Theodore Roosevelt Signed Portrait.

This photograph was signed just a week before Roosevelt delivered the address ‘The Right of the People to Rule’ at Carnegie Hall as part of his unsuccessful 1912 campaign to regain the U.S. presidency. Roosevelt formed the Progressive Party of 1912 (nicknamed the Bull Moose Party) after he lost the nomination of the Republican Party to William Howard Taft, whom Roosevelt had previously chosen to succeed him as presidential candidate. Frustrated with Taft’s increasingly conservative policies, Roosevelt attempted to regain the presidency after a two-year expedition to the Amazon Basin. The split among conservatives between the Republican and Progressive parties enabled the Democratic party to win both the White House and majority of Congress in 1912.