Theodore Roosevelt has a Big Stick
by zunguzungu
The most famous Rooseveltian phrase (and he was a quotable dude) is the slogan “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” As Gail Bederman points out in Manliness and Civilization (in a passage unfortunately not Google books-able), it’s such a cheap shot to note the phallic resonance of that phrase that we almost don’t want to. But we also sort of do: when a manly man like Roosevelt talks about big sticks, he’s talking about big sticks, ya know?
But one of the interesting things about that phrase is that our first record of his using it (and only his first use), in a letter to an ally in the NY state senate, turns out to attribute the phrase to a “west African proverb.” I would love to know where he’s getting it from, how exactly he’s thinking through its West African provenance; hopefully I’ll be able to find out. But that’s the last time he mentions it as having an African origin, as far as I can tell; after that, he calls it an “old adage,” a “homely old proverb” and a “homely proverb.” Given how pervasive (and for Roosevelt, how problematic) is the conventional cliché/stereotype of African masculine, shall we say, endowment, there’s something fascinatingly suggestive in how this ultra-phallic imagery of big sticks begins with an African origin only to swiftly lose it, as it comes to be the official slogan of a great white man president:
In a letter to Henry Sprague in 1900:
“I have always been fond of the West African proverb, ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.’”
“National Duties,” 1901:
“A good many of you are probably acquainted with the old proverb ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick–you will go far.’”
“The Monroe Doctrine,” 1903:
“There is a homely old adage which runs: ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.’”
“America and the World War,” 1915
“One of the main lessons to learn from this war is embodied in the homely proverb: “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”
I’ve also come across an Irish attribution from the American Magazine, 1910 (maybe the Irish have big sticks too?):
“In a happy moment some years ago, Mr. Roosevelt quoted the old Irish saying, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” The press was delighted. The “big stick” part sounded picturesque. So the “speak softly” part of the sentence was promptly amputated, and for seven years the big stick was waved on the front page, on the editorial page, in the sporting section and the Sunday editions.
And in 1917, in “Muncy’s Magazine,” Lawrence Abbot expanded on the Irishness of the phrase, by implication:
“Early in his Presidential career he uttered one of those epigrammatic phrases for which he has become famous. ” Speak softly, but carry a big stick,” he said. The “big stick” half of this phrase caught the public fancy, and many people, forgetting that he put speaking softly first, have pictured him as a sort of glorified Irishman carrying a shillalah in a universal Donnybrook Fair, joyously hitting every head he saw.”
Of course, no one has ever found any source from which Roosevelt might have taken the proverb; you’d think, if it was such a hoary old saw, we’d have some kind of record of its having been used before Roosevelt, and (as far as I can tell), we don’t. I’m pretty positive he just made the thing up (which makes his initial decision to attribute it to a “West African” proverb and his subsequent decision to retract the attribution all the more interesting).
zunguzungu 
He seems pretty excited about the prospect of “going far,” too. Success = travel — or conquest.
Yeah, it works in those terms really programmatically; men do things outside the home, while the feminine is the interior. And manliness is expansionary beyong just men going out of the home into public life; it also means the US going out of its borders into the rest of the world.
You definitely know very well what youre dicnsusisg. Man, this website is just great! I cant wait to learn really what youve got to say. Im really happy which i came across this after i did because I used to be really beginning to become bored using the whole blogging scene. Youve turned me around, man!
[…] Theodore Roosevelt has a Big Stick « zunguzungu […]
The surprisingly linear progression form “West African proverb” to “old adage” to “homely proverb” does seem to support your hypothesis that he made it up. I suppose that the existence of an obscure West African saying makes it all the easier for the Great White Hunter from the Great White Empire to speak loudly about speaking softly while carrying a big stick.
Interestingly, regarding the claim that this is a West African proverb, the stick carried by Uncle Sam in the cartoon is topped with a bird — which you will see invaribly topping the staffs of various Yoruba Lucumi Big men, as with the StaffS of Osun and Osayin. Though Uncle Sam’s bird is definitely not a hornbill ….
Love, C.
Cool I’m just genuinely enoyijng your design-theme for the site. It’s simple, though great. A lot of times it is very hard to obtain this middle ground between usability along with visual appeal. I actually must say that you’ve performed an superb site. In addition, this weblog starts very quick personally with Opera. Outstanding Site!
I think you’re right, Foxessa; there’s always something quasi-atavistic in those kinds of pictures, even if only subliminally. TR does more than most to think American-awesomeness in terms of getting just a little bit closer to the primitive than Europe (who are overcivilized and decadent), but then that’s the thing with TR: the *American* home is on the frontier, out there with the savages, so homely and “the primitive” (however imagined) are not so far off from each other, a la Dan’s linear progression.
There is a huge difference however, in how those men in West Africa — and also here, such as babaaláwos, who are entitled to carry these staffs think about them, and what TR made it be.
These staffs are signals of great honor because of one’s status as a man of learning and power in the mysteries, and because of one’s rank. Traditionally, then,in Yoruba ideals, you would never say anything like talk softly and carry a big stick. Because this dishonors the status, and even the staff, which is often embued with a ‘soul’ of its own.
Love, C.
Aricelts like this are an example of quick, helpful answers.
You are so awesome for helping me solve this mystery.
[…] (aka Aaron Bady) looks for the maybe-African or maybe-Irish origins of TR’s “Speak Softly and Carry a Big […]