The exhibit reveals a darker side of the progressive icon.
On July 4, the $450 million Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library opened its doors to the public — a public that, according to a letter in a library exhibit, Roosevelt felt was similar to cattle.
In the letter written to Charles Davenport at Cold Spring Harbor in his own hand, he explained that “society has no business permitting degenerates to reproduce their kind.”
Roosevelt wrote in the letter, “We have to refuse to apply human beings the same elementary knowledge every farmer applies to his own stock. And that’s madness.”
“The farmers who let all the increase come from the worst stock would be threatened as fit inmates for an asylum,” he added.