:26:05.900 main guide inspired america's 26th president and you can find andrew's book at amazon.com

00:26:14.620 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:26:20.140 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and until next time stay manly

00:26:35.900 andrew vietz andrew vietz andrew vietz andrew vietz

The Art of Manliness - April 03, 2014

Episode #24： Becoming Teddy Roosevelt with Andrew Vietze

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