Courting white southerners: Theodore Roosevelt���s quest for the heart of the South

Most studies of President Theodore Roosevelt address his ���southern strategy��� to revive the Republican Party���s fortunes in a region where it was effectively shut out by 1900. This essay revisits Roosevelt���s approach to the South between 1901 and 1912 and argues that wooing white southerners away from the Democratic Party, more than any other approach, represented Roosevelt���s overriding strategy for the revitalization of the southern GOP