Theodore Roosevelt Typed Letter Signed.

Theodore Roosevelt was an American statesman, author, explorer, soldier, naturalist, and reformer who served as the twenty-sixth President of the United States from 1901 to 1909. The youngest man ever to become president, he took office at the age of forty-two after the assassination of William McKinley, and he became the driving force of the Progressive Era, trust-busting the great corporations, championing the conservation of natural lands, mediating an end to the Russo-Japanese War, for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906, and overseeing the construction of the Panama Canal. This letter was written at the close of his first full year in office as president, only weeks after the United States recognized the new Republic of Panama and signed the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty that cleared the way for the canal. William Ernest Mason (1850-1921) was born in Franklinville, New York, and rose through Illinois politics as a Chicago lawyer and Republican orator. He served in the House of Representatives from 1887 to 1891 and in the Senate from 1897 to 1903, where he was an outspoken advocate of Cuban independence, and later returned to the House from 1917 until his death in 1921. During Roosevelt’s presidency the two men often aligned on matters of policy.