His thoughtful, quiet, pleasant face, so often
portrayed, is familiar to every one; it was the face of a man who
never blustered or bullied, who would neither inflict nor suffer
any wrong, and who had a limitless fund of fortitude, endurance,
and indomitable resolution upon which to draw when fortune proved
adverse. His self-command and patience, his daring, restless love
of adventure, and, in time of danger, his absolute trust in his
own powers and resources, all combined to render him peculiarly
fitted to follow the career of which he was so fond."*
* Winning of the West, 1, 137, 138 (ed. 1889).
Roosevelt contributed two volumes to the American Statesmen
Series, one on Thomas Hart Benton in 1886, and the other on
Gouverneur Morris in 1887. The environment and careers of these
two men--the Missouri Senator of the first half of the nineteenth
century, and the New York financier of the last half of the
eighteenth--afforded him scope for treating two very diverse
subjects. He was himself rooted in the old New York soil and he
had come, through his life in the West, to divine the conditions
of Benton's days.
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