The Triumphant Life of Theodore Roosevelt edited by J. Martin Miller

BIOGRAPHY OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT 25
shoot and live in the open. He was commissioned lieutenant-
colonel, May 6, 1898, and was promoted to the rank of colonel
after the battle of La Ouassina, San Juan, when Col. Leonard
Wood was promoted to brigadier-general and assigned to the
governorship of Santiago.
When the war closed, the Republican party of his native
State nominated him their candidate for governor, and he was
elected over Van Wyck, Democrat, Kline, Prohibitionist, Han-
ford, Social Labor, and Bacon, Citizens' ticket, by a plurality
of 17,786 votes in a total vote of 1,343,968. He served as gov-
ernor of New York, 1899-1900. His administration as gov-
ernor was conspicuous in his thorough work in reforming the
canal boards; instituting an improved system of civil service,
including the adoption of the merit system in county offices,
and in calling an extra session of the legislature to secure the
passage of a bill he had recommended at the general session,
taking as real estate the value of railroads and other fran-
chises to use public streets, in spite of the protests of corpora-
tions and Republican leaders.
He was nominated Vice-President of the United States by
the Republican National Convention that met at Philadelphia,
June, 1900, where he was forced by the demands of the Western
delegates, to accept the nomination, with William McKinley
for President, and he was elected November 6, 1900. He
was sworn into office as the twenty-sixth President of the
United States, September 14, 1901, by reason of the assassina-
tion of President McKinley; Roosevelt being, at the time, less
than forty-three years old, the youngest man in the history of
the United States to have attained the chief magistracy of the
government. He served to the end of the presidential term,
which expired March 4, 1905.