Theodore Roosevelt Administrations - Roosevelt and Congress
Roosevelt and Congress
The Fifty-seventh session of Congress was sitting when Roosevelt assumed the presidency. He went on to preside over the Fifty-eight, Fifty-ninth, and Sixty sessions before he retired in March 1909. In the early twentieth century the Republicans held control of both houses of Congress. In the Fifty-seventh Congress there were 56 Republicans, 32 Democrats, and 2 Populists in the Senate. In the House of Representatives there were 200 Republicans, 151 Democrats, 5 Populists, and one Silver Republican who backed bimetallism. This changed little throughout Roosevelt's tenure.
During the Roosevelt years Congress, particularly the Senate, tended to be more conservative than the chief executive. Historian George Mowry wrote that by 1901 "the power of Nelson W. Aldrich of Rhode Island, John C. Spooner of Wisconsin, Orville H. Platt of Connecticut, and William B. Allison of Iowa was practically unchallenged." Other...
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